According to poll results published in The Daily Telegraph:

Britons have never had such a low opinion of the leadership of the United States, a YouGov poll shows.

As Americans prepare to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence tomorrow, the poll found that only 12 per cent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975 [emphasis added].

Most Britons see America as a cruel, vulgar, arrogant society, riven by class and racism, crime-ridden, obsessed with money and led by an incompetent hypocrite [empasis added again].

And if this is what allies of the US think…

While a key component of a sucessful political (and economic) strategy is building trust (winning “hearts and minds”) in this age of information, the Bush administration has done exactly the opposite. Losing trust means the US is losing its power, and it does not appear that Cheney and Rumsfeld see any problem with running the country on empty, especially since this is an extended version of what they attempted in the 1970s before they were defeated in Congress and then tossed from office, according to the CBC:

An intense debate erupted during former U.S. president Gerald Ford’s administration over the president’s powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, newly disclosed government documents revealed.

Former president George Bush, current Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney are cited in the documents. The roughly 200 pages of historic records reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President George W. Bush’s acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

[…]

Former president Bush, then director of the CIA, wanted to ensure “no unnecessary diminution of collection of important foreign intelligence” under the proposal to require judges to approve terror wiretaps, said a March 1976 memorandum he wrote to the Justice Department. Bush also complained some major communications companies were unwilling to install government wiretaps without a judge’s approval. Such a refusal “seriously affects the capabilities of the intelligence community,” Bush wrote.

The major difference, as the article explains, is that their attempts in the 1970s resulted in a law passed to prevent wiretaps without oversight. Bush junior is thus continuing the policy path of his father, but this time with flagrant disregard for the law. It appears that the US has suffered a sucessful coup that was thirty years in the making from a disgruntled elite. System administrators usually understand that the powers given to them are meant to be used fairly, but every once in a while you find someone who thinks they should be reading everyone’s email and reviewing files without any express approval or oversight from management. Scary to think that is the type of person now running the entire US government. Executives often have to hire special outside security experts to extract these adminstrators from their position. Who will save the US from itself?

This all reminds me of a sign often seen today posted in cubes and offices of Republicans and Democrats alike. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, now firmly entrenched in office, should perhaps just hang a large version from the roof of the Whitehouse: “the floggings will continue until morale improves.” Funny or sad?

The CBC made another interesting comparison:

The documents include one startling similarity to Washington’s current atmosphere over disclosures of classified information by the news media. Notes from a 1975 meeting between Cheney, then White House chief of staff, then Attorney General Edward Levi and others cite the “problem” of a New York Times newspaper article by Seymour Hersh about U.S. submarines spying in Soviet waters. Participants considered a formal FBI investigation of Hersh and the Times and searching Hersh’s apartment “to go after (his) papers,” the document said.

“I was surprised,” Hersh said in a telephone interview Friday.

“I was surprised that they didn’t know I had a house and a mortgage.”

Ok, that’s funny.

After my last entry about the Chinese Firewalls I started to get curious about the origins of the phrase “Chinese Fire Drill”. The Phrase Finder has an odd story that someone posted:

It is my understanding that this phrase originated in the early 1900s. It came from an naval incident where a ship officered by the British and crewed by the Chinese set up a fire drill for fire in the engine room. In the event of a fire the crew was to draw water from the starboard side, take to the engine room and throw it on the fire. Another crew in the engine room was to take the thrown water and throw it over the port side.

When the drill was called the first moments went according to plan then it got confused. The crew began drawing the water from the staroard side and runing over to the port side and throwing the water over, by-passing the the engine room completely.

Thus the expression “Chinese Fire Drill” entered our lexicon as meaning a large confused action by individuals accomplishing nothing.

Perhaps “British Navy Fire Drill” did not have the same ring to it, but it seems to be a more accurate description of the event. After all, wasn’t the reason for the Chinese being employed on the ships their experience and talent for seafaring that Europeans had always envied and emulated, combined with their willingness to work in high-risk endeavors? In other words would you blame the workers or management for a failed disaster plan? And would you really come up with a phrase for a single event like this, or were there other more likely reasons (prejudice against the Chinese)?

I guess the phrase is an unfortunate or even unfair turnabout. Reminds me of the “Chinaman’s minute” or “Chinaman’s chance” which were apparently coined by those who employed the Chinese for building railroads but did not mind leaving them exposed to high risk and physical harm from dynamite. Workers were lowered by rope and boatswain chair down steep inclines in order to set dynamite. When they weren’t pulled back up in time…I remember reading once that the delay could even have been intentional, due to rivalries and ethnic strife among the workers and managers.