SA wrote:
> But a chunk of the unions and SPD broke off in protest against it and
> helped found the Left Party.
Don't be so Wessi-centric. ;-) It is more accurate to say, a chunk of the unions and SPDs broke off in protest against it and helped found the WASG, which went on to become a component of the Left Party, the other (larger) component being the Eastern-based PDS.
> Yet AN seems to want nothing to do with the Left Party.
You could not be more wrong, but I won't go into specifics because email lists are not the place for discussing activism.
> Also, it's odd that AN is constantly criticizing US leftists, yet when it > comes to the US as a whole he wants to accentuate the positive.
No, I have no problem conceding that the U.S. is a neo-liberal shithole. I just have a problem with U.S. leftists who think Europe is a paradise, as opposed to a slightly more livable neo-liberal shithole.
I made this point before: idealizing Europe is not just naive. It is also the cudgel used by neo-liberal onslaught over here. With one side of his mouth, Schroeder attacked the evil Americans and their Iraq war. Then he passed the Hartz laws.
First, Merkel attacked the evil financial power of New York and London Ango-American financial capital. Then, she forced Greece under the jackboot of Berlin-dictated austerity.
Every nasty, brutal thing done by European capital is always accompanied by disingenuous propaganda about how much less civilized the Americans are. It is a transparent strategy to everyone paying attention.