Cui bono?

Further to this piece by Tom Griffin, over at LC, on the connections between the “decent left” (*spits*) and the Islamophobia movement, I read a piece in this week’s Time Europe, about the survival of NATO in spite of the collapse of the USSR. How it’s actually got stronger, despite all other alliances collapsing soon after mutual goals had been achieved.

Alliances die when they win. Take away the enemy, and you take away the glue that holds a coalition together.

[…]

Yet instead of taking its final bow, NATO expanded. In 1994, the alliance sent out invitations to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland; five years later, all three were in. Sixty years ago, NATO started out with 12 members; today it has 26. Not bad for an outfit that, according to theory, should have breathed its last once the Soviet Union had capitulated.

One wonders, when these characters are so committed to a continued American hegemony, if they haven’t got a vested interest in the continued threat of radical Islam?*

*rhetorical question

The irregular quote of the day

Richard Herring on the death of Jade Goody ::

It is of course terribly sad and tragic and unfair that she has died, yet the hysterical and hypocritical reaction of the press which once or twice in the past have pretty much called for her piggy head to be stuck up on a spike, is something to behold.

On one hand it is ludicrous to compare her to Princess Diana and yet on the other there is probably no more apt parallel. They were both vilified by the media that they openly courted and both might end up practically canonised in death.

Amen.