'There’s a problem in reducing politics to litmus tests as to which state is pro-U.S. or anti-U.S., a bad habit of the “anti-imperialist” wing of the left that has little interest in what Syrian or Iranian Marxists stand for. In my view, the most urgent task facing the left today is uniting socialists, not disgusting third world dictators like Qaddafi or al-Assad who are worshipped because Nicholas Kristof editorializes against them.'
Louis N. Proyect knows what he's talking about.
At some point I do mean to get back to a couple of related subjects. Flying Rodent's obituary of Norman Geras* reminded me how good the Indecent Left were at pointing out the failure of logical or polite argument by their pro-Iraq War opponents, but how this became a simple picture of "right-wing monsters" ravaging the globe, which becomes an embarrassing parody of itself when applied to Syria, where the Predictions about WMD are reversed. I also want to examine what imperialism actually means, when it comes to taking guns from the Americans, if that were ever to happen, or approving of Western airstrikes, in a context where they have no interest in bringing about régime change, because they don't encourage revolution and straight transfer of alleigance can't really be done like that, as in Syria today. Though somebody who cares more about developing marxist theories of imperialism might do a better job.
*[http://flyingrodent.blogspot.co.uk/…/a-requiem-for-blog.html]
Also Phil Edwards' piece saying that Putin has preserved international law. He's someone else I've got a lot of time for, but this is not good.[http://gapingsilence.wordpress.com/…/…/no-top-and-no-bottom/]
Louis N. Proyect knows what he's talking about.
At some point I do mean to get back to a couple of related subjects. Flying Rodent's obituary of Norman Geras* reminded me how good the Indecent Left were at pointing out the failure of logical or polite argument by their pro-Iraq War opponents, but how this became a simple picture of "right-wing monsters" ravaging the globe, which becomes an embarrassing parody of itself when applied to Syria, where the Predictions about WMD are reversed. I also want to examine what imperialism actually means, when it comes to taking guns from the Americans, if that were ever to happen, or approving of Western airstrikes, in a context where they have no interest in bringing about régime change, because they don't encourage revolution and straight transfer of alleigance can't really be done like that, as in Syria today. Though somebody who cares more about developing marxist theories of imperialism might do a better job.
*[http://flyingrodent.blogspot.co.uk/…/a-requiem-for-blog.html]
Also Phil Edwards' piece saying that Putin has preserved international law. He's someone else I've got a lot of time for, but this is not good.[http://gapingsilence.wordpress.com/…/…/no-top-and-no-bottom/]
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