Common Sense Democracy

 I ran across a few of the news stories surrounding the speech of President Chavez to the U.N. today. The phrase that immediately comes to mind is, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I do not necessarily think Chavez is a great man and he certainly has his faults as far as fair treatment of his people, but Chavez is right and I don’t like Bush either. The Bush administration has squandered the power and influence of America around the world. The laughing has turned to hate.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tore into his U.S. counterpart and his U.N. hosts Wednesday, likening President Bush to the devil and telling the General Assembly that its system is “worthless.”

“The devil came here yesterday,” Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. “And it smells of sulfur still today.”

Chavez accused Bush of having spoken “as if he owned the world” and said a psychiatrist could be called to analyze the statement.

He also said the U.S. government was the “first enemy” of its people. We are being lied to, decieved and led into conflicts where our sons and daughters are being killed for a cause most don’t support or endorse.

John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, dismissed the speech, saying, “I think that [Chavez’s] rhetoric today shows exactly what kind of man he is.”

Bolton said: “We’re not going to address that sort of comic-strip approach to international affairs.

And of course, as their usual defense, the Bush administration, specifically John Bolton, attacks the messenger without hearing the message. To use Bolton’s own words, I think that BUSH’s rhetoric at the U.N. shows exactly what kind of man HE is. If they weren’t so consumed with pointing fingers and finding someone to blame, the Bush camp might actually find wisdom in stepping outside itself to listen to why the world hates us.

Link to CNN.com - Chavez: Bush ‘devil;’ U.S. ‘on the way down’

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Via Yahoo! News.

“President Bush said he could consider using force as a last resort to press Iran to give up its nuclear program.”

Do we realistically even have the option? Our military is so completely spread thin that we can barely maintain stability in Iraq.

It’s the small comments and subtle references like this that really provide a glimpse into the brain of this President. It seems so early in the diplomatic process for a President to even make such a reference, like he’s a line coach in a basketball game speculating on the second half. We are talking about life and death.

Every avalanche starts as a wee snowball.

Read the full article at Yahoo! News.

Technorati Tags: President+Bush, Iran, nuclear+program, European+Union, war, diplomacy

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President Bush is scheduled to give a speech tonight in which, despite the chaos and car bombs and rising daily attacks by insurgents, he’ll argue that everything is going well in Iraq and we should stay the course. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said, “It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we’re losing in Iraq.” What do you think? Are we responsible for staying the course no matter the cost or have we done what we initially set out to do and it’s now time to pull out?

Here are some resources to learn more:

“Bush Shifts Focus to Iraq,” Associated Press, June 16, 2005
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/16/bush.ap/

“Bush’s Support on Major Issues Tumbles in Poll,” The New York Times, June 17, 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/politics/17poll.html

“N.C. congressmen supports timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.” Associated Press, June 12, 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=759

Technorati Tags : Senator+Hagel, Presidential+Speeches, Iraq, Republicans, Democrats

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Via CNN.com

Bloggers in China using the new blogging service, MSN Spaces, by Microsoft are being censored by the Chinese government.

Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.’s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities — such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

“Prohibited language in text, please delete,” the message says.

I find it both strange and amazing that companies like Microsoft can conduct business operations in countries that are so oppressive. I’m not blaming Microsoft, I just think that it’s strange in this day and age to have governments such as China trying to advance it’s culture through technology and capitalism and yet behave so primitively. It’s like building a 2 million dollar house, furnishing it with the best furniture money can buy but not allowing anyone to sit on it or use it.

As if not allowing people to say “democracy” will somehow make it not exist or make them less eager to have it.

Via CNN.com

Technorati Tags: China, democracy, MSN spaces, Microsoft, blogs, censorship, human rights, Chinese Government

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According to a 2,000 page US Army internal investigation that was leaked to the New York Times:

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar’s face.

“Come on, drink!” the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. “Drink!”

At the interrogators’ behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

“Leave him up,” one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan War, George Bush, Prison Abuse

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Last Saturday we made a post that laid out the evidence that George Bush lied about the justification for the war with Iraq. We said that the Bush administration engaged in a elaborate charade to convince the world that we had to invade Iraq because of the urgent need to get rid of his nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction, which was a huge let’s-fool-the-public lie.

Today’s New York Times reports that 89 members of the House have sent a letter to the White House asking for an explanation of the facts that were reported in Britain two weeks ago, which we laid out in Saturday’s post. The White House has brushed off the letter, but I forecast that this is going to become a major scandal. Lying to Congress. Lying to the United Nations. Lying to the American people. This is going to be George Bush’s $200 Billion Watergate.

Technorati Tags: Iraq War, George Bush

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“The dark underside of the United States has taken center stage in several films at Cannes this year, capped on Monday with a scathing attack of past and present racism in America by Danish director Lars von Trier.”

An article at Yahoo! News discusses a new film released at the Cannes Film Festival called “Manderlay”. The film is directed by Danish director Lars von Trier.

“We are all under the influence — and it’s a very bad influence — from America,” said the 49-year-old Dane. “In my country everything has to do with America. America is kind of sitting on the world.

“America has to do with 60 percent of my brain and all things I experience in my life, and I’m not happy about that,” von Trier said. I’d say 60 percent of my life is American so I am in fact an ‘American’ too. But I can’t go there and vote or change anything there. That is why I make films about America.”

Read more at Yahoo! News.
Technorati Tags: cannes, cannes film festival, america, slavery, film, Lars von Trier, American Imperialism, manderlay

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Although the actual dates vary, May 12th, 1653 marks the date when England took a small step closer to democracy. Oliver Cromwell dissolved the existing parliament in order to establish a new one, thereby creating England’s first written constitution called the Instrument of Government.

After leading the overthrow of the British monarchy, defeating King Charles I and bringing to an end the monarchy’s claim to absolute power, Cromwell ruled England as a Republic from 1653 until his death. Although many agree that Cromwell ruled the commonwealth as a military dictator, his contribution to the written government constitution and thereby the power of the people, is indisputable.

Read more on Oliver Cromwell at Wikipedia.
Read more about the Instrument of Government.
Technorati Tags: Oliver Cromwell, Commonwealth, England, Instrument of Government, Government, constitution, King Charles I, Republic

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“Stable, prosperous democracies are good neighbors, trading in freedom and posing no threat to anyone,” said our President in Riga, Latvia today, the idea being that if tyrants are overthrown and people are allowed to vote, they would choose, as we did, free-enterprise capitalism and the values that go with it, and they’d become our friends. This is our national policy, and tyrants and one-party ‘democracies’ have been overthrown for real democracy from Agentina up to Mexico and east to Ukraine, Georgia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But what are these new democracies voting for? More often than not, anti-American governments and socialism. Huh?

In Latin America, Hugo Chavez (President of Venezuela) is rabidly anti-American. He just came back from a friendship visit to Cuba. Luiz Lula de Silva is Brazil’s new socialist president as is Tabare Vasquez of Uruguay. The leading candidate in next year’s election for President of Mexico is Lopez Obrador, a socialist. The new Secretary General of the Ogranization of American States (OAS) is a socialist from Chile. In Europe, pro-American governements have been thrown out in Spain, and Italy’s next. And in Iraq, after spending hundreds of billions liberating their people, they elect a shiite majority whose leader, Grand Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Husayni Sistani, is an Iranian whose goal is to create in Iraq a state based on Islamic values, like Iran.

Joe McDonald, whose blog this is, has asked me to do some guest blogging. My name is Ned and this is my first post. What you think? If American-style capitalism and values are so teriffic, why are the newly freed, all too often, selecting something quite different? In some cases, they are choosing leaders and policies outright hostle to American interests. Why?

Technorati Tags: George Bush, Iraq War, socialism, American capitalism, democratic elections

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