The conditions that I discussed do not minimize what Brian is talking about -- they are causes of it.
On 8/7/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> I gather that having declared the left dead, or at least sleeping
> very deeply,
It seems to me that, in the United States at least, the Left is dead or comatose, or, more precisely, individual leftists and organizations that still exist do not cohere. Scattered as they are, leftists can help pass minimum wage ballot initiatives, dethrone Joe Liberman, and so forth, playing some roles in local politics. But leftists have little to no power to affect what happens to other peoples in other countries, such as the Iraq War, Washington's support for Tel Aviv, conditions of gay men and lesbians in the Middle East, or what have you. That's my assessment of reality in the USA. If you disagree, you might tell us what yours is.
>Yoshie now sees Islam as the only progressive internationalist force around
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other religions do not come in a single variety -- there are a wide variety of contradictory forces in each religion. Each concrete case needs to be examined carefully, in its national and regional contexts, to evaluate what role it is playing where it exists. Those who think and act like Osama bin Laden and those who think and act like Hasan Nasrallah are not the same, though both are Muslims. The former would rather kill other Muslims as well as secular leftists, whereas the latter have made alliances with those of other faiths and secular leftists, e.g., the Lebanese Communist Party. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>