On Sep 15, 2007, at 10:41 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>> 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.
Islam is a major religion? I had no idea! Thanks for the tip.
> 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.
Ok, you think the Western left is bereft of ideas. That's not a position I'm unfamiliar with, you know. But what are your ideas? You write as if you've got a secret knowledge that the rest of us should be lucky to have. That's been the constant ever since I first made your acquaintance more than 10 years ago - when you were a Leninist, when you were a green, and now that you're a whatever you are, you were always more radical, more steely, and more authentic than anyone else. As far as I can tell, your current idea is that the Western left should ape some of the organized superstitions. Could you disclose some more of your suggestions?
On your "blog" you write:
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-do-liberals-want.html>
> What do liberals want, regarding the empire and its enemy number
> one? 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,
> for example, rooting for men like Bloomberg1 and Rafsanjani2.
>
> While that's a slight improvement over favoring the US government
> over the Iranian government under the guise of opposing both, it
> also puts liberal advocacy for human rights in question. After all,
> Rafsanjani, who has been at the center of power in Iran from the
> very beginning of the Islamic Republic, is responsible for the
> deaths of thousands of opposition activists and intellectuals for
> which the current President of Iran isn't. As for the human rights
> record of the ruling class of the empire, the people of Iran can
> only look at the countries to their east and west and see what it is.
>
> 1 Exhibit A
>
> The editor of Left Business Observer (who endorsed John F. Kerry in
> 2004) says this about Bloomberg:
>
> I don't think Bloomberg makes much difference for how the NYPD
> operates. Instructions for the RNC 2004 almost certainly came down
> from the White House, and I doubt things would have gone much
> differently under Mark Green. . . . But things like 311 make
> routine daily life easier. And you can be sure that FEMA would have
> responded well to Katrina had Bloomberg been president. The
> passport office wouldn't be backed up for three months like it is
> now. The capitalist imperialist system would still go on, for sure,
> but for your average Joe or Jo, things would run more smoothly.
> (Doug Henwood, "Rudy's Braintrust," LBO-Talk, 14 September 2007)
What is the point of posting something like this? My guess is that it's to prove yourself more radical, more steely, and more authentic than me, the liberal. Because otherwise it's not much of a political contribution.
Doug