One of the more amusing developments in pre-election Israel is the sudden adoption of the slogan "piggish capitalism."   Most of Israel's chattering classes still dream of seeing a bolshevik system of state planning of the economy imposed upon what is already a Scandinavian style welfare state in Israel.

Above, the dodo bird, the new Labor Party join-mascot, alongside the lemming.

Things escalated when airhead Shelly Yachimovitz, a backbencher from the Labor Party, started tossing out comments about how "piggish capitalism" was what had to be suppressed.   Shelly, whose qualifications for sitting in the Knesset were that she had hosted a chat show on a state-owned radio station, claimed that the crashing stock markets prove that capitalism is dead and that the new enlightened era of bolshevik planning will rescue the planet.  Never mind that capitalism is the only system capable of generating any wealth at all that ordinary people can have at risk in the stock market in the first place.  It was a bit amusing, but the only paper that told off Silly Shelly was Haaretz, whose business section is the most free-market medium in Israel.

Now Ehud Barak, the fella who single-handedly rained 4000 Katyusha rockets down on northern Israel when he ordered the cowardly unilateral capitulation to the Hezbollah in 2000, has picked up the nonsense term from Little Shelly.  Barak yesterday also spoke out against piggish capitalism, although in the news report in the English Haaretz they prettify what Barak said and call it "greedy capitalism" of the "Right" (see this). 

So now Barak, who is heading the Israeli Labor Party, is getting about 10% of the support of the public in pre-election polls.   He is trying to save his McClellenist backside by pouting against "Piggish Capitalism."  In other words, Barak is now the national champion of Dodo Bolshevism. You may recall that the Dodo bird became extinct because it was too stupid to respond or defend itself when it was being stalked by other animals seeking to devour it.