The ECONOMIST Slides Towards Self-Parody
10/22/2012
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The current (October 20th) issue of The Economist is a riot of HBD cluelessness and invite-the-world / invade-the-world neoconnery; so much so, I'm beginning to wonder whether perhaps  its editorial offices have been infiltrated by employees from The Onion.

First leader: Cry, the beloved country: South Africa is sliding downhill.  

Nearly two decades after apartheid ended, South Africa is becoming a de facto one-party state.

What. A. Surprise. 

Second leader: The Tories' barmiest policy: Britain's immigration policy is crippling business and the economy.  Wake up, Mr Cameron?

What is it that The Economist doesn't like about Tory leader David Cameron's immigration policy?  See if you can guess.

The country has, in effect, installed a "keep out" sign over the white cliffs of Dover . . . British politicians, led by the Conservatives [= Cameron's Tories], do their utmost to signal hostility and mislead the public. Last month Parliament approved a motion to take "all necessary steps" to keep the country' population below 70m.

Those swinish nativists!

Third leader: The killing fields: Despite the huge risks involved, the time has come for the West and the Arabs to intervene in Syria.

"The West and the Arabs"?  Which Arabs?  And given those "huge risks," what's in it for the U.S.A?

America has every interest in a more stable Middle East, in being seen to defend values that it holds to be universal, and denying Iran an important regional ally.

"Every interest"?  As Edward Luttwak explained five years ago, the Middle East is of no importance:

Unless compelled by immediate danger, we should therefore focus on the old and new lands of creation in Europe and America, in India and east Asia—places where hard-working populations are looking ahead instead of dreaming of the past.

"Values" that we hold to be "universal"?  What values are we talking about?gay rights?  Large numbers of Middle Easterners regard our values with contempt or loathing, and are willing to fight to the death to prevent their imposition.  How, then, are these values "universal"?  Why aren't we intervening on behalf of those universal values in, say, Tibet?

For Iran, see Luttwak.

Meanwhile, The artwork in The Economist gets weirder.  See if you can divine from looking at these pictures what topics they illustrate.

First picture.

Second picture.

Third picture.

Fourth picture.

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