I for one think these marriages of convienience lead to dead ends - as many Iranian communists worked with the Islamists to rid the country of the Shah - but looked where it got them.
My wife's uncle started Radio Free Greece in Berkely in the 60's against the junta. His roomate was an Iranian Communist who was murdered by the Islamists after the 1979 revolution.
I guess when starting bottom up, grass roots movements - one must know who one is affliated with and make the decision to fight those groups who profess a divisive or hierarchal idelogy.
There is a great book called OVERTHROW which talks about how overthrowing certain democracies for economic reasons and promoting dictatorships has given rise to these extreme populist ideological movements.
2 examples:
The US/UK overthrew Mossadeq = Shah = reaction Khomeni
The US fosters and promotes an oligarcy in Cuba, Venenzuela, Bolivia, etc = Castro, Hugo Chavez, Morales - and the verdict is out if Chavez will eventually show his true Moaist colors.
** Personally I am a left libertarian so I detest any of the old Stalinist, Maoist guard.
And what of the fact that the US gov't supports a regime with one of the worst human rights records in the world - Saudi Arabia? It's the 21st century and these people still live within a "kingdom". Of course, this type of repression give rise to people just like Bin Laden and possibly later another secular firebrand like Chavez that will most definitely be Anti-American in every way.
It is time to STOP supporting groups or regimes that are opposed to Democracy just because they principally are resisting the capitalist hegemony of the west.
** NeoCons profess to these ideals - but it is a sham to shield purely imperalistic ambitions, as their true modis operandi is to blakanize the entire Middle East through wars and forced sectarian strife in order to ultimately redraw the borders, create new states friendly to Israel, US and UK corporate interests. Basically, to homogenize an entire region and culture toward a commodity society. But to do it, they need to destroy the people themselves and their identity. Of course, the Islamists are a frankestein we have created to help us with that goal, but ironically have now become our own worst enemy. I call this Blowback.
Now - if you look at Tariq Ali's theories - he postulates that the end of the left in the middle east should be owed to the CIA and their infiltration and destruction of all secular movements, thus leaving a vacuum that the madrasas and Islamists took up.
I would recommend THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES - an excellent documentary by the BBC by Alex Curtis about the parallel movements of the Islamists and Neo-cons in trying to create a black and white world, unified by some common myth.
It is all scary - for some reason humans just don't like the relativism and dirtiness of liberal democracy. I wonder why?
boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
I was vocal, vitriolic and unforgiving, burning every bridge I had built with the Democratic Party castigating our junior Senatorette Maria Cantwell for her position on Iraq AND for her co-sponsorship (along with a host of other Dems) of what was Rick Santorum's S. 333 - the "Iran Freedom And Support Act" (I'm not quite sure of its status now). I am not for an attack on Iran for any reason.
But reviling the Bush government for its evil "wag-the-dog" intent to attack Iran and *supporting* Iran are two different things.
Those who are putting forth the idea that somehow leftists should *support* Iran had better come clean, because frankly some right-wing website is going to find writings here about this tendency and beat the Left to death with it. Seriously, this kind of talk about Iran is EXACTLY what the Anne Coulters of the world are dying to read in support of their insane contention that Islamists and Leftists are somehow linked.
So those tending to support the idea that Iran is a positive force in the world should make your case because I'm sorry but leftists really have to choose one side or the other: Does Iran and the Shiite Islamist movements it supports represent a "liberation theology" or not? If so, how?
Here is a portion of Hezbollah's 1985 manifesto:
"We are the sons of the ummah (Muslim community) - the party of God (Hizb Allah) the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran. There the vanguard succeeded to lay down the bases of a Muslim state which plays a central role in the world. We obey the orders of one leader, wise and just, that of our tutor and faqih (jurist) who fulfills all the necessary conditions: Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini....We are an umma linked to the Muslims of the whole world by the solid doctrinal and religious connection of Islam, whose message God wanted to be fulfilled by the Seal of the Prophets, i.e., Muhammad. Our behavior is dictated to us by legal principles laid down by the light of an overall political conception defined by the leading jurist....As for our culture, it is based on the Holy Koran, the Sunna and the legal rulings of the faqih who is our source of imitation."
I found this on the Wikipedia site. The web page quoted is
http://www.ict.org.il/Articles/Hiz_letter.htm
I'm sure other sites will be quoted, but there are consistent ideas, it seems to me, throughout the Iranian-based political writings.
1.) Their movement is based on a defense of Muslims only.
2.) They seek to create governments based on Sharia law.
3.) These governments should have, as their supreme juridical authority, Shiite clerics.
4.) All people under the domain of these governments will be subject to Sharia law AND be constantly exhorted (at least) to become Muslims.
5.) In terms of economics, Islam, like other God/Authority religions, counsels for charity and against vice, but it is not really based on humanistic or democratic judgment. From the "Islamic Economics Homepage" at the website
http://www.islamic-world.net/economics/index.htm :
"It has to be fully kept in mind that all the injunctions of the Sharia seek to benefit human beings and eliminate harm. But those benefits and harms are not entirely left to the judgment of man. In a large number of cases those benefits and harms have been specified in the Qur'an and Hadith and should be made the criteria of judgment."
So the purpose is to impose Sharia first, and create economic justice second, if at all.
It seems to me that, where Catholic liberation theology in South and Central America pushed the Vatican left, it seems that the Iranian theology actually pushes the Muslim world right, towards a stricter, more fundamentalist, Sharia-based political economy. This political economy enshrines male, religious authoritarianism and is completely inconsistent with the aspirations of the Left. The success of Islamism, it seems to me, CANNOT be a success for the Left. There are many ways to sow discord against the hegemon. Not all of them are good.
If Iran succeeds, what do we win?
boddi ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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