Inauguration 2005
Cheney's limo, and a snowball |
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/01/if-we-despise-our-own-government-we.html
"If we despise our own government we have no future"
The words of Jimmy Carter, from his inaugural address, January 20, 1977.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4030079
Fri 21 Jan 2005
Bush Family Greeting Mistaken for Satanic Salute
Many Norwegian television viewers were shocked to see President George
Bush and his family apparently saluting Satan during his inauguration
yesterday.
And deaf American viewers were equally as surprised because to them it
was a sign language obscenity.
But in reality, it was just a sign of respect for the University of Texas
Longhorns sports teams, whose fans are known to shout out “Hook’em
horns!” at games.
The president and family were photographed lifting their right hands with
their index and little fingers raised up, much like a horn.
But in much of the world those “horns” are a sign of the devil.
In Scandinavia, the hand gesture is popular among death metal and black
metal groups and fans.
“Shock greeting from Bush daughter,” read a headline in one
Norwegian newspaper above a photograph of Jenna Bush, smiling and showing
the sign.
The sign also means bulls*** in American Sign Language
www.truthout.org/docs_05/012105Y.shtml
Inauguration: Lifestyles of the Rich and Heartless
By Christy Harvey, Judd Legum and Jonathan Baskin with
Nico Pitney and Mipe Okunseinde
The Progress Report
Thursday 20 January 2005
Due to $17 million worth of inaugural security - paid for
by the city of Washington, D.C. - the Progress Report is unable to access
its office. Never fear - it takes a lot more than that to keep us down.
We put this list together for you ahead of time. Your regularly scheduled
Progress Report returns tomorrow.
A look at this week's festivities by the numbers:
$40 million: Cost of Bush inaugural ball festivities, not
counting security costs.
$2,000: Amount FDR spent on the inaugural in 1945 - about
$20,000 in today's dollars.
$20,000: Cost of yellow roses purchased for inaugural festivities
by D.C.'s Ritz Carlton.
200: Number of Humvees outfitted with top-of-the-line armor
for troops in Iraq that could have been purchased with the amount of money
blown on the inauguration.
$10,000: Price of an inaugural package at the Fairmont Hotel,
which includes a Beluga caviar and Dom Perignon reception, a chauffeured
Rolls Royce and two actors posing as "faux" Secret Service agents,
complete with black sunglasses and cufflink walkie-talkies.
400: Pounds of lobster provided for "inaugural feeding
frenzy" at the exclusive Mandarin Oriental hotel.
3,000: Number of "Laura Bush Cowboy cookies" provided
for "inaugural feeding frenzy" at the Mandarin hotel.
$1: Amount per guest President Carter spent on snacks for
guests at his inaugural parties. To stick to a tight budget, he served
pretzels, peanuts, crackers and cheese and had cash bars.
22 million: Number of children in regions devastated by the
tsunami who could have received vaccinations and preventive health care
with the amount of money spent on the inauguration.
1,160,000: Number of girls who could be sent to school for
a year in Afghanistan with the amount of money lavished on the inauguration.
$15,000: The down payment to rent a fur coat paid by one gala
attendee who didn't want the hassle of schlepping her own through the
airport.
$200,500: Price of a room package at D.C.'s Mandarin Oriental,
including presidential suite, chauffeured Mercedes limo and outfits from
Neiman Marcus.
2,500: Number of U.S. troops used to stand guard as President
Bush takes his oath of office
26,000: Number of Kevlar vests for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan that could be purchased for $40 million.
$290: Bonus that could go to each American solider serving
in Iraq, if inauguration funds were used for that purpose.
$6.3 million: Amount contributed by the finance and investment
industry, which works out to be 25 percent of all the money collected.
$17 million: Amount of money the White House is forcing the
cash-strapped city of Washington, D.C., to pony up for inauguration security.
9: Percentage of D.C. residents who voted for Bush in 2004.
66: Percentage of Americans who think this over-the-top inauguration
should have been scaled back.
www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/bush-j21.shtml
Bush’s second inauguration
America’s day of shame
By David Walsh
21 January 2005
In yesterday’s inaugural address, George W. Bush gave notice to
the world that American imperialism intends to press forward with its
drive for world domination. The US president issued a call to arms, a
jihad, making clear that no country or government will be permitted to
stand in America’s path.
With this speech, Bush and those elements in the ruling elite for whom
he speaks set out to dispel any illusions that either the disaster in
Iraq or mass international opposition to Washington’s militarism
will deter his new administration from pursuing its reactionary goals.
True to form, Bush delivered a series of disconnected assertions, lies
and banalities. He made no coherent argument, but repeated certain key
phrases over and over again, centering on the God-given mandate of the
US to intervene anywhere in the world to advance the cause of “freedom.”
In a 20-minute speech, the president uttered the words “free”
or “freedom” 34 times, and the word “liberty”
another 12 times.
The absurd repetition of “freedom” is unlikely to deceive
anyone, certainly not victims and opponents of his first administration’s
crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney
and the rest of this government stand waist deep in blood and filth, responsible
for the killing of more than 100,000 Iraqis and the death and maiming
of thousands of American soldiers.
The US government and military have spelled out what sort of “freedom”
they have in mind for the Iraqi people and the rest of the world in Guantánamo,
Abu Ghraib and Fallujah: repression, torture, military occupation, the
destruction of entire cities. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan also promised
to “liberate” the populations of Europe and Asia.
The reactionary, fantastical substance of Bush’s speech cannot be
separated from its setting. The freedom that Bush continually invoked
to justify militarism and war was conspicuously absent at the inauguration.
Virtual martial law had been imposed in the nation’s capital. Thousands
of protesters were kept out of sight by an army of police.
At one point, while Bush was reaffirming his dedication to the cause of
liberty, a policeman could be seen demanding that a banner be taken down.
Toward the end of speech the television cameras showed protesters, who
had apparently dared to boo Bush’s remarks, being taken into custody.
The master of ceremonies at the inauguration, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi,
had been forced to resign in disgrace as Senate majority leader in 2002
following his praise for the 1948 presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond,
who ran as the candidate of the States’ Rights Party on a segregationist
program. One news commentator spoke of the particularly strong “Mississippi
influence” in the inaugural events. The noxious power of the Christian
right could be felt throughout. Prayers, religious hymns and praise to
God abounded.
Bush’s address was yet another opportunity to instill a mood of
fear and anxiety in the US population. He spoke of “whole regions
of the world [that] simmer in resentment and tyranny,” presumably
referring, in particular, to the Middle East. By a crude sleight of hand
Bush transformed these regions—which simmer with resentment toward
Washington for supporting tyrannical regimes in the area and invading
Iraq—into a “mortal threat” to the American people.
A central theme was that, after 9/11, America’s divine mission to
spread “freedom” throughout the world coincided with US national
security. Or, to strip the argument of bombast and state the message more
bluntly, the American people had either to kill, or be killed.
Bush observed that after the “shipwreck of communism” had
come a number of years of peace and tranquility, which were suddenly disrupted
by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—what he called, in
quasi-Biblical terms, “the day of fire.” Now we understand,
he claimed, that the “best hope for peace in the world is the expansion
of freedom in all the world.”
The events to which Bush referred are internally connected, but not in
the manner he suggested. The collapse of Stalinism in the USSR and Eastern
Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s set the stage for the current
eruption of US aggression. The end of the Soviet Union provided the opportunity,
as far as the American ruling elite was concerned, for the United States
to overcome its decline in economic dominance through the use of military
might. The Bush administration is the congealed expression of this new
policy, for whose implementation the events of September 11 merely provided
the pretext.
In keeping with the delusional character of the Bush administration’s
imperial project, the inaugural speech had an undertone of panic, even
dementia. This government relentlessly and deliberately seeks to sow fear
and hysteria, but within in its own mentality there is a streak of desperation
and paranoia. The American ruling elite believes it has only a brief window
of opportunity to push back the forces that threaten to engulf it.
“Ending tyranny in our world,” Bush declared, was now “the
calling of our time.” This should be taken as an ominous warning.
The invasion of Iraq was only a prologue.
Much of the media commentary dismissed Bush’s speech as inaugural
rhetoric, with no implications for policy. This is profoundly mistaken.
There are striking parallels between the conduct of the Bush administration
and the increasing derangement of German foreign policy in the late 1930s,
as the economic situation facing German imperialism grew ever more desperate.
The objective background to Bush’s call to arms lies in US capitalism’s
massive budget and trade deficits, the steep decline of the US dollar,
and an economic structure that is becoming increasingly impossible to
sustain. Taking him at his word, and understanding that “the expansion
of freedom” is a code phrase for aggression, Bush yesterday outlined
a program of unrestrained militarism all over the world.
Preparations for war against Iran have already been exposed, by Seymour
Hersh in the New Yorker. This week, in an opening statement to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee during her confirmation hearing, Bush’s
nominee for secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, listed those countries
at the top of the hit list for US aggression. Rice cited as “outposts
of tyranny” North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Burma.
She went on to issue threats against Venezuela and Syria. The Bush administration
is proposing a policy of subversion and military intervention that extends
to the continents of South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
The president did not admit in his inaugural address of any restrictions
on the right of the US to topple governments and invade their territories.
There was not so much as lip service to the sovereignty of nations, the
role of the United Nations, the authority of treaties, the requirements
of international law.
He warned America’s allies that “division among free nations
[i.e., opposition to Washington’s dictates] is a primary goal of
freedom’s enemies.”
Bush addressed himself “to the peoples of the world,” pledging
to liberate them from “oppression.” But the people of the
world, in their overwhelming majority, have already seen through him.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, “By most accounts President
Bush is almost universally disliked, even reviled, around the world. ...
Mr. Bush may be the least-liked American leader in history.” The
Program on International Policy Attitudes reported last fall that “just
one in five people surveyed around the world [in 32 countries] support
the re-election of President Bush.”
According to a Zogby poll taken in mid-2004, the percentage of Arabs—the
supposed beneficiaries of America’s democratic crusade in the Middle
East—with a favorable opinion toward the US had dropped dramatically
in nearly every country surveyed. For example, 98 percent of Egyptians
polled expressed a negative view of the US. Another survey concluded that
a majority of people in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, along with
France and Germany, believe Washington is conducting its “global
war on terror” to seize control of Middle East oil and dominate
the world.
Nor does Bush possess any mandate in the US for his policies of unending
war and reaction. After narrowly winning an election through hysteria
over war and terrorism, and by exploiting the political confusion of the
population and the impotence of the Democratic Party, Bush has registered
the worst popularity rating for a reelected president embarking on his
second term in the last half-century. A solid and growing majority believe
the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Nor is there mass support for radically
tampering with Social Security or the tax code.
When Bush turned to the situation in the US and addressed his “fellow
citizens,” the speech lost whatever shreds of coherence it had up
to then evinced. At times, one had no idea what he was talking about.
Bush made only a passing reference to the bitter divisions in the country,
and not one concrete reference to the poverty, deteriorating living conditions
and oppressive indebtedness that afflict wide layers of the population.
He spoke about the idealism of “a few Americans,” that is,
those involved in spying, invading and occupying other countries. He urged
young people to draw inspiration from the “duty and allegiance in
the determined faces of our soldiers.” The US has need, Bush went
on, of idealism and courage to finish “the work of American freedom,”
a task which he left undefined.
He did make oblique reference to privatizing social security and called
for the building of an “ownership society”—in other
words, a society in which the wealth of the elite is untouchable, while
the rest of the population is left to fend for itself.
Bush, who presided over the execution of 152 people while governor of
Texas, and whose streak of personal sadism is well known, extolled the
virtues of “mercy” and having “a heart for the weak.”
He concluded: “America, in this young century, proclaims liberty
throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof.”
The world’s inhabitants, beware!
After all that has happened in the past four years, the spectacle of George
W. Bush taking the oath of office for a second time was a deeply shameful
event in US history. A stench of criminality hangs about this administration—and
the entire US political and media establishment. Those cheering Bush did
so for a reason: he appeals to the most reactionary and ignorant sections
of the population.
The US ruling elite, which has no rational or progressive solutions to
the contradictions of American capitalism, is tobogganing with its eyes
closed toward catastrophe, with the moral and intellectual cipher George
W. Bush at its helm.
The great hostility toward Bush and his administration’s policies
in the American population needs to find a genuine political voice. No
illusions should be entertained in the Democrats, whose present and former
leaders, including Senator John Kerry, were in obedient attendance yesterday
at the inauguration. The immense and latent opposition to Bush has to
be unified and directed against the foundations of the entire socio-economic
status quo.