For the first two items below I am much indebted to discussions with a fellow blogger:

(Under the heading: �LEFTIST INFLUENCE IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH�)

So the main motivation behind Catholic socialism would seem to be the wish of the church to curry favour with the often poor members of its congregations but some attempt to treat Christ�s counsel about the surest path to the afterlife (e.g. �Go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven� -- Matthew 19:21) as if it were also advice about how to run the affairs of the secular world is also of course involved -- materially assisted by the fact that theologians seldom seem to be very literate in economics.

So in many countries this does sometimes result in people hearing from Catholic pulpits condemnations of the �greed� of capitalism. Yet is it not greed to demand something that you did not earn? Is it not greed to use the coercive power of the government to take from others? Is it not greed to use the coercive power of unions to receive an unfair wage, often at the expense of other less-unionized workers? Is it not greed to demand that church members pay you a certain percentage of their wages? So the second-rate theology that fails even to ask such questions results in many Catholics worldwide hearing from their priests a message that is in some ways not very distinct from the message of Marxist revolutionaries.


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(Under the heading: �THE CHURCH�)

Also at work when Leftists praise primitive religions is of course the normal Leftist hatred of modern Western civilization in general and of the USA in particular. Anything non-Western or non-Christian is therefore welcomed and praised. And the common Red/Green pretence that primitive practices were more �in harmony with nature� is something of a joke. Primitive peoples constantly used fire to clear land and trap game and this constant fire-load on the environment did of course greatly change the landscape and its resident species from what they �naturally� once were. Primitive man probably changed the landscape nearly as much as modern man did, in fact. Only very high rainfall forests would have been unaffected by fire. And the desertification of large areas on the margins of the Sahara is the work of primitive sheep and goat herders in quite recent times.

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An interesting thought recycled from Jeff Wolfe:


�WHY IRAQ? - I've been thinking about why we are about to attack Iraq, and not the real enemy, Saudi Arabia.
Most of the debate has been focused on the first part of that question, so I decided to look at the second part a bit. I pulled out a map to see how I might execute a war against Saud-controlled Arabia if I were the general in charge. It wouldn't be easy. Once you no longer count Saudi Arabia as a friend, the U.S. doesn't have very many friends left in the region. Israel and Kuwait are too small (and Israel is unsuitable in any event for obvious reasons), and Turkey and Afghanistan are too far away.
If we need somewhere from which to base an attack on Saud-controlled Arabia, and none of our current bases are suitable, where do we turn? Going back to the map, we see that the best situated country is probably... Iraq�