Anwar Ibrahim a sodomite?

Well the UNMO establishment is hitting back at Anwar Ibrahim who after years in prison and labelled a sodomite on false charges which the high court threw out, is tarring him with the same old hoary political dirty trick. Will they succeed? Maybe not, but it will stop Anwar's roaring train to power and to a small but necessary change in the way things are done in Malaysia, and a liberalisation of imposed apartheid against the declining Chinese who are the economic spine of Malaysia and the Indians who are tired of being treated as second class citizens. It won't mean the end of Islamic rule but it will mean that Islam will return to the mosques where it belongs and not as a rule of law and thumb for all Malaysians Muslim or not. Anwar is a fighter as is his wife Wan Azizah Wan Ibrahim, so if UNMO thought it could flip in out of public support, they've another thing coming. But the mud is going to be slung fast and furiously. Hold in their Anwar Ibrahim!

Archbishop Tutu got it right!

Archbishop Tutu got it right in calling for Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe to step down and for Africa's leadership to force him one way or the other out of power. They won't. Instead they're going to be guided by the age old recourse to tersigervation [sic]...hemming and hawing and trying to reason with a man who is outside of reason. No he's not mad in the clinical sense, but he's mad in wanting to hold on to power and to punish his people for giving the opposition a vote which put Herr Mugabe out of office. Even the sainted Nelson Mandela took his good time to condemn Mugabe, and of course Tabi Mbeki has proven a pussy in dealing with Mugabe. So in Cairo at a meeting of Africa's heads of state, leaders of the continents some 54 countries will try to 'dialogue' with this bull elephant wounded by his own people at the polls a few months ago. It won't do them a shred of good; on the other hand, bold action will be a signal to their own people that a groundswell of protest can topple hated, corrupt regimes, and that's the last thing these leaders want, namely, to be thrown out of post which fills deep pockets of theirs whilst their people languish in poverty, disease, more likely than not AIDS, and the country's wealth find its way into coded bank accounts in Switzerland. So, they will muddle through a meeting which will end in doing very little if anything in dealing with mad dog Mugabe!

Is Rumsfeld the fall guy?

According to a lead article in today's Sunday New York Times [29 June2008]. Michael R. Gordon, the mouthpiece of the Pentagon and Herr Bush, who whipped up the fevour in the paper of note that he writes for, has reported on a study which the Pentagon is releasing Monday 30 June 2008 which strongly criticises the Pentagon and its civilian and military leadership for mishandling the war Herr Bush lied the US into, and for going against solid experience and advise of top generals who thought the planning for the war's aftermath was poor and foresaw the quagmire the US army is in. The report is official and although what it says is not new, its stinging critique has the imprimatur of official military review. The obvious target is Donald Rumsfeld and Generals Frank and Sanchez, but the finger of blame belongs first and foremost to Herr Bush. Will this report have the same impact that the Pentagon Papers had on the implosion of the Nixon administration and the final days of the failed US in Vietnam? That remains to be seen!

Condy Rice visits China's flood and earthquake victims

US secretary of state Condoleeza Rice is on a goodwill visit to China's southern provinces wrought by earthquakes and floods. She brought nothing but praise for Beijing's efforts to alleviate the people affected by these natural disasters, and didn't pass up an occasion to poke the Birman junta in the eye for its shameful neglect of its own people owing to the misery and death a typhoon and a tsunami brought to coastal Myunmar. Well, why criticise Burma when the very regime of Herr Bush that she serves like a faithful dog, has woefully neglected the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Rice deserves out contempt!

The market slides again

The market is sliding again today [27 June 2008]. A barrel of oil is now quoted at us$142, and consumerism which has been fueling the US economy is slowing down, and what's more the easy money has dried up. The subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown is delievering a one two punch to the big bracket and regional banks, but the jabs are not strong enough to floor them yet. Bank stocks are plunging and even the mighty Goldman Sachs' earnings will be much less. Oil and commodity futures are the new casino gamble, which is tied to the weak US$. Which no one is talking about other than pointing the finger of blame at speculators who are taking advantage of a US market which is intent in not reforming itself, nor is the US government of Herr Bush planning to do much about the current crisis which everyone knows is a recession but the blockheads at the Fed and the Treasury and in the White House. So muddling along till the tidal wave drowns us all or dance ye around the mulberry Bush whilst the party lasts. Which ain't for long!

Correction: Silence of New York Times lambs

18Brumaire stands corrected. Under Shane Alexander's by line in 27 June 2008 New York Times, you will find Two testify on memo spelling out interrogation. It however should've appeared on the paper of note's front page!

Silence of the New York Times lambs

The grey old lady of America's press, the stately New York Times blows hot and cold on issues. It is famously known for its reporters who spread Herr Bush's lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Saddam Hussein's tie in with Osama bin Ladin; its publisher Salzburger junior met with Herr Bush and agreed to hold off on printing a torture story till after the 2004 elections. On the other hand, it has done some good public service in reporting the US use of torture. And yesterday, it sat on its hands. It hasn't published an article on the Connors committe investing the use of torture by Herr Bush's minions. Dragged reluctantly before the committee were Dick Addington a Cheney staff member and the lawyer now professor at UCLA John Yoo who wrote opinions circumventing the Geneva conventions. The force of a subpoena brought smug and haughty Addington to testify. Slippery, greasy, oily, he tried to wiggle out of questions, but his pride proved too much for him, for he did allow that people like him and Yoo sat on a torture committe figuring out ways to make suspected non combattant Islamists squirm under techniques which would make Spanish Inquistors proud. Yoo who writes with panache and swaggers with arrogance couldn't have been more mealy mouthed. He tries to delay answers, confuse Congressmen and women's questions, a performance at odds with his public pronouncement; he full well know that he was under oath so anything he said which proved a lie is subject to criminal investigation. So the two people among others who brought the black blot of shame of the US, did not look good when the light of public scrutiny shone on them. Which brings us to the complacent US press who may think that they already know what the Connor's Committe will reveal. Wrong! The US press is a mere shadow of the guts and brass it showed during Watergate. It's a tamed and defanged tiger at present. Little wonder and despite the news on line, its readership is continuing to decline...readers have a surfeit of glitz and glamour and of the lives of the rich and mighty, which is not speaking to the hard economic times that they are living. How long will the lambs be silent before they're truly slaughtered?

Dump the bathroom attendant Ben Bernanke

Today [26 June 2008], oil hit a high of us$140 a barrel, and the Dow Jones Average sank almost 360 pints. [This is simply a hastening weakness of the market which will dip further, and soon below the benchmark 10.000 mark!] Yesterday pronouncement by bathroom attendant and head of the US Federal Reserve that the prime interest rate would neither fall nor rise did little for the market. That was old news; everyone knew it for weeks on end. Bernanke and the anal hair stylist supremo and US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson haven't a klew as to how to deal with the US economic crisis. Pundits cheer them on now that they say the primary concern is inflation. Well, what is fueling inflation and how does the politics of a weak dollar affect it? You won't hear nary a word about that. Bernanke is useless and Paulson is a boob. The man or woman on the street knows that the US is in a bad recession but not these fools and the groupies surrounding them who live in the comfort of wealth and privilege. You cannot count on Herr Bush, and that ain't saying a lot since he has as thicker head as it comes to economics save those measures which enrich him and his cronies and his bloodsucking class. What about the cancer of the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown? speculation in commodities? heavy tax burdens without much relief on the middle classes? These creeps and their likes believe in a market which benefit solely them, and in consequent the system is showing serious signs of sclerosis and signs of shutting down. Throw the bums out. Isn't there an honest establishment economist who is worthy of his beans to replace these two arseholes?

Herr Bush caves in to Pyongyang

In a dead pan voice Herr Bush announced today [26 June 2008] that he is lifting sanctions of Trading with the enemy act against North Korea, and is calling on Congress to remove it from the list of terrorist states. For it part, North Korea handed over in Beijing a [full?] report of its nuclear activity as they promised to do in October 2007. Thus in the roller coaster ride of Herr Bush's opportunistic policy of dealing with the Kim Jong il regime, which pushed Pyongyang to explode an atomic device thereby making it the world's 9 country to possess nuclear weapons, Herr Bush had to throw in the towel and agree to terms that it could have had with less confrontation, hawkish posturing, and tin sheriff clean up the town attitude, 7 years ago. Thus, one panel of Herr Bush's foreign policy adventurism bites the dust utterly. It follows willy nilly that the establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang should follow. Herr Bush's announcement spells the political demise of South Korea's Lee Myung bak whose people are calling for his resignation owing to his decision to allow reimportation of US beef. Lee scuttled Seoul's Sunshine policy to please Herr Bush and to talk cold war rhetoric to firm up Washington's loosening of ties to its South Korean ally for the simple reason Herr Bush didn't cotton up to an opening towards Pyongyang. And now bye bye Lee as Herr Bush is doing the very same thing! Herr Bush's Nordpolitik dooms his brass knuckles approach towards Iran, who sees how effective and fruitful Pyongyang's handling of Herr Bush was. Herr Bush may think that he's scored a win win situation, but think again, he dropped the ball and had to settle for the appearance of a skilful mating of the North Korean king. He didn't.

Bush's July trip to South Korea called off

Wiser heads in Herr Bush's entourage have prevailed. He won't be going to Seoul to say a fond farewell as president of the US and big white brother of South Korea. South Korea is now going to let US beef to be sold on the Korean market place, which will pump more blood in angry South Koreans who have been demonstrating for the last almost 50 days, and calling of president Lee Myung bak's resignation. Lee isolated behind a wall of cargo containers and buses is beginning to show the demostrators that he has had enough. Is his backbone stiffening with encouragement of US advise? So 18Brumaire won't be surprised by pictures of tear gas canisters launched on crowds, nor baton wielding police and even military. Lee has tried apologising and appeasing the demonstrators; his tack didn't work, so it's bare knuckles time now in the streets of Seoul. Will that help Lee? Maybe yes, maybe no. Will his Grand National Party [GNP] back him up wholeheartedly? Maybe yes, maybe no. Lee is deaf to what is happening on the streets of Seoul; he's shuffled his cabinet but replaced them with the same thick heads he removed; he believes in an iron fist approach without a velvet glove, and as such, turmoil will rule the streets of Seoul, it seems. Lee has proven himself as an inexperienced pol even though he was mayor of Seoul, and as such, he will employ methods which will further isolate himself from his people, but not from his cheer leaders in the US. So for a while he will limp along, but the volatility in the markets, rising fuel prices, and rising inflation, sooner or later will be his downfall, and the GNP has a candidate in the wings ready to take over. As for Herr Bush, he's not welcome in South Korea.

Blabber mouth bruiser Richard Armitage advises John McCain on foreign and military affairs

The man with a loose lip and the body of prison guard and a shaved death head, Richard Armitage has the ear of John McCain on foreign and military affairs. We last heard of Armitage as the blabber mouth who innocently outed Valerie Plame and blew her CIA cover. Ain't that a laugh worthy of a Monty Python skit? A body of line backer and a man who in foreign service brought advice to US allies and foes with a snake's eye and clenched fist! Who would have thought he would turn out pinkie finger lifted as he sipped a dainty of cup of green tea with smear monger Robert Novak, this SVietnam vet had a refined lady coffee klatch penchant for gossip? So now this bruiser who resigned from the Bush administration along with his boss the shamed Colin Powell who lied about weapons of mass destruction at the United Nations, then set up his own consultancy Armitage Associates in Washington, is the hawkish backbone of McCain's foreign and military advisory committee. Go for broke and in more ways than one will McCain push the Iraq war envelope as billions are wasted on a bad war Herr Bush lied his way into. And Armitage belongs to that decision no matter how quickly he's going to say really boys, I'm a dove! Go tell that to the Marines! So as we all know McCain is running for president as Herr Bush redux and behind the false smile and with a back up like big mouth Armitage, we can expect the worst in months to come. Obama beware!

Israel a menace to peace

Rockets showered down on Israel from Gaza today [24 June 2008] breaking the calm of a hardly a week's old truce. Al Quds brigade claimed ownership in response to the Israeli army's murder of two Palestinian civilians in Nablus on the west bank. Even though the truce between Hamas in Gaza and the Olmert government does not cover the west bank, you would think that Israel would have the wisdom to keep a low key. No, the Zionist state has never waivered from making what it refers to Samaria and Judea Arab rein in the footsteps of Herr Hitler who wanted to make Germany and Europe Juden rein. The more Israel tightens its hold on the territory it took over 41 years ago in the June 1967 six day war, the more two independent states, living side by side is a chimera. Ultimately if things continue the way they are, there will be but one state Israel with an overwhelmingly Arab majority treated the same way blacks and coloured were treated in apartheid South Africa. Israel can in any sense be then thought of as a Jewish state, but of a Jewish over class trampling on the rights of Arabs. Ahad Ha Am warned Israel of this almost a century ago; Hannah Arendt gave up hope that the newly founded Zionist state would treat Palestinians equally, and so though a strong Jew culturally she turned her eyes more to Europe and to her adopted country the US. Israel has no intention of making peace; it is the Goliath whom so far no David has fallen. It may suffer humiliation in Lebanon but on its own turf it acts as stormtroopers. And as such is a menace to peace in its own backyard.

Zimbabwe -- Africa's shame

Zimbabwe's Africa's shame. The utterly mad behaviour of the Mugabe government hasn't till now been criticised by his fellow African head of states. Mugabe's refusal to step down, his demogoguery, and resort to murder and mayhen against his opponents has finally pushed timorous voice in Africa, not many albeit, to raise concern. A half-century or more of decolonisation has not broken the mindset of African leaders. Any wrong still rests with former colonial rulers. This transparenet excuse no longer obtains. The record of widespread corruption, rapine and rebellion and authoritarian rule in Africa countries are a matter of record. African leaders are not alone in pussyfooting around criticising rogue leaders; the ASEAN countries attitude towards Myunmar's military junta is a glaring example. However, Tabo Mbeki deserves our contempt. He has done everything to whitewash Mugabe's excesses. South Africa under apartheid represented a symbol of Africa's unity and Africa's division. Mbeki has continued that politic of cleavage in doing nothing but soothing Mugabe's ego whilst turning a blind eye to his murderously deliberate game plan of staying in power. Shame! Shame! Shame!

Where has US beef gone?

The US has renegotiated the beef agreement South Korea's president Lee Myung-bak signed in April whilst in Washington visiting his soul mate Herr Bush, and which has since has caused him untold misery from his own people who having protesting daily for the last 50 days or so, and are calling for his resignation. Bulldozer Lee has apologised twice, but the apologies didn't wash. He reshuffled his ministers but the new team is as out of step as the one it replaced. And so the crisis continues, and the question of credibility remains a burning issue. South Korea has a presidential system of government; to remove Lee from office means impeachment which may not obtain since his party, the Grand National Party, is the majority party, or pressure from within the GNP for him to resign, which is the more likely prospect, owing to Lee style of leadership which has alienated some of his own party. Many Korea hands feel, on the contrary, Lee will muddle through till his 5 years in office are over, and use the example of Herr Bush who is the least popular president in US history; but the analogy is flawed. It is announced that Herr Bush is planning a trip to South Korea if July. Speaking of bad timing, if anyone is unpopular in South Korea, it's Herr Bush, and with an unpopular friend like that, Lee will reap hailstones of protest, and thus push his party to force him out of the Blue House. Which ain't a bad idea!

America's fairness doctrine

Americans believe in value-free coverage in the media. A point of view, especially one that goes against received pious verities, has to be challenged by an opposing opinion. The result a boring rehash of emptiness, and a tilt towards prevailing held establishment views. Little wonder no one is listening. A democracy needs lively exchange of views, but what we get on cable and regular media is the same wornout bluster, blather, and cheer leading. Little wonder, too, vapidity rules and the country slumbers into dumber and dumberness.

Agreement on US beef imports to South Korea

Well Washington took its time to agree to South Korea's demands for modification of the thoughtless agreement South Korea's president Lee Myung-bak signed. The delay has infused a determined campaign by South Koreans calling for Lee's resignation. As we know, he's holed up in the Blue House, isolated from his people by a wall of cargo containers. Although he's reshuffled his cabinet, twice apologised to his people, he hasn't got the message. Bulldozer Lee, what an affectionate adjective?!, has little time left in office. Bubble head pundits and reporters in the US and the UK have largely ignored the protests and how weak Lee is. They will no doubt pat him on the back and of course Herr Bush for saving a man who threw himself at Herr Bush's feet to draw closer to the American president. Little good that's done Lee, as events have shown. Herr Bush's attitude towards South and North Koreas bear the stamp of ineptitude; Herr Bush prefers blindly going for the jugular vein rather than thoughtful diplomacy. And as a result, he has proved once again what a klutz he is and unworthy to his two terms as president of the US. More than tricky Dick Nixon, he has turned the US into a helpless giant, and as a weak man, wanting to prove he's couillons between his legs, he has undermined a willing ally in the Blue House in Seoul, our wet behind the ears, failed businessman Lee Myung-bak.

Renegotiating the US beef agreement. End in sight?

The word is out in Washington that Herr Bush's minions are close to renegotiating the agreement the impudent and naive and wet behind the ears South Korean president Lee Myung-bak signed when he was in the US two months ago, by which he gave the green light to reimport US beef to his country. This impetuous decision has caused a fire storm for Lee, and more than that, has given risen to daily street protests and a call for his resignation. Two 'sincere' apologies' to the nation brought nothing but sneers. Lee had dispatched his minister of trade Kim Joon hong to the US to renegotiate the agreement. You would've thought Herr Bush would be more understandable by easing the one South Korean president whom he thought much of, because Lee was more red white & blue than his two other predecessors. Well, he wasn't. And talks almost stopped before they started. Now a meeting of the minds is near. No matter what Herr Bush agrees to, he's inextricably plunged the knife deeper into Lee's self inflicted wound by originally allowing again the import of US beef to South Korea. He's weakened an ally and thereby opened a pandora's box on relations between the US and the ROK. Even though South Koreans fear mad cow disease, the issue is not really there. US beef is genetically modified through what it eats, and in what he eats has bone fragments which in other countries did account for the outbreak of mad cow disease. Still more the US ignored the symbolism of what home grown beef meant to South Koreans. US ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow didn't help matters by haughtily dismissing South Korean fears. He went so far to dismiss their concerns as though he were talking to a 5 year old. Which all goes to show you, he is not the right man in times of crisis and he typifies by his words that hoary figure of the 'ugly american'. Whatever the outcome of this flapdoodle, it is obvious Lee is a weed reed, and sooner rather than later will have to step down. And Herr Bush's foot dragging will simply have given more fuel to the quiet fires of South Korea's anti Americanism.

Asia Society buys a full page ad in the 'New York Times' to welcome vice minister Wang Qishang to New York

Herr Bush's anal hair stylist supremo and US secretary of the treasury is turning on the charm to extract open market concessions from China. China's special representative to the strategic US China economic dialogue has come to New York, and thus the full page ad in today's 'New York Times' [NYT] by the Asia Society and Japonica which costs more than a cool US$70.000. In fact, the 19 June issue of the NYT's article on the dialogue held in Washington is misleading. US and China agreed to ease foreign investment [financial section online], but anal hair stylist came away from the table with expressions of studying the questions which in plain, standard English translates into it is not going anywhere. Herr Bush minion Paulson poresa the schmaltz on Wang's visit, for the Asia Society will do moment is not fooled; he will got venture from his script to wow American business leaders and Asia hands, but when you look at the bottom line, he won't give anything but words in return for Herr Bush's concessions. Paulson is a fool; Wang recognises this, so he will play him like a two string Chinese fiddle, and dumb ly like little Jack Corner he will be satisfied with a plumb for being such a stupid boy wet behind the ears.

re than welcome him to New York with a full page ad. But wily old fox Wang is not for one second fooled by this fanfare. He will smile, make a speech for American business leaders to smile at and digest with lumps, but won't digress from China's plans to get as much out of Herr Bush without giving up a millemetre.

Should South Koreans forgive Lee Myung-bak?

Lee Myung-bak has apologised at least two times to the South Koreans for his decision to allow the reintroduction of US beef to his country. His people remain unmoved; his bowing has not stopped daily protests, nor quieted calls for his resignation. South Koreans are not in a forgiving mood these days. Lee forgot the sacramental symbol of beef in his own country, and therefore committed a heretical act, it seems. Even though he dispatched his ministerr of trade Kim Jong hoon to Washington to renogciate the agreement on American beef, Herr Bush's minions are not moved. Hardly had Kim begun discussions, the meeting was adjourned. Sensing another faux pas in a long list of diplomatic ineptitude, Washington came back to the table. You'd think Herr Bush would try to rescue Lee, the first president in Seoul's Blue House who wanted good ties with Washington; well, Herr Bush as we all know is tone deaf, so the talks will go on and on until the US wrings out other concessions from klewless Lee's minister. As a result, even if Kim brings back glad tidings to Lee, Herr Bush will have further weakened Lee who is holed up in the Blue House, behind a wall of shipping containers to keep away protesters. Thus, Lee is triply isolated: from Washington, from his people, and from himself. Not a good formula to rule over the world's 12 largest economy! What is clear: Lee has a short life as president. He has proven amateurish at best, inept and unfit for the South Korean presidency. His party has an able successor waiting in the wings since the Grand National Party [GNP] doesn't need to call elections as it holds a majority in parliament. In brief, Lee blew it.

China cracks down on Tibet

Natural disasters, floods, and loss of life have not stopped China from its appointed rounds of repression in Tibet. Resistance by Tibetans to China's more than a half century of harsh rule in Tibet, has torn off Beijing's benign mask of the mother's little helper in Sinocising Ts ibetans and bringing them willy nilly into the 20 and 21 centuries. Tibetan protest have exposed Beijing for what is, and what it is is a brutal dictatorship. China didn't welcome the world exposure to its imperial designs on Tibet, the more especially since it was primping itself as a Miss Goodie To Shoes hosting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party may very well be the darling of investment bankers, private equity investment, runaway shops, and the glee of free marketeers for its seemingly embracing Milton Friedman and advancing on the road to capitalism, but it's the proverbial leopard who by nature cannot change its spots. Still, world opinion should hold Beijing's feet to the fire for human rights violations, but also cultural genocide as it wishes to tear out root and branch Tibetan life and culture and attachment to Buddhism.

Offshore drilling in the US and oil rigs

If you needed proof positive that Herr Bush is a bumbler and a proveyor of snake oil, look at his remedy for rising oil prices. Off shore drilling which won't do much to push down prices; had he called for tapping into the US petroleum reserves, we would then know that he is trying to help the automobile owner in tanking up. He isn't. It's more hype and show business and without much substance. And if it were, there is no provision for oil rigs which are in short supply. So here is a man who thanks to his daddy's wealth spent years failing in the oil & gas business [pace Harken oil], and he shows his hand again, that he is as dumb and stupid in oil & gas. Little wonder, Herr Bush is an utter failure as president, and the US is a sad and sorrier nation for electing this martinet twice.

Subprime mortgage debt hits hard US regional banks

18Brumaire suggests that its readers go on www.nyt.com today. Look at the first page in the financial section for the dirt on how the smaller regional banks are drowning in subprime mortgage debt. If anyone especially the fools in Washington who keep reassuring us that there is light at the end of the tunnel on this matter, well, it ain't so. Truth be told, there may not be any light at all. The warped minds in Herr Bush's administration keep blithely going along as though there is no tomorrow, but there is, and it's today, and the long unpaid bills have come due. Look at the anal hair stylist and US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson who lordly and with a squeaky mouse like voice says that we need to cleanse the banks of bad practices, and then proceeds to put forth a plan which would keep strong public oversight on their sharp practices out of reach; now he is a strong advocates as ex CEO Goldman Sachs of bailing big banks out by large government handouts. But here's the rub, if the big bracket banks get all the attention, who's going to take care of the flailling and failing regional banks? And so we're not only skating on the thin ice of a bad recession, but the signposts are there for anyone to read that the ice will crack and nous voila in a worldwide depression. And Herr Bush smiles like the dolt he is, too in love with his own navel to give a tinker's damn.

Anal hair stylist Hank Paulson tries to snow China

A good photo of a broadly smiling anal hair stylist and US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, with earphones on his bald pate, shaking hands with Wang Qishang, a Chinese vice premier, here on a mission to discuss economic matters. Anal hair stylist supremo Paulson impatiently tried gently twisting China's arm to keep markets of theirs own to US penetration. Beijing has heard this before, and for one reason or another, have listened and accepted very little of Herr Bush's spokesman's advice. In fact, this time the Chinese had the advantage; they were giving as good as they had gotten from the US in the past. They lectured the anal hair stylist and Herr Bush on the way that they are mismanaging the American economy. They were getting their licks for all the times they heard smug anal hair stylists like Paulson preach the gospel of free markets and the evil of a command economy. Now they pointed an accusing finger at unregulated, cowboy style free economics which the anal hair stylist and Herr Bush & co. do and not take kindly too. In fact, frustrated, and without a bone of irony, Herr Bush & co. kept pushing for open markets and swearing on a stack of Adam Smiths and Milton Friedmans that the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown ain't for nothing in free markets. Well, the Chinese didn't swallow this heavy dosee of snake oil. China will laugh behind the anal hair stylist's back; it knows him like the back of its hand since he first came to China as CEO of Goldman Sachs to make money for his banks and for godfathering China into wealth and world markets. Beijing plays him like an er-hu, a two string Chinese fiddle, and Paulson is klewless smugly thinking he knows China better than the Chinese!

Who says the subprime crisis is over? Dow dips below 12.000

Let's not fool ourselves as Ben Bernanke does. There is no turning the corner on the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown. You turn a corner, and voila there's another corner. Truth be told, you're in a maze without Ariadne's string. Today [18 June 2008] the Dow fell below 12.000, this despite the euphoria of two days ago that things were turning up rosy in the financial sector. Well, wake up and smell the coffee, old cocks, it ain't. The big banks are carrying beaucoup subprime debt, and you begin to wonder with all the hype from the banks and the press and the US government whether the books aren't cooked! No one is willing to say the emperor's wearing no clothes, but the left wing press and blogs and the keen eyed who won't keep quiet. So here we are in a fine kettle of fish without a recipe...if we rely on business as usual, we're sunk, and ain't that the truth!

Negotiating with Seoul...does symbolism matter?

In today's 'Financial Times of London', Alan Beattie writes on 'Hard bargains: bilateral trade pacts are falling victim to domestic objections'. His case in point is the US beef brouhaha in South Korea. Beattie straightaways says that 'critics of bilateral trace pacts...are heavy on symbolism but light on content'. He is not wrong, but he is mistaken when he neglects the power of symbols. And in South Korea, beef is transubstantiated in to something which becomes the body and blood of its diet. Daily growing protests in Seoul against the reintroduction of US beef into South Korea, negotiated by the unschooled new president Lee Myung-bak hit a nerve; he was too eager to please Herr Bush, and had made a campaign pledge that once elected, he would tighten ties to the US. Herr Bush used his eagerness to twist Lee's willing arm, and thus we have a conflict which will in the end send Lee packing from the Blue House in disgrace. Beattie downplays symbolism in politics and symbolism has its value there. Had Herr Bush been more sensitive to South Korea, a country the US fought to preserve against the North Korean attack on 23 June 1950, and on whose soil the US maintain some 38.000 troops, he would or at least his closest advisors would be more savvy in dealing with Seoul. Well, he isn't and his diplomatic arm, the department of State with that gofer Condy Rice at its head, is just as klewless. So, here we are once again in a muddle which was easily avoidable but for the smugness of a declining power who thinks it can do anything it wants in the world. And the smugness is endemic. Maybe a new president would act differently, but 18Brumaire ain't too sure, given the influence of cold warrior and ex cia Korea hands who have easy access to the White House.

Impatient China lectures the US on running an economy

It's China's turn to wave an impatient finger at the US for bad management of its economy. Beijing has had to listen to hours of endless preaching by the likes of Hank Paulson and other minions of Herr Bush about running an economy. For them, China held on to old ideas about commanding an economy, whilst they firm believers of very goosey loosey free markets had lessons to teach China. Well now the shoe is on the other foot. The US economy is in deep trouble, and China weighed heavily down with US debt is asking not only for explanations but for regulating a wild west economy. 18Brumaire readers may wonder why. China has benefited greatly from America's deindustrialisation, of the transfer en bloc of US' manufacturing sector to China which brought US companies beaucoup profits, swan in us$billions in private equity or investment capital funds which gave a strong vitamin b12 shot to China's so called road to capitalist development, and to tap into the Chinese brain and brawn for success. And such a strategy has worked too well, for now the US is the sick godfather who is a drain on China's money, time, and energy. Well, as 18Brumaire has earlier noted, the Chinese had pegged the reminbi yuan to the US$; over time Washington has called for its re evaluation as the us$ grew weaker and weaker, but Beijing turned a deaf ear to such pleas. Now for its own hard nosed approach to currency, it's seeing a holes in its money pockets. And so you've the Chinese who've learnt many capitalist lessons but never gave up the virtues of a command economy are growing impatient with an insouciant Bush administration incapable of reform. And so you've the pupil telling the teacher what to do and do it quickly. A futile exercise since smug Herr Bush won't budge an inch. Meanwhile China hit by the effects of natural and man made disasters has much to worry about, but the economy is in command, and so impatient China will lecture the US till something gives..and knowing smug capitalist that might not come soon.

Big Bracket Banks goose that laid golden eggs has gone sterile owing to the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown

Alan Greenspan's silliness notwithstanding, the light is not at the tunnel for the big bracket banks saddled with subprime mortgages. So that readers won't mistake who they are, let 18Brumaire list them: Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Cupidity, the lure of big bucks made them make wrong decisions in moulding fancy, tricky, and unreliable financial instruments such as CDO's, ABS's, & SVU's. Corruption and skewing of the market by sophisticated and suspect strategies of theirs. Malovalence played its role, too, for these big boys and some girls took advantage of America's poor and financial ill equiped, to buy into the American dream of owning a house without much, if any at all, collateral, and chained to onerous fineprint of draconian repayment schedules. And lastly, incredultiy, that such fine heads of finance capitalism could go wrong. Which they did. Note the absence of JP Morgan Chase which is now masquerading as the old robber baron J.P. Morgan & co. It has subprime holdings, and what's more it's purchased at a steal the rotten mortgage book of Bear Stearns. So, no more golden eggs for these thieves profits; expect poor balances sheets. And what's more so far these pickpockets have already written down us$380billion, and the counting is not over yet. 18Brumaire conservatively reckons that these Ponzi schemers will have to shell out more than us$1000 billion or more than a cool us$1 trillion and we're not sure if that figure scrapes the bottom of the subprime mortgage barrel. The big bracket banks can count on one thing, the US government will help bail these criminals out; it has little choice, and doesn't give a rat's arse about the rest of the country or the world but only cares for its platinum lined pockets and wealth

France and the Middle East

Today in the 'New York Times' the bitter Maureen Dowd cocked her snoot at the French. Elitist, self-absorbed, and the usual spate of stereotypes that middlebrow Americans like to tout about the French. However, smug Americans, especially in Herr Bush's circles might do well to take a leaf out of the pages of France's diplomacy in the Middle East. [18Brumaire knows that this will raise hackles among the Israeli lobby!] An envoy from the Quai d'Orsay has met with Syria's president Bashar Al Assad to sort out differences on Lebanon and restore a more normal dialogue with Damascus. Something which is sorely lacking from Herr Bush's night blindness when it comes to Syria and the Middle East. Little is known about today's meeting, but what is certain is that the door is not as in the US case, slammed shut in Syria's face.
Herr Bush has done what a Chinese proverb warns anyone against. Not to pick up too big a rock to throw at anyone lest as it often happens that very rock will land and crush your own toes. And that is without question or doubt that has happend to Herr Bush. The whole region is waiting for Herr Bush to get out of office before any thing which looks like a meeting of minds can occur. And that short wait owing to the monumental problems that Herr Bush leaves the US in, will take some time, and time alas is not on the US' side. Herr Bush's ineptitude has done much to dilute US power and to weaken it internally as a country.

Condy Rice huffs and puffs at Israeli settlements in Palestine

US secretary of state Condy Rice deserves the Pinochio prize for telling tales. She's very angry at Olmert's Kadmina-led Israeli government for extending illegal Israeli settlements in what the world knows as Palestine or Palestine territories. Her current display of high dudgeon won't fool anyone, the more especially she as running dog for Herr Bush has steadfastly backed Israel up and down the line on whatever policy that it pursued. Take Olmert's dumb war against Hezbullah which Israel lost big time, and which did much to tarnish its reputation as the bully on the Mideast block. Mme Rice took her good time to utter any condemnation nor used her influence to restain her Israeli client. Yep, Israel is the US' client; Washington generously doles out billions in US tax dollars for economic and military support, and then with a generous sponge erases that debt, whilst it penny pinches its own needs and the needs of its own citizenry. This imbalance has gone way off kilter especially during Herr Bush watch at the White House. Condy Rice is a femme de paille, and should be roundly criticised for her complete obedience not to her country but to the blockhead who is president of the US. It should also be noted that she and Colin Powell and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld among others sat around a table in the White House trying to figure out torture techniques which become common coin of the realm in Abu Gharib, Bagram, and Guantanamo. For this she and Herr Bush and that loathesome Dick Cheney and the stupid Donald Rumsfeld deserve to brought before an international tribunal for crimes of war. Here recent anger at Israel to get back to the topic, is a display of frustration that under her tenure at Foggy Bottom, she has proven unable to come up with a plus for Herr Bush in a long series of foreign policy failures. Israel will continue to do as it pleases; Herr Bush has abdicated any power to restrain the Israeli pitbull.

China recognises Taiwan as an equal?

No one is saying anything. Yet the facts speak for themselves. By signing an agreement in Beijing between the government of Taiwan and the government of China on direct flights between Beijing and Taipeh, China has de facto recognised that Taiwan is a sovereign and independent state! Let Beijing bluster and threaten but in the end like it or not, China has recongised as an equal on the international chessboard Taiwan as a state in its own right!

South Korea's minister of trade scurries like a sacred rat to Washington

Things aren't going the way Lee Myung-bak, South Korea's embattled president, planned. Mounting, daily protests keep him holed up in the Blue House, so afraid is he of his own people owing to his fateful, arse kissing measure to please Herr Bush, by allowing the reintroduction of US beef to Korean markets. Now he's sent his minister of trade Kim Joon-hun scurring like a sacred rat to beg Herr Bush to renegotiate the deal on US beef. Already a bureaucrat from the department of agriculture is saying loud and clear, there's nothing to talk about. So 18Brumaire asks what piece of South Korean sovereignty is Lee Myung-bak willing to give up to Herr Bush in order to stay in office? We shall soon see. Lee has proved a broken weed.

Will Lehman Brothers fail as Bear Stearns did?

Bets aren't off that at year end or end of 1 quarter 2009 the Feds will have another investment bank failing. A shakeup at Lehman yesterday [12 June 2008] followed the same sad scenario that smug Jimmy Cayne orchestrated at Bear Stearns in September 2007. Lehman chose a man strong in equity markets to handle a debt crisis! If he is made of the same timber as Alan Schwartz who caved into the Sunday massacre of Bear Stearns on 18 March 2008, there's little hope for Lehman Brothers. And what's more its stock keeps falling and falling and falling. It's now at us$27 or thereabouts, and it will fall even more, maybe to us$10 a share the price at which the evil Jaime Dimon bought for a song Bear Stearns at a pirate's plunder rate! The street says Lehman's books are cleaner than Bear Stearns, but unless they're exposed fully on the open market place, we've no way of knowing. Only time will tell as Lehman teeters on the brink!

Are touts taking odds how long Lee Hyung-bak will reamin president of South Korea/

Touts should out everywhere offering odds on how long the beleagured South Korean president Lee Hyung-bak can remain in office! It doesn't look as though he will last as John Chang Myung...a year...before the military ousted him in the early 1960's. For 18Brumaire readers today's edition of the grey lady the august doyenne of American papers 'The New York Times' has a wonderful photo on the side pages of the of a wall of shipping containers smeared with grease and oil the better to keep South Korean protesters calling for Lee Hyung-bak's resignation from scaling them. What's this obsession with walls--has an Israeli fever spread to Seoul...or an American obsession for that matter of a wall built to spearate in Iraq Sunni from Shia? Lee's wall is to keep South Koreans from bringing protest to the very gates of the Blue House where he is holding up. The protesters with a wink of the eye for irony have dubbed this boxcar borderline as a border separating South Korea from a sign saying from here begins the US of Korea. Not only that the popular imagination has made fun of Lee's name by calling him 'Lee Yong-wan', a Yi dynasty minister who helped the hated Japanese in their quest to take over Korea. Now that says much about the slim odds touts should give on Lee's chances for survivial. This man who was swept in on a landslide vote and took power in March, has proven to be a straw man...he may talk tough, but he's a tin ear when listening to the voice of his people! The bids are open...

China's trade balance to the US puts the anal hair stylist Hank Paulson on the spot

Of course the publishing of record trade deficit stats with China will be readjusted but the amount is staggering at a time of financial and social crisis in the US. Anal hair stylist Hank Paulson's performance at the Treasury is a big disappointment to put it mildly. As CEO of Goldman Sachs, he had rubbed elbows with the Chinese rulers and elites and helped make them big bucks not forgetting to cash cheques of theirs for services well rendered in to Goldman Sachs burgeoning coffers. Beijing knows the anal hair stylist very well...they appreciate the way he has braided their anal hairs and coated them in gold. Beijing knows the measure of the man so well that they play him like a violin, and that's a reason why his dealing with them is lackluster. A few days ago he and the bathroom attendant at the US Fed Ben Bernanke were speaking up the 'mighty' US$...the anemic dollar responded briefly, then fell back, and as such the price of a barrel of oil shot up again. 18Brumaire has called for throwing Paulson and Bernanke to the sharks, on Congress to be more agressive in demanding they do a better job, and on the public to write letters expressing anger at these arseholes defending big business and the very rich whilst throwing hardly a bone to the suffering American masses.

Lehman Brothers survival

The American doyen of letters Gore Vidal in a Sunday 'New York Times' Book Review issue when asked about speaking truth to power, suggested readers subscribe to the 'Financial Times of London'. And he's right. Today's issue [11 June 2008] reports that Lehman are in negotiation with Korean bankers for a bailout and a stake in the 4 largest American bank. Citibank which ain't unaffected by the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown, but certainly in better health than Lehman, estimate that Lehman still has us$65000m or us$65bn in subprime debt on its balance sheet. And so, we see Lehman the ghost of Bear Stearns hovering over Lehman. Bear, too, sought to tap into hefty Asian coffers, not in Korea, but in China. China's Citic Group got cold feet and left Bear hanging in the wind and forced to give up the ghost to JPMorgan Chase. Laser like attention to Lehman is driving down share prices and bad mouthing its management will result by 2009 of another huge bank failure on Wall Street, 18Brumaire is willing to believe.

18Brumaire buried Lee Myung-bak too soon

18Brumaire wrote off Lee Myung-bak too soon. Nonetheless we stand behind our prediction that he hasn't got too many days left as occupier of the Blue House. His cabinet in true Confucian style offered its resignation en masse. It won't be accepted; faced with a candlelit demonstration of 80.000 over, Lee knows time is running out for him. Herr Bush isn't going to help him; he won't rescind nor renegotiate the deal to reintroduce US beef to South Korea. If Lee had any sense of irony, he would've taken a page out of Japan's book. Tokyo agreed to allow importation of US beef again in 2006; its inspectors found impurities in the beef, and quickly banned it. Had Lee any political savvy, he could've done as much, and enhanced his reputation as a forceful leader. Well, Lee hasn't such qualities, and as a result, he's boxed himself into a corner. US ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow hasn't helped matters, too. Herr Bush's gauleiter is tone deaf and with a missive slap on the face he spoke these very words: Koreans 'begin to learn more about the science and facts of American beef'; if they did, he went on to twist the knife of insult into Korea's respect for high quality beef, then they could deal with the matter 'constructively'. And there you have it; gauleiter Vershbow is not only tone deaf and arrogant but acts like the cock of the walk of an imperial lord. With a friend like this, Lee's career offers little hope of survival.

Herr Bush's farewell visit to Europe

Anyone with a good shortwave radio or a satellite dish should be amazed at the complete blathered the American media are spouting about Herr Bush's farewell swing in Europe. What seems to puzzle them collectively [allowing for a few exceptions] is that unlike other trips, there are no loud, threatening demonstrations against Herr Bush. Silly geese, they! Doesn't not occur to them, he is damaged goods and is soon going to be out of office? Herr Bush has done his damage in foreign and domestic policy. War and devastation at home and abroad. War against the non monied class and big corrporation and devastation of America's social fabric; war against Iraq and a blind militancy against anyone and everyone who didn't kow tow to the Herr Bush. He waged a misguided war against terror which has done more to create more anti Americans and fill the list of recruits to fight the US with any means available; on the economic front he has sought to beggar world markets through a gigantic Ponzi scheme knows as subprime financial instrutments, and big bully any country who didn't follow his bidding. He's a failure up and down the line, yet his 8 years in office has left the world in more danger than before he swore of his bible to honour and uphold the sanctity of the democracy he tried to force down everyone's throat, like it or not; he spread corruption, pestilence, inefficiency, gave new life to torture...in sum, he proved to be a world menace. It's not too soon to see his back, and that very well may explain why no one bothered to deign to acknowledge his insignificance during his last tour of Europe as 43 president of the US.
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South Korea's Lee Myung-bak resigns

Is Lee Myung-bak the Grand National Party's man in the Blue House a flash in the pan? It seems so. Carried to the presidency of South Korea by a landslide majority in less than 5 months, he's out.
Herr Bush welcomed his election because Lee campaigned on closer US ROK ties which had loosened more out of Herr Bush's dumb policy towards South Korea; Herr Bush didn't take kindly to Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine policy towards that axis of evil North Korea, which his successor Roh Myun-hoo continued. And in the end Herr Bush's blustering brought him to dealing directly with Kim Jong-il. Herr Bush is a chump so when he warmly greeting the newly elected Lee Myung-bak in Washington, he twisted the poor fellow's arm and got not only a free trade agreement out of him but a signature on the dotted line allowing for the reintroduction of US beef to South Korea. Now, beef is a sacrament in South Korea in the same way the purity of cooked white rice is in Japan; in wanting to please Herr Bush Lee unleashed a fire storm of violent protests which brought down his short-lived government, and not only questioned his competence but threw into doubt his plans for privatisation heand coolish relations with Pyongyang. Speak of short sightedness, well, Lee takes the cake! With Lee gone from the scene, the GNP still retains a majority in parliament, and has the dictator Park Chung Hee's daughter Madame Park ready to take charge of the party and the government. She's not faded lily, she. She's for stronger ties with Washington, but she won't eat US beef! and what's more, she's already gone to meet Kim Chong-il in Pyongyang, and thus will take a more nuanced approached to North Korea than the late, but not lamented Lee Myung-bak.

Ben Bernake lets off another loud fart on inflation

You'd think that we'd give another loud yawn when US Fed chief and Herr Bush's bathroom attendant speaks. Well, we don't. With American markets in shambles, here he goes again about inflation. What obsesses him and his ilk so much about inflation which with this or that so far is of secondary importance? It's a mantra which he and mainstream economists chant every morning, noon, and night, and think that saying so will keep inflation down and the US economy going along with God's speed. Wrong. A weak dollar is doing Herr Bush in. Now, we're seeing the full frontal results of his socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor coming home with a vengeance. Bathroom attendant Bernanke simply follows his betters, if he says it is so, then it is so reality be damned! Well, what about a very weak dollar? Rising oil prices? Rising food prices? Rising unemployment? Financial markets paralyzed by the subprime Ponzi scheme krash? Very weak growth in US GDP? The laundry list can go on and on and on but you get the point. Herr Bush & co.'s policies have hit black ice and are spinning out of control, and such luminaries like anal hair stylist Henry Hank Paulson at Treasury and bathroom attendant Bernanke are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Yes, the sky is falling and they are incapable of doing anything right. And among Herr Bush's shock troops in the houses of Congress, they will not go for a windfall profit tax on big oil whose arrogant CEO's mocked senators who challenged big salaries, bonuses of theirs and their politics of bilking the American people! No siree...And if Bernanke and Paulson flap their lips with insouciance how are they going to deal with the not so far off of the 4 largest investment bank Lehman Brothers who is in deep shit of subprime fecal matter? JPMorgan Chase ain't around to pick up the pieces this time since they're chocking on the bloody meat that Bear Stearns brought. Don't say 18Brumaire has warned you...the D word is being whispered more and more loudly this days in the corridors of the financial world...yes, depression and a bad one at that. And so Bernanke's smelly farts can not mask that danger at all, at all.

Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

An Israeli minister has had to eat his intemperate words. Israel is backtracking on the threat to nuke Iran if the US won't do it. And the US for all the bluster it can command ain't. In the last few months of the Bush administration and if the world is lucky the defeat of John McCain the Dr. Strangloves of the US will be sent backing to Texas and Arizona and America's lunatic fringe chastened and defanged for a good quarter century at least. Teheran is getting away with bravado and chest thumping, which Saddam Hussein couldn't. The US is stuck in Iran and in deep dodo as Herr Bush's pappy liked to say, and the US is much the weaker for its adventurist foreign policy. So mini mice of Iran can tweak Herr Bush's tail, and he can roar like the rest and is not in a position to do much than shout and scream and look like Jack Oakey's Mussolini in a Chaplin film. McCain should know better, but he doesn't, so hungry is he that he's willing to let the lunatic right of the US to screw him royally up his arse. And so it goes the age of jackals is fading...let's fervently hope and the world will be better for it.

NY Fed Cheif Geithner speaks out--the worries of a member of the gang of 4

Even a mildly deaf person heard the sudden crush of the New York market on 6 June 2008. It suffered its steepest lost in years. Rising unemployment and a spike of us$10 in the price of a barrel of oil to us$139, another sound barrier broken. Now a member of the Gang of 4, the ones who torpodoed Bear Stearns, and sold it to Jaime Diamon at JPMorgan Chase for 30 pieces of silver,Tim Geither, chief bottle washer at the NY Fed, is calling for a shake up in the financial community. Let's face it, the US markets are in a mess, owing to malign neglect of the monied classes which have the presidency and the houses of Congress and some may say the Supreme Court in their hip pocket. Government oversight has been steadily weakened, especially under the watch of the toilet bowl cleaner Alan Greenspan. Greed was good; the bottom line and coupon clippers ruled the roost; what was good for the rich was good for the US, and the hard working stiff be damned. And now Gauleiter Geithner is calling for a gleichanschaltuung of financial markets, to save his paymasters. The subprime Ponzi scheme collapse has made the whole financial network here and abroad HIV+. Gauleiter Geither's call may not fall on deaf ears but his class and caste haven't the political will nor the economic foresight for reform. Just look at Herr Bush's banal words as he set off for his swan song among his peers in Europe. They're meaningless and vacuous and ingenuous. He simply doesn't give a tinker's damn. Never has. He thinks and rewards his cronies and the class the Bush's fought hard to get into. Let's see what this mage of New York can do. Gauleiters usually end up at the end of the rope, and Herr Geithner is giving himself enough to choke on his own bromides.

Another subprime statistics

The Mortgage Bankers Insurers Association [MBIA] have fessed up another earth shattering statistic. The Subprime Ponzi Scheme has brought homeowner equity in the US to a new all time low [for the moment]. The loss is ringing up to more than US$1,3trillion. Ain't that a kick in the head. And if that isn't bad enough, the Financial Times of London, among other financial sheets, reports that American and European banks are writing off almost us$400 billion, slightly more than 50 per cent by European mortgage backed debt holders. Which all goes to show how slick America's investment banking houses were in shedding the burden on their equally greedy peers in Europe and also likely in Asia. And if that is not enough, the gods bless, New York State attorney general Andrew Cuomo who is holding the rating agencies of Moody's and Standard & Poors' feet to the fire of the law, for their willingness to grant AAA or A3 status to CDO's, ABS, and the like without any dollar substance to support the debt they carried. If you didn't know it before, Moody's & S&P like the magicians they are got kick backs from the investment banking houses to prop up their debt for the most part. Now with fines and court cases and evidence on the books, they've now agreed to rating debt through fees which all banking houses contribute to for an even handed weights and balances of the debt. But this is but another chapter in an encyclopedia not yet finished on the effects of the scam that greedy Wall Street houses perpetrated with the helping hand of Herr Bush & his acolytes.

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Splashed across the upper fold of today's Financial Times of London is a photo in colour of three people leaving the artist's church in Paris--St. Roch--in black and with the mournful sorrow that funeral's allow. On the left in black and with a grim expression is president of France Nicholas Sarkozy, in the middle the sad face of his wife Carla Bruni Sarkozy, a former model, caught with the swift movement as though she stepped out of a fashion show's walk, and in a pants suit from the drawing boards of Yves St. Laurent, whom she came to mourn and pay her last respects, and then there was Pierre Berge, whom the camera caught not only in deep sorrow but in the grief he felt at the loss of his lover, his life long campanion, and business partner. All three are in traditional black, and that black captures the spirit of all France honouring her talented son who at 21 a reed like waif revolutionised women's fashion in 1959! A son of France's Algeria born in the port city of Oran, made famous in Camus' La Peste, who brought through 5 decades the fashion world to newer heights. France has buried a distinguished son, whose sexuality it never questioned.

The demise of Bear Stearns--the plot thickens

We know that Bear Stearns tried at the 11 hour to gather us$30bn to stave off bankruptcy, and allow the bank to fall into the rapacious hands of JPMorgan Chase. Citic walked away from a good deal which it had previous negotiated with Bear Stearns,which for them proved right. Now, today's Financial Times of London let's another cat out of the bag: through the good offices of Lazard Freres, Bear Stearns approached Temesak for a life line. The savvy Singapore fund who already had put some eggs from its basket into UBS and Citibank, also walked away from the table. It reasoned that one, Bear Stearns was too American, albeit with a growing and dynamic international banking division which had broken ice in China, and too financially speaking its rescue would bring tonnes of bricks on its head for a bad deal. And so another exhibit slips into the Bear Stearns dossier for the book that is being written on the rape and the demise of Bear Stearns.

The Fed's bathroom attendant Bernanke talks up the us$

Has Herr Bush's bathroom attendant at the US Fed got religion? or have the vapours from the cleaning fluids he is using to clean the messy toilets the toilet bowel cleaner Alan Greenspan left? Suddenly the bathroom attendant is looking at the sagging dollar; he is talking up the anemic US cuarrency the weakness of which partly has fueled speculation in the oil & gas and commodity markets. 18Brumaire is not a trained economist but even his eldest grandson could tell you that the strength or weakness of the Yankee dollar is proportionally tied to the rise and fall in the price of a barrel of oil or a troy ounce of gold, so on and on. Of course the pundits blame the roaring economies of China or India, the spreading growth of middle classes in these two new Asia tigers, their ravenous appetite for this or that. It is the age old story of seeing the speck of dust in thy neighbour's eye but not the mote in thine. Herr Bush & co. squandered when he came to office a us$5300m bank account through the reckless pursuit of socialism for the rich and private enterprise for the poor. He's has strongly defended the private sector and lessened government oversight, thereby letting the foxes of corruption and malfaisence [sic] into the public chicken coop, to plunder at will. The subprime Ponzi scheme is a good example where government gave Wall Street licence for rapine and mayhem, and look what it gave us--turmoil in the market place. Herr Bush has pushed the envelope further than his predecessors, and his policies, his failed war in Iraq, his poor choice of advisers, his muleheadedness...when you do the sums have rocked the economic foundations of not only the US but the world economy. Now through the back door, Bernanke is saying the Fed will regulate the US$,to put pressure on the speculators who are betting short on everything in the economy to make a quick buck. Is it a little too late? And if the bathroom attendant hasn't enough shit to scrape off the American economy, he may have another failed big bracket Wall Street bank on his hands. Lehman Brothers is the object of the same rumour mongering and agressive attack that sank the late Bear Stearns. Yet, with a ballooning debt, deep social problems and growing unrest, Herr Bush's bathroom attendant is slow to act. And such is the tale of woe the world is reading, and little they can do about it since everyone is tied one way or the other to the US$ and the deleterious policies of Herr Bush

The anal hair stylist doing his shtick in Dubai

El supremo anal hair stylist and US secretary of the treasury Hank Paulson is in the trucial states to soothe the worries of the sheiks who hold big stakes in a sinking dollar and who are creating sovereign funds with this anemic dollars to buy America. What new anal hair style can this arse licker produce, you may ask? Very little but spitting out staccato like the bromides that won't do these big dollar holders much good. And now speculation in oil prices are such that the dollar may fall even further, but the anal hair stylist Paulson keeps shoveling out the shit. It is a known fact, anal hair stylist, a one per cent improvement in the yankee dollar makes the barrel of oil fall us$4...so a 20 per cent shot of governmental vitamin b 12 would drop the price us$80 and bring much awaited relief to the market and knock down the price to us$60 a barrel which OPEC thought fair even if consumers didn't. Paulson deserves to be kicked his soft arse for stupidity and the amount of shit he's willing to lob at us.

The saga of the subprime meltdown continues

And everyone who's anyone is saying that the markets have quieted; that we've turned a corner, and yes, we have in a way, but there's no light at the end of the subprime nightmare. Yesterday [3 June 2008] the dow jones average climbed out of a steeper fall to a loss of some 134 points. If you listened to the endless news chatter on radio or television the reason why wasn't apparent until you heard that the US 4 largest bank Wachovia ousted its CEO. And why? because the bank is deep in the dodo of subprime mortgages. WaMu is in trouble too, and am sure Jaime Dimon is lighting candles to his saints, that the Gang of 4 [Bernanke, Cox, the fool from commerce, and Paulson] threw him the sop of Bear Stearns, when he was thinking of buying WaMu. But the meltdown is also drowning British banks, particularly Bradford & Bigley. And what's more the ratings agencies who worked hand in glove with the banks in givings the suspect CDO's, Abs's, and other tricky financial instruments, based on wishful thinking top grades...AAA or A3, and who are part of the scandal and the problem affecting the financial markets, downgraded the big bracket bank debt to a level skirting junk! George Soros is raising the alarm that owing to more tricky financial wizardry he forsees the bursting of the oil bubble, and should that happen, well, we might have a replay of the krash of 1987 when the dow dropped 500 points, trading stopped, and everyone went into a panic mode. As we all know privatisation and the serious weakening of government regulation has sown mischief among the big thieves in the financial community and robbed they did. The bill is here to be paid but the big boys will get away with hardly a scratch, even though they deserve long prison terms or worse, and the little people who sweat blood to make a living will get it in the neck!

US intelligence gets it wrong again...on North Korea's plutonium cache

It's deja vu all over again. For grey beards who remember the CIA's infamous report proving that the Soviet Union was outstripping the US in military and economic strength, we now have another come uppance for America's intelligence powerhouse. After more or less sifting through 18.000 documents which the Kim Jong-il regime handed over to the US, it now appears that the much beating of war drums about North Korea's ability to produce enriched uranium is turning out to be Herr Bush's mouse that roared. Pyongyang acknowledges that it has produced 37 kilogrammes of enriched plutonium not the 178 kilogrammes that the Herr Bush's intelligence services proclaimed. Once again, the mantra is heard of the propaganda war which Herr Bush is waging through lies, more lies, and damned statistics. Which once again raises the question that any US intelligence guestimates or reports should be immediately suspect, and taken with a grain of salt even if they are spot on. Herr Bush may very well be applying Heinz Kissinger's rule of thumb, when you use force it is better to use 30 per cent more than is necessary than 5 per cent less then necessary...whenever you use force you have to do it hysterically. And Herr Bush's success story in foreign diplomacy is full of ripped up streets, bombed buildings, and unmitigated failure on the whole. Like peck's bad boy found with his hand in the cookie jar, we cal say with authority that we gotta yah! Still, Herr Bush knows no shame, and like him US intelligence will click Prussian heels and follow the leader's wishes instead of doing what intelligence should be doing independent work and exercising independent judgment.