The radical left once upon a time opposed Islam. The Nation magazine was notorious for its support of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It supported the liberation of women, minorities, and the working class from the oppression of the patriarchy and the peasants from that of the landlord class that used religion, Islam, to oppress the downtrodden victims of capitalism and the feudal order.

But then came 9/11 and Islam was all the rage among the left. Killing white American capitalists, little Eichmanns, they called us, was a universal good. And retrograde patriarchal leaders of the opiate of the masses was doing the killing, so the left ended its opposition to organized religion not run by the KGB, Islam.

But any port in a storm, and the radical left has again rediscovered the evils of Islam, but only because they are killing trade-unionists, communists and leftists. As if there is any difference between the three.

Counterpunch January 24, 2012 by Conn Hallinan

The U.S., Indonesia & the New York Times

[Just what is it with the Irish communists at The Nation and Counterpunch? Another Irishman there has a clear hard-on for Muqtada Al Sadr]

Indeed it is, but the Times is not only continuing to ignore U.S. involvement in planning and carrying out the coup, but apparently doesn’t even bother to read its own clip files from that time that reported the Johnson administration’s “delight with the news from Indonesia.” The newspaper also reported a cable by Secretary of State Dean Rusk supporting the “campaign against the communists” and assuring the leader of the coup, General Suharto, that the “U.S. government [is] generally sympathetic with, and admiring of, what the army is doing.”

What the Indonesian Army was doing was raping and beheading communists, leftists, and trade unionists. Many people were savagely tortured to death by the military and its right-wing Muslim allies in the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah. A number of those butchered were fingered by U.S. intelligence.

WTF? Muslims can be bad? They don't like commies, lefties and union thugs? Quelle suprise? All that is old is new again, including leftist denunciations of oppression of the masses by Islam. Ah, the opiate of the people. I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored. It is clear that the preferred target of Muslim violence is Americans, not Soviets, leftists, communists, and union thugs (LOL, I keep repeating myself. I should just say KGB toady, or pinko, or commie, that would cover all those groups.).