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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rock_nj who wrote (585864)	6/28/2004 9:04:27 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 769670

Protesters 'drive' Bush from Ireland ________ Saturday, June 26, 2004 Posted: 1338 GMT (2138 HKT) CLARECASTLE, Ireland (Reuters) -- Irish protesters used Shakespeare to blitz George W. Bush on Saturday, invoking Macbeth, a ghost and a witch to cast a spell on the U.S. president and drive him, symbolically at least, from Irish soil. Some 500 demonstrators marched on Dromoland Castle, the 16th century turreted mansion in western Ireland where Bush met European Union leaders for a summit. When they were stopped at a police road block, they staged their own version of Shakespeare's bloody Scottish tragedy. First, a ghost with a whited-out face read the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Then a woman dressed as Lady Macbeth read a list of Iraqi victims. Finally, a woman dressed as a witch with a black pointy hat and a flowing cape cast a spell on a man wearing a Bush face mask. The man crumpled to the floor as the witch ordered him to leave Ireland and end the occupation of Iraq. The protesters held up a banner adorned with a quote from Macbeth, Shakespeare's powerful drama of death, destruction and ambition in feudal Scotland. "There's the smell of blood still," read the banner, on which was painted a gory hand. "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Some 50 police officers watched the drama unfold from behind their roadblock, just half a mile from the castle where Bush was staying for the EU-U.S. summit. The protest passed peacefully and the crowd dispersed after around 90 minutes. The staging of "MacBush" was one of several events organised by demonstrators to show their anger with the president's visit. Some 10,000 people marched through Dublin on Friday night in opposition to both U.S. policy in Iraq and Ireland's decision to host Bush and allow U.S. jets to refuel at one of its airports en route to the Gulf. Further protests were expected later on Saturday before Bush leaves for Istanbul, where he will attend a NATO summit. The Irish have mounted a huge security operation to protect the president, with 6,000 police and troops on the ground backed by planes, helicopters, surface-to-air missiles and tanks. "One can only assume that if (Irish Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern is prepared to deploy tanks, he is also prepared to use them on the Irish people," said Roger Cole, chairman of the Peace & Neutrality Alliance protest group. "That is a disgrace." Bush's visit has contrasted sharply with those of previous U.S. presidents who were warmly welcomed in Ireland -- particularly those with Irish roots. John F. Kennedy was greeted with almost religious fervor in 1963, Ronald Reagan had a pub named after him in his ancestral village in Tipperary when he came in 1994 and thousands of well wishers greeted Bill Clinton when he came to Dublin. edition.cnn.com

To: Rock_nj who wrote (585864)	6/28/2004 9:30:41 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Your time is up, George _______________________ No wonder Bush is running scared - 25 years of neo-conservative ascendancy in the US is under grave threat Will Hutton Sunday June 27, 2004 The Observer For my entire journalistic life, the most salient political and cultural fact has been the rise of the American right. It is not just that America has been governed by Republican presidents or by Bill Clinton within the penumbra of the conservative intellectual and cultural ascendancy; it's that the conservative victory in the battle of ideas in the US has had a spill-over affect on the rest of the West. It is no accident, for example, that the election of Ronald Reagan launched a fivefold increase in the numbers held in American prisons or that the profound growth of inequality also began with him. Whether it's criminal justice or tax policy, Britain and the industrialised West have been profoundly affected by the retreat of American liberalism. Would Britain, for example, have so readily retreated from its long-held view that prison is essentially a last resort and rehabilitation of offenders must be the centrepiece of any penal policy if it had not been engulfed by the American conservative view that both propositions were wrong? Equally, would our readiness to stand by progressive taxation have been so weakened without the view from the US that high rates of income tax on the rich are morally and economically wrong? We had Mrs Thatcher, but arguably her dominance in British politics would have been less secure had it not been for the succour she took from American policies and conservative ideas. Britain is not a slave to American influences, but it cannot ignore the international common sense which the US more than any other nation shapes. Britain may have elected two Labour governments in succession, but the extraordinary caution of New Labour in championing even a modest social democratic programme is itself tribute to how difficult it is to declare independence from the international consensus. Progressive politics in Britain will gather no momentum until that begins to change - and that requires change in the US. Which is why this year's presidential election is so important, not just for the result but for the way the underlying argument is developing. Bush's strategists thought it would all be sewn up by now; they would have defined Democrat challenger John Kerry as a flip-flop, ultra liberal senator who was unsound on the war against terrorism. Two-term American presidents have habitually established an unassailable lead over the summer before the November election; the Bush team had hoped to achieve that by now with Kerry. Instead, they are involved in a pitched battle with a growing possibility that they might lose. The Democrats are daring to hope and the Republicans are testy and on edge. On trust, on economic competence, on approval ratings and on whether the President is best for America, Bush's poll ratings are poor and falling. In the majority of so-called 'swing' states across the Midwest that Kerry must win, he is registering small but consistent leads; and despite spending a record $80 million on attack adverts, Bush is trailing Kerry nationally, albeit by a small and fluctuating margin. Bush is enduring the most wretched months of his presidency. The furore over the maltreatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib; the continuing loss of American lives in Iraq and the sense, despite the handover this week, that the US has lost control of events; the charge by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the US that there was no evidence of a collaborative relationship between al-Qaeda and Saddam have all badly wounded him. There was never unanimity within Republican ranks, let alone within the wider US, that fighting a pre-emptive war of choice without hard justification and international legitimacy, where victory would confer the victors the impossible task of building a nation, was smart politics or even feasible. Now the debate is out in the open. The risk for Bush is that none of this is going to get any better. Already the neocons are more on the defensive than at any time in the past 10 years. One small sign was the extravagant praise Bush felt he needed to heap on their hate figure, Bill Clinton, at the unveiling of his portrait in the White House. More substantively, the concessions made to win UN endorsement for the handover and last week's cave-in on the US's attempt to get a further two-year extension on US troop immunity from International Criminal Court prosecution both highlight neocon weakness. The US is having to accept that it cannot make the international weather as it chooses. In short, Iraq is emerging as a crucial turning-point in the 25-year-long conservative ascendancy. In his important book, After the Empire, French intellectual Emmanuel Todd argues that what has betrayed the US's attempt to sustain a global hegemonic position and win the battle against terrorism is its partisanship and retreat from universalist principles. Palestinian deaths are not equal to Israeli deaths; terrorist suspects have no right to a fair trial or fair treatment in prison; countries not for the war on terror on American terms are necessarily against the US. It is these attitudes that undermine its moral claims, the 'soft power' that hitherto has underpinned its international leadership. Todd believes that this decline of universalism abroad could not have happened without the decline of universalism within the US; that indifference to colossal inequality and differential rights of US citizens, now expressing itself as rising black infant mortality rates, creates the culture that pursues nakedly unfair policies abroad. America's failures abroad and at home are umbilically linked - and the root of both is neo-conservatism. Few in the US would diagnose the situation in those terms, whatever the underlying truth, but there are signs in Bush's poll ratings that an emerging American majority do see that the philosophy underpinning his policies is a dead-end and that change is needed. Kerry is criticised for not being more tactically aggressive, but his caution is justified. A 25-year ascendancy does not dissolve overnight; the close network of funders, think-tanks, media supporters, corporate beneficiaries and the cultural coalition of anti-gun control, anti-gay and pro-evangelical groups is not going to run up the white flag without sustained resistance. Events are giving the Democrats the ammunition to make the case that America needs friends and that to win them means adhering to international law. But the US is not going to undergo a Damascene conversion. Only cumulative evidence will change minds. But opinion is moving. My bet remains that it will carry John Kerry to the White House - just. Of equal importance is the fact that neo-conservatism is on the defensive and that American liberalism has its best chance to regain ground for the first time in a generation. It is not just American politics that could be transformed by Iraq, but our own. To believe in universal rights and fair societies might become respectable again. politics.guardian.co.uk