Nexus - 0905 - New Times Magazine-pages

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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS THE IQ OF GEORGE W. BUSH: HOW STUPID IS TOO STUPID? by Sean Monkhouse uring a 1992 photo-op at a New Jersey elementary school, Dan Quayle urged a Ds to add an "e" to the word "potato". Even though Quayle was reading from a misspelled flashcard and had been guilty of several more-serious blun- ders, it was enough to confirm the suspicions of many Americans that Quayle was indeed a bumbling idiot not fit to be in office. Ten years later, and US President George W. Bush is busy making Dan Quayle look like a brain surgeon. During his short presidency, Bush has trounced Quayle's record of misspelling and misspeaking and he is positively off the charts when it comes to his lack of world knowledge and basic social skills. Despite the daily reminders of this idiocy, the press and the people remain silent. When Bush fumbles the first line of an important speech, or forgets what he is talking about or to whom he is talking, half of us nod in approval while the other half quietly grimace in disgrace. Granted, with all that's going on today, it might seem trivial or untimely to focus on the President's IQ. After all, we still have terrorists to kill. But if George W. Bush can leave America in the middle of a "war", for European photo-ops and a meaningless treaty, we can take a little time away from criticising his policies and get down to the man himself. What better time to demand a smart President than when America needs one the most? Take Bush's recent trip to Europe, where he visited several world leaders, signed a nuclear treaty with Russia's President Putin and had an audience with the Pope. While meeting and greeting our nation's most important allies and negotiating with President Putin—leader of the USA's former nemesis, the USSR, now Russia— President Bush's behaviour ranged from the frat-boy humour that left many people awk- wardly staring at the ground—like his thanking President Putin for mowing the lawn— to repeatedly forgetting what country he was in. Other blunders were a bit more pro- found. A video clip widely played in Europe shows the President of the United States spitting out his chewing gum into his hand before signing the "historic" Treaty of Moscow. Bush's show of stupidity in Europe, humiliating as it was, doesn't even come close to the depths of idiocy reported last week [early June] by the German paper Der Spiegel. According to the article, during a meeting with Fernando Cardoso, Bush asked the fol- lowing question to the 71-year-old President of Brazil: "Do you have blacks too?" Let that sink in for a second... "Do you have blacks too?" President Cardoso, a sociologist, author and speaker of four languages, had little time to display his shock and horror before National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tried to come to the rescue by explaining to Bush that Brazil did indeed "have blacks" and, in fact, was home to one of the largest black populations outside of Africa. I can't think of a single reason that would absolve Bush of his blatant stupidity in this instance. If he were joking, which he wasn't, it would have been horribly tasteless and inappropriate at the very least. If he seriously didn't know that Brazil does "have blacks" but suddenly found himself interested in the subject, surely some synapse in that little brain of his would have fired, we would hope, and he would have said to him- self: "Oh, this might not be the best time." At the very least, he could have whispered the question to Rice and avoided the embarrassment and apprehensive grins that followed. Hell, he could have waited and looked it up online for himself. But no. Bush doesn't seem to care enough to go to that kind of trouble. Instead, he makes an ass out of himself and the country he leads. Bush, with his non-existent education and his lack of desire to attain one, doesn't prep himself before meeting the leaders of the world or even express the faintest interest in other countries or their citizens. But right now, no one seems to mind. He can thank America's patriotic stupor for not calling him on such a moronic, telling and unexplain- able question as "Do you have blacks too?" I'd like to see a new headline on Newsweek's cover: "The President Didn't Know!" (Source: From an article by Sean Monkhouse, June 17, 2002, at the Yellow Times website, http//:www. YellowTimes.org; also at the Jeff Rense website, http:/www.rense.com) "They misunderestimated me." — George W. Bush BRITAIN BLAMED FOR IRELAND'S HIDDEN HOLOCAUST he politicians refer to it as "Ireland's greatest natural disaster", but, from 1845 to 1850, Ireland did not starve for food because of potato blight: it starved because its food, from 40 to 70 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint by 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia, battleships, excise vessels, the Coast Guard and 200,000 soldiers. Britain seized from Ireland's producers tens of millions of head of livestock and tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry and dairy products—enough to sustain 18 million persons. When the European potato crop failed in 1844 and food prices rose, Britain ordered regiments to Ireland. When blight hit the 1845 English potato crop, its food removal regiments were already mobilised in Ireland. Grossly overpopulated relative to its food supply, Britain faced famine unless it could import vast amounts of alternative food supplies. But it didn't grab merely Ireland's surplus food or enough Irish food to save England; it took more—for profit and to exterminate the people of Ireland. Assuming Britain's census figures for Ireland are correct, revisionist historians are now claiming that the British govern- ment murdered approximately 5.16 million Irish men, women and children between 1845 and 1850. (Source: http://www. irishholocaust.org) COLD WAR NUCLEAR TESTS STILL KILLING THOUSANDS US government study says that the fallout from Cold War nuclear tests carried out by the US, Britain, France and the Soviet Union has caused the deaths of an estimated 15,000 Americans—so far. Excerpts of the report have been pub- lished on a website run by a watchdog group, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (see http://www. eer.org). The study reported that everyone living on the US mainland has been exposed to fallout. "The message is, we are all down- winders," said Bob Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a coalition of pressure groups. He said the report summary had not been made public because of unwillingness by governments to acknowledge the impact of past nuclear testing programs. (Source: The Guardian, March 1, 2002) NEXUS +9 AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2002 www.nexusmagazine.com