Re FW: Bad dudes and boneheads (Stephen Gowans)

["Zane Boyd" <zeebee@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Fidler writes:
I just wish we had a daily leftist mass-circulation newspaper here in
Canada (well, o.k., it could be anywhere) where Stephen Gowans could
write lead editorials, or a front-page column, every day.

Like Fidler, I too wish we had a daily leftist mass-circulation
newspaper here in Canada. I'd subscribe to it and even circulate it.
On the other hand, I'm afraid that if Stephen Gowans were writing lead
editorials or a daily front-page column, I'd
decidedly be using the kind of diatribe he's written in "Bad dudes and
boneheads" to line my cat-litter box instead!

Gowans' piece is nothing more than yet one more
unprincipled, flimsy smear against Chomsky, Alpert, and other "left
intellectuals", in this case on the war on Iraq, backed by meager quotes
taken entirely out of the context in which they were written.

How many actually took the time to open the URLs cited among the references
at the conclusion of Gowans' smug little rant to read (or re-read) what
Chomsky actually says in ZNet's lengthy interview
by Michael Albert? Or what Albert himself says
in full in his and Stephen R Shalom's "Ten Q&A On Antiwar Organizing"? And
what about that that by-now infamous CPD Statement on Iraq "WE OPPOSE Both
Saddam Hussein and the U.S. War on Iraq: A
call for a new, democratic U.S. foreign policy"?

At one time, as some of you may recall -- alas, it seems SO long ago now --
some of us once recognized the importance and effectiveness of using
"defensive
formulations", of which the CPD statement and petition actually happens to
be an fine
example. No longer, I suppose, in the new (yet, in truth, not-so-new) age of
stand-up-and-be-counted, you're-with-us-or-your-against-us school of
sycophantic socialism! (Did I say socialism? Dear me!) Oh, how the middling
have fallen!

I'm afraid Old History's chickens are once again coming home to roost. Those
who don't learn from it -- or more to the point these days, who would
rather turn their backs on it -- are doomed lay a big fat egg!

It's little wonder Chomsky, Albert, Ehrenreich, Zinn and the dozens of
"otherwise progressive" Western intellectuals (to use James Petras's
flippant putdown) have largely ignored the reams of wrath heaped on them for
weeks now by the self-styled, self-proclaimed and oh-so-self-righteous true
believers in the faith. In their shoes, I would too, by not stooping to
dignify a response to such dimwitted drivel.

(Hey, I guess that puts me in THEIR camp, too, doesn't it? Huh? Huh?)

Zane Boyd...

PS: If you detect a note of dismissive sarcasm in the above, you're right.
I've had it with this kind of trumped-up tripe coming from supposedly honest
and
principled socialists and anti-imperialists!