AROUND THE INTERNETS (Pittsburgh Progressive)
Kurt Nimmo says the Fix is in Concerning Iran
Some Crazy People Think Iraq Vote not As Kewl As it Looks. Juan Cole, the best for my money and remember he originally supported the invasion so he's not automatic for the leftist cause, has his well articulated doubts. Raed thinks the government used the monthly food rationing cards to bribe the vote. Christian Parenti thinks there could be a backlash if Shiite majority votes and then gets no say...Isn't that the norm? I saw what happened in Ohio. Robert Fisk, who's in Iraq risking his life unlike certain pinhead Instapundits I know and their local Pittsburgh clones, says that folks voted so they can tell the US to get the Hell Out. I agree with Ted Kennedy that that would be proof of self determination and independence if they asked that. By the way, if you're not aware of it, Democracy Now is easily one of the best if not the best news program in the United States. And when they accuse Democracy Now of being "left" media I can agree with them. Also check out Brit leader Jack Galloway, in case American politicians are wondering what an "opposition" is supposed to sound like:
GEORGE GALLOWAY: They're a farce. They're rigged. An election held under foreign military occupation is always, by definition, utterly flawed. But one which is held in the kind of conditions in which this one is being held is flawed beyond redemption. The facts are that it is simply impossible to hold an election when there is a full-scale war going on between the occupying armies and the resistance forces. The Sunni Muslim population, which if you add the Sunni Kurds and the Sunni Arabs together, is some 40% of the population, are deeply anxious about the way in which the occupying forces are deliberately trying to divide the country along confessional lines. The Sunni Arab population has boycotted the election almost in their entirety. The Iraqis living outside for whom security was not an issue, three quarters of them have voted with their feet and boycotted the election. Less than a quarter of the eligible voters have registered to vote and fewer still have cast their votes. So, this is a festival, a farce that's been held to validate the American-British invasion and occupation of Iraq. But it will not validate it, neither in the eyes of the world opinion, nor, more importantly, in the eyes of those Iraqis who are resisting the foreign occupation and the war will go on, I'm sorry to say.
When I was arguing for embryonic stem cell research over at Ales Rarus the topic came up about fascism and religion. The crazy religious people over at Ales (He wants to ban contraception. God told him too...) made the argument that fascism was a distinctly secular enterprise. I thought they were wrong. And it's not just the argument presented by Fromme in "Escape from Freedom", it's the fact that both religion and fascism both share a kind of love for the irrational. They're fundamentally anti-reason. You can invade Poland or France or Iraq and Iran and nothing bad will come of it. Likewise, your enemies will be thrown into an eternal pit of hellfire, something a loving god would do of course.
I came upon this quote over at a weekly Daily Kos piece called the "The Week in Fascism" that supports my take. Mussolini: He likes religion.
"The Fascist conception of life is a religious one, in which man is viewed in his immanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. "Those who perceive nothing beyond opportunistic considerations in the religious policy of the Fascist regime fail to realize that Fascism is not only a system of government but also and above all a system of thought.
In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in language, in customs, in the rules of social life."
Benito Mussolini
The Doctrine of Fascism, (1932).
On a related note, Robert Kennedy, who might run, calls this administration the "F" word....
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