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Tariq Ali: The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence." 'Sapere aude'
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Needless to say, I find your attitude very primitive, although I am not surprised by it, given the naive views of the American military adventure in Iraq you expressed earlier.
"Person x is a y (Anti-Semite, Trotskyist, ...) so I don't have to bother providing you with any arguments for why x's position on z is wrong" is a line I associate more with DailyKos than with the EuroTrib, but it could be the case that having a less crude representative of the Empire as US President has lead to a degradation in intellectual rigor at EuroTrib. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
An Advisory Board member for Iraq Occupation Watch, Ali is a supporter of the "resistance" in Iraq and has called for the killing of U.S. troops stationed there. Intimating that the 9/11 attacks had given America a taste of its own medicine, Ali made his goals explicit in the May-June 2003 issue of New Left Review. There, he forecast that "the invaders of Iraq will eventually be harried out of the country by a growing national reaction to the occupation regime they install."
[Out of sympathy for Stalinist Saddam Hussein? - Oui]
On February 15, 2005, Horowitz launched DiscoverTheNetwork, a website dedictated to tracking "leftists". It brings the Campus-Watch formula to the wider political arena. In the About Us section of the new website:a "Guide to the Political Left." It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left's (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.[4]
a "Guide to the Political Left." It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left's (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.[4]
A project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), SourceWatch describes itself as an "encyclopedia of people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda." The subjects of these entries are individuals, issues, and organizations whose objectives and ideologies run the entire left-to-right political gamut. SourceWatch also seeks to expose what it calls the "propaganda activities of public relations firms" and the activities of organizations working "on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests." These "exposes," which tend to be critical of their subjects, deal predominantly with conservative entities. Founded in 2003 under the name Disinfopedia, SourceWatch (which took its current name in 2005) reports that from April 2006 to April 2007 it received some 73 million page views. As of April 2007, the SourceWatch database contained more than 15,600 entries.
SourceWatch also seeks to expose what it calls the "propaganda activities of public relations firms" and the activities of organizations working "on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests." These "exposes," which tend to be critical of their subjects, deal predominantly with conservative entities.
Founded in 2003 under the name Disinfopedia, SourceWatch (which took its current name in 2005) reports that from April 2006 to April 2007 it received some 73 million page views. As of April 2007, the SourceWatch database contained more than 15,600 entries.
So, is there a source that everyone involved in this debate will agree to accept? Somehow, I doubt it. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
And, if you cannot link to an NLR article because of rights or protections please do not hesitate to send me word or email me and I will send or the article. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
Since you intend to read Ali's article, here are two other articles available for free at the NLR Web site which give a representative view of how the Left views things:
Perry Anderson, editorial: Jottings on the Conjuncture. This is mostly about the present geopolitical situation. Underlying this account is the view that neoliberalism is a specifically American project, a view which I think is quite correct.
Susan Watkins, editorial: Shifting Sands. This is a review of responses to the current economic crisis and the degree to which it has made people reconsider neoliberalism. In short, it has not, and what everyone is calling for is regulation, something which Watkins observes "is in fact a hard-line liberal economic concept".
Incidentally, Watkins, who has been the editor of the NLR since 2003, is the wife of Tariq Ali. (I only learnt that after I read this piece of hers in the current issue.) Perry Anderson was the editor directly before her. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
And how does being Punjabi somehow relevant? The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
Furthermore his claim of pre-war Afghanistan and Taliban's legitimacy 'as dedicated base the Taliban had enjoyed'. As an historian this article has plenty of creativity and freedom of impression.
Of course, Tariq Ali is a person with a special background as I read in wikipedia. Another link gave more personal information from an interview in May 2003: Islam, Empire and the Left: Conversation with Tariq Ali. Ali only discusses foreign policy in terms of empires and imperial wars. His heritage is the Punjab, divided between Pakistan and India after slaughter of wars. This must have been very personal and he chose a career of political activism, yet escaped death by traveling to Britain for his education. India and Pakistan haven't been able to iron out their differences over decades. Both nations lack stability due to internal terror groups, or in terms of Tarig Ali: freedom or resistence fighters. I guess when the US retaliates after some freedom fighters committed the terror acts of 9/11, the US is accused of "imperial aggression." Reading the biography and the activism of his mother, yes I can believe in the struggle for workers rights in Pakistan and the communist support for an independence.
[Links provided to put Ali's one-sided rant in a bit of perspective, especially his view of the Taliban as 'freedom fighters' and the US as 'imperial aggressors' - Oui]
EARLY LIFE Ali was born and raised in Lahore. The city was part of British India at the time of his birth in 1943, but became part of the newly-independent nation of Pakistan four years later. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab in 1937).
Ali's parents "both came from a very old, crusty, feudal family". His father had broken with the family's conventions in politics when he was a student, adopting communism, nationalism and atheism. Ali's mother also belonged to the same family, and became radicalized upon meeting his father. However, Ali was taught the fundamentals of Islam in order to be able to argue against it.
EMERGING ACTIVISM While studying at the Punjab University, he organized demonstrations against Pakistan's military dictatorship. Ali's uncle was chief of Pakistan's Military Intelligence. His parents sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He was elected President of the Oxford Union, in 1965.
CAREER His public profile began to grow during the Vietnam War, when he engaged in debates against the war with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. As time passed, Ali became increasingly critical of American and Israeli foreign policies, and emerged as a figurehead for critics of American foreign policy across the globe. He was also a vigorous opponent of American relations with Pakistan that tended to back military dictatorships over democracy.
Separation of India and Punjab
Obama resetting the sights of drone attacks
Not all Pathans are as this. And not all Pakistanis of course are Pathans.
And especially, not all Muslims are as this. Having spent a lot of time there I too have to fight this. The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
During Bush 2's presidency, America came to be openly described as an empire across the political spectrum, and not just negatively:
In my days as a student activist in the 1970s, the use of the term "imperialism" to describe US policy was generally used only in the antiwar and international solidarity movements, the writings of left-wing academics or the newspapers of small socialist splinter groups. Three decades later, the notion of American empire is gaining a degree of mainstream respectability, this time promoted by a strange convergence of right-wing unilateralists and humanitarian interventionists who see unbridled American power as the last, best hope for building a more stable world. The most egregious recent example of this trend was the glaring red, white and blue cover story in the New York Times Magazine of January 5, "American Empire (Get Used to It)," in which Michael Ignatieff suggests that Americans are in "deep denial" over their country's imperial role and are therefore ill equipped to understand a central reality of our brave new post-9/11 world.
The most egregious recent example of this trend was the glaring red, white and blue cover story in the New York Times Magazine of January 5, "American Empire (Get Used to It)," in which Michael Ignatieff suggests that Americans are in "deep denial" over their country's imperial role and are therefore ill equipped to understand a central reality of our brave new post-9/11 world.
Not just Tariq Ali, but just about anyone who gets published in the New Left Review considers America to be an empire. So do liberals like Chalmers Johnson and Sheldon Wolyn, whose concept of inverted totalitarianism was diaried here recently.
And why do you find the phrase "aerial terror over Pakistan" "extraordinary"? Why do you think the unmanned drones are called "Predators" and what they fire called "Hellfire" missiles? The Pentagon's own names are meant to evoke terror.
I really find it hard to understand where you're coming from. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
WHy, getting us into Afghanistan. Divide-and-rule with bilateral treaties. Telling 'partners' which way to go in NATO. It's not working that good recently, though -- even if the Europeans practise sabotage instead of some own policy.
spend more on defence so we don't have to
Nothing the US military spends on is something we would have to: most of it is total waste, the rest imperial folly for adventures not serving defense or even counter-acting it with the blowback. This is just talk to get the vassals more pliant. And give more orders to the Mil-Ind complex.
any influence over internal European affairs
So why had separate EU military structures to be opposed so steadfastly? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
It is not obvious that US defence spending makes the EU anty safer; in fact, one could say, given the instablity the US causes with its military, due to its actions near our (not their) borders, quite the opposite is the case.
Sweden may not spend much on its defence. Here in France, we spend plenty. Speaking of larger Europe rather than just the EU, the Russians spend plenty, as does the UK. Not everyone is a free-rider ;-) The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
I don't find any of those extraordinary -- you are in denial.
* Steward of the American empire: as nanne wrote, Obama is an American exceptionalist like any other.
Renewing American Leadership | Foreign Affairs After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew...
After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew...
* 'aerial terror over Pakistan': how else do do you call 'targeted assasinations' with heavy civilian toll in a country not even officially at war? And it's not just Pakistan, just the other day:
Nato airstrike kills 33 civilians in Afghanistan - Times OnlineInitial reports indicated that Nato attacked a convoy of three vehicles on Sunday as they travelled towards Kandahar. The dead included four women and one child and 12 others were injured. Amanullah Hotak, head of the Uruzgan provincial council, said that the people had been travelling in three mini-buses through a pass in the Char Cheno district. Zamari Bashary, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, said: "Isaf troops were suspicious that several civilian vehicles contained insurgents and bombed them." The Afghanistan Council of Ministers strongly condemned the airstrike, saying it was "unjustifiable".
Initial reports indicated that Nato attacked a convoy of three vehicles on Sunday as they travelled towards Kandahar. The dead included four women and one child and 12 others were injured.
Amanullah Hotak, head of the Uruzgan provincial council, said that the people had been travelling in three mini-buses through a pass in the Char Cheno district.
Zamari Bashary, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, said: "Isaf troops were suspicious that several civilian vehicles contained insurgents and bombed them."
The Afghanistan Council of Ministers strongly condemned the airstrike, saying it was "unjustifiable".
Being a Punjabi would colour his worldview as regards Pakistan only insofar as he did not likely have, like a Baluch or a Pathan, any clan or family relationship to Afghanistan. The same would be true were he to have been a Sindhi or to a bit less extent a Kashmiri. But this is to say he is more objective as regards Afghanistan, not less; were he to have been an Afridi from the Mardan area I would worry more that his intimate relations and interests in Afghanistan would colour his view of the conflict, than being from Punjab where he would not have a similar interested viewpoint.
The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill
Okay, with the ad-hominems out of the way, how is what he says wrong on the facts? En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
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