[lbo-talk] Support Bloomberg and Rafsanjani? (was Re: Rafsanjani to lead key Iran body)

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Sat Sep 15 07:41:55 PDT 2007


On 9/15/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 15, 2007, at 9:41 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >> This was the news hook for my interview with Ervand Abrahamian; I'll
> >> post the audio to the web sometime soon....
> >
> > It looks like the demand is now not so much "oppose the US government
> > and the Iranian regime" as support the rich men of both countries who
> > are advertised as "moderates" by the corporate media, rooting for
> > Bloomberg* and Rafsanjani**.
>
> Support? Maybe you're trying to make a joke and I'm missing
> something. I thought Rafsanjani's election was a good opportunity to
> talk about the structure of the Iranian government - or regime, as
> Abrahamian called it - the weird mix of theocracy and democracy
> embodied in the structure of having an assembly of (religious)
> experts choose a "supreme leader" with ultimate authority over the
> elected government. Rafsanjani is not my hero.

Neither was John F. Kerry, and yet:

Disappointment, please. No less serious a radical than

Tariq Ali has said that "the defeat of Bush would be

viewed globally as a victory." He's also denied that by

saying so he's urging anyone to vote for Kerry, though

it's hard to see how anyone else could defeat Bush.

Ali's squeamishness is understandable; for this newsletter,

which has from the beginning viewed the Democratic

Party as an obstacle to human progress, this is a difficult

endorsement to make. Making it easier is the knowledge

that were Kerry to win, he'd become the enemy on

November 3.

He is also likely to be disappointing in many ways

(disappointing to already low expectations), which is a

comfort. He's already made a healthy downpayment on

that disappointment, and the campaign has hardly begun.

He proposed a corporate tax reform that was the triumph

of wonkishness over any discernible political or economic

strategy-"revenue-neutral," of course, but defying any

interesting paraphrase. And, more repulsively, he

endorsed Bush's endorsement of Ariel Sharon's "peace"

plan-assassinations, wall-building, and making most

settlements in the Occupied Territories permanent. Awful

stuff, and it's only April. Come November, it's going to

require a giant clothespin to enter a polling booth.

LBO has quoted several times Garry Wills' explanation

of why the 1960s exploded: after years of liberals' saying

things would improve when Ike was replaced, when things

didn't get much better under JFK, a lot of people decided

the System was the problem, not party or personnel.

Some similar disillusionment with Clinton probably helped

spark Seattle. It could happen again. Let's hope it does.

("Ralph 'n' stuff," Left Business Observer #107, April 2004, <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Election2004.html>)

I'm sure an increasing number of Americans are disillusioned with the Democrats whom they voted for, but there's no sign of radicalization on the home front, is there? Perhaps disillusionment merely encourages apathy, cynicism, and passivity if the disillusioned do not see any practical alternative.


> Aren't you observing a posting moratorium for Ramadan?

Maybe you think that Islam is not a major religion, which can interest non-believers, but a contagious disease or something like that.

Speaking of Muslims, Tariq Ali said in an interview: "For socialists the task is clear: the Muslim communities must be defended against being made scapegoats, against repression, against the very widespread representation that terrorism is proper to Islam. All that must be energetically fought. But at the same time we must not close our eyes to the social conservatism which reigns in these communities, nor hide it. We have to try to win this people to our own ideas" (" The Anti-Imperialist Left Confronted with Islam," IV Online 376, March 2006, <http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1012=>). But what are "our own ideas" to which we are to win "this people" over? If it's basically "Vote for Moderates," then the idea would have a better chance of winning them over if it doesn't come saddled with tortured socialist justifications for it. -- Yoshie



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