remote control: life in america: all articles

The G8 debt relief plan is far less generous than it looks, says Alex Wilks of the European Network on Debt and Development.

The eleventh and last of his “Remote Control” columns finds Siva Vaidhyanathan contrite over the American election result, and worried about the frightened and angry country it reflects.

The United States experienced real democracy only from 1965-2000, from the civil rights era to the post-Florida judicial coup, says Siva Vaidhyanathan. Whatever the result on 2 November, American citizens need to seize the responsibility of remaking it.

The “anarchist activists” protesting the Republican party convention in New York are not the dangerous radicals of news media and mayoral imagination. Real anarchists are just like folks – and their quiet influence is spreading through the culture.

Civil libertarians in the United States are fuming at the FBI arrest of Steven Kurtz, a biotech artist and professor in New York, on charges of terrorism. The security state run amok? No, says Siva Vaidhyanathan: rather, the incident tells a deeper story about the cost of the Bush administration’s dismal record on national security.

Between basketball and soccer, New York and Amsterdam, America and Europe, the drumbeat of sporting allegiance sends Siva Vaidhyanathan a political message.

Ronald Reagan’s mythic celebration of America is echoed in the official tributes and memorials that accompany him to the grave. Siva Vaidhyanathan acknowledges a genius of evasion whose disastrous social impact carried a saving grace that his Bushite successor lacks.

In Guantanamo Bay, the United States is cynically employing the brutal extra-judicial practices of its long-time foe Fidel Castro. In Iraq, US soldiers have been torturing prisoners in Saddam’s chambers. Siva Vaidhyanathan is worried. Can America be forgetting itself?

The myths and legends of Texas are a far cry from the reality. As Disney releases its new blockbuster “The Alamo”, Siva Vaidhyanathan sits in a café a mile away from the Texan shrine and ponders the meaning of freedom.

Want to understand George Bush’s America? You could do worse than visit Texas. Siva Vaidhyanathan returns to his old hunting ground.

America has a remote control relationship with the world. From virtual war to TV news, its citizens take a passive role in world affairs. As the power and influence of the United States spreads across the globe, who is responsible for its impact?

How committed are we to free speech? In the first of his new monthly columns on life in America, Siva Vaidhyanathan, passionate champion of liberty, abandons the cause when faced with airport security, his wife and the ghost of Woody Guthrie.