So Brown is an honorary "loyal Bushie"? Can't be any worse than the unspeakable things Bush has done to the middle class here. Message to all Brits and non-Yanks on this board: however bad you think Bush's foreign policy is, that's nothing compared to the unprecidented way he has destroyed the environment, the middle and working classes, oppressed the poor, and shredded the Constitution piecemeal., in waqys unprecidented in US history..starting with the way he was "elected" in 2000... Oops. Not Bush...Cheney runs the govt. See this weeks' Washington Post series on the shadow Cheney Presidency.
www.washingtonpost.com decades after him, the Roberts-Alito Supreme Court will complete the systematic destruction of all our recent womens; rights, civil rights, and environmental laws. They're already off to a great start....a triple whammy dismantling some key Civil Rights Act of 1964 laws, just Monday, in three landmark cases in one day.
Wow, this pretty much makes it a clean sweep. The Western world is currently controlled by the right and Far right. Cheney (oops, I mean Bush) in the U.S; Harper in Canada; Brown in Blighty; Sarkozy in France; Merkel in Germany (though she might be a moderate); Olmert in Israel (wait until they attack Syria, Hamas and Iran next month--I have read this posted from someone else on another site who has a friend in the IDF who is currently in the Negev desert, where he says Israel is curretly conducting "unusually large" military excercises in preperations for a war in July to erase the "shame" of last yr's war, using the Hamas takeover of Gaza as the excuse. This sounds entirely believable to me, as Rumsfeld and Cheney teamed up with Dan Halutz to take Israel to war last yr--a dress rehersal for attacking Iran; clearly Cheney is realizing the US public will not tolerate a US attack on Iran so why not get Israel to do it for us??God forbid if this is the case--but Seymour Hersh has never been wrong)...Putin in Russia, and the idiotc John Major in Oz. (His entire country is wilting in drought and they say Australai willnot be able to grow food crops in another 15 yrs,and he is still the only Western power along with the US to oppose Kyoto.)
It's a rough time for progressives of all stripes, though I think we must prepare ourselves for more of the same and indeed, even worse. As the global Oil Peak approaches (if we have not seen it already), and the world's natural rescources begin to run low, and the effects of global warming and climate change begin to pile up, governments of all stripes will by necessity have to become more autocratic, if not openly despotic, as their restive populations demand a retun to the status quo and the glory days where they could carry out their indulgent lifestyles. Refugee problems will only grow. I say it a lot to people: "We are already living in a 'Children Of Men' world." Many of these leaders, such as Sarkozy, openly played the Muslim card and they will appeal to racist and xenophobic elements of their populations to keep them distracted and or/ entertained as their material problems grow, which without armed conflict manynot be solveable. This is the horrid way Bush/Cheney can continue to be so confident and sure history will vindicate them: they in their cynical way believe that in the end the populace will give up their freedom in exchange for the security offered by a despot.....