Symptoms of Religious Rhetoric and Wacko Extremism

[tw]

It is no fluke that the US influence and popularity is dropping like a rock. In a previous post years ago, cited was a consortium of lifetime American diplomats and generals, from both political parties - people who had worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations even back to Richard Nixon - noted how George Jr has undermined all their work of the past 40 years.

Of course, like the George Jr tax cut, destructive after effects appear years later. Now we have another example of how religious zeal is undermining American economic dominance. From the International Hearld Tribune:

EU Tries to Unblock Internet Impasse
The United States and Europe clashed here Thursday in one of their sharpest public disagreements in months, after European Union negotiators proposed stripping the Americans of their effective control of the Internet.

The European decision to back the rest of the world in demanding the creation of a new international body to govern the Internet clearly caught the Americans off balance and left them largely isolated at talks designed to come up with a new way of regulating the digital traffic of the 21st century.
...
The United States lost its only ally late Wednesday when the EU made a surprise proposal to create an intergovernmental body that would set principles for running the Internet. Currently, the U.S. Commerce Department approves changes to the Internet's "root zone files," which are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, a nonprofit organization based in Marina del Rey, California.

Political unease with the U.S. approach, symbolized by opposition to the war in Iraq, has spilled over into these technical discussions, delegates said. The EU and developing nations, they added, wanted to send a signal to America that it could not run things alone. Opposition to Washington's continued dominance of the Internet was illustrated by a statement released last week by the Brazilian delegation to the talks. "On Internet governance, three words tend to come to mind: lack of legitimacy. In our digital world, only one nation decides for all of us."

Can you really blame the world? When wacko logic posted by Urbane Guerilla types is the policy of the George Jr administration, then the world (and the American science community) has so much to fear from American control.

Once America was highly regarded by over 70% of the world - when its leader even knew what countries bordered Israel. It does not take a genius to even see Geroge Jr lying about Iraq, stem cells, weapons of mass destruction, intelligent design, extremist rhetoric about birth control, killing so many world treaties to keep the world safe (anti-ballistic missile treaty, nuclear test ban treaty, fundamental declaration of human rights, Oslo Accords, etc), America's pathetic response to an Indian Ocean Tsunami, and America's miserly response to foreign aid (only extremists believe the US is a generous nation - a fact that the numbers do not support and demonstrated by the US response to Millennium Development Goals).

As long as extremist Americans would pervert American principles by imposing religious beliefs on all people and rewriting history for to their own political agendas, then the world has much to fear from the US government. No wonder American extremists fear the UN.

And so we have but another example of how the world is turning against the US.

[Undertoad]

Brazil or any other country can start their own domain name system. It's easy.

They can even block the regular root domain servers if they like.

They can bloody well block everything they don't want, like China. This net was invented by Al Gore and wet-nursed by ARPA, and it's not going anywhere.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Maybe it will stop all the spam I get from China, but I bet Nigeria sticks with us.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Again TW demonstrates that he can't copyedit (so his "brilliant" ideas haven't even that much credibility) and if he takes himself seriously, that makes a grand total of ONE.

He lost me when he called tax cuts "destructive." TW, as an economist, you make a mighty fine horseapple. Leftists, in my experience, tend to maintain a careful economic illiteracy. About the only things tax cuts are destructive of are governmental aggrandizement and the inflation that goes along with it.

[wolf]

I don't know if I want to be playing on an internet governed by the European notions of "appropriate" speech rules.

[SmartAZ]

One nice thing about the internet is everybody gets to pretend they own it.

[smoothmoniker]

EU: How come you guys get to run the internet?

US: Dunno ... cuz we built it?

EU: That's not fair!

US: Tell ya what ... once your check clears for your share of the development costs, we'll let you have a vote on whether swazblaklivastaniland gets a .sbt or a .szd

[richlevy]

Well, this should add some fuel to the debate.

The sources are hardly unbiased, but it certainly will make for a lively discussion.

Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq, Afghanistan: BBC
LONDON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.

Bush made the claim when he met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and then foreign minister Nabil Shaath in June 2003, the ministers told the documentary series to be broadcast in Britain later this month.

The US leader also told them he had been ordered by God to create a Palestinian state, the ministers said.

Shaath, now the Palestinian information minister, said: " President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God.

'God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan'.'

"And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq...' And I did.

"'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God I'm gonna do it'," said Shaath.

Abbas, who was also at the meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, recalled how the president told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation.

"So I will get you a Palestinian state."

A BBC spokesman said the content of the programme had been put to the White House but it had refused to comment on a private conversation.

The three-part series, "Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs", charts the attempts to bring peace to the Middle East, from former US president Bill Clinton's peace talks in 1999-2000 to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip.

The programme speaks to presidents and prime ministers, their generals and ministers, about what happened behind closed doors as the peace talks failed and the intifada grew.

And finally, the White House denial. It's too bad they don't have any credibility left to effectively challenge this.

The White House has dismissed as "absurd" allegations made in a BBC TV series that President Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq.
"He's never made such comments," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Scott "Karl Rove never outed Valerie Plame" McClellan.


I guess when the White House tapes are released 50 years from now, we'll know the truth. It'll probably even be more interesting than the Watergate transcripts.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It makes sense when dealing with religious extremists, in order to gain their fear or respect, to present yourself as a religious extremist. Something Bush can do with conviction.