On 4/17/14 5:57 PM, Joseph Green wrote: > Telling the workers and activists to ignore these issues is to help defang > the movement. Counterposing the struggle against the economic devastation of > the workers in the US to the struggles of other working people around the > world is national narrow-mindedness of the most ignorant sort, no better than > ignoring the struggle of workers in other cities, states, and occupations > than one's own.
The thing that confounds me is the utter lack of interest in the Arab left. One thing that the Internet has made possible is the creation of communications globally on the left in a way that was never possible before. I have about 35 FB friends from the Arab world including some expatriates and some currently in places like Lebanon. In the last 12 months my blog has been visited from the following countries: United Arab Emirates -- 1,515 Lebanon -- 671 Egypt -- 591 Saudi Arabia (!) -- 505 Qatar -- 246 Plus smaller numbers from Palestine, Iraq, Kuwait and Oman. Nothing like this ever existed in the past. It makes political collaboration possible in a way that Comintern leaders could only dream about. Those who adopt narrow nationalist perspectives must have forgotten about the internationalism that is at the heart of our movement. I have no idea where PEN-L'ers are living. I never bring up the topic of Syria unless it is a link to an article I have written. Same thing with Ukraine. Most of my posts here are related to Piketty, the economic situation in the USA, etc. Carrol's accusation that I am diverting energy from the US class struggle is pure bullshit, something that I have gotten used to over the past 15 years. I really wonder what makes him such a jerk. He practically drove Doug Henwood from his own mailing list. Thank goodness he had the common sense to unsub from Marxmail where he was capable of doing little harm. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
