A leaked early draft of the script promises a story that jumps back and forth between Bush's dissolute youth and his time in office, from driving his car on to his parents' lawn and challenging his father to a fistfight, to almost choking to death on a pretzel while watching a football game, and telling the Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar that he's given up sweets since the start of the Iraq War, as a 'personal sacrifice to show support for our troops'. Is this comic material, or pure tragedy?
Pass The Pretzels – It's Bush, The Movie
batboy-ish
Bush scolds China on rights day before Games
Reuters
Thursday, 7 August 2008
Just hours before flying to Beijing for the Olympics today, US President George Bush used some of his bluntest language yet in publicly pressing China to improve its human rights record.
In a speech in Bangkok on the eve of the Games' opening ceremony, when the eyes of the world will be on Beijing, Bush voiced "firm opposition" to China's detention of dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists.
"The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings," he said in comments likely to anger China's communist leadership.
"We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labour rights not to antagonise China's leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential," he said.
Beijing is accused of cracking down on dissent ahead of the Games instead of granting more freedoms, as originally promised.
Bush had faced criticism from rights groups not only for attending the Games but also for not speaking out more forcefully against Beijing's crackdown in the run-up to the showpiece event.
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Gus: the guano batpot calling the china black...
no consultation
Quagmire, Phase 2: The Invasion of Pakistan
Posted on Sep 11, 2008
By William Pfaff
The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970.
An American army, deeply frustrated by its inability to defeat an anti-American insurgent movement despite years of struggle, decides that the key to victory lies in a neighboring country. In 1970, the problem was the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Today it is Taliban and al-Qaida bases inside Pakistan, which the United States has been attacking from the air for some time, with controversial “collateral damage.”
George W. Bush has now authorized independent ground assaults on Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Pakistan’s Tribal Territories, without consultation with Pakistan authorities. These already have begun.
This follows a period of tension, with some armed clashes, between American and Pakistani military units, the latter defending “Pakistan’s national sovereignty.” Pakistan public opinion seems largely against “America’s war” being fought inside Pakistan.
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Afghanistan: Pakistan fury at US cross-border attacks
Raids by US forces based in neighbouring Afghanistan risk undermining Islamabad's new civilian government
By Raymond Whitaker
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Pakistan's new President, Asif Ali Zardari, is facing demands to withdraw co-operation with the US in the "war on terror" amid rising anger at the increasing number of American attacks on Pakistani soil. There have been four so far this month, including the first acknowledged ground assault by US special forces based across the border in Afghanistan.
Despite official Pakistani condemnation of the strikes, mostly by missiles fired from Predator drones, Mr Zardari is being accused by opposition parties of having secretly agreed to them. Equally damaging, it is possible that Pakistan's military chiefs were aware of US operations but did not inform him.
The row has intensified in the past week since the disclosure that President George Bush signed an order in July authorising cross-border attacks from Afghanistan without seeking Pakistani agreement.
The US has made no secret of its concern at Afghanistan's worsening instability, emphasised yesterday by the death of a provincial governor in a suicide bombing 12 miles from Kabul. The US emphasis on the militant threat from Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, where al-Qa'ida's top leaders are believed to be hiding, is part of a reassessment of US priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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see toon at top and read more at truthdig and at The Independent
quagmire number 12,986,549.09
President George W Bush has warned the entire US economy is in danger as he moved to justify the planned use of $US700 billion of taxpayers' money to try to salvage the crumbling financial system.
As Congress continued to grapple over the bailout plan, Mr Bush announced gravely that "the market is not functioning properly", seeking to sell the bailout deal to a doubting Congress and an equally sceptical American public.
"There has been a widespread loss of confidence and major sectors of America's financial system are at risk of shutting down," Mr Bush told the nation from the White House, using some of the bleakest language of the crisis so far.
"The government's top economic experts warn that without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic and a distressing scenario would unfold," Mr Bush said, in a rare televised appearance.
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see toon on top and others here;
Perfect storm...
The bushit twins...
all fall down...
foxes and henhouses...
bushitman...
comic opera...
It would be funny if the situation was not so tragic. But the man, GWB has done to the world what no other Napoleon ever been able to: DESTROY MONEY.
Not only he has legitimised terrorism by declaring "War on Terror" rather than fighting as it should be — underground, in order not to acknowledge terrorists and give them names, not only he has invaded a country under false pretences, not only has he managed to raise the price of oil, and energy in general, five folds, and a zillion other mishaps, Bushit has also managed to make people loose their illusions about MONEY. He has destroyed the core system of capitalism by exposing the tricks — a bit like a failed magician whose starry box fails in the middle of an act, revealing the con-trick and the switch of bodies...And no help from his assistant, the elusive Cheney, dressed up as Miss Universe, oblivious to the disintegration of the act.
I can see a toon coming on but I'm laughing too much...
The constipation will ease...
Bush says bail-out will be passed
President George W Bush has said that legislators will "rise to the occasion" and pass the proposed $700bn (£380bn) Wall Street rescue plan.
He said disagreements remained as "the proposal is big and the reason it's big is because it's a big problem".
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said lawmakers would stay in session until a deal was reached.
But rebel Republicans remain unhappy at the plan to buy mortgage-backed assets from US banks.
However there were some positive signs later on Friday, when Democratic House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said progress was being made on a financial rescue bill.
She said Congress was "back on track" in its efforts, and that lawmakers would continue to work over the weekend to reach agreement.
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I was having the usual argument a few days ago... I was blaming Bush and Greenspan for having shot the economy to pieces in order to increase the level of greed beyond the red line... Of course both men were revered by my interlocutor...
To me, Greenspan was fuelling the fire to let the economy engine in overdrive. he knew it was risky, otherwise he would not have been an economist' bootlace. But in his quiet and soothing voice he said sweet nothings every-time he commented on the economic situation in the US. words like "poise, fine-tuned, elegant" resonate in my memory although he may not have used these exact words. He was bullshitting of course, knowing full well, he had taken short cuts, he was driving over bumpy grounds and he had overcharged the engine... Meanwhile Bush was doing his best to burn money. And our John Howard would have taken us the same road if we'd let him to. Lucky we now have Alice-in-Wonderland (our Kev) doing her second tour down the rabbit hole, while Fluffing Beauty (our Mal [Gus cartoon pending]) is awakening in a house full of shrinking Howard's men that became Nelson's men that are now Mal's men and a few maidens — some of whom plagiarise speeches — in boots...
Thank gracious me, Faulkner is still working hard to make sense of the democratic processes... A good man.
sale!!!
In my humble opinion — having worked in advertising for the "mass market" industry for yonks — should the little shrub in Washington, trying to make us swallow a very very bitter pill, discount his US$700 Bn to a now cheap US$695.95 Bn, just to give us a sense of value?
See it coming, folks... Still the same rotten good though...
Se toon at top... Please note, contrary to the feeling that it might, the word "doppia" does not mean "dope" in Italian. It's the letter "W". Just letting you know... Mind you........
cui bono?
Almost nobody has yet seen Oliver Stone's forthcoming movie about George W Bush, but already it's hugely controversial. A White House spokeswoman has predicted that it will be full of inaccuracies, and says the president plans to ignore it. Rightwing columnists and bloggers have condemned it as a vicious smear. Leaked pages from an early script have been picked apart by the media. Before interviewing Stone, I rewatched several of his darkly brilliant conspiracy films, and once you've marinated for a while in their pervasive sense that unseen forces are at work in the world, it's hard not to look at the pre-release controversy and wonder: to whose advantage, ultimately, does it accrue? Who's pulling the strings here? Follow the money. Cui bono? Who benefits?
See toon at top: Dubya the movie...
dubya...
W. (2008)
This movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.
October 17, 2008
Oliver Stone’s Vision Thing: Bush, the Family
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: October 17, 2008
The megamillion-dollar question that hovers over Oliver Stone’s queasily enjoyable “W.,” his Oedipal story about the rise and fall, fall, fall of George W. Bush is: why? Neither a pure (nor impure) sendup of the president nor a wholesale takedown, the film looks like a traditional biopic with all the usual trappings, including name actors in political drag — Josh Brolin plays the frat boy who would be king, while Richard Dreyfuss creeps around in a Dick Cheney sneer — alternately choking on pretzels and spleen, and reciting all the familiar lines and lies. History is said to repeat itself as tragedy and farce, but here it registers as a full-blown burlesque.
see toon at top...
awesome sterility and shameless refusal in our times...
Robert Fisk's World: From the fourth century BC, words our leaders should heed
Thucydides' account of the Spartan war contains a dark and chilling relevance
Saturday, 18 October 2008
Robert Fisk lets fly in a debate at the Woodstock Literary Festival
Let us now praise famous men. And after yet another US presidential candidates' debate of awesome sterility – not to mention their shameless refusal to tackle the real, bloody issues that confront America – I'm referring principally to one of the first journalists to understand war and, so far as he could, to check his sources: Thucydides.
See buggalug at top...