Re: Support Bloomberg and Rafsanjani? (was Re: Rafsanjani to lead key Iran body)
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