Hello from San Francisco.

As a European, you should worry that Bush has broken down the US economy with unusual speed. Not even a strong EU can deal with a broke US. For economic reasons and for political reasons.

after I saw the debates I was more impressed with Kerry than before. But still, I agree with jaydee, at this point there is not much he can do. Bush should be punished for his immoral and self-serving playing around with other peoples lives. And maybe Kerry can get the US economy back on track.
Irak will remain the same for a long while. France and Germany won't jump in to save Kerry, and neither will Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Jordan. I doubt that Kerry will be able to change the facts of this war: that there is a mercenary for every ten legitimate soldiers, that large parts of Irak and most of Afghanistan are controlled by warlords and crooks, and that reconstruction is not even beginning in these countries.

btw: (and apropos both WG's joke and Newromancers post) one of many similarities between our age and the 1930's is the way in which the 'center' is moving so far right that moderate views are seen as radical.

EU economy does not depend on the US.

Of corse, if the US is going down, there is nothing the EU can do against it. - If that is what you mean. - Most of the major European country have there own economy troubles right now, Germany for example (Plans that GM will fire 10.000 ppl at there European Factorys, especially at Germany (Opel) wont help - that for sure - but even if all American Companys would close ther German factorys, it wouldn't kill the economy). Plus the east extendsion are digging a big hole in everybodys pocket.

Never the less, the situation isn't as bad as in the US, the Euro stabilizing packt still holds. (as you might have notized.)

And about the US, I seriously dounbt that the American Economy will collaps like Japans did ... too much major companys there.

So, economicly, the EU will not be ruined by a broken US, politically, well that's a different story. However, the way the current goverment 'talked' to some of the 'old countrys' - as Bush once said - I think, at the moment, not many countrys over here would risk there own economy by trying to help the US.

Beware of the electronic voting machines in Florida!

[primate thumbs both passports nervously]

hard to catch up reading

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General Motors is not closing plants in Europe because it is from the US. They are closing plants in Germany because they are not making enough money. They already closed most of the US ones. More will follow

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Yes I know ... it was just an example of what happens when big American factorys would close doors on Europe. Btw. Opel is not doing that bad right now ... in fact, they are/where on there way up - situation was worse 3 years ago.

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Japan did have more big companies than the US, and much more hard cash. It did not help. They still have the cash, after all. Or where do you think the US deficit is ending?

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The crash in Japan was fast ... and fast over ... I can remember all these people who made credits in yen during the deflation. However, the economy system of the rising and falling sun can not really be compared with ours ( I made a bad example, now that I think back.)

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Well, the IMF and the World Bank have officially warned the US that our deficit, financed largely by the Japanes and especially the Chinese, might crash our - and the world's - economies.

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Nahh, I think Dog Soldier is right. The U.S. is not going to crash ... they have there problems, true. ( thin ice? maybe ).

But still they are running everything well ... If you ask me, that was ment to be a warning shot for the U.S. goverment ... something like a nice "Hey, what are you dickheads doing over there? Stop it and start repairing the damage you done to your economy, idiots!"

Thinking about a economy-world-crisis at this stage of globlisation is hard. If America would crash would the rest fall with it? Or would the healthy companys trensfer money and backup to other nations first? A healthy company is interested in its own surviving.

So the stock market will crash ... okay ... but i think back on April 2000 ... alot of banks and companies lost money ... so did a lot of my friends. But then, this dot-com crash not really effected our lives. I think a crash of the States would have pretty much the same effect.

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Originally posted by SRu:
The domestic problems like health care, collapsing retirement funds, the questionable future of Social Security, etc.

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The social system ... or the lack of it ... is something we europeans can hardly understand.

@ M

Very interesting your last post.
Because I allways belived US puts much more money into research then Europe does.

The controll of Currency was a bad idea in the first place ... but a worse if they tried to keep the Doller at a level with the EURO (whichwas introduced at 1.2 at the current marketing) ... but i do belive this will regulate itself.

As the USD was that high, exports into US brought European companies lots of extra cash ... now that this has changed, it is harder to make profit from exports to the US ... but for US companies it became more profitable to export to EU ... divisen will exchange, the situation will stableize again. - I'm quit willing to help them, by buying my DVD there

Mister Gibson, your latest blog link is invalid, as it links right back to http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/*. However, the address http://www.massivechange.com/ is valid, and works fine once cut-and-pasted.

I shall take this opportunity to formally express my thanks for your continued hospitality and forbearance. This remains one of my favorite sites, one of only three I bother to post on.

I've been reading the responses to the blog now that Gibson has started again, and I must say some of you are missing a critical (to my American mind) point: if US economy collapses, we exist in a society corrupt enough to sell real WMD. Not those imaginary ones Bush chased after in Iraq, but the real deal, you know, the shit we can't even tell our own people we developed. To think you can sit across the oceans and not be affected is old thinking. I'm one of those people who still can't choose who to vote for, mainly because, there really are no choices. I've researched and researched, and the only conclusion I can come to is, there is no TRUTH in today's media, only distortion and the result is misinformation. I wish I could believe Kerry was a better choice than Bush, but there's just no evidence.

And I say this after having watched the debates, and believing Kerry had much better points than Bush. Undertandable because Kerry says what I want to be hearing, but then when I research his own website, the more I think about his proposals, the less they seem like good alternatives to Bush, and the more they seem like MORE OF THE SAME.

These two guys are some symptom of the flaw in modern politics here, but if I thought I could jsut ignore the situation and not bother voting, then I vote for the collapse of the ideals of the Constitution. Maybe it's already happened. I don't know why things got so fucked up over the phantom Iraqi WMD but I do know where the real ones are, and I think it's in the world's interest to see America remain stable.

re: the above.

With Bush you're guaranteed more of the same.
With Kerry at least there's a sliver of a chance we'll get something different.

Just my rupee .50

Also re: the above, I think it is a terrible mistake to reduce democracy to the mere practice of voting. As per the current signature.

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With Kerry at least there's a sliver of a chance we'll get something different.

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I agree with this statement but also think it's the equivalent of saying in Russian roulette there's a sliver of a chance I won't blow my brains out.

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This analogy implies that Bush is not so bad, and that Kerry could be worse.
From my point of view, even if the media are all lies and propaganda, it looks like :
- Bush is stuck with his war on terror/Iraq/whatever policy, and can't afford to move backwards. If he's re-elected, the war will go on, until something (probably very horrible) happens.
- Kerry, being a new guy, can try to change the situation without having the world pointing at him like : "Ooooh! He changed his mind! He's so weak and untrustworthy!"

That's the only way I think the Iraq situation can have a chance to be solved.

There are other points after that, on which I can't express due to my lack of knowledge of the US internal situation.

If a guy claims he's more moderated than Bush, I take that as a good sign.
I would be very afraid if he claimed Bush is a big sissy and he can do better than that.

--
ArkanGL

In more different and happy news, Arkan's back!

... and he's talking to the blog, since WG's back!
How could news be better ?

--
ArkanGL

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Too bad the election of the most powerful person in American politics has been reduced to the mere act of voting...

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I think you misinterpret my vague statement. What I'm saying is that for the vast majority of human history, securing a slightly less-shitty life has required quite a bit of activity. Lately we've been taught that you can spend 364 days a year chasing money and buying SUV's, and only think about how society is run one day per year (or perhaps two in a leap year) when we vote, and everything will turn out all right. That's horse-puckey.

There's more to politics than the presidential election, and there's more to participation than voting. Find a niche where you can do something and give it a shot. It can be very rewarding.

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Originally posted by Bravus:
If you're looking at the stats, it would be very unlikely indeed for Kerry to do more damage than Bush, since he'd have to be even further in those directions than Bush, who is already unique as a US president.

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There's a few things Kerry has suggested we do to fix Bush's mistakes. I'll keep it short, and point out Kerry plans to increase the number of active duty military. Are they planning on pulling these people out of a clone vat or something? You can't play around with the numbers and come up with extra people out of thin air...

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Originally posted by Mean Old Man:

Call me naive, but I _still_ can't get over the fact that someone would feel comfortable asking questions like this to people who can in no way be held publicly accountable.

An elected _politician's_ voting record should be publicly available on demand. A non-elected _pundit's_ history of opinion is no one else's business unless he decides to reveal it voluntarily.

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All of the above, and how long has Gibson been living in Canada? Would he have Canadian citizenship by now?

Please note that I am in no way trying to call Gibson's right to comment on the US's political situation (we all do it all the time here on almost every country we don't already live in), but I don't see how Gibson could have voted in the US since probably the early 70s.

Actually, what I'm dying to know is what's on The Man's RSS feeder. A year ago he mentioned a couple of places, e.g. scoop.agonist.org, but I'd love to know where he gets his news and opinion nowadays. A year can be an aeon in internet news source, um, time....

As I'm sure you're aware DP the internet has it's own time(thanks Swatch), it's called "beats".


Mr. Gibson, what type of wine do you like?
Can I send you some chicken strips?
I have a pumpkin brandy butter that is outta this world, want some?