BROWNBACK , YELLOW CHINA and WHITE WINTER

Reports coming up from way down low Australia reveal that China’s influence in that country is booming. Below are a few excerpts from a McClatchy news service story which appeared in our local paper, the Spokesman Review, today (January 21, 2007).


[SNIP]
BRISBANE, Australia – Over the past century, U.S. and Australian military forces have fought together in nearly every major global conflict, including both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and now in Afghanistan and Iraq.

‘Australians have been at the pointy end of the spear in both Iraq and Afghanistan,’ said Michael J. Green, the former head of Asian affairs at the National Security Council in Washington.

So it may come as a surprise that a recent poll found that Australians feel about as warmly toward a new suitor in the region—China—as they do toward longtime ally America. Moreover, the poll found that Australians think China is the strongest power in Asia, eclipsing the United States. . .

A trickle of Chinese students enrolling in Australian schools has turned into a tide, and trade between the two countries has skyrocketed, turning Australian views of China rosier and making some U.S. policymakers uneasy. . .

‘I saw zero difference between President Bush and Prime Minister (John) Howard on China policy,’ said Green, the former National Security Council adviser to Bush.
[PASTE]

We must recall that Green is a Bushite and, as a member of the National Security Council, he served during the time when Bush and all his cohorts were lying at the rate of about one sound bite per minute per minute, so how can we pay any attention to what Green says. It’s obvious to anyone that Bush has cost us friendships and influence all over the world, and if America is declining in influence, most of that decline can be attributed to Bush’s illegal invasion of the sovereign nation, Iraq, as well his fundamentalist’s supporters’ anti-science and anti-fact biases.

Now why should I mention Sam Brownback in conjunction with this article about Australia? Well Sam just announced his run for the presidency and Brownback’s another one of those Christian fundamentalists who is, by conviction, anti-science and anti-progress. He will further decimate America’s once insurmountable lead in technology and science, and even more worldly scientists will go elsewhere for their educations. We need to ask Brownback, point-blank, if he subscribes to the facts of evolution or to the unsubstantiated literal interpretations of the Bible—that anti-science textbook—as to the origins of life. We can ill afford another presidency that is backward and reactionary. It will only hasten America’s already deepening decline as a force in world affairs. I think Americans do have to make a serious choice about whether we sink into Biblical superstition and become ever more like those backward Moslem nations we now oppose or choose the rational and effective methods of empiricism. Being hopeful, I am resisting my gloomy tendencies but being realistic about fundamentalist forces and their influence in America, the gloom factor tips the balance a little more to the dark side than the light.

PS: Speaking of light—yep, my backyard and we finally got winter.