Why De Long Bailed the List?

Brad Mayer bradley.mayer at ebay.sun.com
Mon Oct 1 16:07:33 PDT 2001


Perhaps because he'd have to add the WTC massacre, as "regrettable" blowback, to his _long_ (no pun intended) list of the "CIA's actions" he would find "very difficult to condemn": the by now (within the left, I hope) well known, CIA/Rightist support for the Afghan "freedom fighter" mujahadeen, which included the Arab Afghan buddies of Osama bin Laden. See De Long's quote below. I am opposed to excluding anybody from non-membership left lists, even if they are a Nazi, so long as they behave within reason

You all have read Tariq Ali's article, I hope. Yank on this thread hard enough and it leads back to that other American Zion in the Middle East, the wonderful beacon of progress known as Saudi Arabia, as is revealed again in todays' NYT article, "U.S. Set to Widen Financial Assault".

Let us hope that U.S. leftists get up off their "virtues" and begin to SHAMELESSLY tar and feather up and down, the right wing scoundrels presently hiding behind the Stars and Stripes. Some of these who where close to the anticommunist mujahedeen in the 1980's - such as Bearden (former CIA officer) and Evans (a mujahedeen-hugging journalist whose highly unfinancial article appears in this weeks Barrons, fancy that!), are already preparing defensive positions along precisely these lines, scurrying to distance, more than themselves, their glorious anticommunist cause, from their former Arab Afghan friends. The "cause" has gotta be worth it, at all costs! Lezsee, how many William Safire pieces on the Afghan "freedom fighters" can I find...

Ironically, such distancing has the effect of shifting the focus to - more precisely - the "Saudi Afghans" - and their well heeled tie-ins to the Saudi upper crust. That's one place the broad US Right just doesn't want to go - that was what the Gulf War was all about.

Instead, they are preparing to plumb new depths in infamy. -Brad Mayer ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 02:04:03 -0700

To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com

From: Aaron <aaron at burn.ucsd.edu>

Subject: Brad De Long doesn't belong on a left discussion list

It seems to me entirely unacceptable for a 'Left' discussion list to include among its participants someone who, in response to the rather weak liberal statement:

>>Of course this doesn't mean I

>>wouldn't be hard on the CIA agents who effectively passed death sentences on

>>five thousand members of the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, by handing

>>their names over to Suharto and the insurgent generals during the '65 coup.

writes:

>I don't like Suharto, but when I think about what happens in the first

>generation or two after a Communist victory...

>...

>So I find it very difficult to condemn the CIA's actions in Indonesia in

>1965. Eurasian Communists have been very bad news...

This support for the massacre of worker and peasant leaders by the bourgeoisie puts Mr. De Long on the other side of a bloody divide from any kind of leftist -- whether trade union militant, anarchist, Marxist or any combination or variant thereof. One should no more engage in polite discussion with him than with an admirer of Adolf Hitler. He should be promptly removed from this list.

- In solidarity against capital, - Aaron -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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