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At 12:58 24-10-16 -0400, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
>> https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/10/24/intervention-in-syria-wouldnt-start-world-war-iii
>
>Sam Charles Hamad is cut from the same cloth as Clay Claiborne
Well on the face of it I would have more or less considered that a
complement, given that Clay was a valuable contributor to this list for 5
years (and still would be except for the rash action by one individual who
possesses undue power in that regard). And during that time the views he
expressed were not only within the political range implied by membership in
this list, but mainly reflected the predominant political slant of the
list's most vocal contributors. That is UNTIL a difference emerged regarding
election tactics...
> The idea
>that you would urge a vote for Hillary Clinton because she is for a NFZ
Is absolutely NOT what Clay had argued nor can I find any such wording in
Hamad's piece. There are a plethora of dangers entailed by the electoral
victory of a (near?) fascist such as Trump in the US, Le Pen in France,
Wilders in the Netherlands, AfD in Germany, or (but too late) Duterte in the
Philippines, and many of us see those dangers (victory to Assad being but
one) as overriding the general wisdom against appearing to go soft on a
bourgeois candidate for office. That may well be Hamad's view, but wasn't
even what he said anywhere in this piece.
His piece was about Jill Stein's position on Syria and Russia which I'm
afraid happens to coincide with the fascist right, which is why the infamous
Alex Jones was happy to feature her interview on Infowars.com (which I just
went ahead and watched, lest I speak in error). By focusing on Jill Stein,
Hamad was clearly trying to reach the (unfortunately large) portion of the
left who have bought into right-wing arguments in favor of Assad and the
Russian military intervention in Syria. And I'm not even talking about the
(erroneous) "left"-wing justifications such as the supposed "axis of
resistance" against Israel or the "imperialist plan for regime-change to
obtain oil/pipeline/whatever." Infowars played her 4 minute interview,
apparently uncut, with the interviewer gleefully concluding that "Even Jill
Stein trusts Trump more than Clinton."
http://www.infowars.com/jill-stein-issues-new-hillary-ww3-warning/
Now in his piece Hamad takes on the red herring about the danger of
inadvertantly starting World War III which any sane person would see as a
worse outcome than, say, the continued slaughter in Aleppo. And indeed
during the cold war, the danger of nuclear annihilation was one horrific
outcome of increasing militarism and became identified with antiwar
discourse. But now? And between major capitalist powers just over Syria??
No, it has now become a form of fear-mongering that I'm afraid neither
Donald Trump nor Jill Stein avoids stooping to. And it pisses me off in
particular, because I get regular emails from the (essentially right-wing)
"Information Clearing House," in which at least every month there is an
alarming headline about an imminent war between Russia and the West. Month
after month, year after year I keep reading that shit, and now to hear it
coming from a leftist (and knowing that, as usual, it's purpose is to trash
any defense of the Syrian revolution) I find intolerable. And Hamad was
right to take it on, and try to lead leftists away from such thinking.
His article wasn't about the elections or which candidate to vote for. It
was about a position which happens to be shared by Trump and Stein, the
latter being the connection to his target audience, leftists. I hadn't
considered the exact positions of Jill Stein very important, since she has
no chance of winning the election, and I didn't think she'd ever get enough
votes to even make a difference in the outcome (though I'm not sure now).
Not following her campaign, I was rather consoled when Louis once replied to
Clay that:
At 18:21 28-09-16 -0400, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
>.
>On 9/28/16 5:40 PM, Clay Claiborne wrote:
>>
>> Do they oppose Putin on anything?
>
>
>I'm sticking with Jill Stein who is only guilty of 1 bad position out of
>100
And put that way, I could see supporting such a campaign were there not an
imperative to defeat the fascist. After all, 99% of the time she's promoting
socialism and traditional left positions. Or that's what I would have
gathered from Louis. But then the last few weeks they had her on Democracy
Now speaking extensively to answer issues raised in the presidential
debates; there I found a very different proportion of left vs.
