Thursday, July 31, 2008

China's imperial hand sqeezes Zambia's testicles

Zambia is a mountain of copper. China has long helped Zambia develop its infrastructure and its copper mines for the orange goal. In the mist of revolutionary times when China had not applied the onerous logic of free enterprise, Lusaka found in China a relatively good partner. But no more. China imports its own workers; its own materials for construction; its own this and own that for its own needs and the needs of its personnel that it brings from China. On the other hand, it exploits Zambian labour at a pace and a rate which could easily come out of the novels of Dickens or Zola. China is a harsh foreign helper. It has no concern for workers' health, workers' rights, workers' welfare. And why should it? Beijing doesn't care a whit for its own people back in China, so why should it care for the welfare and decent living wages for exploited Zambian copper workers. To Beijing, Zambia equals copper and that's that. For the Zambian elite, it means money but who gets the benefits from King Copper. Certainly, not the ordinary Zambian. And so we have a neat replay of imperialism of yore with a Chinese face today in Zambia.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Corrupt Ehud Olmert gets the boot

Corrupt Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, is stepping down. And about time. They got the goods on him for having accepted a paultry us$150.000 from an American with dual citizenship for favours done or soon to be granted. Will Olmert go to prison? Is that too much to hope for? Malfeasance. Corruption. Two of the many sores on the decay Israeli state. What about the peace process? Don't make 18Brumaire laugh! Zionism has had but one goal since emigrants began coming to eretz Yisroel in the early 20 century: to clear the land of Arabs from the Mediterrean to the Jordan river, and in 60 years through thick and thin, the Zionist state will attain its goal. Paradoxically, by incorporating Arabs, even those housed in Israeli style Bantustans, the Jews will become a minority, and like the white government in South Africa, it too will fall to the will of majority and with that the ideal of Herzel's Judenstaat will belong to history and the dusty shelves of bad novels. So bye bye Olmert, you gonif!

Bye bye corrupt Stevens of Alaska

The axe is finally falling on the neck of the grand old man of Alaskan politics, Ted Stevens, the longest Republican serving in the US Senate. The FBI has the goods on the man who sold his votes to an oil service company for a measley us$250.000, to upgrade a house of his. The man like countless others, will end up in gaol where he belongs.

The CIA discovers that Pakistan's InterServicesIntelligence is in league with the Taliban and al Qaeda

Were I am an American citizen I would ask for my tax monies back. What the hell has the CIA been doing? Anyone can go to a good public library or a well stocked book shop in the endless malls that grace the heartland of America, and find books that will tell you as much, to wit, that Pakistan's CIA the ISI has been in bed with the Taliban since the dictatorship of General Zia Ul Haq who died mysteriously in an aeroplane bombing along with the US ambassador and a slew of Pakistani generals 30 years ago. Herr Bush knows this but he's ill conceived stroking the feathers of Pakistan, a state founded on Islam, has gone to the extremes in foreign and domestic policy. It boggles the imagination once again the failure of US intelligence services to see what is plainly right before their eyes. Everyone shrieked, 'Horrors', when senator Obama suggested that since Islamabad won't take care of the Taliban and al Qaeda for whom Pakistan is a haven, we 'nuke 'em'. Obama's knew what he was talking about when he suggested this as a threat to spur Mushareff to action. It didn't happen, but Obama once again saw what other preferred not seeing and played the ostrich with its pink arse exposed for all to see. Pakistan and the ISI won't let Afghanistan free of its influence nor its grip, and thus, the collusion between the ISI and the Taliban and al Qaeda and the freedom the latter two have in the Waziristans. Herr Bush has proven himself to be a witless idiot, once again, and his own spy outfits won't tell him anything and with reluctance, the fool in the Oval Office doesn't want to hear.

Herr Bush's empire collapses

The cruel structures of Herr Bush's neo conservative empire are falling into ruin. Financially, he's bankrupting the US by leaving a debt of us$482bn; strategically, he's lied his way into war in Iraq, and has stretched the military supply of cannon fodder [the pool of the poor, the oppressed, and the immigrant masses]; he's botched the war in Afghanistan. His court favourites are under the laser law of the law and many are disgraced and some may even end up in prison once Herr Bush is out of office. The rich whom he's favoured have ruin riot in hedonistic living and have grown fatter and decadent and corrupt thanks to Herr Bush's tax cuts. Herr Bush has torn up the US constitution to impose his imperial presidency; his minions have rewritten laws and conventions to condone torture and high crimes and unusual punishments for whom he perceives to be his enemies. Were Freud alive today, he surely would in disgust turn Herr Bush into a case study of the weak Caesars that fell one after the other during the decline of Rome. The US deserves better, but Herr Bush's corporate friends have bought the country for their own gain. And a sadder day it is that that has happened. Herr Bush's managed to turn the US into the sick man of globalism.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Anal hair stylist Hank Paulson won't defuse the US financial meltdown?

Try as he might, anal hair stylist supremo & US secretary of the Treasury won't be able to defuse nor reasonably managed the US financial and mortgage market meltdown. One, he's implicated in engineering the meltdown as former CEO of Goldman Sachs; two, ideologically and tempermentally, he is against regulation and government guidance unless it means a wider berth for laissez faire capitalism and finance capitalism. Both have proved a failure today. He has but 6 months left in office so against high winds and strong currents in the financial and mortgage industry, he will try to ride out this perfect storm, and do things, he's subjectively and objectively opposed to. Had he read Galbraith's the crash of 29, he would have learnt a thing or two.

Perfidious Jerusalem

You can bet your bottom pence that Israel will end up gobbling up all of the west bank. Gauleiter Olmert has given the green light for more settlements which Israel promised that it would refrain from establishing in the hopes of a peace treaty with the Palestinian authority. Fat chance! The dream of eine Judenstaat is now well after a century close at hand. Paradoxically as Jerusalem swallows up all the land from the sea to the borders with Jordan, it will become less Jewish unless it can expel millions of Palestinians. So bye bye erets ivri...soon to become overwhelmingly erets arvi! Fickle is the finger of fate?

Death of Herr Bush's foreign policy in Latin America

Fidel Castro may remain hidden from public view like the long awaited Mahdi, but Herr Bush's foreign policy in Latin America has turned out to be a total disaster. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has linked up with Russia. Herr Bush cannot do much about Russian arms going to Carcas for the simple and plain truth that Senor Chavez supplies a good third of US' oil needs. So much for the smarty pants neocons and their unlearnable leader Herr Bush. And then there's Bolivia. Herr Bush's acolytes have been trying to oust president Morales from office but with little success. Whilst Herr Bush has accomplished nothing of much in Iraq, Latin America has become less and less a US string of satraps.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Barak Obama and the hope for change

Well read David Brooks op ed piece on Friday 25 July 2008 New York Times on line. He's growing impatient with senator Obama's Panglossian rhetoric which for him is growing very thin indeed. And by implication, pinning the tail of the donkey on Obama for preaching pie in the sky, and although he knows that the junior senator can be hardnosed in his speeches and actions, he is calling him a purveyor of snake oil. And here we can a line of attack for the upcoming presidential campaign. McCain a realist [sic]; Obama a hopeless romantic. What did this fool think Obama was going to lay out a complete election platform in Germany or Israel or Jordan or in Ramallah or Iraq or Afghanistan or Paris or London? Wake up and smell the espresso, il sig. Brooks. If anything the wild and delirious reception Obama has received in Berlin and then at the Elysee palace in Paris is a bellweather of the resurrection of the traditional Atlantic cum Nato policy which Herr Bush in full bloom as a tin horn sheriff abandonned. Speak of short sightedness and blind spots...there you have the definition of il sig. Brooks vision and world.
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Did you hear of another McCain whopper?

John McCain as we all know is running for president on the Republic ticket. The other day, he in all his knowlege of geography informed the world that we must pay attention to what's happening on the Iraq Pakistani border. Give the man, 100 lashes and a good atlas and send him back to school. Herr Bush is dumb, but a president more dumb is hard to imagine, but there he is in the person of John McCain. War hero that he may be, his misinformed utterances make him not fit even to sit in the US Congress which alas he does and with other bozos like him who know nothing, learn nothing, and forget everything.

No change of heart for Republicans

The Republicans in the Senate cannot change spots like the proverbial leopard. They're doing their most foul in block legislation which would tax the oil barons who are bilking the US public.
Had their martinet leader Herr Bush want to break the high ceiling of oil prices, he would let flow the never ending accumulation of oil in the US Naval Reserve. He won't since it doesn't benefit his class of scum bags feasting on the body of the US taxpayers.

Why say Herr Bush, anal hair stylist, toilet bowl cleaner, and bathroom attendent

18Brumaire has received queries as to why he refers to president Bush as Herr Bush; to US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson as anal hair stylist supreme; to Alan Greenspan as the toilet bowl cleaner; and to US Fed chief Ben Bernanke as bathroom attendent. British newspapers in the 1930's referred to Adolf Hitler as Herr Hitler, and in many ways small and larger, president Bush displays the same meglomanic pretensions and a penchant for the totalitarian, and so he rightfully deserves being called Herr Bush. Anal hair stylist, well, it a translation from the French for 'peigne cul', the small brush which sycophants, brown nosers, and apple polishers. Using 'peigne cul' as a such would mean nothing to an English speaking and reading audience. Anal hair stylist supremo Hank Paulson deserves this qualifier the more especially since he does everything to braid and gently stroke the anal hairs of his blood sucking financial capitalists. Toilet bowl cleaner for the awful Alan Greenspan is apt. Since he has done everything to wipe clean the enormous bowl of shit that he allowed the financial industry to fill and overflowed to become what is known as thde subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown, and what's more, he knew better yet dispensed with sanitary paper for Herr Bush to wipe his arse with the fortunes of taxpayers. Bathroom attendant for Ben Bernanke: he hands out the towels and opens the taps for the fat cats, coupon clippers, corrupt and putrefying corpse of finance capitalism to wash their shit stained hands. Each in own way deserve prison.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Brideshead redux

Brideshead revisited the 1945 so so novel of Evelyn Waugh is back on the screen as cinema. 1982 the BBC turned it into a memorable 11 part series which is long remembered and should be brought back to public television again. A slice of life of British upper Catholics in all its piety, fanaticism, and decline of sorts. Waugh is a jolly reactionary who took to his new faith with a fanaticism which only a convert can display. He describes a world he adores in decline but is not afraid to show warts and all. The new version well has smooth Waugh's reactionary edges...his dislike of the lower orders...and offers up the protagonist Charles Ryder originally played in the series by Jeremy Irons with someone William Goode who has no personality, and what's more adds with a dash of the ordinary of homosexuality. Read the novel, eschew the film, is out recommendation. Despite Waugh's ultra montanism, if you read his letters, he's a lovable old bear and if you read his Gilbert Pinfold, he laughs at his alcholism and his dependency on drugs. He had a sharp eye for character and detail. Read his travel books, his Black Mischief, his Loved One, and his war triology which he took aim and hit more targets than HRH's government would like in its pecking order, its corruption, and at times its incompetence in wartime.

Investment banks---basket cases

If a company posted a 62 per cent drop in quarterly profits, wouldn't common sense tell you that it is trouble? Apparently not in investment banking. Yesterday Credit Suisse reported such a fall in earnings, and the street offered up a small sigh of relief. Why? the investment bank beat expectations! Now if that is not perverse, 18Brumaire doesn't know what is. The same logic applied to JP Morgan Chase and Citibank, too. Investment banking is a proverbial basket case. The industry shot itself in the foot with fancy financial instruments which falls under the category of the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown. Bear Stearns is history already, and when the Gang of 4 at Treasury, the US Fed, and the NY Fed allowed Jaime Dimon to absorb Bear Stearns at the bargain basement fire sale rate of us$2 a share, well the world markets tumbled badly. Despite an upward trend, the damage was done, and quarter after quarter investment banks are forced to write off us$ billions on bad mortgages. Some like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have enough black ink to hide their exposure, but others like UBS, Credit Suisse, Lehman, Merrill, Wachovia cannot. [Fear not gentle readers the day of reckoning is coming soon for JP Morgan at least. It is holding a fat wad of Alt-A mortgages which are beckoning for payment, and running close to us$400bn. More on that in the future!] The investment banks' stockholders ain't too happy, but the US Fed and the Treasury have opened lines of credit to them. So no matter how badly they're managed, the US rate or taxpayer is going to bail them out, and the poor bastard whom the banks and mortgage lenders seduced into buying mortgages are going to be on the street. Herr Bush has been caught napping on the job, and bathroom attendant Ben Bernanke and anal hair stylist supremo Hank Paulson are now scrambling with makeshift solutions to keep the industry afloat whilst impoverishing the whole country, and not really attacking laxity in regulation, corruption, malfeasance, and letting the US$ weaken more and more. Now 18Brumaire is going to repeat what it has said at other times. During the 1980's when the banks induced Latin American countries, businesses, and banks to take loans and then they could pay them back, a banker made the banal remark, that when business is good, private industry wants the government off its back for it's raking in the money, but when terror and panic and crisis occur, there they are like blindmen on a street corner or in the money bazaars hand out with a deep tin cup begging for the public's money. And this is how it is today. No reform, panic, flailing with a sabre in roiling financial waters, and the fear that the system is going belly up, which it ain't. Unless the public sheds its passivity, unless brave politicians denouce pious verities, the charade will continue. Already the US is sinking into the west of the second rate...and its people will grow poorer and poorer but not the shit that rules the country, lead a hedonistic lifestyle, has money salted offshore, and run the country.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Black Knight pays off royally

Anyone who's willing to spent 150 minutes groaning through the latest Batman film, the Black Knight is playing the game of the sado machochism [sic]. Everyone says it's the late Heath Ledger's film. His cackling Joker brings the film to life. Sociologists of the film will find that it speaks more to the fears and loathing of America towards foreigners. And why not? It may not be fair but underlying the mad insouciane of America's ruling class of a hedonism which makes Fellini's La dolce vita seem like a kindergarten class, the US is living off the monies from east Asia and Europe and oil rich Arab countries to sustain a way of life of a stinking corpse. And yes, the first weekend gate of us$158m, makes investors happy, and of course, means that they will churn out more dark night films of gore and despair and fiddle as Washington burns and Hollywood snort more cocaine of easy money.

Herr Bush won't veto the mortgage rescue bill

The US press is making a big deal of Herr Bush's decision not to veto the mortgage rescue bill which the houses of Congress will put on his desk for signature next week. The anal hair stylist supremo & US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson convinced him, he should. And why shouldn't he? It hits the rate or taxpayer in his thinning purse, to bail out Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae & bring a modicum of relief to mortgage holders on the verge of default or deliquent. The bill is steep, say, in the us$ trillions which has too many zeros for anyone to imagine? But, hey, it's an election year, and turning down a bill which the Democrats had ambiguous input, won't hurt tub boat admiral McCain's run for the Oval Office. Let's pare away some of the hype. Anal hair stylist Paulson's rescue, if rescue it be, that is, allowing Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae access to the public trough for 18 months will keep the foreign sovereign funds and investors happy since they bought these two government sponsored companies at a steep discount when the stock of theirs tanked on the market. As such, it will continue the putrefying practice of Herr Bush of making foreigners paying for the US' self indulgent life style of the blood sucking ruling class, and what's more, once Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae are sucking the public's tits, the sustaining milk of life won't be easy to turn off. Then, home owners can renegotiate terms of their mortgages with the banks...well, this is voluntary on the banks part. So, nothing makes Herr Bush's heart beat joyfully than no regulation on his rich friends and croneys and the dead weight of the rich on the public's body. But saying this won't alleviate the yet to find bottom of the subprime Ponzi meltdown. It is reported that housing prices have fallen 57 per cent, which means the house you buy today or bought tomorrow is worth less than the mortgage, and the housing situation around military bases is down 217 per cent with a corresponding high rate of foreclosures. So where does this leave us?
In brief, the long drawn out neglect on Herr Bush's watch will benefit shareholders and foreigners and may very well alleviate the hurt of some homeowners paying off mortgage, but it won't staunch the blood letting in the mortgage market. On Youtube you can see smug Herr Bush laughing it up about the drunken binge on Wall Street which brought us the subprime debacle. There he is, the dry drunk himself, chuckling and cackling like a hen who has laid a giant egg on the taxpayer. His money is safe; his property, his make believe ranch in Crawford, Texas, too. So he can joke and look down upon the poor bastards who wanted a piece of the American dream which his class of cock suckers bilked and are in the processing of ruining.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Obama looks more and more presidential

The talking heads in the US keep saying that senator Barak Obama's trip to Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Europe is getting massive press coverage. That may be true of the non American press, but reading on line the major American broadsheets, you wouldn't think so. Instead, we get endless commentary on the drab and lackluster senator John McCain. The media say that poll after poll show that a goodly majority of Americans thank that the senator from Arizona has it hands over heels on Obama as a military leader. What polls, pray tell? And what is the cross section of the population tested? McCain keeps sounding unpresidential, whilst hearing Obama speak about a timetable for US troop withdrawal from Iraq has the ring of a real commander in chief, unlike McCain who doesn't seem to know his American constitution would leave the generals to run wars. Obama with each country that he visits has draped himself in the toga of leadership, McCain's whining that the Illinois senator is wet behind the ear when it comes to going abroad. Has this man forgotten that Herr Bush never traveled outside the US until he became president? What's more many of Obama pronouncements on foreign policy strike the right chord; McCain's clash with reality, his consciousness is working a slow speed to catch up!

India's Congress government hasn't fallen yet. Nonetheless a nuclear accord with the US will inflame conditions in the basket case which is Pakistan

To cries of bribery and dirty pool, the Congress led Indian government got what it wanted: the green light to go ahead with an agreement with Washington for US nuclear technology for peaceful use. Which raises the question: will New Delhi now sign the non nuclear proliferating treaty? Maybe yes, maybe no. Only time will tell. A consequence of this win for prime minister M. Singh, is that relations with Pakistan will become more testy. Its neighbour which India thrashed three times in war, is a basket case waiting to implode. Mushareff instead of going after Islamic extremist beefed up arms to the 60 year disputed squabble over territory in Kashmir Jammu. The deal with Washington will inflame spiraling out of control conditions in Pakistan, to say the least. And the army which is the key to power in Islamabad is betwixt a rock and a hard place, and a guardian of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, but for how long? Herr Bush's gambit has opened another can of worms on the Indian subcontinent.

Anal hair stylist Hank Paulson benign neglect fails

Well, oh, well, anal hair style supremo & US secretary of the Treasury is sweating to get the reeling mortgage market into line. After Herr Bush's long neglect of government regulating the hanky panky mortgage and investment bankers in the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown, the wary eye of the US hand alas sees once again that the anal hair stylist has his work cut out for him. Today's Financial Times of London puts the bailout for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae at us$35bn. [23 July 2008] We know who's going to cough up the lolly! The US rate or taxpayer. Once again 18Brumaire sees proof positive in the old saw that the US leaders prefer to pay the weights and chains of a pound of cure whilst sneering at the light ounce of prevention. Paulson will escape much damage or a long term in prison for his role in creating and hoodwinking not only fellow bankers but the taxpayer in designing and refining subprime mortgage. He's going to keep his hundreds of millions stashed away in executive compensation, but not the poor man on the street who will bear the burden of Paulson et al.'s folly. His co conspirator Ben Bernanke is going to recommend a hike in the prime interest rate, to curve inflation. But it fuel the bloody monster...he prefers to sacrifice growth to keeping his class of blood suckers, Bush incompetents,f and the robbing rich classes to feed off the poor's misery. And 18Brumaire keeps banging pots & pans about what the hell are this two arseholes doing about the US$? Do they care? Seemingly not, since they're marking time till Herr Bush retires ignomiously to his Potemkin ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Bulldozer redux--Israel get a taste of its own medicine

Another bulldozer attack in Jerusalem. Horrors! Stories on telly show the killing of the Arab from occupied East Jerusalem being killed at almost gun point. He did not expect to live, it goes without saying, when he began rolling over motor cars in the street. His was an act of desperation underscoring the sorry plight even of Arabs with Israeli passports. The world or let's say the western eye recoils at the use of a bulldozer as a instrument of violence and a political statement. Well, blinkered western eye where has your vision been for the past 60 years: Israel uses the bulldozer as an instrument of violence, retaliation, and complete punishment collectively for any Arab, read Palestinian, challenge to its occupation and to its treatment even of its own Arab citizens as second class. Well, now, like it or not, the bulldozer is giving Israel a mild taste of its own medicine, and Jerusalem doesn't like it. Tell that to the uprooted Palestinians, the land the Israelis stole from the Arabs, to the dead, and to the parents of Rachel Cory whom an American made bulldozer crushed.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Nuri al Maliki

Nuri Al Maliki may be any number of things, but one thing his US handlers hadn't bargained for, was his fierce sense of nationalism. He wants the US out by 2010 or in 16 months which funny isn't it is what senator Barak Obama has been saying. Where does this leave Herr Bush? His third finger up his anus taking grim pleasure at his failure in Iraq. Like it or not, Herr Bush is seeing his life in the presidency flash by as he figuratively falls on the sword of his own failure.

Dragging feet anal hair stylist Hank Paulson reluctantly is doing what he's being paid for by the taxpayers

Were economic times good, the anal hair stylist supremo & US secretary of the Treasury would be clinking at what he does best...flutes of the very best champagne, and polishing his nails on his brest, thinking what a very good boy am I! Well, they are not. Times are tough and getting tougher. They demand Paulson to do a full day's work in regulating the Treasury which he is loathe to do. It goes against his capitalist free trader heart. But Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae require it. He's ordered an audit of their books, which is laudable, but the rot was there in public view. Not only did ceo's of thes public but privately run entities get caught with their hand in the honey pot, but poor and lax management were there at the eye's surface. And what has Paulson and his successors done? Very little but nothing, and nothing they'd have done were there not a crisis in the housing market which Paulson then CEO of Goldman Sachs had not created. So the circle has come fully around and he has to earn his money now. But we won't expect much from a man whose whole life is dedicated to weaving the anal hair of the greedy, blood sucking orge which is America's capitalist and ruling class.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Starving America

Well now the food giants are going to hike prices on food up as much as they can, and setting a floor on nothing less than 20 per cent on the shelf price. That and rising motor gasoline prices and a tanking economy are pushing the US man or woman on the street to not only pinch pennies but run the risk of joining a growing army of the unemployed and the unsheltered, the hungry and the long line of the poor. And what do we see in the newspapers, nary a word about it. You've to look at the foreign press to find out what's going on in your own backyard. The US has become if anyone hasn't noticed a playland of the rich and the famous and the plunderers of the American people. They've become peons to be exploited to the hilt and to the hilt they're having their noses rubbed in the shit of the rich and privileged.

Anal hair stylist Hank Paulson opens US taxpayers to foreign plunder

Anal hair stylist supremo & US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and the bathroom attendant & US Fed chief Ben Bernanke are lowing lines of credit to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The immediate result was the rush for shares from foreign governments and investors at bargain basement rates. No secret as to why. It's a win situation for the holders of Freddie and Fannie stock; no matter how poorly they perform, the ordinary US rate or taxpayer is going to fit the bill. Great, ain't it? It didn't occur to these arseholes to nationalise Freddie and Fannie; Freddie was a government owned entity before it became a 'private' company quoted on the New York exchange, and Fannie was created to spur good old fashioned competition with it. What is plain as the nose on your face, these fools Herr Bush put into office serve the financial class to which they are wedded to lock, stock, and barrel. The quicker we kick their arses out of office the better for the country since they and their predecessors are guilty of sleeping on the job and letting the rich plunder the US economy for selfish gains...and now the barn door is open for everyone else to feast on the corpse of a dying US economy.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Herr Bush raps Taiwan's knuckles

Herr Bush ain't going to give Taiwan F-16's to beef up its defences against a menacing China. He is paying a debt to Beijing who is bankrolling a depleted US treasury, for arranging face saving exits from his disastrous foreign policy cut on axes of evil. He owes Beijing big for a breakthrough with Pyongyang, and for giving Washington a toe in the door to Teheran. Herr Bush won't be the first Republican who wanted to screw US' ally Taiwan. Look at Nixon and Kissinger who wanted to throw Taiwan to Mao's wolf in 1972. Now, he says, whoa there pardnah, there's an us$11bn package on the table for Taiwan, but so there is, but it is a sop without the F-16's, to ward off any mainland adventurism to rape an independent country like it to Tibet 60 years ago.

Anal hair stylist Hank Paulson the whore of corporate America

You do not need to do sums on the finger of one hand to see what anal hair stylist & US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson is up to. He's the whore of corporate America, or more to the point Milton Friean economics. Listen to this weaver of the financial community's anal hairs; listen to his words, he's putting down the structure for a corporate state, one in which the financial community and transnational corporation can forever and forever world without end can and will plunder the US rate or taxpayer's purse, to bail out banks and corporation who commit large scale fraud and plunder. The sooner he goes, the better. The sooner the crud of the Bush bloodsuckers leave office, the better. We need a re enforcing of lax government regulation which the likes of Herr Bush's friends have brought the US and the world to the edge of financial ruin. What Paulson and his mafia of banks and foreign governments is looking for is a sleepy public which will bear the pain of being looted without complaint. If there were justice, Paulson should be working in a prison kitchen or being someone's bitch in a padded cell.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Will Anwar Ibrahim give a swab of his DNA?

The Malay pooh bahs hate Anwar Ibrahim. They're trying to do everything to bring him down as he nears his grasp on power. Mahathir succeed in not only putting him behind bars, but keeping out of electoral politics for more than 10 years. Abdullah Badawai's snap elections in March 2008 broke the decaying, corrupt UNMO half-century hold on power, and propelled Anwar Ibrahim near to the prime ministership. Down but not beaten, UNMO engineered a coup against Anwar. He was accused of buggery with a young aid. He sought refuge in the Turkish embassy until he had assurances that his life wouldn't be in danger. Now, he was arrested but released after a night in gaol. Now, too, the police are demanding a saTmple of his DNA to prove he buggered the young man on his staff.
UNMO is playing it rough. Anwar accused Abdullah's right hand man Razak of being implicated in the murder of a Mongolian model. He says, the other says...has the odour of a shoot out at the OK corral. The stakes are high, for Malaysia is stretching at the seams and social unrest is growing especially among the Chinese and the Indians, the poor, despised, and greatly discriminated against 40 per cent of the population who for 40 years have had to drink bowl after bowl of bitter tea, being deprived of a good education, a good job, a good house, and other advantages which went without question to the Malay majority. Anwar recognising this cobbled together a broad coalition formed for change, and change is the last thing UNMO needs and wants. The US has twice warned Abdullah to not kill Anwar nor put him back in prison. Abdullah won't listen to Washington, for the stakes of corruption and wealth are too high and also he and his croneys might very well end up in a cell that they want to throw Anwar into.

Can John Thain work wonders at Merrill Lynch?

Merrill Lynch's 2 quarter results are out. They're less than spectacular, and the street didn't think that they would be. A write down of more subprime mortgage debt, resulting in a quarterly loss of us$4,9bn. And that ain't the end of it. Wait it 30 September 08 for another drubbing at quarterly report time. John Thain has his work cut out for him. He remains upbeat: Merrill has a liquidity of us$92bn, so it can sustain more and bigger losses. But for how long? Thain left Goldman Sachs after the anal hair stylist and then CEO and now US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson took his crown as an heir apparant from his head, and exiled him to China. Thain came back strong, ushering the New York Stock Exchange public and profitable. Now, he's being asked to work his magic on Merrill which is nose deep into subprime mortgage debt. He's going to sweat blood to do that. And that's the truth. For unless he turns that venerable white bread house around, it too will go belly up as 18Brumaire thinks Lehman will by end of 1 quarter 2009.

Mamma Mia unsettles high minded film critic AO Scott

AO Scott is what the French call an 'amateur de films' or as he would say, a film critic at the august newspaper of note the New York Times. Reading today's www.nyt.com, his review of Mamma Mia! is on the lower fold of the first page of the Arts & Leisure section. Mr. Scott doesn't like it. It's his right not to, but mid way into his words, he takes aim at Phyllida Lloyd for a messy, unkempt film. Yet, his pique is reserved for Abba and what he would consider vapid songs, yet he does acknowledge that some of the group's songs are highly polished. Nonetheless, on the whole, for him, it's all chocolate and vanilla pudding topped with marshmellows. Mr. Scott is high minded, no low brow, silliness will his eye tolerate. 18Brumaire wouldn't dare pretend to think what the late Pauline Kael might say, but at least, she found whimsy and fun in good bad films, which Scott simply thinks is a bad film in Mamma Mia! Lighten up, old starched shirt, loosen your tie, and chill out! You cannot. You're looking for art for art's sake in film...go to Cannes or Venice or Berlin or Toronto, and seek it out there. Apparently Abba's songs do not set off chimes of youth and fun and simple pleasure for him. Was he born old?

Thursday, July 17, 2008

What are they doing to save the US dollar?

What are they doing to rescue the US dollar which keeps oil and food and weakens the world's confidence in the US as the locomotive of world economic growth? Very little, to be charitable. Herr Bush has presided over the stretching of US financial strength to the extreme as the dolthead in the White House has done with the army in Iraq and Aghanistan. It's an old and sad song, isn't it? His croneys are incompetent fools masquarding as experts. Unless the US restores confidence in the almighty Yankee dollar, Herr Bush is presiding over a currency Goetterdaemmerung of global proportions. Yep, Herr Bush fancies himself as Nero fiddling while the US dollar burns and as Jacques Brel cried in 'les tauraux'...Herr Bush is like the fan cheering the killing of the US dollar bull, as fancing himself as la Carmencita!

Saudi King Abdullah's side show of religious tolerance in Spain

Only a fool would take Saudi king Abdullah at his word. He's spending big oil dollars on a gathering of religious leaders for peace and harmony and understanding among the religions of the world. Eyewash. There's no religious tolerance in his own country. He funds the spread of Islam's ultra strict school of law otherwise known as Wahabibism which has fueled the rise of Islamic extremists the world over. Although Spain may be a symbolic venue, remember it's the land los reyes catocolicos chased out the Arabs and Jews in 1492, it is a smoke screen for Saudi designs to look good in the world's eyes. Wouldn't it be better for Abdullah to practise what he is preaching and stop being the bag man for Islamic terrorism, intolerance, and extremism, and yes, hypocrisy.

Christopher Cox Idiot

Christopher Cox heads the SEC. If anyone remembers, he's one of the gang of 4 who killed Bear Stearns. He's as suited to head the SEC as an apprentice tailor. At least an apprentice tailor is taught to pay attention to detail and never sleep on the job. But Cox has slept on his watch, and has allowed the banking industry and the mortgage houses to get away with murder. Only now, he and the anal hair sytlist Paulson at the Treasury and bathroom attendant at the Fed got a stick up their elitist arses to do something about bank failures. Cox doesn't even know what laws are on the books to pursue in the courts of law the banking houses that are causing havoc in the market places and fleecing our purses. He is another Bush incompetent...as bad as Brownie at FEMA during the Katrina catastrophe...And is incapable of dealing with a crisis that won't diminish his stock and money nor take him down a peg or two on the social scale. If proof needs be that Herr Bush's reign is a horror story, just look the idiot Cox in the eye, and there you will find proof postive!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The anal hair stylist Paulson and the bathroom attendant Bernanke play Capitol Hill again

It is becoming eminently clear that anal hair stylist supremo & US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and the bathroom attendant & US Fed chief Ben Bernanke are not fit to polish the shoes of US citizens. With the temple of finance falling about them, they lamely stroll into the fray of failing mortgages and bankruptcy as though nothing in the world is amiss...until friends of theirs find the snake of failure biting their arse, and hasten will they to save them at the rate or taxpayers expense. The deepening recession which they're loathe to recognise is kicking them in the balls and forcing them to put some muscle into regulating the finance and mortgage industries, a cardinal sin of their outdated economic theory. They've idly sat by doing nothing till the shit hit the fan, which is nothing out of the ordinary for them since it is a very American thing. Yep, they firmly believe a pound of cure is worth more than an ounce of prevention. And lord love a duck, that's economics American style wrapped in the red, white, and blue! For them, that is. They've more money than they know what to do personally and have not the common touch. They thought that they could surf on the high crest of the financial storm. Wrong. They drowning, flailing around looking for any branch to hand on to. And quite honestly they deserve a thousand lashes by the public for their far niente, their sloth, and their devil take everyone but out solid, good capitalist class whom we've pledged our allegiance till death do us part. Put the bums on trial for robbing the public of their trust and their future and then throw them in prison, lock the cell, and throw the key away.

Petty tyrant Bush eats crow

Herr Bush is riding his own petard. He's not so quietly flushing down the loo his axes of evil propaganda. A deal with North Korea's going a pace, and now he's sending Nicholas Burns to observe Iran in a meeting of six to discuss Iran's nuclear programme. This is the first open contact by Herr Bush regime with Teheran's mullah on the matter. Herr Bush knows no shame so we cannot expesh ct an act of contrition. Like it or not, Herr Bush's become a very weakened thug that even his own warlike threats to have Israel bomb Iran has turned the factions within his own administration to force his hand and wave an olive branch no matter how timidly. Baked crow is becoming standard fare at the White House.

Monday, July 14, 2008

US casualties hike in Afghanistan

Well, see what Herr Bush's dumb wars have led us to. Now, he's has to speed up troop withdraw from an unwin[n]able war in Iraq to battle in Afghanistan where he should've stayed in the first place after the fall of the Taliban. What's more the Taliban have regained full strength and can kill with impunity since they can find immediate refuge in US ally's Pakistan. What's he going to do about that? Exercise soft power? Send in his secret weapon John Negroponte who has twisted and retwisted and then twisted again Pervez Mushareff's arm to no avail. Herr Bush is caught in his own trap. It is no small wonder...the fool Bush long ago announced, he had given up capture of Osama ben Laden...the man's not important, and we all know the US troops fumbled the hunt in the Afghan caves when they could've nabbed the man. 18Brumaire has reported before the noises emanating in Saudi palaces of Herr Bush's friends, that he secretly agreed to stop the ben Laden hunt if he withdrew US troops from Saudi soil and got a pledge of no attacks on the US. This may be true, then it may not. Eventually the truth will out. Under pressure, Herr Bush's folly in Iraq is causing another unwinnable war in Afghanistan, thanks to Herr Bush's limited vision and imagination. Perhaps he should talk to god for guidance?

The anal hair stylist Hank Paulson's sleight of hand

Anal hair stylist supremo and US secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson likes his Sunday night surprises. In March along with bathroom attendant and US Fed Chief Ben Bernanke and his acoylates and the NY Fed, he rescued Bear Stearns whilst forcing it to fall on JPMorgan Chase's knife. Now, he has ridden to the 'rescue' of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two public corporations run on private lines. Well, he couldn't do anything else but that: pumping in ratepayers funds to save the two entities from themselves after years of corruption, mismanagement, and unregulated sugar plum pas de deux in the ballooning new debt market. Despite their being quoted on the New York stock exchange, 18Brumaire repeats, they're public corporation, and so willy nilly the anal hair stylist was forced to intervene on their behalf and on the ratepayers' bill.
A week ago, this specialist in anal hairs kept telling everyone he could collar, oh, Fannie and Freddie are doing fine. What was obvious, the dolt did want to regulate. The failure of IndyMac forced his hand. IndyMac is the bellweather of what's wrong with financial and mortgage markets, as if this is a revelation for all but the deaf, dumb, and blind in the financial sectors who played gaily and with Herr Bush's malign neglect in regulating the markets, with CDO's, SUV's, ABS' and other fancy financial instruments for quick profits at the poor's expense, whilst playing to the pipedream of every American to own his own house which Herr Bush blithely encouraged. Arse hole Paulson disdains regulated markets unless they benefit his class of bloodsuckers at the public's trough. Nonetheless the market has turned on him and his wretched kind, and so like it or not, he's being forced to nationalise IndyMac, soon to be joined by other regional banks, and to begin regulating markets albeit dragging his satisfied big arse. And before 18Brumaire forgets, let's say this LOUD & CLEAR, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not responsible for the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown. They didn't dabble in trick financial instruments mentioned above. But anal hair sytlist supremo did as CEO of Goldman Sachs, before he made the sacrifice of accepting Herr Bush's offer to head Treasury. A reason that he ain't too willing to follow the money is that it would lead right back to him and his banker friends who deserves a long term in gaol. No doubt about that! There is no reason to pity Paulson; he's getting the swift kick in the arse but alas so are the US public who allow elected officials to be bought off by the likes of Paulson & his rotten kind.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

A breakthrough in the six party talks in Beijing

Herr Bush has finally caught on: Pyongyang negotiates on a quid pro quo basis. He removed North Korea from nations on Trading with the enemy Act and the list of terrorists countries. North Korea reciprocated in agreeing to a more stricter monitoring of its denuclearisation. Of course more needs to be discussed, but finally the train is choo choo ing along. Is there a lesson to be learnt here? Yes. One that Herr Bush ignored when he played to the world's stalls or to the balcony in his axis of evil speech. He blew it, for he knew what he had to do all along and didn't. And his dumb nature has wasted years to arrive at where we are today. In a way, Herr Bush is a free spirit; he believes in the free market; a free market means no control and left to the vagaries of the times and the moment. Well if he were using his own time and money and own body, fine, but as president, he's sacrificed the lives and blood and sweat and tears of his citizens and is leaving them worse off than they were when his daddy's minions, notably James Baker III, stole the elections for him in Florida courts and before the US supreme court. Herr Bush deserves our coldest contempt!

China caught with its pants down aiding Sudan in its war in Dafur

If you read the old grey lady of US journalism, you'd never see yet the story of hard proof that Herr Bush's good friend China is doing anything wrong in Sudan besides investing heavily there and soaking up Khartoum's oil and yes training its military in its war in Dafur. Till now, despite Beijing's cries of innoncence, there has been no concrete link between China and the way its helping Sudan in waging war in Dafur. No more! The rebels have captured two lorries [trucks] mounted with cannons, and each bears a Chinese matriculation tag. More, aerial photos show Chinese jets in June which carried out bombings of refugee camps. And still more, it is bruited that Beijing is busy training Sudanese pilots in made in China aeroplanes to further prosecute the war in Dafur and elsewhere in Sudan. Yes, there's blood on China's hands. But the US press once again remains silent. If ever there is proof that furthers a boycott the Beijing Olympic games, here it is. And what's more, China's direct role in what even Herr Bush's former secretary of state Colin Powell dubbed a war of 'genocide', is now established. This should be shouted from the tops of houses and the banging of pots and pans. China is guilty as charged!

Herr Bush screws tub boat admiral McCain on Iraq

John McCain is willing to doven at the slightest wind of change in GOP policies. He at first thought that the US should honker down in Iraq for a century if needs be, then he reversed engines and thought in a few years, the US could wind down the war there, and now Herr Bush has shoved his middle finger up the senator from Arizona's arse hole. Owing to the climb in deaths and vigorous renewed activity of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Herr Bush is now going to withdraw US troops from Iraq at a quicker clip and toss them into the fight in Afghanistan which will spill over into turbulent Pakistan who has always given safe haven to the Taliban and al Qaeda. On one hand, he's thrown a kiss to senator Obama who right on not going to war in Iraq and right again for fingering the nefarious and two faced role America's ally Pakistan was playing in Afghanistan. Now where does this leave tub boat admiral McCain? Where he's always been frantically trying to bail out his leaky boat in his run for the White House.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

In a crisis would you rely on anal hair stylist Hank Paulson?

I do not think so. The subprime Ponzi scheme dominoes are beginning to topple. First, Bear Stearns, then IndyMac... IndyMac's bankruptcy has forced the hand of anal hair stylist supremo Hank Paulson who by the by is US secretary of the Treasury, and who is living la vida loca in Europe these past few weeks, to take over the bank. How long will it be, before Herr Bush's incompetent weaver of the financial world's anal hairs, be panicked into nationalising Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? The system thanks to the guiding spirit of Milton Friedman and the ghosts of unbridled laissez faire capitalism are drawing the US and need 18Brumaire add, into the whirlpool of world depression? Paulson is a bubble head; his nostrums are old hat and offer no solutions to the severe problems at hand. Herr Bush can no longer play possum until he turns the mess that he has created during his 8 years in office to the poor bastard who will be the next American president. He has to act, and if he's as ineffective as the Republican Herbert Hoover, everyone run for cover, if you've not already!

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Bulldozer Israel

Israel now wants to bulldoze the house of the man who bulldozed cars, injured pedestrian, and killed two before being shot by an Israeli. Jerusalem is intent in pursuing as it always has the code of Hannurabi--an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Which will throw out on to the streets of east or Arab Jerusalem an extended family of the elderly, women, and children, and other relatives of the dead man. Of course, the irony is lost on the feckless press which not only excuses Israel's brutal policies towards Palestinians but also uses the bulldozer to main and kill and destroy property and the land Palestinians use to cultivate olive groves, orange groves, and raise food, and yes denying pasture land to goats. The irony of moment has not escaped the eye of 18Brumaire who already has commented on the use of the bulldozer by a disgruntled Israeli Arab on the heavy Zionist hand which is denying equality of treatment not only to its own Arab citizens but to the Palestinians living under the steel heel of occupation which is pushing them into bantustans a l'afrique du sud. Irony upon irony which conventional opinion in the media gladly turns a blind eye to. For all its might and swagger and sway, the Zionist state is as fragile as delicate Venitian glassware, and one sharp movement, it fractures. And Israel is fracturing internally, beset as it is by corruption and malfeasance and the logic of its own racialist ideology, and externally as it sees its power shrivel as the bully with a bulldozer in the Middle East.

America in poor health

America is in poor health, politically, economically, culturally, and bodily in the health of its citizenry. Michael Moore's 'Sicko' made a good case for a single pay health care system. It was pooh poohed since the insurance lobby, the moss back members of Congress, the White House, and the like took Moore to task for showing the high quality of Castro's health care programme. Well looking at the press, the US press that is, the true believers in laissez faire capitalism for others in the houses of Congress, when they benefit from completely socialised medicine which they and those who went before them voted on, wanted to cut doctors' fees in Medicare by 10 per cent. Then the AMA propaganda kicked him in this election year, sending out thunderbolts of warning that Republicans beware, we will run against you. So suddenly the Democrats got Teddy Kennedy out from his chemo, to come to Congress to vote the bill out for Mr. Bush's veto which would easily be over ridden. With Kennedy in the well of the Senate, well, annus mirabile, some Republican senators--and you can bet those in a tight race for re election--crossed the aisle to the number of 9, to vote for restoring the cuts to Medicare fees and to push pressure on the private insurers who take the seniors' money and give little in return. So the cuts would be restored...and Herr Bush will have to lump it as will his rapid barking conservative dogs. Yet the cuts restored, it won't help the state of health in the US which spends more money on health care but has little to show for it. Now some public radio stations are calling for a reform based on the French model...which Moore's 'Sicko' praised...but Moore did more than that he offered many alternatives for the US to consider in healthcare reform...be it Canada, the UK, Japan, France, Italy, or yes Cuba as a pis aller. So Herr Bush has succeeded where others try as they might have transformed the US into the sick old man of the west!

Iran tests rocket, Washington & Jerusalem have a hizzy fit

Iran's Revolutionary Guard's second, and this time at night, testing of advances in rocket technology has caused a hizzy fit in Washington and Jerusalem. Teheran's tests have even had US secretary of state Condoleeza Rice take to the air waves shaking a weak fist at Iran. We'll defend our allies, meaning bully Israel, against Iran's attack. Brava for the bravado, Condy! As 18Brumaire noted, Iran is playing tit for tat in a game of diplomatic chicken. Israel threatens Iran with rockets; the US menaces war with Iran. So when the shoe suddenly is on Washington's or Jerusalem's foot, it pinches painfully, as it should. The two bullies have met their match, and there's little short of war, which doesn't rule out the use of Israel's 125 nuclear bombs, that they can do. Teheran's belled the two bullies' cat. Washington and Jerusalem may grow nostalagic for the days when they could bowl over the region but they're long gone and lost in the mists of pipe dreams. Of course irrational forces may prevail and either one or the other bully may begin a military response which would short of atomic destruction, weaken the two tin horn sheriffs and ultimately lead to the collapse of the Zionist state and a stinging defeat for the US military which already is too stretched and badly engaged in war that one that cannot win [Iraq] or two muddle through for long years having dumbly given up the initiative [Afghanistan] for a mirage of victory in Iraq. And what's more, now, they've to contend with a frisky Pakistan, an unreliable ally at best, within whose borders the Taliban and radical Islamist fighters have found a comfortable haven and from which they can attack with almost certain impunity NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Iraq wants a timetable for US troop withdrawal

Am quite sure that in his private moments, Herr Bush is spitting bullets, more than he's spent killing Iraqi's on the ground. His hand picked Nuri Al Maleki doesn't want to extend Herr Bush's troops presence indefinitely, and has called for a timetable for America's military withdrawal from Iraq, before he will sign any greatly modified agreement allowing US bases in Iraq with minimal man and firepower. Well how does this square with tub boat admiral McCain? What Al Maliki has done by digging in his heels, is to bolster senator Obama in the race for the White House. He's making it easier for Obama to wind down US troop presence in the failed and dumb war that Herr Bush lied the US into. So much for fair weather friends, Herr Bush, you've succeeded in allowing Iran a better role in Iraq than it ever would have, and what's more your brutal war has sent erstwhile allies into the arms of everyone in Iraq who is saying basta, ya!, enough's enough, pick up your cluster bombs and vanish into the desert's horizon and let's deal with our own affairs and our neighours. Bye bye birdie Bush!

The end of Israel's hegemony in the Middle East

Iran's testing of a long range rocket which can reach Tel Aviv rings the death knell on Israel's hegemony and terrorism in the Middle East. Herr Bush and Havar Olmert are openly furious as well as they should be, since it's their stupidity in thinking that a steel fist works more wonders than risks and dangers for the Washington and Jerusalem. With one long trail of a rocket, the geopolitical realities have changed radically, and simply geometrically reverse the balance of forces. Israel cannot and will not risk war with Iran, and Herr Bush's cat is belled, unless he's dumber than we give him credit for. Israel and Washington are getting as good as they dish out and they do not like it at all, at all.

Anal hair stylist Hank Paulson @ Bathroom attendant Ben Bernanke give stupid a bad name

Picking nits out of his beard, bathroom attendant& US Fed chair Ben Bernanke after long and slow deliberation has come up with goosey loosey suggestions to handle the subprime Ponzi scheme meltdown, and with foggy vision has come to the conclusion that the crisis in financial and housing markets will go well beyond 2008. Lord love a duck! This highly paid fool find wisdom at the bottom of his cognac snifter which the ordinary man or woman on the street could have told him lmonths earlier. He really does not care for him or her; he's looking to cushion the fat cats of finance capitalism who designed cdo's, svu's, abs, which got us in to the hot water that the US and yes Europe and Asia are in. His rescue of Bear Stearns was a Faustian deal for it send the markets that he is protecting into free fall. Look at anal hair stylist supremo and US secretary of the Treasury who has little time to deal with the recession. He's luxuriating in the lap of luxury in London or on the European continent or clinking cups of cheer with his Chinese masters. From his aery perch of comfort, he's come to the same conclusion as the bathroom attendant, and what's more, he ain't exactly rushing to cushion foreclosures in the US which will go well beyond 5 million and still counting. Rather, the anal hair stylist is braiding the anal hairs of his class and making damn well sure that they're not going to suffer the indignities of life that working people do! What's very clear: these two fools have the royal third finger up this anus, going mad with delight, and delaying any real recourse to the horrible shape the US is in, till Herr Bush is cutting wood in Crawford, Texas as an ex president who has much explaining to do.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Seoul's Lee Myung bak reshuffles his cabinet again and again and again

This is the third time Bulldozer Lee, South Korea's embattled president, is reshuffling his cabinet. It won't dampen the spirit of the daily protests near his Blue House. Protesters are calling for his resignation, but old blockhead won't go, thus percipitating a crisis which 18Brumaire thinks that his party, the Grand National Party, will in the end have to twist his arm badly to step down. Lee is South Korea's George W Bush, insensitive and tone deaf to public opinion; uneducable and unlearnable, and a disaster which is no longer waiting to happen.

JP Morgan's Jaime Diamon does a star turn on Charlie Rose---Nuts!

Jaime Diamon looking cool and relaxed fielded vanilla and chocolate pudding questions thrown at him by affable, oily Charlie Rose. Diamon smiled and laughed and encouraged applause from a hand picked audience who was there to hang on to the wisdom spouting from his anointed lips as prince of Wall Street. He fumed against rumour mongerers who brought down Bear Stearns, but was sanguine enough to say he picked it up as a newly found diamond, oh diamon, ain't you so clever? What he didn't say, nor was asked pointedly or otherwise, was why after promising Bear's CEO Alan Schwartz a 28 day loan of us$30bn, he changed his terms, saying, Schwartz had 24 hours to refund the money! Schwartz couldn't raise the us$30bn in less than a day, that is, Sunday to Monday, so he threw in the towel and submitted to the humiliating deal of selling to Diamon Bear for us$2, yes, us$2 a share...Diamon was ably abetted by the gang of 4--Bernanke, Gaithner, Paulson, and a flunkey at the Treasury. Bear's demise triggered a turn in the market which is rushing the US and the world to a depression. But Diamon is cheerful and happy to gather the whole world unto his arms and laugh all the way to his industry's destruction!

Monday, July 7, 2008

New SEC rules

Well it looks as though the anal hair stylist supremo Hank Paulson's whimsical policies might see the light of day. He's putting his all behind the aligning of America's tougher SEC rules with lax European practices the better to hide debt and foolishness and shagging royally stockholders...not the institutional kind...but the wee people. So put on your safety belt for deep plunges in the market, business failures, and banks going belly up. The anal hair stylist is digging his own class' grave...and everyone else's. Kick the bum out of office! He's a disaster of the first water.

BBC got soft with Seoul's Lee Myung bak

Have the BBC gone soft? It might seem so had you caught BBC worldwide news yesterday [6 July 2008]. A brief glimpse of the interview of its correspondent in Seoul with president Lee Myung bak. T'was all vanilla and chocolate pudding, it was. Piously Lee admitted that he should've listened to his people about allowing US beef to be again sold on the South Korea market. He didn't and he isn't, the more especially the street protests that his decision engendered are going strong in to a third month. And the call for Lee's resignation has not quieted one whit. Lee is now getting tough, so it is not surprising that we're beginning to see broken heads and arrests, but this, too, has if anything simply fueled the protests. Lee is as tone deaf to public opinion as his hero Bush who will drop in to see him at the Blue House before or after the Olympic games in Beijing. And boy if you've not seen street protests before, just you wait. Wonder how the BBC will paint them?
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Bush will go to the opening of the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing

You got to hand it to Herr Bush. He means what he says. He's going to the opening of Beijing's 2008 Olympic summer games. Herr Bush has ethics and feelings and worries that his absence unlike Angela Merkel's or Nicolas Sarkozy's will show disrespect to the Chinese people. Well Herr Bush what about disrespect and brutal suppression of Tibetans rights? Hardly worth worrying about for him. He's Beijing's puppet. China hold billions in US debt, so tin sheriff blow hard that he is, Herr Bush afraid to anger his debt holders, rattles off pious verities which make him look like the jackass that he is.

Bulldozer in Jerusalem

Oh, did you hear the wailing and gnashing of Israeli teeth when an angry, frustrated Israeli Arab got into a bulldozer and barreled down streets in Jerusalem? In the end, two dead, many injured, and the man shot 5 times and killed. Shock and indignation. Yet, what about the long list of Palestinian dead or destroyed homes and uprooted olive groves which Israel has systematically carried out with a BULLDOZER. Where was the out cry then? The bulldozer is a weapon against Arabs in Israel and the occupied territory and Gaza. It's as plain as the nose on your face that we're dealing with a double standard here. Sympathy is overwhelmingly on Israel's side, although it is the agresser; not on the victims who are Palestinian or Israeli Arab. The shoe pinches when Israel gets a dose of its own medicine, doesn't it? And what's more telling with all its power and wealth and sympathy globally Israel is more insecure than anytime in its history.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Another lecture by the anal hair stylist Hank Paulson

From London the anal hair stylist supremo and US secretary of the Treasury has once again held forth on how bad markets are. We have heard his blather time and time again. We are not interested in another rehash of Little Nell dying, we simply want to know what this fool who passes himself off as a hot money man is going to do to ameliorate the current mess which he as Herr Bush man at the US Treasury has helped to make worse. We want answers, not bromides, not pap, but real answers how to begin digging our way out of a deep recession which is beginning to skate on the edges of depression. That what we want, oh anal hair stylist supremo. Action not empty words!

Anal hair stylist Paulson finds out that Europe is suffering from the subprime meltdown, high oil prices and the like

Anal hair stylist supremo and US secretary of the Treasury is a busy man today. He's always on the road. He's become a moving target, not easy to hit. You see him clinking glasses of good cheer in Asia or looking sappy at meetings in Europe. Now the anal hair stylist has, o miracles, Europe is in economic doldrums albeit not as bad as the US. Paulson is traveling so much it takes his mind--what little there is of it--from problems at home of which he's klewless, and has little idea of how to remedy them. Put a cup of whisky in his hand and he's in his element, a back slapper and glass eyed with cheer. As the US economy tanks, the dollar so anemic and anorexic you wonder if ever will live to see another day, the anal hair stylist continues with insouciance on his appointed rounds of far' niente...do nothingism which excels at. Send the man to boot camp, and let him peel a mountain of potatoes for he might go well at that?

On again--Herr Bush's trip to South Korea

If you thought cooler heads found a place in Herr Bush's White House, think again! After the G8 meeting in Tokyo, Herr Bush's trip is on again to drop into Seoul. South Korea's capital is bubbling with protests against the importation again of US beef [and this has been going on for the last two months on a daily basis], which Bulldozer Lee Myung bak gave the green light to sell US beef on the Korean market place when he was in Washington to curry Herr Bush's favour. A lot of good that's done him! The protests, deepening in popular support, are also calling for Lee's recognition. At first to cool off the heat of Lee, the White House not only renegotiated the agreement on US beef, but also announced Herr Bush's trip to see his new friend in the Blue House was off. And then Lee with the happy smile on Herr Bush's face, let the beef in anyway. It was as though klewless Bulldozer Lee had waved a big red flag to an already enraged bull! Lee's decision with US backing was just that, for it gave one walloping dose of vitamin B into flagging protests, and suddenly the streets again were awash with Koreans calling for Lee's stepping down from office. And it up until now protests had a country fair air to them, Lee's police got testy and began breaking heads. Now the protests aren't going away by any stretch of the imagination by August unless Lee resigns. So if Lee is the most hated man in South Korea, Herr is a close second. And if anything will make Koreans' blood boil, it's Herr Bush's presence in Seoul.
Protesters might not get closer enough to spit at him as did Venezuelans during Herr Nixon's visit as Eisenhower's vice president, but one thing is sure, Lee will call out the troops with live ammo, and then the US beef hockeys will hit the fan!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Social protest in China -- the ringing of the knell on the Communist party

Natural disasters, protests in Tibet, world condemnation, and threats of boycotting the summer 2008 Olympics in Beijing have rained on Beijing's parade. The tired old Communist party is now facing social protests be they the killing of an innocent school girl or the collapse of shoddy schools killing thousands of school children and by killing of children, it affects the one child per family policy which the great helmsman Mao instituted. The death of an only child strikes at the very heart of China's millenia old ethos which values children as the link to the future. Many grieving parents may be too old to have another child, so they will slouch into old age without anyone to care for them, and thus with their passing, the family will die out. Natural disasters such as floods and earthquake have the centuries old stigma that the heavens are not happy with China's leaders and that they are with drawing the mandate of authority from them. China's brutal rule in Tibet is but a magnification of the terror that its uses against its own citizens. And the Chinese have to thank protesting Tibetans because in one fell swoop, they have exposed the ugly dictatorship in Beijing. Slowly but surely the cancer of destruction is eating away at Communist rule in China, and thanks to rapid economic development, an industrial and prosperous China is merely exacerbating the contradictions within society, impoverishing the masses for enrichment of the very few, and by a stroke, recreating uneven capitalist development which in the west ushered in revolution and democracy of sorts, not democracy of the party dictatorship a la Lenin! So we are witnessing the fools who rule and run China, digging their own grave!

Lee Myung bak cracks heads of protesters

It is now going on to two months since the streets of Seoul are the stage of massive protests against president Lee's decision to allow re importation of US beea. Protesters are calling for his resignation. It looked for a brief moment that Lee had managed to calm the streets by renegotiating his thoughtless agreement with Washington on US beef. But he's known as 'Bulldozer' and bull doze did he the protest by allowing the beef in. And with one push of the plow, he turned over the field of discontent once more to the protesters. Not only that the protest has gained in depth and appeal. Catholic clergy have taken to the street, holding processions and outdoor masses, something not seen since and reminiscent of the days when Korean Catholic with the blessing of cardinal Kim challenged the Yushin constitution of dictator Park Chung Hee. Lee is tone deaf and has learnt nothing from his country's history or the feelings of his fellow citizens. And so he's called on the police to crack heads. Which will only make his opponents on the street dig in more firmly. Bulldozer Lee has dug his own grave. Street protests have so isolated him from his people, and brought dissension within his own Grand National Party which holds a majority in parliament, that sooner than later, he's going to have to step down.

War drums on the Potomac?

Sy Hersh has a hot piece in the current issue of The New York. Famous for his breaking the My Lai massacre, he has sources in the Pentagon. Today, he's talking of Herr Bush's everything in place to launch the long talked about attack on Iran. Michael Klare share 50 per cent of Hersh's fears, though. It reminds one of the short story which hardly anyone reads anymore. Which door will the protagonist open? The one behind which is the fair damsel? or the other which harbours a man eating lion.? True Herr Bush is the most radical [right] of America's 43 presidents, and he doesn't give a rat's fart to those who question his right to do what he jolly well pleases. His war in Iraq ain't going well; he dropped the ball against the Taliban in Afghanistan; his ally in Pakistan is in collusion with radical Islamists; and he's stretched his military to the point of breaking. Attacking Iran would cause serious civil unrest in the US; bring down the pillars of the economic temple on Herr Bush's thick head; and send south the world's economy and play havoc with the way of life we know. Is Sy Hersh playing the boy who cried wolf? One wonders, and yet one thing is sure, Herr Bush's own generals are fearful of the man's actions, and so they leak rumours to Hersh to put sticks in the spokes of Herr Bush bicycle to war with Ira Link

John McCain down Bogata way, ole!

Republican presidential hopeful McCain is down in Colombia today [1 July 2008]. His is a show and tell day in Bogota. He went to throw his support behind Herr Bus;h's push for a free market zone with the US, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere. McCain adds nothing to the matter, but he's in motion which just about says it all. He's being jerked around by an adviser of his Charlie Black the man who wishes Al Qaeda attacks the US again so that his traveling mate will be a shoe in to the White House. Well, Black wearing another hat is a lobby for Occidental oil which has a presence in Colombia. So we may read a little more into McCain's trip than meets the eye, but not very much. McCain is a witless wonder. He's slipping and sliding to appease the Republic hard right who will hold their collective nose vote for him in November, something his 95 year old mum had the good sense to say out loud. Age has nothing to do with McCain's candidacy; it's his groveling before the old gods of a disastrous 8 years of Herr Bush radical rule. If McCain had any thoughts of his own, he long ago traded them in for a chance to sit in the Oval office. He's the Hubert Humphery of the Republican party!

John Mc

John M