[Marxism] Ecuador jumps onboard the "posturing" bandwagon over Gaza

[S. Artesian]

Fred,

Good to hear from you again.  Hope the New Year finds you healthy and busy. 
Thanks for those 2 additional pieces of information.  I will certainly give 
them careful consideration to see if I have been too hasty and too harsh in 
my characterization of anti-imperialist governments and their actions 
against Israel.

Of course, I will need to reconcile Morales' statements, actions, and his 
intent to take Israel to the Hague against the support for the occupation of 
Haiti.  I think you will agree that doing so is the only way to arrive at a 
full, balanced, and, of course, dialectical assessment of the situation.

My view, I must admit, is colored by the fact that I don't think a dialectic 
is "on the one hand, while on the other,"  is not  "yin and yang," is not 
"taking the good with the bad," so I don't exactly weigh bad things like 
military support for the occupation of Haiti where the occupying force, 
according to a UN internal investigation, has been involved in trading food 
for sex with children  AGAINST the good things like denouncing the Israeli 
murderous assault.  I'm not sure about how others construe their dialectics, 
but that's how it is for me.

Likewise, I'm not generally sympathetic to a dialectic that values the 
statements of Correa against Israel over/against/mindless of the actions 
against the indigenous people who are  in opposition to various laws 
regarding the exploitation of natural resources.  Maybe it's just me, maybe 
not.  In either case I promise to carefully study this information.

I was wondering-- since Ecuador and Bolivia's trade with Israel is so small, 
amounting in 2008 to maybe $6-7 million in exports, and $40 million in 
imports, if perhaps you know of any attempt by Ecuador and/or Bolivia to 
persuade Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, who have considerably larger trade 
volumes with Israel, to impose some sort of sanctions?-- perhaps Mercosur as 
a whole, or the Andean economic alliance, or the Bolivarian Alternative has 
considered such a course?  I would be very interested in any information you 
have on this-- 

Anyway, that's my dialectic in a nutshell, as wacked out as it may be.  And 
I appreciate the information you have provided in these matters.

best to you and yours.
___________

Note to Gary.  Now, now Gary, not incorrect.  You wrote:  "Wallerstien says 
that domestically he [Obama] will do some social democratic things and we 
must welcome that. I agree but to look into the face of the victims of US 
imperialism is something else."

I asked you then why we would welcome those things when [or if] those things 
are most intimately connected with a loathesome foreign policy?  Did we in 
the US welcome Johnson's war on poverty "despite" the war in Vietnam?  Those 
that did were of course just following the line of the "enlightened"  social 
democrats of that era.  Those who thought those 2 wars were not intimately 
connected, could be teased apart were incapable of providing any real 
opposition to the "bad" war while supporting the "good" war.

Oh, and you can certainly speak for yourself about your preference for 
living in a social democracy, but not for me. I would prefer living in 
Paris, and not because of the social democracy.  Sarkozy or Royal, 
samey-same as we used to say back in the day.  My preference is based on the 
food, the wine, and the art.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Fuentes" <fred.fuentes at gmail.com>
To: <sartesian at earthlink.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 1:10 AM
Subject: [Marxism] Ecuador jumps onboard the "posturing" bandwagon over Gaza