>I think Michael Albert and Stephen Shalom discuss the issue of tactics well without resorting to
the anti-radicalism/redbaiting of Corn, Hitchens, Gitlin, etc. It could be found here:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2527
> Now is as good a time as any to build a movement that "calls for an end to the >barbarism and for
the beginning of a new society." This isn't going to happen >with ANSWER or with people like Corn.
>
>Proud to be part of the "hard left,"
>marc
And isn't going to happen with Michael Albert either. Z Magazine is boring and depressing. And what it has in common with ANSWER a lack of desire for kicking any ass. When either's tactics or strategy fails they cluelessly redouble their efforts.
The Village Voice article you link to is full of lies but it's interesting the authors says this: "I can't think of any comparable example of bad faith among the neohawks, but I do have some thoughts about what makes them run. For one thing, there's a real temptation to leave the chronic depression and ample masochism of the left behind."
As I've said before, I don't think Hitchens has abandoned the left. But here the writer is saying something I've been running across a lot lately. Just here on this list, you have Alec R.'s dark ruminations and Carrol's chronic condition. This morning I read a book review of celebrated author Jonathan Franzen's new essay collection How To Be Alone. The reviewers says Franzen had a close call with depression. Also, she ends the review with
"In the four scant pages of "Inauguration Day, January 2001," Mr. Franzen describes riding from Harlem to Washington with a group of demonstrators from the International Socialist Organization and marching to the Supreme Court building in the rain. On the way home, he concludes: "Few pleasures compare with that of riding on a bus after dark, hours behind schedule, with people you violently agree with." This book illustrates what he means."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/04/books/04MASL.html
Obviously, the left is very interested in and knowledgable about dark, depressing subjects even though their elimination is its raison d'etre. For example
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/04/international/middleeast/04RIGH.html Amnesty Accuses Israeli Forces of War Crimes By JOEL GREENBERG
JERUSALEM, Nov. 3 — A new report by Amnesty International contends that Israeli forces committed war crimes in Jenin and Nablus this spring during a large-scale offensive in the West Bank, killing Palestinians unlawfully, blocking medical care, using people as human shields and bulldozing houses with residents inside.
The report was formally submitted to Israeli officials today.
"The information in this report suggests that the Israeli Defense Forces committed violations of international law during the course of military operations in Jenin and Nablus, including war crimes, for which they must be held accountable," the new report says in its conclusion.
[clip]
Citing accounts by witnesses and on-site investigations by Amnesty International delegates, the report describes incidents in which unarmed Palestinian civilians were fatally shot in custody or while in their homes. In one incident on April 6, a man was shot and killed after he was seized with other men in the Jenin refugee camp, the report says. In another incident, the previous day, a woman was killed when soldiers used explosives to blow open the door of her house as she went to open it.
In Nablus, again on April 6, eight members of a single family were killed, including three children, their pregnant mother and an 85-year-old grandfather, when their house was bulldozed.
The report says soldiers used people as human shields, forcing them to walk in front of soldiers and to enter homes and rooms suspected of being booby-trapped or of sheltering gunmen.
"The soldiers would have us walk in front of them, sometimes with them resting their rifles on our shoulders," said Amer Abdel Karim, 24, who was arrested in the Jenin refugee camp on April 9. "At times they were exchanging gunfire and shooting from people's shoulders."
The report also cites cases in which prisoners were beaten, often with rifle butts and sometimes severely, including one case in which a detainee died.
Ambulances and aid organizations were prevented by Israeli forces from reaching the areas of combat even after it was reported that the fighting had stopped, the report says.