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.

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.

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.

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.