Month: December 2007

Alberto Gonzales will be remembered, not as an eminent US Attorney General, but as the man who “didn’t recall”. His boss, George W Bush, is unlikely to be remembered as the most esteemed president in United States history, but he may well go down as the president who had “no recollection”.

The recent revelations concerning the “disposal” of CIA interrogation tapes are yet another example of a White House deliberately flouting the law. Bush says he has “no recollection” of the missing tapes, or even of their existence. CIA Director Michael Hayden, in whom George Bush “continues to have confidence” – just as he did with Alberto Gonzales, FEMA head Michael Brown, and numerous other total failures appointed by this incumbent US president to top positions they had neither the qualifications, nor the whit, to hold – said the tapes were destroyed, “because they posed a security risk”.

To whom were they a security risk? To the CIA operatives who used water-boarding and other forms of torture defined under the Geneva Conventions against their victims, or to certain high-up members of this administration who might one day be brought to justice for sanctioning such techniques, if the evidence were still available?

“We do not torture.”

In April this year, it came to light that around five million White House emails had “gone missing”, or, to put it another way, had “been deleted”. The law requires the president to preserve all presidential records.

According to the latest reports, that figure may be in excess of ten million. The president, it would appear, is yet again “outside” the law.

Alberto Gonzales pleaded his “ignorance’ right to the end. Eventually, pressure left him with no option other than resignation.

George W Bush won’t resign. He is determined to see out his second term. Yet, with still more than a year to serve, it would appear he has already begun to “clear out his desk”.

Filed under: Early onset senility

Have you noticed the inflection in the voice, the lowered tone coupled with a downturn of the eyes? News anchors spend hours in front of the bathroom mirror practicing that somber look, the dirge-like vocal that’s always a precursor to really bad news.

It’s needed frequently in America. Never an NBC Nightly News goes past that some great, catastrophic, news story isn’t preceded by the bathroom mirror look, and a practiced flickering of lashes as ace anchorman Brian Williams swiftly lowers the eyelids.

Tonight it was a re-run. You know the one. Gunmen runs amok, kills many, turns gun on himself. No, it wasn’t a school this time. For a bit of variety the loony with the shooter chose a mall in Nebraska, brimming with Christmas shoppers.

What a juicy story for the media. All those fear-crazed shoppers dashing hither and thither, screaming and shouting, then daring to whine and winge just ’cause it happened.

Don’t come crying to me, dear. When was the last time you voted for gun control?

That’s why the somber look and the elegiacal voice are so important. The American news just wouldn’t be the same without them. After all, if anyone actually did anything about the shooting sprees embarked on by pre-pubescent, weapon-toting morons, who probably were buying guns at the local Wal-Mart long before they were old enough to vote, like – for example – pressuring those somnolent old farts snoozing their lives away in the comfortable leather armchairs on Capital Hill to introduce something loosely called “gun control”, all that contorting and head-bowing in front of the bathroom mirror would be a waste of time, now wouldn’t it?

Americans love to whine. They make an art-form of it. By now, you’d think they’d be used to shopping at malls frequented by psychotic killers; schools regularly carved up by teen students put out by low grades, or gas stations targeted by ex-military snipers suffering depression due to a lack of mother’s breast milk.

But, obviously, they’re not. They still whine and complain everytime it happens, then immediately rush out to vote for their local NRA candidate.

Consequently, nothing ever gets done.

Let’s look at today’s NBC Nightly News in detail. After the Nebraska shooting came the ongoing story of flooding in the American West. Had this excess of water arrived a couple of weeks earlier, it may have helped put out the forest fires that ravaged California through November. But it didn’t. Nature is rarely that obliging, particularly when both fire and flood result from global warming.

Is America doing anything to prevent catastrophic climate change? No.

Child obesity means the next generation won’t live as long as their parents, warns NBC’s resident ‘medical expert’, insisting:

“Brian, something must be done now!” Cue lowered eyelids from the anchor.

Fat kids have been around in America for a generation, in fact, almost as far back as 1940 when Dick and Mac McDonald opened their first restaurant. Of course, you can’t blame old Dick and Mac. They didn’t realize the consequences of their actions would send thousands of American kids to an early grave. That would be akin to blaming Henry Ford for global warming.

Responsible nations can look after their younger generations by legislating against too much fatty, unhealthy food in school diets, and pressuring corporations that run poison parlors on Main Street to provide healthier, more wholesome food. Of course, governments only do that when they in turn are pressured by their citizens. It seems America’s citizens would rather watch their kids die of diabetes and premature heart disease, than upset the corporate boardrooms.

Brian William’s vocal tones sank even lower with the latest report from the Government Accountability Office stating a catastrophic accident was bound to happen soon at an American airport, given the state of the national air traffic control system. One Congressman almost wept as he muttered, “The FAA has let us down….sob…”

What a total load of balderdash! The FAA is a US government department. That’s why the report came from the Government Accountability Office. The US ATC systems have been broken for years, with the full knowledge of Congress and the president. The old farts have done nothing to force the FAA into upgrading and improving the system. They could start by awarding them some money to do it with.

Yet, is it an election issue? Are the people demanding safer air ways?

No. They’re more concerned as to whether Hilary Clinton is religious enough, or if Barack Obama’s truly a Christian, or a cleverly closeted Muslim.

That’s what inflames the American people.

They can be gunned down in droves, incinerated or drowned, fall out of the skies from forty thousand feet, and let their kids stuff themselves till they burst like over-inflated pumpkins, but elect a politician who doesn’t say his prayers every night?

NEVER!

Meanwhile, Brian Williams is cosseting his vocal chords and plucking his eyebrows, ready for tomorrow night’s lugubrious performance.

Filed under: Apathy

Is America a democracy, or has it secretly metamorphosed into a closet theocracy?

For a country once so proud of its traditions – the land where freedom of religion was always hailed as sacrosanct and the separation of church and state set in Constitutional concrete – there is a awful lot of emphasis these days on a politician’s religious belief systems.

This is really nothing new, of course. When JFK was campaigning for the presidency in the sixties, his Catholic affiliations led many to question his suitability for the highest office. This week Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is taking a leaf out of Kennedy’s book by making a speech to Republicans clarifying his religious position in the hope it’ll gain him additional support.

Giuliani has slid backwards down the polls due to an unacceptably irreligious lifestyle, and Barack Obama has gone to great lengths emphasizing his Christian, rather than Muslim, beliefs.

Why are these factors relevant in today’s United States? If freedom of religion is truly sacrosanct, should it matter if Obama were a Muslim, or if Giuliani is, in reality, a closet atheist? Do a person’s religious beliefs effect their ability to carry out the duties of the Office of President of the United States, given the Constitutional separation laid down by the Founding Fathers?

Or, has the concrete begun to crack?

Much has been said and written about the present incumbent’s beliefs and his reliance on divine inspiration in the business of decision making. Given his record over the last eight years, it hardly seems a dependable way to run a kid’s tea party, let alone a nation, yet millions of Americans find any other method unacceptable.

What about the millions of non-Christians living in this country? It would appear they have no political voice at all. As one who happens to consider orthodox religious belief a serious handicap to life, I don’t particularly relish having someone with that sort of impediment running the affairs of state. Yet it would seem I have no choice.

In a true democracy a politician’s religion, if he has one, should have no bearing, either on his ability to secure sufficient votes, or to do the job he was elected for.

Recently, ex-British prime minister Tony Blair disclosed to the world that he kept his religious faith under wraps for the years he was in office, for fear it would cost him votes. The British people knew he was a Christian, but they couldn’t care less. He could have been a Buddhist or a Hindu, or even a Muslim, and it wouldn’t have been a problem just so long as he didn’t demand the whole British Parliament bowed five times to Mecca every day.

You see, that’s what a democracy is all about; not caring how people are, or what they believe, just so long as they keep it to themselves and don’t interfere in the lives of others.

Some insist there was once a time when America was like that?

Webster’s dictionary defines a theocracy thus:

“government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided”

Everyone of the front runners, both Democrat and Republican, in the present race for their party’s nomination has stated categorically that their Christian religious belief is the prime guiding factor in their lives and work.

Is America still a democracy, or has it secretly metamorphosed into a closet theocracy?

Filed under: Whose country?