Month: November 2004

According to commentary by at least one economist, the melt down of the U.S. economy is very likely, in line with the previous arguments I’ve presented here before.

Salon has an informative article about the support given by the Reagan and Bush 1 administrations to Saddam to use chemical weapons against his own people and the Iranians.

An article by Rick Perlstein in last weeks Village Voice is worth reading to dispell the notion that it was “moral values” that bought Bush the election. According to Perlstein and the Polysigh blog, it seems that religious voters did not turnout in significantly greater numbers for the 2004 election and then vote for Bush.

The images shown via the BBC (among others) of rampant bulldozing of houses in Fallujah using armoured vehicles is eerily familiar of the illegal collective punishment of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli Defence force using Caterpillar bulldozers. As noted by Mark LeVine, the ideology of Israel and the U.S. has converged.

Proof there is still consideration and sanity in the U.S. courts in this decision concerning the application of POW status to Guantanamo Bay detainee Hamdan:

As the shock begins to recede, significant questions as to the democratic character of the U.S. election persist. One characteristic that stands out clearly is that nearly no-one has heeded Kerry’s call for everyone to kiss, make-up and somehow accept Bush’s immoral administration.

CNN notes that when Kerry called Bush to concede “During the phone call, Bush and Kerry agreed that the divided nation needs to heal, officials said”.

Orcinus has a well reasoned comparison of the behaviour of the U.S. conservative movement manifesting itself in the U.S. Republican party, the Christian fundamentalist movement, right-wing media, and more extreme racist groups to behaviour displayed by historical fascist states (Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, Spain under Franco).