Capitalism got scared recently. There were some bandits riding into town, robbing banks and undermining entire economies. Here in Europe, if you were a centre-left government leader, you could expect attacks from all sides until you agreed to impliment right-wing economic policy.
But now that the financial crisis is fading into memory (in every context except our long-overdue inflation-based pay-rises!), we see the pale faces of colonisers marching the plains once more.
But this time, the white man (and in the WASP-West, Obama is on their team) is spreading democracy in the Middle East instead of civilisation in the Wild West. Just like those Puritan founding fathers, the modern missionaries will aloow the death-slaughter-massacre of millions of darker-skinned "savages" in order to teach them how to be more like us. So now, with protests all over the Middle-East, and democracy spreading like a plague, Hilary Clinton throwing $25 million to dissidents who use social networks to protest against oppressive regimes (and not even smiling when stating that Wikileaks was not the same thing at all!), if we step back, we can see a very dangerous void emerging.Like them or loathe them, dictators in the Middle East have tended to prevent the spread of extremis. Saddam's Iraq might not have had freedom of speech, but at least there weren't bombs going off every few days. Once these nations have democratic elections, muslim extremists like the Taliban (the offshoot of the US/British supported Mujahideen from the old cold war) will be voted into power.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Merkel (Germany), then Cameron (UK), then Sarkosy (France), and now Burlosconi (Italy) have all said that "multi-culturalism isn't working". If I was a European Muslim and heard the leader of my country's elected government saying that, I'd be very afraid. Wasn't that what the Catholic Kings said in Spain just before they started burning heretics?
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