Ghosts of old rhetoric

Old Forecasts Come Back to Haunt Bush

Well, he came, proclaimed and ... dunno - exactly why Bush called his press conference is a bit vague, nothing much new and hot on the heels of yesterday as covered in the above link. I suspect today had something to do with desparation - trying to keep up the pretense of authority in the face of declining approval ratings. It all came sadly unstuck when he took questions afterward - too much indecision in the answers, a couple of close calls on mixing up Iraq with Iran and an awful lot of attempted humour and snickering to cover up the goofs. Gawd help Amerika.

The questions were interrupted as my UK feed switched to East London where the Prime Preacher was delivering his own speech on Britain's foreign policy. It was, I begrudgingly admit, a rather compelling oratory which saught to say that long-term objectives were modernise political globalisation in line with the infrastructure of economic globalisation that has already stabilised. Very oddly, given his own religious persuasions, in an attempt to distinguish militant Islam from the moderate faith itself, Blair referred to "protestant bigots" creating obsticles to the peace process in Northern Ireland and insisted that most Muslims want to live in a contemporary democratic world. In this regard he also displayed telling knowledge of the history and tenants of Islam itself.

None of this changes the reality of the fact that Blair seems unable to see beyond his own urge toward evangelical patronage in the affairs of others, nor his conviction that the current model of economic globalisation is the right one. In an age of rampant consumerism and a market-driven capitalism that accelerates the divide between rich and poor, he has clearly given no thought to the fact that a "modern" world so defined is in serial decline. He views "terrorism" as a contemporary threat to drag so-called civilisation back into a fundamentalist dark age but never considers that it may also sometimes be motivated by disenfranchisement. Whilst there continue to be those that suffer within the new global economic hierarchy, his words remain framed by an opposing fundamentalist stance and will continue to lack the integrity he tries so hard to employ.

Later.