Hyperbole and inaccuracy notwithstanding, I had some sympathy with the calls to scrap the UK’s Holocaust Memorial Day as reported in the Sunday Times at the weekend . . . → Read More: My Holocaust is Bigger than your Holocaust
|
|||
|
It won’t be long before George W. Bush speaks to the nation from Jackson Square, a beautiful and relatively unscathed New Orleans landmark. He’ll talk about taking responsibility and moving forward, about the heroism and sacrifice of those involved in the rescue and relief efforts, about the American qualities that will make rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast not only possible, but imperative. What he won’t say are any of the things he should say. So we’re taking the liberty of saying them for him. . . . → Read More: Bush: “I’m not up for this. I quit.” I think I just witnessed a train wreck in slow motion. The Galloway versus Hitchens debate in New York was a traversty that I admit I never foresaw, but which with the benefit of hindsight may have been only too obvious from the start. The debate sold out more than a week ago so I watched live on the Internet as Hitchens disintegrated before my eyes. Hitchens was terrible. He stammered and mumbled his way through the debate, which lasted almost two hours. Occasionally persuasive, but mostly unsteady, his arguments often lacked direction and veered off on tangents which though powerful on the pages of a magazine or webpage, were no match for Galloway’s soapbox bluster. I didn’t score each of the rounds, but I would say Galloway won each and every one of them. At the end, when it looked like Hitchens was about to make a comeback, he shot himself in both feet and a couple of other orifices to boot, by appearing to defend Bush’s handling of the New Orleans flood crisis by springing to the defense of the troops who were belatedly deployed to the scene. All Hitchens had to do was condemn Bush—for his mishandling of the war and the post-war reconstruction in Iraq, or for his handling of the hurricane relief effort, and I would have been with him. Instead, he chose to castigate the hecklers in the audience like a school marm who has lost control in an assembly. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has been in a distressingly public tailspin since 911, has now become so delusional that he mistakes George W. Bush for America and blames the former’s inadequacies on the latter. . . . → Read More: Thomas Friedman blames America for Bush But with a very few exceptions, no one is attacking the people who are on the front lines saving lives. And in the instances where criticism has been aimed at police, for instance, it arises from situations such as the one during which racist Louisiana cops prevented threw down on a crowd of storm victims attempting to walk out of New Orleans. Overwhelmingly, the criticism is of federal officials who didn’t get those “front line” responders into the afflicted areas quickly enough to do the jobs they’re trained to do, and then didn’t provide them with clear direction. . . . → Read More: Bush defends where no one attacks Sunday morning I got up early and went on down to the Pentagon’s “America Supports You Freedom Walk” . . . → Read More: In Which I Liberate the Freedom Walk The United States has been by any measure the world’s strongest and most prosperous post-World War II nation. With the end of the Cold War and the removal of the counterwieght provided by the Soviet Union, American imperialists such as those at present embedded in the Bush administration — Dick Cheney, former Rumsfeld deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, Bush himself, and others — have looked to recast the country as a deliberate empire rather than one by default. Bored by the niggling proxy wars spawned in the contest with Russia and still enraged by the outcome of the post-war adventure in Vietnam, these men sought a far more direct and unabashed application of US military might and economic dominance. . . . → Read More: The abbreviated empire As New Orleans is slowly drained of its human population, numerous press reports describe what remains. Along with homes and possessions and, all too often, friends and family who died during the storm and its hideous aftermath, residents of the city are leaving behind what numerous press reports have described as a “toxic gumbo.” The description doesn’t do justice to the situation. . . . → Read More: Don’t go in the water: Katrina’s toxic legacy More than the levee was breached this week. The social contract that binds us was breached this week. The obligation we have as a nation to secure all citizens and the protection we purchase by restricting our actions in exchange for the benefits of civil society were both breached this week. The patina of civil rights and of equality of access were breached this week. The illusion that the government has done anything more than talk about security or preparedness or that security is even a priority, was breached this week. . . . → Read More: Wading Into The Breach… |
|
||
|
Copyright © 2012 BTC News: If It Says ‘News,’ It Must Be True - All Rights Reserved |
|||
Bush: “We’ll do for the Gulf Coast what we did for Iraq.”
When Jerry Bremer arrived in Baghdad to take over as Iraq proconsul, he immediately set about rewriting the country’s civil code — in violation of international law — for the benefit of US corporations, and dispensing, pallet loads, literally, of cash looted from Iraqi’s oil revenues. Now that president Bush has designated political assassin and ongoing national security threat Karl Rove as the new Gulf Coast proconsul, Bremer will soon look like a classic piker. . . . → Read More: Bush: “We’ll do for the Gulf Coast what we did for Iraq.”