NP - Some Left

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 23:16, Mutualcode at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/28/2003 11:55:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> fqmorris at yahoo.com writes:
> 
> 
> > As someone who has done a good deal of marching and public speaking
> > about
> > Vietnam, Chile, South Africa, Palestine and East Timor in his time
> > (and would
> > do it all again), I can only hint at how much I despise a Left that
> > thinks of
> > Osama bin Laden as a slightly misguided anti-imperialist. (He
> > actually says he
> > wants to restore the old imperial caliphate and has condemned the
> > Australian-led international rescue of East Timor as a Christian
> > plot against
> > Muslim Indonesia). Or a Left that can think of Milosevic and Saddam
> > as victims.
> > 
> > Christopher Hitchens
> >     --The Washington Post   20 October 2002
> 
> 
> Of course there is no such "Left." 

Hope you're right.


> Hitchens is attempting to justify
> his own veering to the Right by creating a "straw movement." If
> anything, Osama is the CIA's and Bush's best friend, 

True, in a peculiar but nevertheless real and not entirely discountable
sense Osama served Bush's political needs well, but Osama is (or was)
not my friend. He's a despicable piece of shit, as are the others
mentioned.

> and the Left's
> worst nightmare: 

The worst nightmare of Western Democracies.


> a near perfect rationalization for tyranny,

Yes, it is fear, rather than the Internet, that can lead to tyranny.
America's civil liberties  have been the result not so much of a piece
of paper (The Bill of Rights) as of a quite remarkable and almost
unprecedented  freedom from fear. But luck can always run out.



>  allowing,
> for example, the inner junta to whisper the name Daniel "this is not 
> a bigot" Pipes into the ear of The Dauphin- busy, no doubt, at cup 
> and ball- among other diversions, while your freedom smolders.
> 
> http://www.skwerm.com/mchorner/pipe/
> 
> respectfully