...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

Leftist-Islamist misperceptions: Want to know why Alexa McDonough and Mo Elmasry are so simpatico? Could it be that they both view the world through the same distorted lens—the one that sees eee-vil Capitalism as the wellspring of the world’s ills? Here’s Mo, sounding a lot like a Alexa or Socialist poster-babe Naomi Klein,  in a speech he delivered in Cairo two years back. It strings together all the familiar buzz words—“apartheid,” “globalization,” “Kyoto,” “colonialism,” etc.:

…Apartheid South Africa is fortunately a thing of the past and Apartheid Israel is, sadly, all too much a thing of the present. But Apartheid Globalization threatens to be an even greater danger, promoted by rich and powerful countries as the new world order that will benefit us all. This is the big lie we are being asked to believe, whether we are rich or poor, have or have-not.

If we let Apartheid Globalization set the agenda, we will soon be deprived even of the air we breathe; our atmosphere will be polluted beyond repair by rates of overconsumption by the rich that will make the Kyoto Accord worth less than nothing.

Even now, the world's poorest are tragically paying the price as victims of so-called "natural disasters" that are directly related to human-originated climate change. In both developed and developing countries, hundreds of thousands of people die in such cataclysms every year.

The rich and powerful West still refuses to acknowledge that its wealth and development were built on the backs of the poor through centuries of slavery, colonialism and exploitation. This immoral denial is by far the biggest crime against humanity.

Instead, the West blames its victims and spreads dishonest propaganda claiming that poverty and underdevelopment in poor nations are problems of their own making, due to lack of democracy, rampant corruption, and poor governance.

The West conveniently ignores the history of civilizations destroyed by its colonial imperialism in Africa, China, India, the Americas, and in the Arab and the Muslim worlds. This is the racist Western view of culture that now advocates for globalization on its own inequitable and unfair terms.

In a speech at the opening session of the South Summit, convened by the Group of 77 in Havana, April 12, 2000, Cuban president Fidel Castro said:

"If Cuba has successfully carried out education, health care, culture, science, sports and other programs, which nobody in the world would question, despite four decades of economic blockade, and revalued its currency seven times in the last five years in relation to the U.S. dollar, it has been thanks to its privileged position as a non-member of the International Monetary Fund.

"For two decades, the Third World has been repeatedly listening to only one simplistic discourse, while one single policy has prevailed," Castro continued. "We have been told that deregulated markets, maximum privatization and the state’s withdrawal from economic activity were the infallible principles conducive to economic and social development.

"In the last two decades, along this line the developed countries, particularly the United States, the big transnationals who benefit from such policies, and the International Monetary Fund have designed the world economic order most hostile to our countries’ progress and the least sustainable, in terms of the preservation of society and the environment."

As Castro so clearly outlined, the Third World has paid a high price as a result of the economic crises, instability, and uncertainty, all manufactured by the rich and powerful as they grow even richer, speculating on the currency of poor countries. The well known unrestrained speculation on the currencies of the countries of Southeast Asia and the crises that followed is a powerful example.

This too is another crime against humanity. The Third World is forced to keep large sums of hard currency in reserve -- depleting the amounts available to invest in local development projects -- all just to protect its currency from predatory speculators…

Hmmm. Sounds like Mo’s prescribing the “cure” of sharia banking to heal The Third Word from wounds inflicted by all those nasty “speculators.” I’m sure Alexa and Naomi (who’s been known to express praise for Hezbollah’s local projects) would be on side with that.

Posted by: scaramouche at 09:12 | link | comments

Comments: