Egypt's government prohibits political parties seeking a religious agenda, and will probably not be relieved to learn that some of the New Centre Party supporters are former Muslim Brotherhood members, supposedly disillusioned by the party's opposition to modernisation. The Muslim Brotherhood is in many ways the ancestors of modern Islamofascism, including al-Qaeda. This party is supposedly the other end of the scale.
The founders, implicitly rejecting theocracy, say that they do not claim divine sanction for their policies and that the people are the ultimate source of authority and legislation.
They also invoke the traditional Islamic legal concept of ijtihad -- legal rulings by jurists who adjust religious law in the light of reason and changing circumstances.
"They (the founders) believe that what they are offering are ijtihads by humans, guided by the general intentions and basic concepts of Sharia, but they remain ijtihads which may be right or wrong, liable to give and take, criticism and review, just as they are liable to reconsideration and change from one time to another and from one place to another," the manifesto says.
The party also supports full citizenship rights for Egypt's coptic Christian minority.
If this is legitimate and not just an attempt to make a legal cover for extremists, it is surely a better way to channel religious fervor into politics than suicide bombings.
Indymedia, the sewage channel of leftist propaganda, has outdone itself. Yes, really. One of the nuttier leftist agitators, John Paul Cupp, calling himself Iraqi Resistance Solidarity Network Co-Editor when he's not chairman of the local Kim Jong Il fan club, has taken the (il)logical consequences of his rabid anti-Zionism:
Scared? You should be. And "revisionism" is not a figure of speech.
Why is that? It has to do with the most dangerous, misunderstood, and difficult to explain LIE concerning the 20th century, that of a Jewish "Holocaust". Eventually, at a certain point were the contradictions are heightened enough, one can not be genuinely anti-Zionist without going at this paradigm of Zionist political power head on.
Dr. Ibrahim Alloush, a foremost respected Pan-Arab Leftist and Scholar, in a special on line study outline WHY THE "HOLOCAUST" IS IMPORT TO PALESTINIANS, ARABS, AND MUSLIMS* explains as follows: [SIC & snip]
This is real neo-nazi inspired Holocaust revisionism, imported wholesale into Arab Islamofascism, not just some vague leftist substitute. It has been intellectually acceptable among Islamic "intellectuals" to deny the Holocaust, so it is just a matter of time before the most radical leftist "intellectuals" go full circle and start to deny what Cupp calls "the founding myth of the Zionist state." Many on the left already reject the logical conclusion of the Holocaust: that a Jewish homeland became necessary. How far from here to rejecting the basic premise?
Right now, most on the left will probably (I hope!) reject Cupp as a rabid fanatic who wouldn't know which way to put on his tin foil hat, but those who support the Islamofascists and Baathists as "the minutemen" today are certainly not beyond subscribing to revisionist drivel tomorrow. Quite often, it's a short route from the extreme right to the extreme left.
Milton Friedman, the Nobel-Prize winning US economist and one of the most influential economists of the 20th Century believes there is a "strong possibility" that the 12 member euro zone could collapse "in the next few years".
In an exclusive interview with the EUobserver, Professor Friedman argues, "there is a strong possibility that the euro zone could collapse in the next few years because differences are accumulating between countries ... I'm not saying it is a certainty, just that it is a strong possibility".
He suggests that the euro could be replaced with the old national currencies.
Well, that would solve the dilemma of Tony Blair about whether to join the euro.
The common currency is one of the things about the EU that appeals to me. After all, I have several times travelled through Europe, having to exchange currency several times in a single day (some of these countries are tiny, remember). Of course, what is convenient for the tourist may not be the best for the economies.
Does the economist recommend any medicine for the EU?
"There is no doubt what the EU should do. Abolish your rules and regulations. Abolish your [high level of] spending. The European economy is too burdened with rules and regulations".
These recommendations are hardly controversial and unusual, but it's hardly a chance that countries like France will see this before the country is totally broken. And by that time, the EU would be in ruins.
India's investors are not optimistic about the new government wtih the Congress Party dependent on left-wing parties supporting it from the outside, and sent the shares down by more than 15 per cent today, resulting in trading being suspended on the Bombay Stock Exchange. This is the single biggest drop in India ever.
Investors are nervous that the Congress Party will halt or reverse reforms, especially under pressure from the communists. Sonia Gandhi's party has tried to address the fears, but so far unsuccessfully.
