Writing on the Wall Shows Preparation for the Crash
Bush Ally Howard Defeated in Australia Next Prime Minister Promises New Course on Iraq, Warming
By Rohan Sullivan Associated Press Sunday, November 25, 2007; A17
SYDNEY Nov. 24 -- Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia's combat troops from Iraq.
Labor Party head Kevin Rudd's pledges move Australia sharply away from policies that had made Howard one of President Bush's staunchest allies.
Rudd has named global warming as his top priority, and his signing of the Kyoto Protocol will leave the United States as the only industrialized country not to have joined the 1997 pact that set mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.
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Subliminal political portents are evident across the globe, as Bush supporting governments in Japan and Australia fall. Sarkozy doesn't count, he will use his sail to grab any convenient wind.
We're watching the globe say "we're sorry, we'll never do it again if you just let us get by this time."
Financiers running amok, record high stock markets goosed by greed, companies torn to shreds, unprecedented debt, the international mirage that is Dubai, skilled workers replaced by whoever happens by at the lowest wage, no accountability anywhere, either financial or ethical.
It's not going to wash. Promises have been too often unmet to be believed now and the irony is that those who brought us down won't be around to take the heat. At least Herbert Hoover was in office in October of 1929.
The world will pick itself up and start over, but the sturdy who are going to make the long slog back are no longer Americans. Too busy at our iPods, we haven't retained the skills of survival. The 'service economy' has turned us into the served and--like those comedic remnants of the long-neutered British aristocracy--the vast majority among us can no longer boil an egg.
If we could find an egg.
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