Maggie says:
The news from London today is obviously terrible. But I am alone in feeling like there's no time to mourn the loss of life because within minutes after the tragedy Bush&Co are offering up reasons for absolute outrage? That they're so busy strategizing how to spin the London bombings and take advantage of them through terrorist fears that I become too angry to feel as sad as I should? On the heels of turning 9/11 into one tawdry photo op and macho declaration after another, today we have Bush and the media who love him reminding us that however low Bush's poll numbers are, we're always just one terrorist act away from another Bush love-fest.
Outrageous moment #1: Acting as if the G-8 Summit is a bastion of good-heartedness. We all know that global poverty has been discussed at this summit only because of grassroots global pressure to address it. Pretending otherwise is just plain hypocritical, as is pretending that the Summit is actually going to create positive change. But Bush isn't one to pale at the sign of hypocrisy - he digs right in. Here's his response this morning: "On the one hand, we got people here who are working to alleviate poverty and to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS and that are working on ways to have a clean environment. And on the other hand, you've got people killing innocent people. And the contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who've got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks." Sorry, but I'd say you guys are about the only ones convinced that you care deeply about human rights and human liberty. Maybe the rest of the world cares deeply about these things, but leaders at the G-8 Summit most certainly do not. And don't even get me started on what you're "working on," because I take issue with that bunch of lies, too.
Outrageous moment #2: Pretending the Iraq War is about terror and is worth fighting. This from the BBC today (of course it's not the American press), interviewing Condaleeza Rice:
Okay, forgive me for saying this for the billionth time, but either the officials in this administration are absolutely brainless or they just assume that we are. Acting as if the many terrorist attacks since 9/11 are not related to our wrongful invasion of Iraq and the "global war on terror" is ridiculous. No matter what, we will never hear this administration admit that this war has caused many more problems than it's solved. I don't know how an attack could be clearer - a sign saying "This is because of Iraq?" And even more troublesome is how many more tragedies will have to happen before Bush&Co stop spinning and start rethinking their approach.BEALE: Do you think that Britain and America in Iraq are perhaps fighting the wrong war? They went to war to remove physical weapons of mass destruction but partly Saddam Hussein as well, but that hasn’t stopped the terrorist attacks in Western cities like Madrid, in London today. It seems to have fueled those attacks.
RICE: Oh, I don’t think that anything is being fueled here except the fact that the terrorists are finally being confronted. Again, they were — they’ve been doing this now for a couple of decades and for a while the world, going all the way back to Beirut and going back to the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 or the attacks on American Embassies in 1998, this has been going on for a while.
Outrageous moment #3: Mainstream media sucking as usual. It really does only take the mention of terrorism for our mainstream media to begin fawning all over the Homeland Security Director, touting our ridiculous color-coded terror alert system, and making analogies about how strong and justified a leader W is. I am just sick to death of this. We have Katie Couric pestering John McCain with worries about Amtrak security for her weekend getaways (never mind that Republicans have so slashed Amtrak's budget it won't be around much longer anyway). We have blaring headlines screaming "Terror Threat Elevated!" We have the media scaring people into believing that they're next and all they can do is to pray to the Bush administration for protection. In another time and place, we might expect this morning to be the staw on the camel's back, the signal the mainstream media needed to finally stop swallowing everything they're told and to start doing some analytical thinking of their own and affecting real change. But no. In this day and age, they simply revert to what they already know how to do. And for the brainless media, that's hyping up the fear factor and bowing down to a macho man who pretends he has all the answers.
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