Truly distressing is that there is at least an embryonic secular Left in Iraq but it continues to be ignored by Klein and just about the entirety of the Western peace movement, for that matter. Iraqi democrats and socialists make no illusions about the character of American occupation, but they have even less truck with Al Sadr's death squads. *************************************************
Agreed. When the Iranians threw the Shah out, I remember it was the workers at the ports who struck and shut down oil traffic while the mass of population demonstrated in the streets yelling, "Mag ba Shah" (excuse the transliteration). When the fundamentalist theocrats took over, they violently suppressed the left which had blocked with them nationally. The international left more or less forgot about Iran after that.
Unity for what? That is the question. With whom? I'll go for the Workers Communist Party. The religio-theocrats and former Ba athists can go to their own hells.
Best, Mike B)
===== It is the simple thing that is difficult to do, being-for-oneself, whose ways must be won by fighting, whose excellence demands bravery.
Ernst Bloch, "Dialectic and Hope" http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
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