The Oil Drum

133 comments on Bourse! Bourse! Bourse! Bourse!

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Agric on January 25, 2006 - 9:55pm

Fair comments, worried. I'm from UK rather than US, so I might share some of your perspective.

Castro in Cuba has been demonised by the USA for 50 years, yet he seems to have done a pretty good job compared with similar countries in Caribbean and central america, particularly considering the trade sanctions etc the USA have imposed. Chavez seems to be similar so the US demonises him.

The US supports regimes when it believes they are in its interest, seeks to undermine regimes that it thinks are not, it has been consistent in this. Democracy or what is good for the country has f*ck all to do with how the US behaves.

I despair over the US electoral system. It has served the US and the world ill. Any close election (within 10%) should be considered suspect now that unverifiable voting is used for near 70% of votes. If similar voting methods were imposed in UK we would riot, I am sure of that.

Yes, the US has meddled in Iran, and many other countries closer to home, in illicit ways, but so did the UK in its day. After all, it was UK who invented Iraq back in 1924. global powers tend to behave so.

I agree that Bush has been a disaster for opinion of the US abroad, most US citizens aren't really aware of how bad. Few have any concept of life outside the USA: their media ignore it, very few of them travel. I had visited more countries before I was 18 than GW Bush had when he became president.

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fallout on January 26, 2006 - 9:37am

I recently had a little exposure to just this, when I traveled to Australia (our ally, fellow contributor of troops to the Iraq debacle, and home to my wife's sister and her husband). Asked by an Australian customs and immigration official at the Sydney airport "Which country I was from, I replied "America", and handed him my passport.
He grinned slyly and said,
"Ah, United States of the World, eh mate?"

The US has apparently returned to the concept of colonial imperialism, just under a new guise, while at home we slide ever further to the right, toward the kind of creeping fascism (in Mussolini's sense of the word, the merging of corporate and State) George Orwell worried about.