[Marxism] Tariq Ali - Where has all the rage gone?

[Walter Lippmann]

The Cuban Revolution played a powerful role in the
1960s, as it demonstrated that you could fight city
hall and win, that you could overthrow a Washington-
backed dictator and retain power, as it does today.

How disappointing that Tariq Ali makes no mention
of the Cuban Revolution in his interesting survey
of the year 1968. Yet the Cuban Revolution played
a key role for him and for many of us in radical
and would-be revolutionary movements and struggles.

While Cuba's endorsement of Soviet intervention in
Prague disappointed many, it was of a kind which 
the USSR could not circulate in its time because it
acknowledged that the intervention was a violation
of Czech national sovereignty. 

It could be argued at the time, and was, that Cuba
had to make the endorsement because it needed the
support of the USSR to survive the blockade of the
island. Like it or not, and in the absence of the
Soviet Union, Fidel continues to state today that
the Soviet intervention was necessary and right at
that time. It's in MY LIFE, his latest book.

There's no simple solution to these conundrums as
so many of us would like there to be, especially if
we are of a perfectionistic bent.

Recently I saw a terrific movie about some Jewish
prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp which was
called THE COUNTERFEITERS, a film which takes up
moral dilemmas not considered by perfectionistic-
minded individuals and tendencies. Here's what
the New Yorker's David Denby said about it:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Counterfeiters
(director: Stefan Ruzowitzky; 2008)
by David Denby 
March 10, 2008 Text Size: 

Ruzowitzky, Stefan;

“The Counterfeiters” The Austrian winner of the best foreign-film
award is the true story of Salomon Smolianoff—known in the movie as
Salomon Sorowitsch, or Sally (Karl Markovics), the most skilled
counterfeiter in prewar Berlin, and also a bon vivant, ladies’ man,
cynic, and opportunist. Arrested in 1936, Sally, a Russian-born Jew,
is sent to Mauthausen concentration camp, in Germany, where he
survives for five years by painting Nazi kitsch. In 1944, he’s
transferred to another camp, Sachsenhausen, just outside Berlin, and
placed at the head of Operation Bernhard, a counterfeiting workshop
run by the S.S. and staffed by Jewish prisoners skilled as printers
and graphic artists. Sally’s unit produces the British pound in bulk,
but his perfect design for the dollar is sabotaged by a Communist
printer in the group, Adolf Burger (August Diehl), a fiery anti-Nazi
who can’t bring himself to help the German war effort. The movie is
devoted to Sally’s genius for survival, his efforts to keep the group
together and to prevent the heroic Burger from attaining the
martyrdom he appears to long for. Markovics has a hatchet face,
aggressive but guarded, even closed off, but with a glint in his
eyes. The movie keeps us close to him, and we learn, with increasing
admiration, how his mind works. “The Counterfeiters” is a testament
to guile. The writer-director, Stefan Ruzowitzky, scored the picture
with tangos, which are meant to be Sally’s music—seductive, insolent,
triumphant.
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Perfectionism is so seductive, but it's a dead end, nevertheless.
Walter Lippmann

Tariq Ali's article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/22/vietnamwar

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     WALTER LIPPMANN
     Los Angeles, California
     Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
     "Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
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