[lbo-talk] Tan Malaka (was Liberalism)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Jul 10 12:01:13 PDT 2007


On Jul 10, 2007, at 10:02 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


>> I've been mechanically approving your first three posts of every day
>> - and by the way I'm getting a little annoyed at how you sometimes
>> decide to delete the pending posts, so when I go to approve them,
>> they're gone. But I'm not going to approve any more until you
>> actually name some names.
>
> Yourself, for example.
>
> Can you imagine writing an article with the tone and argument like
> "Cooler Elites" <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070507/henwood> --
> "Can we trust them? Do we have any choice?" -- about the power elites
> and ruling classes of Iran now or Yugoslavia in its twilight, or even
> the power elites and ruling classes of China or Russia today (neither
> of which is exactly on the list of America's worst enemies yet), let
> alone getting it published in The Nation, without devoting more space
> to the human rights violations and other problems caused directly or
> indirectly by them than to your main argument, mentions of which you
> can, as you in fact did in this article, get away with omitting when
> you are writing about the "investor and business coalition" and "their
> favorite politicians" in the USA?

This is fucking ridiculous. I've spent a lot of the last 20 years writing and broadcasting about the human rights violations and other problems caused by the U.S. state, economy, and ruling class. Sometimes it gets into The Nation, sometimes not. I've never mounted a soapbox to denouce human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia - I was against Bill's splendid little war. I've never joined in the left-liberal denunciations of Putin. I've defended China against critiques coming from American unions.

And on Iran, who have I had on my radio show this year to talk about that country? Saadia Toor and Kourosh Shemirani, Hamid Dabashi, and Val Moghadam. Not a single human rights imperialist among them.

What was I supposed to do in that warming piece? List the crimes of the American ruling class in detail, in that old Bella Abzug kitchen sink style? Why would I find the ruling class less than trustworthy if I didn't think it a muderous, greedy, short-sighted, and cynical crew?

This extremely lame answer confirms my suspicions that you've backed yourself into a corner and are too bullheaded to admit it.

Doug



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