Taking a long view of the matter, why not learn Persian? I assure you that it is a lot easier for you than Arabic or Japanese, and probably it is easier than German or Russian, too. Within a year, you can write like this: <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yf.html>. After all, Persian is a very gender-neutral Indo-European language. Engels claimed that he could master its grammar in 48 hours:
Since I am in any case tied up with the eastern
mummery for some weeks, I have made use of
the opportunity to learn Persian. I am put off
Arabic, partly by my inborn hatred of Semitic
languages, partly by the impossibility of getting
anywhere, without considerable expenditure of
time, in so extensive a language -- one which
has 4,000 roots and goes back over 2,000-3,000
years. By comparison, Persian is absolute child's
play. Were it not for that damned Arabic alphabet
in which every half dozen letters looks like every
other half dozen and the vowels are not written,
I would undertake to learn the entire grammar
within 48 hours. This for the better encouragement
of Pieper should he feel the urge to imitate me in
this poor joke. I have set myself a maximum of
three weeks for Persian, so if he stakes two months
on it he'll best me anyway. What a pity Weitling
can't speak Persian; he would then have his
langue universelle toute trouvie [universal language
ready-made] since it is, to my knowledge, the only
language where 'me' and 'to me' are never at odds,
the dative and accusative always being the same.
(Engels to Marx, Manchester, 6 June 1853, MECW
Volume 39, p. 335. <http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/letters/53_06_06.htm>)
On 6/26/07, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> Yoshie, perhaps you should throw in some trivia about the Sopranos,
> plastic porn stars or Zizek in your posts... ;-).
I just found the (Persian) text of the lecture on Michel Foucault's philosophy that Giorgio Agamben gave in Tehran last September: <http://www.irip.ir/Files/Agamben/Translate.pdf>. When I get a chance, I'll translate it into English.
On 6/26/07, Lenin's Tomb <leninstombblog at googlemail.com> wrote, citing Bricmont:
> One of the main things wrong with the rhetoric of support is
> that it accepts the logic of the adversary: they accuse us
> of 'supporting' the other camp ... a minimum of modesty
> should lead us to think that, far from us supporting a
> resistance that isn't asking for anything, it is the resistance
> that supports us. After all, the resistance is much more
> effective in blocking the US military machine, at least for
> a while, than the millions of demonstrators that marched
> peacefully against the war and who unfortunately
> did not manage to stop the soldiers or the bombs.
> Without the Iraqi resistance, the United States would perhaps
> today be attacking Damascus, Tehran, Caracas, or Havana.
Precisely.
Similarly, Tehran supports us, not vice versa.
There does exist a problem: various resistances to the empire can be at odds with one another, and some are. But that is not a problem that we can solve from here, and it is a secondary contradiction besides.
On 6/26/07, Russell Grinker <grinker at mweb.co.za> wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Beyond that, there isn't much you can do to directly support Iran's
> > workers, women, students, etc. If, for example, you are a dock worker
> > and live in a country that imports goods from Iran, and Iran's workers
> > strike, and you are asked not to handle hot cargoes, you should do
> > what you can to not allow the hot cargoes to move, provided that the
> > strikers aren't like the CTV of Venezuela. But few of us are in such
> > a position.
> >
> > As I said before, leftists who can't reform their own country's labor
> > movement are unlikely to be of much assistance to other countries'
> > labor movements. There is no short cut.
>
> Surely the task of transforming any movement must specifically be about
> winning (relatively few) people over on relatively difficult issues like
> opposing one's own government when it's at war?
I agree with you that politics must be argued from the beginning, starting with those who are open to discussing it. The example of trade union solidarity that I mentioned is meant to ask the question of how. It is my belief that, to offer anyone more than symbolic solidarity, we have to have a base of power ourselves. As Bricmont says, we have to take this question into account: "how many divisions will you send into battle?"
On 6/25/07, tfast <tfast at yorku.ca> wrote:
> > But why should I have to stipulate that every time
> > I point out that we shouldn't necessarily believe
> > even 50% of what's in the New York Times on
> > such a sensitive topic as Iran?
>
> Because it demonstrates that you are a right thinking lefty:),
When the time comes for all to toe the invisible party line of cold war liberalism, all the post-modern enthusiasm for Nietzsche goes out of the window.
On 6/26/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> I don't the point of actively demonizing the government of
> Iran
Nothing that you have said about Iran suggests that Iran's government today is better than the Shah's regime or that it does _anything_ that even remotely benefits the Iranians. The dominant idea of Iran that you convey here is a republic of fear, to borrow the title of Kanan Makiya's pre-war book about Iraq, which has a fondness for fascism. If that's not demonization, I don't know what is.
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-November/022698.html> [lbo-talk] Iran executes another queer Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com Wed Nov 15 11:31:46 PST 2006
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070409/007224.html> [lbo-talk] Halliday on the left & Islamists Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com Wed Apr 11 11:11:45 PDT 2007
. . . . .I'm just editing an interview with Hamid Dabashi in which he recalls Iranians' fondness for Germans in the run-up to WW II. . . .
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070416/007849.html> [lbo-talk] it's ok to kill an unmarried couple walking together Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com Thu Apr 19 06:34:57 PDT 2007
New York Times - April 19, 2007
Iran Exonerates Six Who Killed in Islam's Name By NAZILA FATHI
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070423/008401.html> [lbo-talk] capital punishment in Iran Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com Fri Apr 27 10:24:23 PDT 2007
[hanging people from a crane so they take 10 minutes to choke to death...lovely]
> (I haven't posted anything to this list that was critical of Iran that
> wasn't a response to YF in more than a month.)
Being "critical" of Iran is not the same thing as saying only, "Yuck."
Criticism takes more than that.
> But I don't see the
> point of doing the reverse, either - of circulating apologetics for
> the regime, for saying that Khomeinism is a lot like LatAm populism
> (yeah, if you overlook the religious police),
Ervand Abrahamian wrote in Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, <http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6c6006wp/>, pp. 2-3):
The central thesis of this book is that "populism" is
a more apt term for describing Khomeini, his ideas,
and his movement because this term is associated
with ideological adaptability and intellectual flexibility,
with political protests against the established order,
and with socioeconomic issues that fuel mass opposition
to the status quo. The label "fundamentalism," in
contrast, implies religious inflexibility, intellectual purity,
political traditionalism, even social conservatism, and
the centrality of scriptural-doctrinal principles.
"Fundamentalism" implies the rejection of the modern
world; "populism" connotes attempts made by
nation-states to enter that world.
There is more at issue here than semantics. On the one
hand, if Khomeinism is a form of fundamentalism, then
the whole movement is inherently incapable of adapting
to the modern age and is trapped in an ideological closed
circuit. On the other hand, if Khomeinism is a form of
populism, it contains the potential for change and
acceptance of modernity -- even eventually of political
pluralism, gender equality, individual rights, and social
democracy. In arguing against the term "fundamentalism,"
I do not deny its existence in other countries or even among
some Khomeini supporters in Iran. Nor do I deny the
importance of religion to Khomeini himself. My argument is
that Khomeinism should be seen as a flexible political
movement expressing socioeconomic grievances, not
simply as a religious crusade obsessed with scriptural texts,
spiritual purity, and theological dogma.
Abrahamian's thesis is perfectly compatible with informed criticism of the Islamic Republic of Iran's police, prisons, and other arms of political repression and social control, though not with saying "Yuck" and leaving it at that.
> or referring to "my beloved Islamic Republic of Iran."
I am speaking the truth here, albeit ironically: I love Iran, its people, its history, its culture, its language, and I wish the Iranians well. -- Yoshie