Perspectives on the 2nd Bush term Features collected by TFF between November 2, 2004 and January 20 – Inauguration Day, 2005

This collection contains pointed comments on various aspects of the second term of the Bush Administration. Bookmark it and check now and then the next four years: what was right and what was wrong, what was too ‘hard’ and too ‘soft’ as predictions?

On imperialism

Gore Vidal, In These Times
Imperial amnesia or the United States of Amnesia…

Ignacio Ramet, Le Monde Diplomatique
Bush second time around

Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor
On foreign policy: how bold will Bush be?
There is Iraq but new challenges also loom in Iran and North Korea.

Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker and Information Clearing House
The Coming Wars.
What Pentagon can now do in secret.

Tom Barry, Laura Carlsen, and John Gershman, International Relations Center
The next four years: A political forecast

Chalmers Johnson, TomDispatch.com
Creating a WIA – Worthless Intelligence Agency.

Scott Ritter, Aljazeera
The Salvador option
The Pentagon is considering the organisation, training and equipping of so-called death squads, teams of Iraqi assassins who would be used to infiltrate and eliminate the leadership of the Iraqi resistance.

On democracy and leadership

Greg Palast, TomPaine.com
Kerry won

Maureen Dowd, The Age
The loonies have taken control.

Howard Fineman, Newsweek
Karl Rove unleashed.

Tom Barry, The Right Web
Robert Zoellick: A Bush Family Man.
No. 2 at Rice’s State Department

On the economy

Paul Krugman, TurthOut
Economic crisis a question of when, not if.

The U.S. National debt Clock
Each U.S. citizen’s share of this debt is $25,792.10.

Joseph Quinlan, The Globalist
Behind the sinking dollar: America’s image as a “rogue nations”.

On human rights

Information Clearing House
The Human Costs of War
– a project by Patricia Foulkrod and in association with Operation Truth, an non-profit organization created by Iraq veteran Paul Rieckhoff. This film is our soldiers’ perspective of the Iraq War, and how they are being treated upon returning home.

Jim Lobe, Information Clearing House
Congress pushes penalties for Global Court Support
U.S. allies in the developing South are now being targeted by lawmakers here, who have already meted out punishment to nations that support the new International Criminal Court (ICC).

Jim Lobe, Foreign Policy in Focus
Mainstream media miss Rumsfel’d “Dirty Wars” talk
Rumsfeld blurs the line between the police and the military.

Eric Margolis, Information Clearing House
Uncle Sam has his own gulag.
Behaving like the Soviet secret police won’t make America safer…

Amnesty International
Human rights not hollow words
An appeal to President George W. Bush on the occasion of his re-inauguration.

Scott Horton, Los Angeles Times
A Nuremberg Lesson – Torture scandal began far above ‘rotten apples.’

On global development

Editorial in the New York Times
America, the indifferent
Almost a third of the way into the program (The UN Millennium Declaration goals), the latest available figures show that the percentage of U.S. income going to poor countries remains near rock bottom: 0.14 percent.

Tom Reagan, Christian Science Monitor
“They hate our policies, not our freedom”.

Timothy Heritage, Reuters
Four more years of Bush makes the world anxious
Mistrust also runs deep among ordinary people. Some 58 percent of people surveyed in a British Broadcasting Corporation poll in 21 countries said they believed Bush’s re-election made the world a more dangerous place.

On media, censorship and puritanism

George Monbiot, Common Dreams
A televisual Fairyland.
The US media is disciplined by Corporate America into promoting the Republican cause.

Dominic Timms, The Guardian
Fearful US TV networks censor more shows
The panic that is gripping American TV bosses facing a puritanical backlash or exorbitant government fines has today extended to a cartoon series and a BBC drama.Would you be browsing this Collection now,
if it wasn’t useful to you?
Support TFF and get more quality articles like this in the future

On arrogance

Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
Annal of Outrage
The Bush administration’s ten most outrageous scandals – and orgy in fraud, mismanagement and corruption.

Dafna Linzer, The Washington Post – TruthOut
IAEA leader’s phone tapped
U.S. pores over transcipts to try to out nuclear chief ElBaradei

– a type of intimidation used before…

The Progress Report
When it comes to inaugural excess, the numbers speak for themselves.
What you could get for the 40 million dollars inauguration…

Peace & future researcher + ‌Art Photographer

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Tony Robinson October 4, 2026 Violence is easy to recognise when someone is being beaten, shot or killed. It becomes more difficult when nobody is holding a weapon. Poverty, discrimination, exploitation and repression can restrict a human life just as effectively, although they do so in very different ways and with very different consequences. Simply adding more categories to an ever-growing list of forms of violence does not really solve the problem. The more interesting question is what all these different situations have in common and why it makes sense to describe them using the same word. Human beings do not simply react to what happens around them. They remember the past, imagine things that do not yet exist, make plans and undertake projects. Workers organise because they imagine different working conditions; people migrate because they imagine another life somewhere else; social movements emerge because people refuse to accept the...
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Johan Galtung 1930-2024October 2015 Published here on October 3, 2026 Let us focus on Civilization for conflict analysis and remedies. Major forms of disorder use violence; war is state organized violence. The most belligerent states are the United States of America and Israel, both with civilization roots. National Evangelism, the US Protestant Christian civilization– more national than evangelical–justifies US warfare as exceptionalism of a people chosen by God, with a manifest destiny to run the world. Orthodox Judaism justifies Israeli warfare to conquer and expand from Nile to Euphrates as a religious right and duty to the Eternal One. The third most belligerent country, the UK, no longer believes it is God-chosen but chosen by the USA; not quite the same but something. But the root cause of global disorder lies in the Occident–with Islam–seeing itself as the single, universal civilization valid for all at all times, all others being...
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Tony Robinson October 4, 2026 Violence is easy to recognise when someone is being beaten, shot or killed. It becomes more difficult when nobody is holding a weapon. Poverty, discrimination, exploitation and repression can restrict a human life just as effectively, although they do so in very different ways and with very different consequences. Simply adding more categories to an ever-growing list of forms of violence does not really solve the problem. The more interesting question is what all these different situations have in common and why it makes sense to describe them using the same word. Human beings do not simply react to what happens around them. They remember the past, imagine things that do not yet exist, make plans and undertake projects. Workers organise because they imagine different working conditions; people migrate because they imagine another life somewhere else; social movements emerge because people refuse to accept the...
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It’s a matter of principles, courage, vision and pulling together – while the militarist world is falling apart… Peter Langille October 3, 2026 “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”The Bertrand Russell—Albert Einstein Manifesto, July 9, 1955 ⁕ The forecast for what’s ahead is worrisome. The sharp rise in armed conflicts over the past three years is adding to what was already the highest level in over seventy years. Genocides, which should be prevented are supported. A shared climate emergency that jeopardises survival is ignored. Diverse polls now suggest that people are war-weary, worried and interested in a more effective United Nations. And, there are viable policy options for a more secure world! Yet governments are doubling-down, betting on more war and investing heavily. If current trends persist,...
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Johan Galtung 1930-2024October 2015 Published here on October 3, 2026 Let us focus on Civilization for conflict analysis and remedies. Major forms of disorder use violence; war is state organized violence. The most belligerent states are the United States of America and Israel, both with civilization roots. National Evangelism, the US Protestant Christian civilization– more national than evangelical–justifies US warfare as exceptionalism of a people chosen by God, with a manifest destiny to run the world. Orthodox Judaism justifies Israeli warfare to conquer and expand from Nile to Euphrates as a religious right and duty to the Eternal One. The third most belligerent country, the UK, no longer believes it is God-chosen but chosen by the USA; not quite the same but something. But the root cause of global disorder lies in the Occident–with Islam–seeing itself as the single, universal civilization valid for all at all times, all others being...
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Below are TFF-related media mentions, comments, videos and social media posts published elsewhere but not on this homepage. We happen to catch and list only a fraction. Regarding video comments and debates, we recommend that you go to the TFF Video Channel on Substack where many of them are reproduced. Jan Oberg is a contributor to China Daily – 52 million daily clicks – and Global Times, CGTN and CCTV (the national television), China Investment, Xinhua News Agency and several others. Articles and videos on these media very often multiply into countless Chinese (and Western media) that re-post them from these main media. Thanks to The China Academy, his analyses, interviews and comments are frequently posted on YouTube channels such as Thinkers Forum and Wave Media. These videos are often re-posted on Bilibili (China’s YouTube), the China Content Center on TikTok, and on the Chinese edition of TikTok, Douyin.com. This means reaching hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide over a year. While there are too many to catch on all these...