There's a playlist of clips including the entire interview I did with Ali available on YouTube (just search Cutrone and Ali), where anyone can see for themselves what Ali said. The NLR article by Ali I referenced is "Mid-Point in the Middle East?" from 2006 -- see the final paragraphs.
My point is not to vilify Ali but to point out that all sides of the so-called "Left" are playing problematic role, "pedagogically," regarding the realities of the world we face. There's a lot of posturing, but nothing of political substance.
-- Chris
P.S.
James Heartfield asked about Vietnam: Yes, it is "impressive" for its sweatshop labor!
Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com Fri Apr 9 07:42:20 PDT 2010
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On Apr 9, 2010, at 9:38 AM, Christopher Cutrone wrote:
> publicly interviewed Tariq Ali during the worst period of the Iraq
> occupation, and he lied through his teeth, saying that the sectarian-
> communalist violence in Iraq, i.e., of the mosque and marketplace
> bombings, was not being perpetrated by the Iraqis but by "British
> special forces!"
This did not sound at all like Tariq Ali to me - I've interviewed him many times and know him reasonably well. So I asked him about it. His response: "Certainly not..and why British? We know that some of the death squads were set-up and sent out by the US..NYT reported as much some years ago....and I must have said that...they taped the whole interview and put it out...a few months ago I denounced the Shia squads for cleansing the Sunni areas!"
Doug