US Presidential Debate

As part of my coverage of the US Presidential race (where as usual I called the Clinton / Obama race wrong ..... but I did get McCain right!) ...

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain 1st Presidential Debate

  I watched the US Presidential debate yesterday.

Greedy Bankers learn no lessons

The news was broken today that the Japanese Investment bank Nomura has bought 2,500 of the Lehman Bros jobs in London, Europe, and Asia (only the investment bankers of course ....).

Then came the staggering revelation that the 2,500 staff are in negotiations to get their "Bonuses", promised by Lehman Bros before they went bust!! Not grateful for keeping their overpaid jobs, despite running one of the biggest financial institutions into the ground, they want Million pound bonuses to 'keep' their jobs.

Now I feel we should tax every penny of every bonus paid to these idiots, because this is just the Capitalist world gone utterly mad ... these people have cost the US and UK Govt's billions, and Billions, of pounds and dollars, to clean up the mess and they want bonuses!

The BBC reporter who broke this news, also said that he had heard that one individual wanted the £11 million bonus ($22 million) he had been guaranteed by Lehmans (regardless of whether he made and profits for them or not!), and another wanted a mere £1 million bonus, for unravelling his massive trade deals for the liquidators, or new owners.

Such naked greed, and rampant idiocy, is why the whole thing collapsed, and yet apparently the gravy train at the tax payers expense, just carries on with no shame shown .....

The West is eating itself from the inside, like a cancer.

Economic Meltdowns and their affects

I haven't commented on the financial meltdown of the last few weeks .....

Foreclosures Rise During Recessions

..... mainly because there are thousands of blogger's who will do so, from the professional, to the amateur economists and political commentators, and each will have their own take on events:

• Those on the Left are pointing to Marxian economic theory, and saying the collapse of western capitalism is historically inherent in the model.
• Those on the right are more subdued, but say the model is robust enough to recover (although admittedly not without great pain and subsidy).

 

Democracy or Conspiracy at work in South Africa?

In a strange turn of events in South Africa, the President Thabo Mbeki who has outwardly been a model of propriety and democratic (ish ... this is Africa!) behaviour, has been ousted in a bloodless coup by his greatest rival Jacob Zuma. 

I touched on the background to this event a few weeks ago, but with reference to the threats by his supporters, to use unconstitutional means to overturn any court decision that they didn't support, I little suspected that this was the beginning of the end for Mbeki, who only a few days ago was negotiating the "Zimbabwe settlement". 

Zuma, who has been bedevilled by allegations of corruption, sexual misbehaviour, and other undemocratic behaviour, has somehow survived all of this, with most legal cases being tied down from ever getting to court by his lawyer, whilst he publicly asks for 'his day in court'. A tactic that works with his constituency of barely literate, poor blacks who are politically naive at best, and often followers of the 'land grab politics' of Mugabe at their worst. 

These supporters are the same people who recently took to ethnic cleansing to remove foreigners from many areas. Thabo Mbeki on the other hand only recently got linked to a corrupt arms deal (not terribly convincingly), and then suddenly a judge suggests that he had 'interfered with a case against Zuma' (although not all agreed with the judge), and he is forced to resign by his own (Zuma controlled) ANC party. 

It is a forgone conclusion that Zuma will win the party elections as he already is party president (which is effectively the same thing), and thus when he takes over as President Zuma of South Africa, he will have completed one of the strangest power transfers in African history. 

What this all means for South Africa is hard to judge, on the one hand Thabo Mbeki has accepted his demotion without apparent rancour and peacefully, whilst on the other, this does appear to be a coup (although not with the guns that usually accompany an African coup). Mr Zuma is a strange mixture of deviousness and populism, and its this mixture that makes it hard to predict how this will play out ... but perhaps poorly. 

He recently apparently pledged to help white Boers who were now living in poverty in their own White Townships (the ANC has always accepted Boers as "Afrikaner Africans" but considered the English speakers as "Colonials"). However his anthem "Umshini wami" (Bring Me My Machine-Gun)" tends to suggest that his power base is similar in nature to that of Robert Mugabe's "War Veterans" i.e. young, unemployed males prone to violent behaviour....... and they recently threatened violence if court decisions went against them, which is not a good sign. 

I expect there to be a honey moon period, but should he be baulked in anyway by the courts or constitution, then there may a temptation for him to just override them .... I may be wrong, but there are hints that he has that kind of 'Big Man African politician' personality. 

"Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country". Helen Suzman

Oddest Book Titles

There is a competition held annually since 1978 by The Bookseller magazine to identify the oddest book title that made it into print for the year ..... many an oddity has been identified, and for your delectation and wonderment I print the list of winners to date.

The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year

1978: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (University of Tokyo Press)
1979: The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution (Transaction Press)
1980: The Joy of Chickens (Prentice Hall)
1981: Last Chance at Love: Terminal Romances
1982: Population and Other Problems (China National Publications)
1983: The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling (MIR)
1984: The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today (Constable)
1985: Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the Other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts (Westwood Publishing Co)
1986: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality (Brunner/Mazel)
1987: No Award
1988: Versailles: The View From Sweden University of Chicago Press)
1989: How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art (Ten Speed Press)
1990: Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual (Lace Publications)
1991: No Award
1992: How to Avoid Huge Ships (Cornwell Maritime Press)
1993: American Bottom Archaeology (University of Illinois Press)
1994: Highlights in the History of Concrete (British Cement Association)
1995: Reusing Old Graves (Shaw & Son)
1996: Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (Hellenic Philatelic Society)
1997: The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition (Mitchell Beazley)
1998: Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw (Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust)
1999: Weeds in a Changing World (British Crop Protection Council)
2000: High Performance Stiffened Structures (Professional Engineering Publishing)
2001: Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service (Butterworths)
2002: Living With Crazy Buttocks (Kaz Cooke - Penguin)
2003: The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories (Kensington Publishing)
2004: Bombproof Your Horse (J A Allen)
2005: People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It (Gary Leon Hill - Red Wheel/Weiser Books)
2006: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification (Harry N Abrams)
2007: If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs (Simon & Schuster US)

Just a note that 1987 and 1991 must have been particularly sensible (or boring) years .....

The Art of the Political Cartoon

The UK has a very long heritage of satire via the 'cartoon', with works by William Hogarth in the mid 18th century perhaps being the best known. His subjects ranged across the spectrum from social commentary to political observations (His name has links to all his works) e.g.

This is an observation of the radical politician John Wilkes, which portrays him as slightly deranged with his eyes crossed.

An explanation, John Wilkes and the North Briton newspaper, won a legal case against the Government in 1763, against the use of 'general warrants' to arrest writers, printers and publishers of 'anonymous works', hence the cap of liberty, and the copy of the North Briton .

This political tradition has been carried on via the newspapers for centuries, and although there are several well known current practitioners such as Steve Bell, the acknowledged 'Master' is Gerald Scarfe.

In this cartoon for example he has Bush and Blair being shown their legacies .....

But, he ranges across the political spectrum, and he attacks either the political left or right with equal savagery, and he discusses some of his *work in this very interesting BBC flash clip (from which this still is extracted).

*For any non UK readers of this blog the people featured in the clip (in order of first appearance) are Margaret Thatcher, Harold Wilson, Edward (Ted) Heath, Robert Mugabe, John Major, Richard Nixon, Gordon Brown , Putin/Medvedev, George Bush, Tony Blair, Barak Obama, David Cameron

UK runs out of energy (Again)

As I discussed in an earlier blog comment, the UK faces a potential energy crisis of epic proportions ....

UK Nuclear Power

...... and yet the Labour Government of Gordon Brown is sticking its head in the sand on this issue.

Alcohol Drinking Types

The UK Government has identified nine drinking types ...

 

We All Need A Drink Now And Then

 

..... ostensibly to help tackle drinking problems in the population.

 

England being swamped by immigration

It's just been officially announced that after over a decade of unrestricted immigration, England is now the most overcrowded major country in Europe.... this is not news, as all the political parties have connived in New Labours lack of control on third world immigration.

It simply illustrates the sheer level of the criminal negligence implicit in the failure of politicians to defend our borders. In the past this would have been classed as betrayal akin to a treason, but in our PC times, there will be those white haters on the left who will be happy with the news.

We are heading for a time when racial problems will spill into violence .... I say that because flooding one country with foreign and alien peoples will surely cause violence. I cite Fiji, Uganda, Libya, Niger and Malaya as examples of where the native population have reacted violently to perceived mass immigration.

I expect that this news will be ignored by the Government, which after all is the Architect of this mass immigration.

New UK Creationists

I tentatively touched upon this subject sometime ago as part of another blog on human evolution, but as I think its slightly 'loony tunes' I didn't ever follow it up. 

God Creating The Heaven And The Earth
(Brueghel Jan II -  Wikimedia Commons)

It seemed a particularly American kinda obsession, or at least so I thought, until I read this BBC article, which shows that belief in "creationism" aka "intelligent design" is on the rise in the UK.

Faces of history

I was sat in a restaurant on the shores of Lake Garda, Italy (just place name dropping!), when a bunch of Germans walked in. Nothing strange about this as Germans are everywhere, and its not far from the the Austrian (Germans who can't make up their minds) border.

After a bit, it became apparent that they were all 'Berliners', and as I was idly looking at them, I was struck by the appearance one of the girls, who had an 'oriental' cast to her face. I don't mean she was a first generation daughter of a Chinese and European couple, I mean from a certain angle you could see that she was not wholly 'German' in descent.

This caused me to think about how the history of a location is often written in the DNA and appearance of its local population. In the case of Berlin, Stalin infamously allowed his "Mongolian" divisions three days to mass rape the population of Berlin as a punishment for Nazi atrocities in Russia. This was part of a systematic system of rape, murder and looting across all of Eastern Germany, and has left its mark in the DNA and appearance of the population of that region. A bit of a Slavic or Mongolian slant to East Germans and Berliners is maybe therefore not surprising, even if for obvious reasons it is not a subject that is openly discussed.

However as an illustration that most places can exhibit this - I give you Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and the population of western Turkey. The original Turkic invaders were a small dark haired and dark complexioned people (and remain so across the globe), and yet a 'surprising' number of 'Istanbul Turks' are tall, blond and blue eyed ..... well surprising that is, until you realise that up until the Turkish Ottoman conquest in 1453, the city and surrounding provinces had been host for centuries to thousands of tall, blond / red headed and blue eyed Gauls, Vikings, Saxons and others from Northern Europe (or the old Roman world) who fought in Roman or Byzantine armies, and the descendants of these men are still the inhabitants of the city, despite becoming 'Turks' by conversion afterwards.

This still causes some Turkish nationalist hackles to be raised when you mention it in Istanbul (I know of what I speak LOL), but its true. The Turks are taught surprisingly little about pre-Islamic Asia minor, and I suspect would rather pretend the land was not Greek before becoming theirs by conquest. Still in the East of Turkey its true to say that the population is largely 'Turkic' looking, but this area was depopulated in the centuries of fighting between the Byzantines and Arabs, and then Byzantines and Turks, but in the 'European west' its different.

Its patently obvious that, a total of about 40,000 or so invading Turks couldn't kill and replace several million Byzantines, and like the supposed "Anglo-Saxon" or "Norman" invasions of England, it was mostly a replacement at the top rather than an invasion and population replacement.

History is full of these visual reflections of the movements of peoples if only we have the local knowledge to notice them, and travelling along the crossroads of invasions and conflict often shows us these faces from the long forgotten past.

An Istanbul crowds showing its diversity

Sexual Harrassment in Egypt

You know how all those Mullahs and their supporters, always say that women aren't oppressed under Islam, but rather are respected and safe as long as they dress conservatively (hiding under a tent structure?).

Egyptian Sexual Harassment Is Rife

Well as is usual from that source, its actually complete garbage as evidence shows ........ 

Yemen runs dry

I am away in Italy for a while so these are a couple of quick comments ....

Yemen Droughts

..... firstly water wars. I have blogged before about the collapse of the Ecosystem and our closeness to "water wars".

Just an unremarked genocide

Just a comment on the news that, as usual, around the world, Christians are being persecuted, and Christian politicians say nothing ...... as usual.

First came the news that over 10,000 Christians have been driven into camps or the forests in India (The country we have given £825 million pounds in aid to). Christian Aid runs an appeal on behalf of Hindu flood victims in Bihar, but nothing for the relief of homeless Indian Christians, which about sums up their "PC" infection, when they favour Hindus over Christians. Only the Pope speaks out.

Second the tiny band of Christian Somali's living in Kenya report being persecuted, again, who cares? certainly not the West, who only seem to care about Islam or other violent religions 'rights'.

As I have reported before the persecution of Christians by Muslims or others is now a worldwide trend, but you would hardly know it in the West.

Anglo Saxon Sluts?

The revelation (if you will pardon the fundamentalist metaphor), that the Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol is a teenage pregnancy statistic, would be vaguely interesting outside the US, but not much more than that, however the side statistic that the US has the worst teen pregnancy rates in the Western world makes it very interesting.

For the land of the Fundamentalist Christian to also be the land of the teen pregnancy is quite ironic (if the US does irony), and in fact a look round the "Anglo Saxon" world shows that in second slot is, yep the United Kingdom :-) In fact outside of Sub Saharan Africa (where teen marriage is the norm), it appears that its us and the US that lead the way across the Anglos Saxon world.

• The US has 44 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19.
• The UK has 27 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19.
  

The Canadian rates are 16 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19.

This UN report lists all the figures in this age group for 2002, and shows the following:

Edited List for the year 2002

1 Niger 233
26 Afghanistan 111
34 Zimbabwe 92
42 Jamaica 79
49 South Africa 66
51 Haiti 64
58 United States 53
66 Turkey 43
68 Bulgaria 41
69 Iraq 38
69 Saudi Arabia 38
69 Ukraine 38
70 Romania 37
72 Armenia 34
73 Georgia 33
76 Russia 30
77 Belarus 27
77 New Zealand 27
78 Estonia 26
78 Lithuania 26
80 Latvia 24
83 Hungary 21
84 United Kingdom 20
85 Croatia 19
88 Australia 16
88 Canada 16
88 Poland 16
89 Ireland 15
90 Austria 12
90 Malta 12
91 Germany 11
91 Norway 11
92 Cyprus 10
92 Greece 10
93 Belgium 9
93 France 9
93 Luxembourg 9
94 Finland 8
94 Slovenia 8
95 Denmark 7
95 Sweden 7
96 Italy 6
96 Singapore 6
96 Spain 6
97 China 5
97 Netherlands 5
97 Switzerland 5
98 Japan 4
99 South Korea 3

The full list is on the link above

Things have evidently got worse in the last 6 years!!

It should be noted that many of the non western countries have large numbers of early marriages e.g. Turkey.

In my opinion, its the casual acceptance in the West, that the state has too pay for, and support, any teenage girls who get pregnant, for life, that lead to these high rates.

Stop welfare and you stop teen pregnancies.