Q: Why does President Bush like to talk about “spreading democracy”?
A: Because “bending democracy over my desk” tested poorly in the focus groups.
So it turns out, to absolutely no-one's surprise, that when Dubya talks about promoting democracy, all he really means is promoting elections:
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch on Thursday said that the Bush administration was giving lip service to the promotion of democracy around the world by endorsing suspect elections while allowing human rights violations in those countries to go unchecked.
In a scathing report, the organization blamed the United States and Europe for undermining human rights by allowing autocrats to pretend they are democratic. The report cited Bahrain, Jordan, Nigeria, Russia and Thailand as acting "as if simply holding a vote is enough to prove a nation democratic, and Washington, Brussels and European capitals played along."
(...)
In an interview, [HRW executive director Kenneth] Roth attributed much of this posturing by foreign governments to the Bush administration's promotion of democracy while still accepting the results of dubious elections. Mr. Roth said that the Bush administration had chosen the trappings of democracy instead of human rights.
"They've abandoned democratic standards and reduced its requirements to just holding an election," he added.
(...)
"It's now too easy for autocrats to get away with mounting a sham democracy," Mr. Roth said. "That's because too many Western governments insist on elections and leave it at that. They don't press governments on the key human rights issues that make democracy function — a free press, peaceful assembly and a functioning civil society that can really challenge power."
Bush and the GOP are pro-democracy in the same way that they're pro-life: They focus solely on surface metrics like elections and births, but categorically reject the core principles that give democracy and life meaning. Principles like the importance of diverse and independent media, egalitarian elections, rule of law, compassion for the poor and sick and wounded. Not to mention the principle of not spying, imprisoning, raping, torturing, or killing indiscriminately. They have no use for any of it.
They are dripping totalitarian poison into America's veins, and it has to stop before we become the country our parents warned us about.
(h/t dakine and The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)
Login Here
Share This
Spotlight
OMG, there’s a police helicopter overhead saying that there is an eight year old girl with jeans and blond hair missing. Never made it home from school…
Boy, ya can’t get nuthin’ by these guys.
Did they slap their foreheads and say D’OH! too?
Bum zed. Sorry. To read now.
Ohhh, no.
Jeeze, I hate to hear that!
Eli!
Sigh…but when I express what my parents knew was happening…I’m told to put aluminum foil on my friggin’ head. My parents knew what they hell they were talking about, and it was real.
Someones baby girl.
Physio!
It just never ends.
Eli,
I truly look forward to your insightful analysis.
Bush with his vast right wing noise machine has still not managed to get his ass above 25% approval.
We don’t have anything close to a democracy in this country.
Money counts for everything. The supremes said so.
But it’s worse than HRW sez. When the election doesn’t turn out the way W wants it too, the whole population is locked in a prison & starved to death.
Me too!
I’m pretty sure I’m due for some.
They don’t press governments on the key human rights issues that make democracy function — a free press, peaceful assembly and a functioning civil society that can really challenge power.”
Were lowering the standards over there so folks wont pay attention to the lowering of standards over here.
Bush has run around screaming about elections in the Arab world and when they have them and the results are not to their liking they try to strangle the winners.
Hezbollah and Hamas were both electoral winners.
Meanwhile autocrats like Mubarak, the Saud’s and Musharraff get unqualified US support.
Stoke regional cynicism much?
-G
I ran across this from Buzzflash. The connection to your article is this: Bush (and Congress) do not think democracy actually removes autocratic leaders or dictators. We get this insight from John Conyers office on the subject of impeachment. In the Conyers analysis–even in our own American democracy—elections do not constrain the behavior of the President under the laws of the land. Impeachment , once believed to be a check on “high crimes and misdemeanors”–i.e., “laws” in some form or other–does not actually apply to illegality at all. Confused? So was I.
http://www.opednews.com/articl.....r_says.htm
the country my great parents escaped from
Eli! Ya didn’t even touch on rigged elections abroad like Kenya(and here)! Many of the issues you raise reverberate here… ;-)
Not that Pakistan is an Arab country mind you.
-G
I can’t remember who it was on one of my recent posts who kept saying money was speech (maybe it was you?).
I don’t think I quite got it at the time, but I think I do now. All other things being equal (some people are able to compel attention, others simply don’t want it) our voice in this country is roughly proportional to your net worth.
It hit me really in the gut what we have become when Whitehouse invoked the Nuremburg defense twice with our chief law enforcement officer.
They hauled off Aristide who was elected in Haiti. Didn’t like his populism.
They tried to pull a coup on Chavez who was elected cos he wants the NATION’s wealth to help the people. Very undemocratic notion.
Ahem.
Perhaps you need to speak with Suzanne about appropriate police procedure.
*sirens whooping*
“OK, step out of your vehicle, put your hands on the top of the car, and spread your legs apart. . .”
I agree, Eli. It has got to stop. When I think about how screwed our country has become in seven years, it just boggles. It’s like the Master Plan people were able to find so many other crooks, it all just fell into place.
I think I’d be scared to death if I were involved in this destruction, knowing what can happen to them with impeachment off the table. Sometimes I think that maybe the good people in congress have a plan…
Is that like, put your money where your mouth is?
Well, the key is that all we require is the presence of elections. Doesn’t matter whether they’re valid or not.
Although, as some have pointed out, to some extent our view of their legitimacy is colored by our approval of the outcome.
Which makes all the sham elections that we *have* rubber-stamped very telling indeed.
We are down, way down the bunny hole.
-G
Big.
they have killed the opposition leader and his associate in Kenya…and they ar blowing up PET markets in Iraq…i cant bear to watch anymore
Eli is was probably me, but owning the media and buying access to congress critters makes laws go your way?
No congress critter will take your or my call, but if you had lots of dough, whadya know! Hello, How can I help you today?
The female political analyst that Bill Moyers has on every few weeks is a dead ringer for Trent Lott.
-G
That absolutely takes my breath away. I am speechless.
I don’t think this analogy was from the police procedure aspect…
MIne too.
Allende was elected too and he just had to go because he wanted to get out from under the thumb of transnational corporations.
The CIA fixed that.
NO suprise. They don’t care about anything but power and money for themselves and their friends.
Why else would they have done what they have done. It certainly has not been out of the good of their hearts. There is nothing redeeming I can say about the current bunch of criminals controlling our country and thus the world.
Tax cuts for the rich, a war that makes them rich, sham elections at home and abroad. This is old news unfortunately.
So who is going to keep an eye on the election this year.
I just voted early on suspect electroic machines. That really made me nervous.
Spreading democracy is simply a way to get rid of all our “excess” democracy here.
Bottom line: Who the hell is “they”????
Please see the link at #16. It’ll make you madder.
McCain Ad:
“Social Conservative”
True, but how do you blend that in with all that war.
“True Conservative”
Interesting way to label himself. Wonder if he will drop that Socialist tag.
One of the things that frustrates me is how much more time and effort it takes for us to have even incremental impact on Congress, as opposed to corporate lobbyists. We have to mobilize tens or hundreds of thousands of phone calls and faxes and letters and e-mails and we move the needle a leeeetle bit, but all they have to do is send a few lobbyists to write some checks, and they get immediate results.
I mean, look at telecom immunity, which is completely indefensible on any kind of rational or legal grounds. But the telecoms paid for it, and they mean to get it.
What were the election results I saw for some place, Russia? that were like, 100% in favor of a certain politician.
97-100% IIRC.
Yeah, they had an election all right.
Vote yes while I polish this revolver over here, it’s all good.
Indeed not…
In response to Loo Hoo. @ 24
ya know (please cover your ears)the phrase…IMPEACHMENT IS OFF THE TABLE….is by far the dumbest thing i have ever heard a politician say ever…when does one ever take a political tool OFF THE TABLE …she is a dumb pussy
—-
You know sadlyyes that is correct, that is the best analysis of Democratic leadership since the primary races started. For real.
“They”
Ironically, Impeachment is the one procedure mentioned the most in the Constitution, 19 separate times IIRC… 8-(
They kitty.
And that’s the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee…
McCain Ad:
“Social Conservative”
Since that is actual a label like “Compassionate Conservative”, and “True Conservative” does not mean anything - or would offend some subset of the R-subset.
But it doesn’t matter (apparently) per John Conyers office..see link at #16
and they make fun of France….. working persons paradise compared to the US
Ironically, Impeachment is the one procedure mentioned the most in the Constitution, 19 separate times IIRC… 8-(
——–
And Corporations zero (though theoretically not existing).
*ahem* are you speaking of assume the larry craig position?
My second choice of topic for tonight was to point out that for all the Straight-Shooting Maverick spin the press will surely throw around if McCain is the nominee, I don’t think there will be any way to conceal or spin the fact that McCain wants us to stay in Iraq FOREVER.
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch on Thursday said that the Bush administration was giving lip service to the promotion of democracy around the world by endorsing suspect elections while allowing human rights violations in those countries to go unchecked.
——–
This has been done by a decent amout of Presidents el al.
It really makes it seem that all is lost. That story ought to be front paged in a post, dontcha think? Or add it as an update to yours?
Whats tapping yer toes got to do with anything?
/snark
This is true, but I think Dubya has raised both the rhetoric and the other-way-looking to a new level. And he’s probably diminished democracy at home probably more than anyone since Jim Crow days.
everything.
Did you see the YouTube intercutting McCain on the stump and Dr. Strangelove (the War Room sequence)? War is just “the cost of doing business” in the world for a guy like McCain. It’s the “overhead” you pay for democracy.
Anti-jobs and Pro-war
Didn’t Romney write that script for the Democrats himself?
It probably doesn’t fit exactly with mine, but I agree that it needs more attention. I’ll run it up the FDL flagpole and see if anyone salutes.
Thanks. I’ve just downloaded the report and will read it. The only saving grace of Bush and Cheney is that they are so incompetent. They can only bully a population which is predisposed to trust them by default because they are that peoples’ putative lawful government. In other words, us. Everyone else can play them like the simplest rube marks who were ever born.
Bush wanted elections in Palestine, and didn’t get the results he wanted, so went ahead and tried to subvert the results of those elections. That act of bad faith fully revealed the horrible mess that his misguided and vicious Israel/Palestinian policy created for all to see.
I have suspected this vile ploy was part of their plan for quite awhile. I hope the report delivers the hard evidence to convict them.
Nothing quite so vile and so effective as a corrupt electoral process to destroy any form of democratic govenment and socieity.
So wait, Eli, you’re saying they are being hypocritical? That sounds so harsh. Bush I am sure really does like Democracy. I think it was a teddybear Dick gave him.
My second choice of topic for tonight was to point out that for all the Straight-Shooting Maverick spin the press will surely throw around if McCain is the nominee, I don’t think there will be any way to conceal or spin the fact that McCain wants us to stay in Iraq FOREVER.
———-
Or it could be beyond that (or just his common sense) the Iraq War II was going to disappear (and is in fact frozen or worse while arming Sunni).
So the media in fact already has a pre-strategy. Funny how stupid the stooges they put out as their front men (excepting KO; and perhaps RayGun was a media-type and that is the problem; Bush sure as hell was not the CEO-type Prez).
Summarized from the book Simulacra and Simulation, there are four phases of image:
1) the image is the reflection of a profound reality (the orginal)
2) the image masks and denatures a profound reality (a careful counterfiet)
3) the image masks the absence of a profound reality (mass produced knockoff)
4) the image has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum, a copy without a model (pure shlock; the only hook is what it’s called).
We’ve now reached phase 4 of “democracy”.
BTW, Simulacra and Simulation is the book in which Neo hides his disks at the start of The Matrix. It’s a real book.
Right, because if we don’t keep invading people they’ll just come over and take our democracy away.
Maybe we should have invaded BushCo, then.
They don’t press governments on the key human rights issues that make democracy function — a free press, peaceful assembly and a functioning civil society that can really challenge power.”
————-
it is really hard to believe,that kinda sleazy is just an absolute zero at SofS…..a black woman…double minority…argh!@#$%^&*!@#$%^&!@#$
Uhh, I thought we elect our critters to conduct ‘Oversight’ and purportedly represent ‘We the People’… Impeachment is a very useful tool in pointing out that the Chimperor has no clothes… Damn, I’m naive… ;-)
This is true, but I think Dubya has raised both the rhetoric and the other-way-looking to a new level. And he’s probably diminished democracy at home probably more than anyone since Jim Crow days.
—-
The atomic bomb does come to mind as well. Plus the strategy for oil since 1945.
Ding!
they all believe that…that is what they figure into the cost of a gallon of gas…course a handfull of OLDISH men get all the PROFITS
In response to Eli @ 58
This is true, but I think Dubya has raised both the rhetoric and the other-way-looking to a new level. And he’s probably diminished democracy at home probably more than anyone since Jim Crow days.
—-
The atomic bomb does come to mind as well. Plus the strategy for oil since 1945.
———-
I think its more his lies that are all crimes that is the worst, its a real gross 1-2 punch.
We really have a crew of criminals, incompetents, liars and thieves in this administration.
This is treading over ground covered several times in the last year, but I do think that the founders envisioned impeachment as a remedy for bad government more broadly than we do today. I will look for Hamilton’s quote that impeachment was a remedy for political crimes. I think it was from one of his addresses to the NY ratifying convention. And as covered by many blogs and commenters here, including me, Madision did advocate impeachment in the first Congress for many acts clearly committed by the Bush administration. The clearest and most notable example is the president appointing subordinates who clearly put protecting him and others in his administration above the enforcing the law.
I once suggested writing a Republican dictionary, you know with words like bipartisanship or phrases like “Supporting the troops” because these things obviously don’t mean what they think they mean.
Yes. I agree. My son will be cannon fodder in about 14 years at this rate.
Naive, and probably underdressed. Hi CT!
Once again Exxon has shattered the all-time profit margin of any company…
OT:
Has anyone researched or linked to the snow crisis in China?
5.8 million stranded on the road. Snow everywhere and no way to go anywhere, often no electric or heat, some roofs falling in, at some train stations 500,000 people stranded.
I gotta check it out if possible. I hope they are all safe.
It’s called Conservapedia.
YUP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSZwEwl_1Q
One reason I supported Edwars was that I thought he would be much more aggressive in pushing for needed reforms that Obama and Clinton, and foremost among them is in voting integrity. My understanding is that Canada uses paper ballots and a public ballot counting process.
I would like to see a process like that adopted in the US. I hope Obama or Clinton would push for something like that.
Aloha! Heck no, I’ve several layers on as it’s freezing here… But, of course I’ll get no sympathy…! ;-)
The problem with the impeachment process is, it’s akin to being on trial where the jury is made up of your most loyal friends and your worst enemies. The outcome will be entirely determined by whether you have more friends or enemies sitting in that box, and your actual guilt or innocence is irrelevant.
(Also, pretend that verdicts are decided by a simple majority…)
i could post some notices at the pump,like REBEL you Rubes….a few old men are making BILLIONS
707!
and also in response to dakine @ 33:
My initial reaction was that Bush sees himself as the John Wanye — Lone Ranger — Matt Dillon sheriff of the world. “If I say ’spread ‘em,’ you ask ‘how wide?’”
In a related development, storage of coal used for electricity generating has declined to 21.29 million tons, less than half of the normal amount, according to the State Electricity Regulatory Commission.
China’s 17 provincial-level regions adopted power-rationing measures as coal shortages cut power generation. Continuous freezing and snowy weather across large areas of China sharply raised electricity demand, but also hindered coal transportation, which exacerbated power shortages.
Power plants that produced seven percent of the country’s thermal power were shut down because of a lack of coal, the latest figures from the State Electricity Regulatory Commission showed.
Yeah, that is true. that is why we need to elect a grassroots Congress. But I noticed one commenter suggested enrolling citizen juries for impeachment trials. Wow! And I thought I was a radical on impeachment. That is an interesting idea.
George Bush isn’t fit to take a drink out of John Wayne’s spittoon.
The impeachment thingy is a stupid law.
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
http://www.math.ku.edu/~evanvleck/yosemite.gif
Oh, I would love to see that. But only if they could find jurors nonpartisan enough to decide based on evidence rather than personal loyalties.
I think that would take some pretty serious Constitution amending, though.
Of course not! It’s well below freezing, raining, the wind is blasting from the East, bearing the scent of unwashed Nova Scotians, and you want sympathy??
‘Bout half of that!
mebbe thats Chenois?
or dicktionary
or theocratsaurus
or illexicon
by the by….Network is on TCM tonite
My view was more along the lines of the scene in Pulp Fiction just before Zed gets dead.
Heh, I could be one of those Nova Scotians if I choose too… My eldest is attending Grad school at Bowling Green and she snapped at her mother last nite… “You’re freezing? The wind chill has it below zero…!” Not much sympathy was shown… ;-)
Impeachiness.
Here is the McCain-Dr Strangelove YouTube.
Nighty-night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nqtL-P8kzo
Kinda like the Christmas I called my sister in New Hampshire when I was on Oahu:
I said, “Yeah, it’s a kinda nasty day and I’m gonna have to grill some chops on the lanai rather than under the sun.”
She said, “I don’t wanna hear it you little SOB, I’m running a temperature of 102 and it’s 13 degrees and snowing outside and I’m wedged next to a fireplace.”
Aloha, Dude!
What a stunningly appropriate mashup!
My girlfriend lives in South Carolina, and recently informed me that “freezing” is actually 45 degrees, because that is the temperature at which she turns blue.
g’nite, dude - good dreams!
Eli, I believe James Bond said something once about “shared bodily warmth.” If she’s freezing, you’re not doing your part.
It’s all relative to what your body is used to. When I first got to Hawaii, I’d been in mostly cold areas of New England and MI for 2 1/2 - 3 years. Temp got down to 60, I was still feeling like it was springtime. After four years in the islands, temps got down to the sixties, and I’m bundled up, looking to turn on the heat.
This is not a permalinked image:
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/FULLDISK/MTIR.JPG
but you can see the jet of clouds over eastern China that has caused such problems.
Well, I try not to make Al Gore cry, but I *do* set my thermostat a little higher than 45 degrees.
foremost among them is in voting integrity. My understanding is that Canada uses paper ballots and a public ballot counting process.
—-
Ding. Clean elections & voting. This public ballot counting is much more public that America?
-
OT:
Snow-stricken China warned that worst is to come
1 hour, 36 minutes ago
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is not yet over the worst of a winter weather crisis that has killed 60 and doomed millions to a cold dark Lunar New Year holiday next week.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200.....ther_dc_43
Ding!
We also need to place this beside the manipulation of elections here at home, in Florida and Ohio. To Bush, it is the appearance of Democracy that counts. Furthermore, place this next to the Democratically elected victory of Hamas in Palestine, and you see again how much (or how little) our Preznit values Democracy. He likes Democracy as long as it produces leaders acceptable to himself.
Bob in HI