I have been involved with American political matters for many years now and have watched the ebb and flow of concepts, ideologies, policies and personnel with some interest. Having said that, I also have to say that the current Administration of George W. Bush is, without any question, the most incompetent, dishonest and divisive I have ever encountered in person. On the domestic scene, Bush has personally allied himself with the lunatic Christian Right to the point where he has alienated a good part of the American religious scene.
He has wilfully interfered with the funding of stem cell research that all sane medical people have said is vitally important in finding cures for such widespread diseases as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and many, many other major killers of people. Bush has also pursued an agenda that is transparently anti poor in general and anti black in specific. His bored reactions and lack of action in the Katrina New Orleans hurricane disaster is typical of the man. He did not care about the very obvious suffering of the poor, certainly because the poor are just that, poor.
The New Orleans poor are generally Democrats, black, on welfare or some kind of subsidy, can do nothing for the Republican party and, in the eyes of this party, are parasitic and unproductive. Bush’s idiotic tax breaks for his rich friends have clearly sown the seeds of a future major economic disaster, one that he will not be around to deal with. Bush has personally negated years of environmental advances because many of the restrictions mandated by these advances cost his business friends, and political contributors money.
Bush and his associates hold the laws of the land in contempt, feeling, without any legal basis, that they can rule the United States as they wish.
But it is the international arena that the bumbling, incompetent Bush policies have created immensely critical problems that will cost Americans a great deal of money on a personal level and put the United States in opposition to the rest of the world.
The most important case in point here relates directly to the growing violence being committed by the state of Israel against Lebanon and the Palestinian state. Humanitarian concerns aside, the economic consequences for Bush’s encouraging this naked aggression coupled with his flat refusal to make any official effort to stop it will certainly result, almost at once, in an immediate surge of the price of crude oil due to growing fears on all sides that this violence could very well lead to a major war and the total disruption of the world’s major oil supplies.
The Bush administration’s course of threatening Iran with military actions coupled with their equally obvious intent to permit Israel to continue its ruthless destruction of Lebanon and deliberate seizure of its territory will certainly result in a sharp surge in oil prices that will certainly prevent them any room for diplomatic actions and, in the end, cause titanic economic upheavals in the United States. At a time when the Republicans are suffering from monumental declines in the polls and with a major midterm Congressional election looming in November, the Bush people blindly push ahead with their senseless and very destructive policies.
The price of oil has surged up to nearly $80 a barrel and most professional non- government experts in the oil field are highly concerned that if the Lebanon attacks do not cease and the area is not brought under strong external control, such as a UN military mission, the unabated and savage actions of the IDF is expected to involve Syria and, even more seriously, Iran. If Iran becomes involved militarily (they are already supplying Hezbollah with very advanced weaponry) this could not only threaten the position of American military units now in Iraq but also interdict the movement of oil from both Iran and Iraq to world markets.
The leaders of Iran have before them the example of Russian President Putin’s brief but devastating shut-off of Russian oil and gas to eastern Europe last winter. This was calculated to make a point, which it did, but the Iranians can easily see that even a temporary cessation of their oil shipments to other oil-hungry nations would have a devastating effect.
This would, in essence, turn these nations against the United States for its clearly perceived role in instigating and maintaining the violence in the Middle East This explains why Russia, China and other countries have continued to resist Bush’s demands that they force Iran to abandon their nuclear program. That this position is basically that of Israel and as it is universally believed everywhere that Israel has a disproportionate amount of influence in Washington, anti-Semitism, always endemic, will erupt in many areas with terrible results to diverse Jewish communities worldwide.
If Bush and his people thought that their threats against Iran would have any effect on that country, they were sadly mistaken and Iran counter threats to cut off their oil has caused many countries whom Bush counted on to support his, and Israelis, to withhold substantive support for Bush’s threats. demands .
This has become clearly evident to the Iranians and the fact that they can defy Bush with growing impunity has not gone unnoticed by other countries who hitherto had been afraid of American actions against them in the event that they proved to be intransigent to any American demands.
The Bush Administration has made similar demands and issued stern threats against North Korea but when that country fired test rockets after Bush personally had threatened immediate military reprisal,s. When nothing happened, both North Korea and Iran have devastatingly called Bush, and Americas, bluff.
Iranian threats to cut off oil shipments have immediately caused an upward surge of oil prices from a high of $28 a barrel in 2002 to $78 a barrel in 2006. This increase in price pours huge amounts of money into the coffers of Iran, a strong military and political force in the Middle East and the accounts of Saudi Arabia whose leaders, once pro-American, have turned away from American because of the reactions of their people to the Israeli destruction of life and property in Lebanon.
It should be noted that in addition to supplying hostile Arab states with huge revenues, the rising prices will have, and are having, a strong, negative effect on the American public. Once a major oil and natural gas producer, America has now become a major oil and natural gas consumer but official Bush policies have so infuriated many oil producing countries that they would prefer to sell to China and India, both with burgeoning needs for oil.
Remember that the soaring price of gas at the pumps was the primary reason why the presidency of Jimmy Carter toppled. Bush might not worry about this as he cannot be reelected but the damage will be visited upon the Republicans who most probably will lose control of at least one of the branches of Congress in November. If they lose both houses, as is not impossible given the increasing disasters, loud and persistent Beltway rumors have it that Bush could very well be impeached and even more certain, massive investigations into rampant Republican corruption would follow as surely as night follows day
That not everyone in America is upset with the surging prices of gasoline, it is noted that
Exxon/Mobil will be announcing the highest second-quarter earnings of any corporation, American or foreign, in history. This will be a $9.9 billion profit raked in over the three month quarter.
The strongly pro-Israeli neocons have repeatedly called for Bush to launch an American air attack on Iran’s reported nuclear facilities, regardless of whether they are peaceful or militant in nature. The plan is to use tactical nuclear weapons and so-called ‘bunker buster’ bombs on any area in Iran believed to be involved, even remotely, in their nuclear power programs. This would include homes of personnel, schools, electrical power grids and any kind of Iranian infrastructure that could even remotely be connected with this program. Although this course is eagerly and often put forward by militant pro-Israel neocons, the economic results would be catastrophic and the price of oil would go so high that it would be sold by the cup, not the gallon.
Money, unfortunately, is power, and the increase of the price of oil has not only enriched various hostile Arab states, it has also done this for the Russian Republic.
Russia, once an economic basket case after the collapse of Communism, now is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, controller and developer of oil, natural gas and nuclear power in the world.
This is an extreme irritant to the Bush administration who have tried, in vain, to secure pipelines for oil and gas that would ship non-Russian resources to the West outside of Russian territory. To this end, the U.S. has attempted to gain control over countries over whose territories such pipelines would have to cross but in spite of early successes with the Ukraine and Georgia, Putin has effectively blocked an uninterrupted passage and has effectively blocked Central Asian countries from dealing with American oil interests and preventing the establishment, or continuation, of American military bases in these strategic areas.
In furtherance of this program, Russia has cooperated with China to use a group called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. (Øàíõàé Õýöçî Öçó÷æè (Øàíõý Öçó÷æè) This was initially formed on June 5, 2001 by China, Russia , Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The first joint military exercise between the China and Russia, called Peace Mission 2005 started on August 19, 2005. Following the successful completion of the Sino-Russian military exercises, Russian officials have begun speaking of the SCO taking on a military role and of India also joining these exercises in the future.
Other states, to include Mongolia , Pakistan, India and Iran have observer status and in Serbia, the Serbian Radical Party has called for Serbia to try to join. The Serbian Radical Party is doing this because they tend to view the European Union as being a negative force on Serbia and because they want to seek better relations with Russia. The Serbian Radical Party has also proposed that Serbia join the Union of Russia and Belarus to improve relations with Russia.
The U.S. Department of Defense has expressed growing concerns that this group could quickly develop into a military entitiy in opposition to NATO. The DoD feels strongly that pressure eminating from the United States is materialy assisting Putin’s plans for a counterbalance to NATO and, in addition, has expressed strong concerns that the admission of Russia into the EU would further a European bloc that would spread from France, through Germany to Russia, creating a unified and potentially very powerful entity stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Both the SCO and a Russian entry into the EU could form an economic and military bloc that could easily rival the U.S. in power and that would be a very strong rival to America’s foreign and economic policies.
Much, if not all, of this organizing is due, in the main, to the Bush inability to produce an effective diplomatic policy as well as his ongoing policy of threat and bluster towards anyone he perceives as opposed to American business (read oil and energy) interests.
The results of this ineptnness and total lack of foresight could easily do terrible damage to the interests of the American public.
He has wilfully interfered with the funding of stem cell research that all sane medical people have said is vitally important in finding cures for such widespread diseases as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and many, many other major killers of people. Bush has also pursued an agenda that is transparently anti poor in general and anti black in specific. His bored reactions and lack of action in the Katrina New Orleans hurricane disaster is typical of the man. He did not care about the very obvious suffering of the poor, certainly because the poor are just that, poor.
The New Orleans poor are generally Democrats, black, on welfare or some kind of subsidy, can do nothing for the Republican party and, in the eyes of this party, are parasitic and unproductive. Bush’s idiotic tax breaks for his rich friends have clearly sown the seeds of a future major economic disaster, one that he will not be around to deal with. Bush has personally negated years of environmental advances because many of the restrictions mandated by these advances cost his business friends, and political contributors money.
Bush and his associates hold the laws of the land in contempt, feeling, without any legal basis, that they can rule the United States as they wish.
But it is the international arena that the bumbling, incompetent Bush policies have created immensely critical problems that will cost Americans a great deal of money on a personal level and put the United States in opposition to the rest of the world.
The most important case in point here relates directly to the growing violence being committed by the state of Israel against Lebanon and the Palestinian state. Humanitarian concerns aside, the economic consequences for Bush’s encouraging this naked aggression coupled with his flat refusal to make any official effort to stop it will certainly result, almost at once, in an immediate surge of the price of crude oil due to growing fears on all sides that this violence could very well lead to a major war and the total disruption of the world’s major oil supplies.
The Bush administration’s course of threatening Iran with military actions coupled with their equally obvious intent to permit Israel to continue its ruthless destruction of Lebanon and deliberate seizure of its territory will certainly result in a sharp surge in oil prices that will certainly prevent them any room for diplomatic actions and, in the end, cause titanic economic upheavals in the United States. At a time when the Republicans are suffering from monumental declines in the polls and with a major midterm Congressional election looming in November, the Bush people blindly push ahead with their senseless and very destructive policies.
The price of oil has surged up to nearly $80 a barrel and most professional non- government experts in the oil field are highly concerned that if the Lebanon attacks do not cease and the area is not brought under strong external control, such as a UN military mission, the unabated and savage actions of the IDF is expected to involve Syria and, even more seriously, Iran. If Iran becomes involved militarily (they are already supplying Hezbollah with very advanced weaponry) this could not only threaten the position of American military units now in Iraq but also interdict the movement of oil from both Iran and Iraq to world markets.
The leaders of Iran have before them the example of Russian President Putin’s brief but devastating shut-off of Russian oil and gas to eastern Europe last winter. This was calculated to make a point, which it did, but the Iranians can easily see that even a temporary cessation of their oil shipments to other oil-hungry nations would have a devastating effect.
This would, in essence, turn these nations against the United States for its clearly perceived role in instigating and maintaining the violence in the Middle East This explains why Russia, China and other countries have continued to resist Bush’s demands that they force Iran to abandon their nuclear program. That this position is basically that of Israel and as it is universally believed everywhere that Israel has a disproportionate amount of influence in Washington, anti-Semitism, always endemic, will erupt in many areas with terrible results to diverse Jewish communities worldwide.
If Bush and his people thought that their threats against Iran would have any effect on that country, they were sadly mistaken and Iran counter threats to cut off their oil has caused many countries whom Bush counted on to support his, and Israelis, to withhold substantive support for Bush’s threats. demands .
This has become clearly evident to the Iranians and the fact that they can defy Bush with growing impunity has not gone unnoticed by other countries who hitherto had been afraid of American actions against them in the event that they proved to be intransigent to any American demands.
The Bush Administration has made similar demands and issued stern threats against North Korea but when that country fired test rockets after Bush personally had threatened immediate military reprisal,s. When nothing happened, both North Korea and Iran have devastatingly called Bush, and Americas, bluff.
Iranian threats to cut off oil shipments have immediately caused an upward surge of oil prices from a high of $28 a barrel in 2002 to $78 a barrel in 2006. This increase in price pours huge amounts of money into the coffers of Iran, a strong military and political force in the Middle East and the accounts of Saudi Arabia whose leaders, once pro-American, have turned away from American because of the reactions of their people to the Israeli destruction of life and property in Lebanon.
It should be noted that in addition to supplying hostile Arab states with huge revenues, the rising prices will have, and are having, a strong, negative effect on the American public. Once a major oil and natural gas producer, America has now become a major oil and natural gas consumer but official Bush policies have so infuriated many oil producing countries that they would prefer to sell to China and India, both with burgeoning needs for oil.
Remember that the soaring price of gas at the pumps was the primary reason why the presidency of Jimmy Carter toppled. Bush might not worry about this as he cannot be reelected but the damage will be visited upon the Republicans who most probably will lose control of at least one of the branches of Congress in November. If they lose both houses, as is not impossible given the increasing disasters, loud and persistent Beltway rumors have it that Bush could very well be impeached and even more certain, massive investigations into rampant Republican corruption would follow as surely as night follows day
That not everyone in America is upset with the surging prices of gasoline, it is noted that
Exxon/Mobil will be announcing the highest second-quarter earnings of any corporation, American or foreign, in history. This will be a $9.9 billion profit raked in over the three month quarter.
The strongly pro-Israeli neocons have repeatedly called for Bush to launch an American air attack on Iran’s reported nuclear facilities, regardless of whether they are peaceful or militant in nature. The plan is to use tactical nuclear weapons and so-called ‘bunker buster’ bombs on any area in Iran believed to be involved, even remotely, in their nuclear power programs. This would include homes of personnel, schools, electrical power grids and any kind of Iranian infrastructure that could even remotely be connected with this program. Although this course is eagerly and often put forward by militant pro-Israel neocons, the economic results would be catastrophic and the price of oil would go so high that it would be sold by the cup, not the gallon.
Money, unfortunately, is power, and the increase of the price of oil has not only enriched various hostile Arab states, it has also done this for the Russian Republic.
Russia, once an economic basket case after the collapse of Communism, now is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, controller and developer of oil, natural gas and nuclear power in the world.
This is an extreme irritant to the Bush administration who have tried, in vain, to secure pipelines for oil and gas that would ship non-Russian resources to the West outside of Russian territory. To this end, the U.S. has attempted to gain control over countries over whose territories such pipelines would have to cross but in spite of early successes with the Ukraine and Georgia, Putin has effectively blocked an uninterrupted passage and has effectively blocked Central Asian countries from dealing with American oil interests and preventing the establishment, or continuation, of American military bases in these strategic areas.
In furtherance of this program, Russia has cooperated with China to use a group called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. (Øàíõàé Õýöçî Öçó÷æè (Øàíõý Öçó÷æè) This was initially formed on June 5, 2001 by China, Russia , Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The first joint military exercise between the China and Russia, called Peace Mission 2005 started on August 19, 2005. Following the successful completion of the Sino-Russian military exercises, Russian officials have begun speaking of the SCO taking on a military role and of India also joining these exercises in the future.
Other states, to include Mongolia , Pakistan, India and Iran have observer status and in Serbia, the Serbian Radical Party has called for Serbia to try to join. The Serbian Radical Party is doing this because they tend to view the European Union as being a negative force on Serbia and because they want to seek better relations with Russia. The Serbian Radical Party has also proposed that Serbia join the Union of Russia and Belarus to improve relations with Russia.
The U.S. Department of Defense has expressed growing concerns that this group could quickly develop into a military entitiy in opposition to NATO. The DoD feels strongly that pressure eminating from the United States is materialy assisting Putin’s plans for a counterbalance to NATO and, in addition, has expressed strong concerns that the admission of Russia into the EU would further a European bloc that would spread from France, through Germany to Russia, creating a unified and potentially very powerful entity stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Both the SCO and a Russian entry into the EU could form an economic and military bloc that could easily rival the U.S. in power and that would be a very strong rival to America’s foreign and economic policies.
Much, if not all, of this organizing is due, in the main, to the Bush inability to produce an effective diplomatic policy as well as his ongoing policy of threat and bluster towards anyone he perceives as opposed to American business (read oil and energy) interests.
The results of this ineptnness and total lack of foresight could easily do terrible damage to the interests of the American public.
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