George Bush's America

[ken]

www.alternet.org/story/32382/

[phil]

HÉ! This is not about George Bush's America ...

This is not an article from The Guardian ...

It gives me no pleasure reading it or posting it here ...

It contains relevant matters for reflection ...

You can choose to ignore it because I'm the one who put it here ...


NEWSWEEK
INTERNATIONAL

The Rise of the Rest

It's true China is booming, Russia is growing more assertive, terrorism is a threat. But if America is losing the ability to dictate to this new world, it has not lost the ability to lead.

By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK
May 12, 2008 Issue


Americans are glum at the moment. No, I mean really glum. In April, a new poll revealed that 81 percent of the American people believe that the country is on the "wrong track." In the 25 years that pollsters have asked this question, last month's response was by far the most negative. Other polls, asking similar questions, found levels of gloom that were even more alarming, often at 30- and 40-year highs. There are reasons to be pessimistic—a financial panic and looming recession, a seemingly endless war in Iraq, and the ongoing threat of terrorism. But the facts on the ground—unemployment numbers, foreclosure rates, deaths from terror attacks—are simply not dire enough to explain the present atmosphere of malaise.

American anxiety springs from something much deeper, a sense that large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world. In almost every industry, in every aspect of life, it feels like the patterns of the past are being scrambled. "Whirl is king, having driven out Zeus," wrote Aristophanes 2,400 years ago. And—for the first time in living memory—the United States does not seem to be leading the charge. Americans see that a new world is coming into being, but fear it is one being shaped in distant lands and by foreign people.

Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

These factoids reflect a seismic shift in power and attitudes. It is one that I sense when I travel around the world. In America, we are still debating the nature and extent of anti-Americanism. One side says that the problem is real and worrying and that we must woo the world back. The other says this is the inevitable price of power and that many of these countries are envious—and vaguely French—so we can safely ignore their griping. But while we argue over why they hate us, "they" have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.

Read more ...

www.newsweek.com/id/135380

[phil]

Variation on the same theme ...


Who Will Tell the People?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 4, 2008

Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I’ve had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.

They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.

Our president’s latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after 9/11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”

That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: “You go to war with the army you have.” Hey, you march into the future with the country you have — not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

Read more ...

www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/opinion/04friedman.html?em&ex=1210132800&en=86fe7eaa442ab3f2&ei=5087%0A

[phil]

Now ... THIS is Junior's America!

www.newamericancentury.org/


The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.

The Project for the New American Century intends, through issue briefs, research papers, advocacy journalism, conferences, and seminars, to explain what American world leadership entails. It will also strive to rally support for a vigorous and principled policy of American international involvement and to stimulate useful public debate on foreign and defense policy and America's role in the world.

William Kristol, Chairman

[phil]

More of the same ...

Written by a *fellow* american ...

An Unnatural Disaster
America bears much of the blame for its waning global clout.

Excerpts ...

The issue goes way beyond Bush's decision to invade Iraq in the middle of the war in Afghanistan. U.S. government literally broke down during the Bush years. The interagency process was destroyed as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld set up what was effectively a "black" alternative government (the veep's shadow national security council, and Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon).

The White House treated its coequal branch, Congress, like an interloper (to the annoyance of Republicans as well as Democrats). Junk science infected the policy-making apparatus on key issues of importance to our allies in Europe and Asia, like global warming. Junk legal reasoning by White House and Justice Department lawyers was used to publicly justify torture, decimating our once high moral stature around the world. Junk economics—an excess of free-market fervor—infected the Federal Reserve and other regulators, who slumbered while Wall Street ran amok selling fraudulent mortgage securities to foreign markets. Congress went to sleep while the administration ran up record deficits. (The fallout from the subprime debacle and budget imbalance has cost us as much prestige in the economic sphere as Iraq has cost us in the foreign policy arena.) The Department of Homeland Security, misconceived and oversized even at its birth, grew into an unmanageable monstrosity, leading directly to the disaster of the Hurricane Katrina response.

...

But Congress and the punditocracy never really challenged the Bush team on these seemingly simple points. Indeed, scratch a theorist of American decline today, and underneath you'll often find an Iraq war supporter. Because they are vested in justifying themselves—thinking that other presidents would have made mostly the same strategic choices Bush did—it may be easier on their consciences to conclude that our problems are more inevitable than self-made.


More ...

www.newsweek.com/id/137146

[phil]

A rather long essay ... Well worth reading!


The Future of American Power
How America Can Survive the Rise of the Rest

Fareed Zakaria

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008


Summary: Despite some eerie parallels between the position of the United States today and that of the British Empire a century ago, there are key differences. Britain's decline was driven by bad economics. The United States, in contrast, has the strength and dynamism to continue shaping the world -- but only if it can overcome its political dysfunction and reorient U.S. policy for a world defined by the rise of other powers.

FAREED ZAKARIA is Editor of Newsweek International. This essay is adapted from his book The Post-American World (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., © 2008 by Fareed Zakaria).


On June 22, 1897, about 400 million people around the world -- one-fourth of humanity -- got the day off. It was the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria's ascension to the British throne. The Diamond Jubilee stretched over five days on land and sea, but its high point was the parade and thanksgiving service on June 22. The 11 premiers of Britain's self-governing colonies were in attendance, along with princes, dukes, ambassadors, and envoys from the rest of the world. A military procession of 50,000 soldiers included hussars from Canada, cavalrymen from New South Wales, carabineers from Naples, camel troops from Bikaner, and Gurkhas from Nepal. It was, as one historian wrote, "a Roman moment."

In London, eight-year-old Arnold Toynbee was perched on his uncle's shoulders, eagerly watching the parade. Toynbee, who grew up to become the most famous historian of his age, recalled that, watching the grandeur of the day, it felt as if the sun were "standing still in the midst of Heaven." "I remember the atmosphere," he wrote. "It was: 'Well, here we are on top of the world, and we have arrived at this peak to stay there forever. There is, of course, a thing called history, but history is something unpleasant that happens to other people. We are comfortably outside all of that I am sure.'"

But of course, history did happen to Britain. The question for the superpower of the current age is, Will history happen to the United States as well? Is it already happening? No analogy is exact, but the British Empire in its heyday is the closest any nation in the modern age has come to the United States' position today. In considering whether and how the forces of change will affect the United States, it is worth paying close attention to the experience of Britain.

www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501facomment87303/fareed-zakaria/the-future-of-american-power.html

[Ampage]

I sure hope you spend at least 10% of the time you do here trying to save Canada.

Save the Canadian cheerleader - save them all, eh?

[phil]

HÉ! The two Cheerleading squads at the boys' high school
place second and third in their respective category
at the national competition in Toronto a few weeks ago ...

They don't need any help!

Eldest Son's rugby team ... Now ... That's another story!

And saving Canada ? I do my best trying to get the country free
of Stephen Harper and his own brand of neo-con government ...

Say... You do know who Stephen Harper is
and the fine points of canadian politics, don't you?

[maarts]

You know you leave yourself open for a "No. Why don't you post something on the subject?"-answer, right Phil?

Interesting reading material though. What stays with me is the whole 'I wish it all were over'-feeling. Shared worldwide that sentiment.

[phil]

But there is a specific board for discussing that ...

Which has been pretty much deserted since the ROC crew jumped ship ...

You think Amp was a regular reader there? ?

[phil]

Now THAT is a funny british video...

Bush: "What do you mean, negociate?"

www.thefirstpost.co.uk/9576,features,world-leaders-episode-1-what-do-you-mean-negotiate

[maarts]

Bush the bikie!
Only a chain around his knuckles is missing...


(actually was a nice story about the Memorial Day veteran remembrance-service through the Rolling Thunder-bikies.)

[shin]

Torture is awesome! Thanks, conservatives! America is thankful for your service!

[phil]

Dunkin' Donuts yanks Rachael Ray ad




Does Dunkin’ Donuts really think its customers could mistake Rachael Ray for a terrorist sympathizer? The Canton-based company has abruptly canceled an ad in which the domestic diva wears a scarf that looks like a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab men.

Some observers, including ultra-conservative Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin, were so incensed by the ad that there was even talk of a Dunkin’ Donuts boycott.

‘The keffiyeh‘, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,’’ Malkin yowls in her syndicated column.

‘‘Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons.’’

The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.

Said the suits in a statement: ‘‘In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial.’’

(In case you’re wondering, the stylist who selected the offending scarf was not Gretta Enterprises boss Gretchen Monahan, who appears on Ray’s TV show as a style consultant.)

For her part, Malkin was pleased with Dunkin’s response: ‘‘It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists.’’

...

The keffiyeh is the traditional scarf of Arab men ... Period!

And except for the black and white colors,
it doesn't even look like a keffiyeh, you stupid dumbfuck ...!!

That coffee looks suspisciouly like a cocktail Molotov

[phil]

Next time, they should have her wore a ten gallon cowboy hat
and a red, white & blue bandana ...

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not sure about the the universe."
(A. Einstein)