In its campaign for international economic sanctions on Iran, Washington is wielding its dollar hegemony to force nations to make decisions: "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.
Either you are with us, or you are with Iran." I say, dump the dollar slowly but surely, and side with Iran.
On 10/12/07, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> In an earlier post, I cast it in different
> terms, as a choice (for the "third world") between the Iran/Venezuela
> model and the (Tom Friedman) India model.
I vastly prefer the Iran/Venezuela model (Third-World populist democracy) to the India/Brazil/South Africa model (Third-World liberal democracy) or the China model (Market Leninism with Chinese Characteristics).
On 10/12/07, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> I'm eventually going to get to responding to Yoshie's reading of
> Gramsci, but I'm substantially skeptical to the parallel between
> Iran and Venezuela. It seems to operate on a set of shallow
> linkages between Ahmedijad and Chavez in order to gloss over the
> more substantial element of the Boliverian movement, the mass
> movement. I'm am willing to be disabused of this notion, but I
> don't see anything parallel to this occurring within the Islamic
> Republic.
There are differences between Iran and Venezuela, as between any two nations. Venezuela is more democratic than Iran, but its Bolivarian process has not changed political economy as much as Iran's Islamic Revolution did.
On 10/11/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Dabashi:
>
> > When Bollinger finished with his preamble and turned his attention
> > directly to Ahmadinejad, we begin to witness the precise manner in
> > which the legitimate criticism of the Islamic Republic invariably and
> > ever so imperceptively degenerates into an illegitimate propaganda
> > manifesto for the missionary position of the United States to save
> > the world and for its client Jewish state of Israel to do its share
> > in this civilizing mission.
>
> This illuminates precisely what Yoshie, and apparently you accept:
> that the legitimate criticism of the Islamic Republic is the same as
> a propaganda manifesto on behalf of imperialism.
Dabashi criticizes Bollinger for taking up the White Man's Burden, but the ideological premise of discourse of liberalism and human rights today is _the White Man's Burden_ (naturally updated in multiculturalist fashion), which assumes that Iranians (and others in the global South) _need help_ from Americans (and others in the global North) _but not vice versa_, so there's no escaping racism in this discourse. Ideology of liberalism and human rights itself needs to be rejected.
> Bush, with the
> support of Bollinger, weakens and isolates the reformists in Iran
> that Dabashi writes about, much to the pleasure of Ahmadinejad & Co.;
Those who like reformists should have supported them when Khatami was the President and pushed America to normalize its relation with Iran at that time. But I don't detect any call to action in what you said about them back then.*
* E.g., <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1999/1999-July/012198.html> Hiro on Iran Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com Fri Jul 16 17:49:37 PDT 1999
[When I interviewed Hiro last night, he emphasized the class conflict between the young Westernized bourgeois of North Tehran and the religious poor and working class residents of South Tehran.]
Wall Street Journal - July 14, 1999
ANOTHER IRANIAN REVOLUTION? NOT YET
On 10/11/07, Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> 2. You reject what you think are exaggerated numbers. So then how
> many people have been killed, tortured, humiliated for what are
> considered sodomite (and adulterous) acts and what effect has that
> had on those whose sexuality may well lie outside our Western
> identities? You say not a word here, and I find that very disturbing.
I find it very disturbing that no one seriously wants to boycott Japan, though a call was issued more than a year ago. Really, Japan is an ideal target for those who claim they oppose both the "US government" and the "Iranian regime."
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/furuhashi150806.html> Boycott Japan by Yoshie Furuhashi
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Whether you hate America and its imperialists or Iran and its Islamists or both, if you follow their money, as well as the genealogy of their new management philosophy, you eventually get to Japan. -- Yoshie