Carowan unmasked

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Feb 19 12:23:15 PST 2001


Well it turns out that Jan Carowan was Rakesh Bhandari, a list alum, under a pseudonym. I'm rather stunned by this deception. Rakesh would have been perfectly free to criticize Sweeney, Nader, me, and whatever else he wanted to under his own name, but "Jan Carowan" just sounded like another net lunatic to me. And his whiny offlist emails to a number of subscribers only confirmed that. One unwilling recipient even suggested contacting hotmail's harassment staff, so I'm not alone in feeling annoyed.

Among the offlist communications I got were:


>So you claim that you expelled me for my tone and style, not for the
>reason that you do not appear to yourself as you appear to me--a
>defacto right winger, insensitive to homophobia and racism, for
>having cast a symbolic vote for Nader (when Bush had to be pushed
>back before all else--you try to raise your gay or colored kid in
>the next 8 years in this country) and an ugly American labor
>aristocrat social imperialist (for having uncritically supported
>Sweeney's unilateral calls for social protectionism). What you
>cannot handle is not my style and tone but the fact that you appear
>so different to me than you think of yourself. The reason you give
>here for expelling me is purely delusional; it was an act meant to
>protect your self image from the destabilization of an other's point
>of view. So now you have silenced, censored, expelled. The
>*violence* is in your act, not in my sharp and obnoxious style.


>Please be aware that Jan Carowan would have mercilessly criticized UNITE
>which seems to have retained the journalistic mercenaries Henwood and/or
>Featherstone for their protectionist anti sweatshop campaign which has has
>already cost Cambodia a quota increase and destroyed tens of thousands of
>lives of poor Cambodian women. Their benefactor UNITE has also ensured that
>African Free Trade Act puts all the sacrifices on some of the poorest
>people on earth since Africa has been forced to liberalize while
>required to use
>American fibres in exporting to the American market. This has saved several
>hundred American jobs at the expense of the poorest people on the earth.
>Please forward this to LBO; the stakes are high.


>All you are both saying is that the Cambodians and Africans who have
>been victimized by UNITE's protectionist policies are not welcome in
>your living rooms. Henwood and Featherstone don't even mention these
>impacts. You are all just apartheid fucks--and I mean that
>sincerely. It's obvious that not one of you has a clue how you
>appear to many of the world's peoples. Politics is not a matter of
>living rooms; it's a matter of open contestation in an environment
>which is decidedly not cozy.

So "Carowan" has now gotten his posts forwarded, and his critiques heard.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list