Quick Chris, say something about prostitutes/sex-workers again... I can't take the heat any more! ;-)
Rakesh: I thought I said more than once that I have no criticism of Dabashi (I think I said that in my post congratulating Julio also, for which I presume I have earned the 'lackey' denotation ;-)). Where I agree with Yoshie, Michael and Julio is that there is no value in (us, Western leftists) getting all liberal and "on the one hand... on the other hand..." about a "regime" elected by a people whose greatest threat at this point is our government (which we can criticise much more authoritatively). Chomsky has said similar things about the repeated requests that he *also* criticise this or that "regime" (now, Chomsky has nothing praiseworthy to say of various "regime"s either, but that is not a matter of principle on his part, from what I can tell, but a matter of knowledge -- hence my willingness to listen to Dabashi, and Yoshie).
--ravi
Ulhas posts that the government of Iran is engaging with some Western corporations providing fodder for Doug to question the idea that Iran represents an "anti-imperialist" (note that the word "imperialist" is not mine) and "populist" possibility against dominant forces today. Its going to take more than such an incident to negate the contrast between India's current neo-lib model and what I called the Iran/ Venezuela alternative. If that is not obvious enough, I have to spend the time to explain why I think so (that the two are models available to the "third world" today).