Consigliere Pugliese here w/ a hurried reply, probably w/ little of numerous thoughts and feelings of the last hour thinking about this thread, an offlist e-mail from Julio Huato. My ambivalent, conflicted political identity these last few yrs.(always not far under the surface memories good and bad, of radical actions of the US flag burning and US military base and nuke plant property destruction kind) and associations w/ remants of the Weather Underground ala PFOC and assorted scurrilous and scholarly Trotskyists, neo-Maoists, punk anarchists and yes, CB, even CPUSA and ex-CPUSA. (More than a few like Bill Sennett, late of the Lincoln Brigades and leadership in the Illinois CP, had little trouble admitting Julius Rosenberg, etc. were spies, doing their proletarian internationalist duty and would agree w/ the substance of a Trotskyist critique of Stalinism [or Paul Sweezy's circa 1980], but, would say comparing the strength of the CPUSA (80K members late 30's vs. 1K, at most for the SWP and its splits a 'brewin' same period.) But, I ramble avoiding the thread subject ;-)
If MRzine means to reach beyond its small audience (Circa 1990, in a small meeting w/ Bob Wing, ex-cadre of Line of March, now w/ UfPJ, which Yoshie seems to have left in disgust, he reviewed w/ us in CCDS, FRSO, Solidarity, DSA, SF Women's Bldg., circulation figures for MR and a dozen other longtime radical left journals, all of them in parlous states.) and it was public material, then (albeit defensively) I'd agree w/ Max that what Yoshie and her respondents on haloscan comment sections said was fair game. (Hitchens broadcasting the Juan Cole Gulf2000 Gary Sick list translations of the Iranian Pres. w/ dreamy eyes on Slate was a low blow.)
Why did I send to Cooper's blog? None of my Darfur posts having been replied to here and full of bile I sent them there. Though in person a wuss who has rarely shouted, get this keypad in front of me and I'm prone to do mayhem...'cuz yes, I do like stirring up shit from afar that I run away from in personal life, whether familial, w/friends or in the white collar factories I make a sporadic income in. (And that fill me w/ anger reminding me that whatever my despair about the US Left in all its ineffectiveness, shallowness and silliness http://www.zombietime.com/hall_of_shame/ it emeges out of real injustices that mainstream upper class liberal Democrats cannot and will not touch.) Cooper, at least has the virtue of not avoiding subjects like Castroism or ANSWER , that Daniel Lazare avoid or demogogue, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060403/exchange . For example though The Nation Books has reissued a classic Left critique of the Cuban Revo. by Jorge Edwards, "Persona Non Grata, " that Cooper recommends, how many here would even pick it up?