[lbo-talk] Love (was Has the Left Gone Mad?)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 8/4/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> > Yes, there is a difference -- the former is analysis without emotion
> > (whether due to simple absence of it or active suppression of it),
> > whereas the latter is analysis of emotion.  Two different genres, and
> > both are valid -- it all depends on what you want to say, whom you
> > want to address, and how you want to say it.
> =============================
> That is a good way of putting it.
>
> In my own case, I have and have always had strong feelings about the social
> and political issues I choose to comment on. Few find their way to the left
> who are not empathetic and crave justice.
>
> However, the question is whether it is more poliitically effective to try
> and persuade people outside the Middle East who are not inclined to support
> demonized movements like Hezbollah and Hamas and states like Iran by
> "analysis without emotion" - or controlled emotion - or by flamboyant
> professions of love for a Persian Prince which can have no other purpose, it
> seems to me, than to shock and provoke. People are rarely shocked into
> changing their minds.

Two dates on the calendar:
22 August 2006: Tehran will reply to the Six Major Powers
31 August 2006: the deadline for Tehran to suspend nuclear enrichment,
as demanded by UN SC Resolution 1696 (2006), under Chapter VII, 14-1
(Qatar),
<http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8792.doc.htm>

In the short run, there are only two people in the world I want to persuade:
Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin.  If you could put them on the phone, I
promise you I'd do my Aristotelian best to try to convince them that
economic sanctions on Iran would not be in Russia's and China's
interests.  :->

Looking at the medium run, all I can do at this point is to put
leftists on notice that they should reexamine Iran and provoke
discussion about it (while entertaining Carrol Cox, John Mage, Jerry
Monaco, Jean-Christophe Helary, and sundry others).  Events have to do
the job of changing their minds, just as they have on the question of
troop withdrawal from Iraq.

In the long run. . . .  Well, I'm not convinced that we'll have "the
long run" to worry about.

On 8/4/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> I mean no disrespect, Joel, but I understand your response as pretty much
> symptomatic of the chronic despair which becomes acute in the case of the
> well-intentioned Israeli and overseas Jewish left at times like these: a
> deep-seated reflexive fear for Israel's survival coupled with shame and
> disgust at the brutal one-sided military might it brings to bear on
> resistance movements originating in impoverished and oppressed civilian
> populations.

Oh, Marvin, you complain too much.  :->

On 8/4/06, Max B. Sawicky <sawicky at verizon.net> wrote:
> >. . . If the Tel Aviv-Washington axis succeeds in defeating
> >or weakening Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran, etc., the Islamist Right,
> >backed by Saudi money, will step into the vacuum,
> >recruiting more angry Arab and Muslim youths into its
> >sectarian jihads not just in the Middle East but all over the
> >world.  Hard as it may be for you to believe, it is
> >Hizbullah, et al. who stand between us and apocalypse.
>
> I'd hate to hear the bad news.

Me, too.  I wish I had better news.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>