[lbo-talk] [Pen-l] Todd Gitlin: the most pompous ass ever?

Patrick Bond pbond at mail.ngo.za
Thu Jun 9 07:01:38 PDT 2011


In a talk given to our Centre for Civil Society in 2009 - http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?11,22,5,1878 - Norman Finkelstein gave a stunning lecture to a large Durban crowd that included Gandhi's grandaughter Ela, in which he argued that Gandhi would have supported Hamas' rocket launches. I don't have a transcript of this but if anyone wants to read the original discussion of Satyagraha by Gandhi I can forward it. Quite a mixed-bag in terms of race politics, it was, but a century ago in Durban things were rather tricky.

We'll see what interesting residues of Satyagraha will apply when the Conference of Polluters climate summit comes to town in about six months' time. Dec 9 is the final day for saving the Kyoto Protocol's binding language - and that won't happen. Instead, there'll be more privatisation of the air via carbon trading.

Maybe some civil disobedience will change the tone.

(In Gaza a couple of weeks ago, at the Erez border, I witnessed Israeli border patrols firing regularly at unarmed Palestinians. In these peaceful marches to the border there have been dozens killed or wounded.)

On 6/9/2011 6:42 AM, Robert Naiman wrote:
> Gitlin may be a pompous ass, but the underlying point is still
> basically right. When pompous asses come around to seeing that 2+2=4,
> it's still four. It's important not to be provoked by the arrival of
> the pompous asses on the scene into arguing that 2+2 is anything but
> four.
>
> On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 3:45 PM, Joseph Catron<jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "[I]t now looks as though—fingers crossed—a critical mass of Palestinians
>> may, at last, be getting the point. When they blow people up, they
>> manufacture panic and hatred, and lock themselves up. They forfeit the
>> initiative. When they act en masse with what Gandhi called satyagraha, soul
>> force, they seize the initiative. If the Palestinian national movement had
>> begun with disciplined nonviolence, it would have achieved statehood by now.
>> That said, much better late than never."
>> http://972mag.com/can-nonviolence-move-the-next-century
>> Anyone failing to understand why this dripping racist condescension is
>> entirely baseless might consider reading Mazin Qumsiyeh's Popular Resistance
>> in Palestine. But in the meantime, or in lieu of that, please avoid any
>> attempts to feign expertise on the topic.
>> --
>> "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
>> lytlað."
>>
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>>
>
>



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