The alliance is a natural one. Christopher Caldwell, in a must-read despatch from France, notes how the anti-globalization dreamers of the Euro-left are now riding a tiger that may eventually devour them. Their newest vihicle is an organization called the Social Forum. It’s a merging of various Ayatollahs with various Michael Moores:
This linkage takes many forms. Muslims were hugely overrepresented among the Social Forum’s delegates; they even comprised a large chunk–perhaps a majority–of the American speakers. Perhaps this is unsurprising given the role played in this radical ideology by the American occupation of Iraq (universally opposed) and Palestinian terror against Israel (almost universally supported). The Arab world’s case tends to get made in red-meat terms, as it was at a rally I attended in a mud-ringed, marijuana-smelling tent in St. Denis. The antiwar Scots member of parliament George Galloway had the audience roaring its approval when he expressed his hopes that George W. Bush would be buggered by one of Prince Charles’s servants during his forthcoming state visit to Britain, and the American delegate Rahul Mahjane direly warned that the occupation of Iraq would resemble–horror of horrors–“what the United States did to Germany after World War II.” The yearnings of radical Muslims are now at the core of the Social Forum’s universe. They have jostled aside the left-wing economics and focus on global markets that once dominated.
The real common thread? Hatred of the Jews. Caldwell’s piece reads like a letter from Weimar Germany. Can France really be sliding into another collapse?
CLEFT ABORTION: A new twist in the case of a six-month old unborn child aborted because the baby had a cleft palate. An Anglican curate has just won the right to challenge the cops’ refusal to prosecute the doctors who aborted the baby. Such frivolous abortions are illegal in Britain after 24 weeks.
The Dish 