Iran as a country is, of course, not at all irrational. The idea that Iran is a nation of lunatics is simply propaganda. The problem is that your analysis of Radical Shiism leaves out the inevitable theocratic intent of the Khomeini interpretation of Vilayat-a Faqih. It may be that you have no fundamental problem with this theocratic intent. Leninism is itself a religious interpretation of Marxism, so you may have no problem with the idea of the radical imposition of a moral/ethical system. It may be, in your judgment, "for their own good".
If you feel that every country must organize itself as an anti-American army, then this is rational. Armies always have radical, totalizing moral systems.
So I won't argue with you as to the value of radical moral vanguardism.
Instead, I'll suggest this - Shiites could do something great if they could enlighten certain economic ethics in Sharia. Usury - interest - is forbidden be Sharia. But in the absence of interest, the only source of financial "lubricant" could be what we might call "anti-interest". If the Muslim financial elite could be persuaded to offer excess payment into the financial system - paying each time more than they have to so that this excess could be collected and used to compensate risk-taking - they would have something.
But unless they are willing to answer capitalism in a mechanistic way, we should, I think, simply assume that Shiism (and Islam itself) will and should be enlightented away like all our other myths.
boddi
On 6/28/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/27/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > provocations from the Yoshie Broadcasting Network.
>
> On 6/27/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Jun 27, 2007, at 12:36 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> > > Why accept the terms of debate set by the bellicose
> >
> > That's hegemony for you, eh? But in some sense you're doing that too.
> > You want to prove that the Iranian state is wise and virtuous in
> > order to argue against sanctions. I say the Iranian regime can suck
> > out loud and sanctions are still an outrage. I say Iran is entitled
> > to develop nuclear weapons, too, as much as I dislike theocracies
> > that jail and shoot the likes of most members of this list.
>
> "Suck" is not even a criticism. :-0
>
> You must have come down with a severe case of anti-intellectualism if
> you think that scholarly works by the likes of Ervand Abrahamian,
> Arzoo Osanloo, and so on (none of whom says everything that the
> Iranian state does is "wise and virtuous," nor have I) are
> "provocations" that are too provocative to read. (Not that reading
> them necessarily changes your mind, as Hamid Dabashi, Valentine M.
> Moghadam, Saadia Toor, Kourosh Shemirani, etc. have hardly changed the
> way you represent Iran.)
>
> In any event, if a person tells me that X is a theocracy that jails
> and shoots most liberals and leftists and does nothing but oppress its
> people and yet that it is "an outrage" to sanction such a republic of
> fear and moreover that the said theocracy, whose behavior is entirely
> irrational (which is the impression left in the mind of the public by
> the way many liberals and leftists, as well as the corporate media,
> portray Iran), is "entitled to develop nuclear weapons" (which Iran's
> government doesn't say it wants, nor do most Iranians), I have to
> conclude the person is really out of his mind. Most thinking people
> wouldn't entrust nuclear weapons to the irrational.
>
> I fail to understand how misrepresenting Iran as a republic of fear
> ruled by irrational rulers benefits the Iranians.
>
> On 6/26/07, Jim Straub <rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 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?"
> >
> > Here here, but this points to a bigger problem: the us left has no
> > divisions. Beyond that, they don't -want- any. To get any involves doing
> > various unsavory things like talking to or allying with various folks far
> > removed from our own ideological values. Or building compromised
> > institutions nontheless able to maintain bank accounts and membership rolls
> > in the six figures for continuous years. Moving individuals, to say nothing
> > of the masses, happens by bits and increments rather than transformative
> > leaps, and so most leftists today prefer the art of critique and rhetoric,
> > which involves no responsibilities and little effort. The left doesn't want
> > a base and if it accidentally got one the majority on this list would be out
> > to undercut it, and they no doubt could find many valid points of criticism,
> > but at the end of the day, such purism can't even play a support role to
> > base-building.
>
> On 6/27/07, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> > Everyone clamours about Iran because BushCo have made it the topic du
> > jour and Doug Ireland and others post endlessly about it on the net.
>
> Anti-intellectualism, i.e. an inability to think beyond "sucks," is
> one problem of Americans today, which is organically linked to
> "purism" in the case of self-identified leftists (for purists
> everything "sucks") as well as a Pavlovian response to cues given by
> the US power elite.
>
> Beyond that, there is a problem of an implicit social theory that
> informs many leftists' thinking.
>
> Many on the Left who write about Iran, whether they are Iranian or
> Western, abstract "Iran" from its regional and global contexts. For
> them, the primary contradiction is the conflict between "the Iranian
> regime" on one hand and labor, women's rights, and other activists on
> the other hand, and activists who represent particular sectoral
> interests are then equated with "the Iranian people" (if writers are
> liberal) or "the Iranian working class" (if writers are Marxist). But
> social contradictions in Iran, which is not on the eve of revolution,
> cannot be represented in such a simplistic scheme; sectoral interests
> are not the same as class or national interests; and it is dangerous
> not to keep in mind that, Iran being in the empire's crosshairs, the
> primary contradiction at the political level today is between the
> Iranian people's right to exist and the empire's attempt to deny it,
> and all secondary contradictions within Iran, between Iran and its
> neighbors, and so forth are shaped by it and in turn shape it.
>
> > India gets a free pass because there is a wishy-washy sentimentality
> > about India among Western leftists. Though India, as it is currently
> > evolving, is a much more serious threat (particularly in an
> > ideological sense) since it is re-validating the neo-lib model (with
> > attendant Reaganite clichés), coupled with a dangerous naiveté about
> > markets, capitalism, corporatism, consumption, etc, the lessons of
>
> Western liberals' response to India may be rooted in worse things than
> wishy-washy sentimentality. It may very well be just frank admiration
> for economic growth. At one time in history, social democrats held up
> Sweden as the model. Then, after the waning of social democracy as
> well as socialism, they looked East and found Japan, South Korea,
> Taiwan, and so forth and held them up as the model for the South if
> not the North. Then, deflation grounded Japan, and the Asian
> financial crisis hit the "Asian tigers." Now they point to China and
> India as the new models* for the South. Why can't Russia do what
> China and India are doing, they say. But why would the Russians want
> to live like the Chinese, let alone the Indians? With each phase of
> capitalist development, people are asked to lower their expectations.
>
> * A brutal model of development can provoke an organized response,
> however, a glimpse of which is seen in the wire dispatch below. Most
> (all?) newspapers, predictably, regard this as less newsworthy than
> gas stations burned in Iran by unorganized protesters in response to
> higher gas prices and rationing.
>
> <http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP216874.htm>
> Maoists blow up India rail station as strike bites
> 27 Jun 2007 06:59:56 GMT
> Source: Reuters
> By Bappa Majumdar
>
> KOLKATA, India, June 27 (Reuters) - Maoist insurgents blew up a
> railway station and disrupted public transport across several Indian
> states on Wednesday, on the second day of a strike that highlighted
> their growing strength and national coordination.
>
> The insurgents used powerful explosives to blow up Biramdih railway
> station in a pre-dawn attack in the eastern state of West Bengal,
> disrupting links with many parts of east and south India, officials
> said.
>
> "Dozens of Maoist rebels tied up all the railway employees and just
> blew the station and torched whatever was left of it before melting
> into darkness," said Mahabir Pyne, a local resident.
>
> Maoists called the two-day strike in their strongholds of east and
> central India to protest against special economic zones (SEZs),
> low-tax enclaves created to boost industrial growth that have sparked
> protests from farmers who will lose their land.
>
> In the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, rebels called out employees
> of a coffee extracting plant from work near the port city of
> Vishakhapatnam, an SEZ location, and blew it up.
>
> Authorities in many mineral-rich regions of south, east and central
> India suspended public transport. Shops were shut in rural areas and
> mining operations in the eastern state of Jharkhand and the central
> state of Chhattisgarh were suspended.
>
> On Tuesday, a goods train engine was blown up and another set ablaze
> in Jharkhand. Rebels also set ablaze five trucks transporting minerals
> in the state.
>
> MAOISTS HOOK ON TO ECONOMIC ANGER
>
> Security analysts said the rebels have cleverly hooked onto an issue
> -- the seizure of land for SEZs -- that has angered many poor Indians.
>
> In March, at least 14 villagers were killed in police clashes with
> protesters in West Bengal, where the state government planned to set
> up a chemical hub on farmers' lands. It galvanised popular opposition
> to SEZs across India.
>
> At the same time the insurgents, who say they are fighting for rights
> of poor peasants and landless labourers, showed their growing punch in
> India's economically important mining regions.
>
> "This is the first-ever coordinated lethal action by the Maoists over
> a very wide area," said Ajai Sahni of the New Delhi-based Institute of
> Conflict Management.
>
> "It shows their dramatic shift of strategy from isolated hit-and-run
> attacks to a systematic and planned terrorist act."
>
> "This (SEZ) issue has been given to them on a platter and many foreign
> investors we spoke to recently said they were told by the governments
> in India that the Maoist issue won't be a problem," Sahni added.
>
> Thousands of people in India have been killed since the Maoists began
> their insurgency in the late 1960s.
>
> (Additional reporting by a Reuters reporter in Hyderabad)
> --
> Yoshie
>
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