Mind the Gap

Things worth checking out, internationally speaking: Coming Anarchy has one of their best posts in a while with On Demographics, Part 3: Why the Gap will conquer the Core. To summarize, it is about the convergence of the third world with the first, and how this will be achieved without the world turning into an over-polluted, under-educated, disease ridden planet. My further comments (serious for once!) can be followed on the post itself.

Joerg at the Atlantic Review talks about the American-rightist cultivated fear of an Islamicized Europe. Largely a product of fear rather than reality, this is the Le Pen’s of America projecting their fear of an increasingly non-white world onto others. You can be assured that the same people sounding the alarms about Europe are the same crying out dey took der jobs (or, no to immigrants, for you non-South Park viewers).

In the international irony scene, a Russian who spent some serious time in the Gulag for criticizing Stalin was recently given an award by none other than Putin himself! Putin then had him shot.

Continuing on this theme in the good ol’ US of A, Marginal Revolution has a post on Norman Finkelstein being denied tenure at Depaul. Somehow, the fact that Crazed Plagarist / Zionist Crusader Alan Dershowitz spent his time since being called out by Finkelstein trying to ruin him eludes everyone there. And also, somehow a majority of Americans believe in creationism AND evolution? It’s like choosing between Sunjaya and some other androgynous male to impregnate my teenage daughter! I just don’t know which one I want.

Tiny Revolution also has a great post about Bernie Aronson, one of the figures in a documentary about unions titled Harlan County USA. He was actually a union laborer around these times. And now? He’s on the board of trustees for Freedom House and writes op-eds on how much he hates Hugo Chavez. Quel dommage.

Other things that make me go ooooooooh: There are 586 days until the election. 586 mother fucking days. Seth Godin asks the important question: how can someone be in favor of the impeachment of Bill Clinton but not of George Bush? A U.S. soldier was beaten and tased at McCarran Airport. And for your wonderful governmentsponsored action of the day: “The Army secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste.” (what, they couldn’t apparently your family gets sweet coloring books! Sign me up!