Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: It’ll Be Gore?
…but once Feingold exposes that Hillary has been wrong on so many issues Dems care about (Iraq, civil liberties, Iraq, attacking Bush), she’ll be reduced to normal size for others to take on. Gore can sit back and watch Feingold do the dirty work and get in as Hillary weakens.
Gore’s big advantages: he’s been right on the issues, he retains stature among Democrats, and, surprisingly, he’ll appear fresh from being away so long. Other than SNL last night, when was the last time you saw Gore on TV (and if you didn’t see Gore on SNL see it here) and you will soon see his environmental documentary in the theatres
Category: Politics
The Populist Latin Revolution
While America has been fixated on fighting the Islamo-Facist Revolution, another Revolution has been going on closer to home in Latin America. A revolution that according to provocative Black scholar Shelby Steele started after WWII:
I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty. This idea had organized the entire world, divided up its resources, imposed the nation-state system across the globe, and delivered the majority of the world’s population into servitude and oppression. After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself
With the exception of Cuba, Latin America never had their Revolution to end White Supremacy. As blogger Robert Mayer points out in his response to the ” Why isn’t Socialism Dead” (posted on this blog on May 6):
Latin America, next to Africa, is one of the most in-egalitarian continents in the world. Even Eastern Europe is no comparison. Military dictatorships, billionaire oligarchs, and foreign corporations have had their run of the place. Latin America is also still very much undermined by its Spanish colonial past. Most of the very wealthy in Latin American countries tend to be of European descent — in another word, white. Compare that to the poor, who are predominantly of Indian descent.You have yourself a genuine populist witches brew. A brew where people not only no longer believe in democracy, but advocate the complete redistribution of wealth based on racial terms.
Chile has been the most successful Latin Country to make the transition to a Free Market model, but it had the advantage of a relatively small indigenous population of Mapuche Indians to assimilate. Compare that to Bolivia, where they are over half and just elected Morales, a Populist one-of-their-own, who immediately sent the Army out to seize the gas fields. Problem is their neighbors in Brazil & Argentina (Through Spain) were the investors who developed those fields. Again they are relatively successful primarily European-descendant countries with their own Populist movement histories, as portrayed in the musical “Evita” and starring Madonna in the film version. Now the indigenous populist revolt has spilled over their borders to effect their Socialist economic well-being.
Socialism Dead?
TCS Daily – Why Isn’t Socialism Dead?
The Christian’s life is transformed because he accepts the myth that Christ will one day return and usher in the end of time; the revolutionary socialist’s life is transformed because he accepts the myth that one day socialism will triumph, and justice for all will prevail.
How many times have Christians in the last two thousand years been convinced that the Second Coming was at hand, only to be bitterly disappointed — yet none of these disappointments was ever enough to keep them from holding on to their great myth. So, too, Sorel argued, the myth of socialism will continue to have power, despite the various failures of socialist experiments, so long as there are revolutionaries who are unwilling to relinquish their great myth.
Men need myths — and until capitalism can come up with a transformative myth of its own, it may well be that many men will prefer to find their myths in the same place they found them in the first part of the twentieth century — the myth of revolutionary socialism.
Why China Fears Falun Gong
Independent Online Edition > Asia
In the 19th century the Taiping Rebellion sprang from a religious cult which provoked perhaps the bloodiest civil war in human history when the forces of the Qing Empire clashed with those of a mystic named Hong Xiuquan who said he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and claimed to be the new Messiah. At least 20 million people and perhaps as many as 100 million perished.
Not long after that came the Boxer Rebellion in which rebels also saw the world in more metaphysical terms, claiming that movement exercises influence the fundamental forces of the universe. They even went so far as to insist that their breathing exercises would allow them to ward off bullets. Nor wonder the normally inscrutable President Hu looked taken aback when the Falun Gong woman screamed.
Kissinger’s World View
Insightful comments from Henry Kissinger at the recent Baker Center conference on Winston Churchill:(thanks to Tom Barnett’s blog)
We live in a period in which most of what we know from history is inapplicable or applicable in limited ways.”
“Asia today is like 19th C. Europe and the Middle East is like the 17th C. Then there’s globalization which both integrates economically and fragments politically. And somehow we need to synthesize this all in a way the public can understand.”
Head of Arab League Pushes Nuke Programs
Head of Arab League Pushes Nuke Programs – Yahoo! News
KHARTOUM, Sudan – The head of the Arab League called on Arab states Tuesday to work toward “entering the nuclear club” by developing atomic energy
BERLIN (AFP) – Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear programme, with help from Pakistani experts, a German magazine reports in its latest edition, citing Western security sources.
This atavistic love of blood and death and, indeed, self-immolation in the name of God may not be new–medieval Europe had an abundance of millennial Christian sects–but until now it has never had the means to carry out its apocalyptic ends….If nothing is done, we face not proliferation but hyperproliferation.
Henry Kissinger said yesterday “ “We live in a period in which most of what we know from history is inapplicable or applicable in limited ways.”
Then he says, Asia today is like 19th C. Europe and the Middle East is like the 17th C. Then there’s globalization which both integrates economically and fragments politically. And somehow we need to synthesize this all in a way the public can understand.
NEW DELHI – Village elders ordered a Muslim man in eastern India to leave his wife after he accidentally divorced her in his sleep, a news report said Tuesday.
In the wake of the cartoon jihad and mosque-on-mosque violence in Iraq, most Americans now think Islam has more violent believers than any other faith. Yet many still view it as a “peaceful religion.”
Psychologists might call this cognitive dissonance — a state of mind where rational people essentially lie to themselves. But in this case, it’s understandable. In our politically correct culture, criticizing any religion, even one that plots our destruction, is still taboo. And no one wants to suggest the terrorists are driven by their holy text. Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?
Chanting “God is Greatest” after the 71-to-36 vote, Hamas lawmakers hugged and kissed Ismail Haniyeh, their teary-eyed prime minister-designate who vowed to not to abandon the fight against Israel.
“The Koran is our constitution, Jihad is our way, and death for the sake of God is our highest aspiration,” Hamas lawmaker Hamed Bitawi said.”
To bolster its campaign, the Iranian government has one of the most extensive and sophisticated operations to censor and filter internet content of any country in the world — second only to China, Hopkins said.
It also is one of a growing number of Middle Eastern countries that rely on U.S. commercial software to do the filtering, according to a 2004 study by a group called the OpenNet Initiative
Reconquista of Aztlan
Just as there is a movement among European Muslims, who carry banners proclaiming “2030 we take over”, there is a comparable movement in the South West of the U.S. This quote is taken from the conclusion of a Mexican Government sponsored forum:
Is there a common destiny? Is there a common destiny for Aztlan and Mexico? Will Mexico recover its lost territories? There is a Mexican-American activist that use to be a radio talk host that would broadcast in English, “Wake up and smell the refried beans!” and “We are reconquering Aztlan without firing a shot, house by house, block by block!” Y que?
This student maifesto from UCLA gives a feel for the sentiments expressed in this photo.
MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism
Salman Rushdie should soon have some more compatriots with his Fatwah death threat; after he and 11 leading secular Muslims published this manifesto in a Danish paper. Click on the link above to read the full original. Here is an excerpt:
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
Hamas on a mission from God
Hamas, the Islamic radical party now ruling the Palestinians, announced that they don’t really care about financial aid from Europe or the U.S. This is because Hamas believes that soon the world will be largely Islamic, and the Christian nations will amount to little, or nothing, in the grand scheme of things. Hamas believes they are on a mission from God, and that their success is preordained. This creates some difficulties when trying to negotiate with Hamas.