Wednesday 18 June 2008

Afghanistan – The Charmed Hallway of Asia


Afghanistan is a charmed, spell-bound country. It lies in the middle of nowhere, its only asset being its strategic location right between Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. Lacking resources of significance or access to the sea, it is very much like a hallway with no furniture: you can’t live there but you can’t do without it for the access to other rooms.

One thing about hallways is that you can’t stay there for too long unless it’s the only thing you know since your birth. You can hang out there for a while, maybe even bite the bullet and stay a few nights, but you won’t possibly settle down there.

Many conquerors tried to defy that, all of them failed. No amount of digging your heels in the ground worked. The place is charmed. Alexander the Great, Assyrian kings and Shahs of Persia, the Mongols and Timur, Moguls of India and Arab Caliphs, all did their brief stunt in this magic land only to withdraw before too long or, at utmost, to claim its nominal dependency.

Afghanistan was a buffer zone in the Great Game between the British and Russian Empires, wisely enough, neither side wished to claim it. The Wakhan Corridor is a lasting legacy of that thoughtful arrangement. Afghanistan was left alone for many decades until the Soviet Union, oblivious of history's lessons, decided to barge in. Contrary to Western propaganda, Soviets did introduce progressive developments there: gender emancipation, free education and healthcare. But once again, nothing was enough to get rooted there in any meaningful way. The arid Afghani soil rejects any foreign seed.

Now we are having a whole international force stationed there. Billions are spent in aid, development and military expenditures. So far the only achievement was a major boost in opium and opiates production. Contractors, parliamentarians and other carpetbaggers are having 300-dollar sushi dinners in Kabul while the country folks, disenchanted with yet other self-proclaimed liberators, start again siding with the Taleban. Ever-so-irresistibly smiling President Karzai may keep squeezing multi-billion aid pledges from Western governments but it is not him or his ilk – not even the foreign troops consuming 100-million dollars worth of bottled water a year - who will inherit Afghanistan, but the hardy Afghani farmers wasting away from dysentery and malnutrition in their earth dugouts. Remember, the place is charmed.

Sunday 15 June 2008

Lame Duck, Lame Lines


Oh, the sheer irony of it: the man who almost single-handedly turned the USA from the darlings and role model of the world into its most hated bully and the new Empire of Evil, denounced "misinformation and propaganda" that sully the country's image abroad.

Probably to protect world's most famous dimwit from the adoration of Italian public 10,000 policemen were mobilised in Rome, there were frogmen under bridges and snipers on roofs, and mobile phone signals were being disrupted whenever his motorcade moves. Bush made his European exit with a bang, spreading the Culture of Fear only Americans know how - and that is in the country that sided with the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, a close ally in other words.

To the chants "Bush, go home!' outside, the lame duck president knew no better than to ask Italians to ignore the "misinformation and propaganda" spread about his country and to learn the "first-hand truth about America" by visiting. Translation from Bush-speak: "don't pay attention to the irreparable damage, suffering and destruction that I and my cronies have caused to the world in the last 8 years in pursuit of personal enrichment, just come and see our friendly and hard-working folks - their smiles are simply irresistible".

It is impossible to start an argument with a dimwit without looking like one but it is pointless to argue with a dimwit who is fed lines through a wireless earphone by his speech-writers, and dumb lines at that. So, let's leave him to that, hoping he will cause little more harm before he sinks into the annals of history. There is a special place in hell for people like him.


Saturday 14 June 2008

Roman Abramovich - The Official Presiding Deity Of Conspicuous Consumerism


How do you know a natural born gentleman of means from a freshstart trying to pass for one? The latter gives too much tips.

New Russians feel that if something costs an awful amount of money, it simply must be good. Probably that's why clothes of comparable quality cost in Moscow 2-3 times as much as in Western Europe. Russians are considered best customers in Amsterdam's shopping malls, which locals consider too ridiculously overpriced to go to. Life is not a cabaret, it is a mall so Russians in Europe shop till they drop - as if the stingy hand of Communism were still having a grip on Russia's consumer supply.

Russia's presumedly richest man Roman Abramovich paid Amy Winehouse a hefty 1 million GBP (that's around 2 millions US bucks) to sing one hour at the launch of his girlfriend's art gallery in Moscow. That may come across as a sign of ultimate coolness in Moscow but Mrs. Wino must have been laughing in her sleeves not believing her luck: the Russian gig brought in about 10 times as much as a much longer regular performance elsewhere.

This guy looks like he can't believe his luck: Ivorian footballer Didier Drogba was plucked out of relative obscurity and handed 24 million pounds by Mr. Abramovich to join his favourite hobby horse: Chelsea F.C. - just one million short of Beckham's transfer fee to Real Madrid one year earlier. The kick of playing a fairytale prince who can turn people's fortunes upside down at his whim must be priceless.


Unrestrained in means and oblivious of real world prices, in football New Russians are pushing the prices up, just like in London's luxury realty market where they are responsible for 90% of purchases, pressing out the Japanese and Arabs.


In the country where 34 people own 75% of entire wealth, it is a never-ending ball for those 34 and their families. Brought up in relative austerity under Communists, they managed to grab hold of formally everybody's - technically nobody's - assets in what is probably the biggest swindling operation in history when world's second largest economy was privatized for next to peanuts. But it is also the same country where men officially are not expected to live to retirement (average life span is 56 years) and whose population is dwindling by 800 thousand a year from harsh labour and living conditions, unhealthy lifestyles, rampant alcoholism, drug abuse and diseases. But what of it, when you can sit back in your 9.5-million-pound London apartment and enjoy an 80-million pound painting that belongs to you and looks like shit.


Lesson In Humility For The EU Politburo


862,415 Irish delivered a resounding No on behalf of the European Union's 490,000,000 who were denied the right to vote on the Lisbon Treaty, a disguised proxy of The European Constitution that failed so spectacularly in 2005.

While I believe that the Treaty's objective of streamlining the European governance system is highly plausible, the cavalier attitude the EU Politburo took in pushing it down on people assuming their servile compliance by default deserved a counter-reaction.

The sentiment behind the No vote in Ireland was the same as that in France and Holland back in 2005: it was a call for the European big brass to step down from their high horse and try to explain what exactly they were doing to their half a billion of citizens. No heed was paid however. Far removed from the common Euro-Joe's concerns in their ivory tower of Brussels benefits bonanza, non-elected rulers of Europe decided that it would suffice to tweak some wording, give it a new name and "the plebs will gladly swallow it".

No such luck. Convoluted Euro-speak and a massive pro-treaty campaign by political celebrities could not hide the fact that Euro bosses were simply taking people for docile idiots.

And they still are: the responses from the likes of Jose Manuel Barroso and David Miliband show no remorse but poorly hidden irritation with the pesky commoners who dared to get in the way in their scramble for power.

'By hook or by crook, we shall drag you, stubborn fools, into our paradise,' quoth finger-wagging Barroso. 'After all, my future European Presidency is at stake!'

Most likely, the Irish will be bullied into re-voting until the Eurocrats squeeze the right result out of them, just like they did in 2002 with the Nice Treaty.


Wilders' Fitna Fails, Unites Religions


Wilders botched it big time after all. Praise Allah!

'The commotion around Wilders' movie Fitna did not lead to an increase in extremist incidents. In fact, it has prompted many Christian and Moslem organization to seek better contact with each other', said the Dutch National Coordinator of Fight Against Terrorism in his statement.

The peroxide blond politician tried to garner as much press attention as he only could copying some of his friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali's best performing tricks: making an MTV-style (lots of provocative imagery, no substance) anti-Moslem video was one of them.

It was meant to propel Wilders into the first ranks of Dutch political world, which is becoming increasingly dependent on 'spin' tactics. The trick did work - but just for a short while. The video turned out so lame and the timing was so wrong that apart from uniting both Christian and Moslem organizations against Wilders, it only succeeded in making him one of the most hated personalities in The Netherlands, earning him epithets like "despicable provocateur" and "extremist".


Hatred-mongers like him are solely responsible for the fact that there are now around 200,000 people in 8,5-million-strong Dutch workforce busy "fighting terrorism". A staunch Roman Catholic, Wilders is a frequent traveller to Israel where he claims to have made friends with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Almert. His credo pattern, atypically pro-Israel for a Dutch politician, bears striking similarities to the beliefs of the British interwar leaders who made a series of disastrous decisions in the British Mandate of Palestine influenced by their Bible-based Christian upbringing - leaving the world to deal with now 70 years of bloody ethnic violence. History lessons are never learnt because no one learns history.

Tuesday 10 June 2008

The Real Point Of The Iraq War


Like we did not know that from the start: the Iraq War was ALL about sharing spoils in the aftermath and very rich spoils they turned out indeed. An investigation by the BBC has just revealed the tip of the iceberg worth 23 billion US dollars lost, stolen, or not properly accounted for by some of the top US companies.

But even more interestingly, this subject cannot even be discussed in the US press because of gag orders imposed by the Bush government. The head of the committee responsible for investigating this, says that "it may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history." Well, I guess he never delved into the financial intricacies of all Chechnya wars in Russia. he sure would be in for quite a few shocks.


Sunday 8 June 2008

Lot From Sodom, Our Moral Beacon


Lot from the Bible gets sloshed before getting it on with his daughtersWe all know the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorra – both cities perished in fire and brimstone for the sexual transgressions of their citizens, the abominable homosexuals, thereafter known as sodomites. (Gomorrans were not as lucky to have a sexual “perversion” to be named after them.)

But what became of the only righteous man saved from the horrible fate of his compatriots, Lot? What was the lot of the God-chosen man after his wife had been turned into a salt pillar for casting a glance back at her hometown as it was consumed by flames and a rain of smouldering rocks?

The man who was divinely saved as an example of pure life for generations to come went on to take shelter in a cave, get drunk and have sex with his daughters who later bore him children. That progeny lived on to become the patriarches of the Moabite and Ammonite peoples.


The Old Testament seems to give us next to no leeway between the options of heavenly punishable homosexuality and "divinely endorsed" incestual propagation. Modern Christian preachers decrying the former as the abomination in the eyes of God use the Sodom and Gomorra accident as a rock-solid proof for their views. However, they always remember to cunningly omit the end of the story, which would put their stance in a very dubious light.

The Bible is a great book full of folk wisdom and spiritual revelations. At the same time, you can find there justification for just about anything: appeal for universal brotherly love is put on the same shelf as pimping one’s own wife. Glorification of ruthless genocide is made in the same breath as most sublime expressions of humility and thankfulness. Whoever claims the Bible to be the ultimate base for moral judgement on all things should be prepared to have his own weapon turned at him.


Saturday 7 June 2008

New Faces Of New Russia


Gone are the days when Russian big brass looked olive drab and oblivious of modern facial care. Gone are even the not so remote days of ill-advised attempts at classy act with the help of flashy Italian garb and bling-style accessories.


Russia's new image financed by the seemingly unlimited oil and gas profits is all about understated top-notch luxury and designer-approved colour schemes. Beastly faces of former Communist bosses have vanished into the dusty archives of history. The state-of-the-art spin machine has fixed everything down to good boys' facial expressions and impeccable manicure. Gorbachev's broad Southern accent and Yeltsin's habitual malapropisms have given way to intelligentsia-style vocal inflections and even English fluency.

New leaders of new Russia are, as Marx would remark, the products of the system. Capitalism requires products to be well designed and presented and politicians are no exception. Even tough cookie Condie Rice was impressed: 'Medvedev is of the new generation', she conceded warmly.


Thursday 5 June 2008

Tata Nano As A Harbinger Of Global Doom


The 2000-Euro zero-frills Tata Nano is about to hit the market. Millions of Indians will become more mobile, the living standard goes up. Definitely, a cause for celebration.

Until you think of the price that it comes with. Not the 2000-Euro price tag, but the hackneyed environmental impact. Despite the wee size and motorcycle-style engine, the Nano's fuel consumption is worse than of the Toyota Prius, and let's not even get started on the 2-stroke engine's gas emissions.

It's a very difficult dilemma: it's surely nice to wish people in the developing countries have better lives, but the day every family in China achieves the Western life standard, this world will probably explode, literally.


The problem is double-edge. On one hand, the so-called Western life standard promoted as the most desirable is barely sustainable even now. The paragon of that consumerist dream, the US of A, sucks 40% of world's energy to maintain it. On the other hand, the overpopulation in the developing world has never been addressed in any meaningful, non-PR way, which would be nation-wide birth control education programmes and free supply of condoms for every family.

I remember an interview with an Ethiopian woman in Cooking In The Danger Zone. All her 6 or 7 children have been brought up almost solely on foreign food aid. When Stefan Gates asked her why she had so many children if she had no means to feed them, she answered that in those days she did not know better, nobody told her and now nothing can be reversed.

The only long-term solution would be cutting down on the excesses of the First World and keeping in check the population growth in the Third World.

Strangely enough, the now defunct Second World was approaching that balance, if not always intentionally: the former Socialist countries were chronically underpopulated (the trend is still continuing) while the consumption was kept next to bare basics. And that was exactly what brought the system down: the American Dream looked so sweet from behind the Iron Curtain that everyone was relieved when Communism collapsed. Blatant consumerism proved irresistible.

Now we live in the world where a personal car, a wide-screen TV and flying on vacations abroad are the Aspiration, the Salvation and the Redemption of every specimen of middle-class office plankton worth his annual salary growth. The world vision initiated, among others, by Ford and General Motors in the 30s buying out and dismantling whole rail and trolleybus networks throughout America, so that everyone would need to buy a car.

It all could even be cute and laughed away, were there a few times fewer of us on this planet. As it is, it is not the case. Our appetite for resources is becoming more and more voracious and there will hardly be any major shifts in the mass conscious towards desire for more sustainable lifestyles. So let's wait and see until the last litre of gas disappears in the fuel tank of a Tata Nano. That will be our first call for change.


Tuesday 3 June 2008

Who Is Actually On Our Side?


It must be in human nature that whoever gets to power immediately starts craving more and more control. The fear of not knowing what is going on in citizens' minds must be unbearable. Just over a decade after the demise of the KGB as a not so successful attempt to keep people's minds in check, its very original foe, the US, introduces the Patriot Act that aims at the exactly same objective. UK, the 51st state of the current Empire of Evil, achieves the highest density of CCTV cameras per capita. The Culture of Fear is slowly creeping up on the European continent too: even water bottles and nail-clippers are potential weapons these days.


But the most fierce opponents and decriers of the Western democracies' newest trends in mass conscious control and manipulation are guilty of the same crime. Our flamboyant Mr. Hugo Chavez who rose to power as the champion against the malign US influence in Central and South America is currently trying to institute an anti-spy law. The gist of it is: "if you don't squeal, you'll get in the dock" - not cooperating with intelligence agencies will land you for 4 years behind the bars. I remember how I used to morally side with Chavez's cause but now he too is going down the typical power usurper's way.

Quickly spreading worldwide paranoia as well as technological advances are getting all sides to beef up on surveillance. It's a new arms race and the loser this time will be the common-and-garden Joe like you and me as now it is a perfect perpetual war and its real objective, as unobtainable as it may be or seem, is a total subjugation of your mind. Globalist or anti-globalist, militant communist or hard-nosed Neo-Con, they all are after your brains.


Pro-Democracy Protests In Bangkok


You can't report all the news in the world but at least a major news agency should have enough sense and logical judgement to separate the wheat from the chaff.

My previous post was about the factoid pseudo-news scum that takes over the BBC headlines. TV news in UK is bound by law to be impartial and the BBC website is the internet outlet of the TV service.

It is easy to understand why China news gets more coverage than reports from smaller Asian countries, but one thing that makes me furious is that when a Tibetan mob went on vandalizing shop windows, the worldwide hoopla went sky-high praising them but when thousands of Thai people in Bangkok keep protesting against an illegal constitution change that would allow the former Prime Minister get away scot-free with embezzled billions - that barely merits a mention (after I wrote an angry letter to the editors, but I don't really know if it actually had any effect, I like to hope it did). And even then, reports on a peaceful pro-democracy protest by concerned politically aware citizens get buried in heaps of stuff like Kiwi hedgehog assault or Indonesian flighty cash-drop.

Ironically enough, the Thai military turns out to be the only defender of justice these days, while the US threatens to withdraw its aid (a miserly 32 million a year, more spent on luxury items in Bangkok alone on any given week!) if their puppets of corrupt politicians are not restored to power. The Empire of Evil has now a firmly established capital in Washington, D.C.

Monday 2 June 2008

There Goes The Beeb Too


Trashy tabloid-style news - is that what we all want?


Here's the list of the most popular news of the hour - no, not on the Daily Mail website, but on the good old BBC International:

BBC prides itself on its mix of analytical and factoidal news as thus they can "address all audiences [including imbeciles and illiterates]". Their Most Popular News pick is actually based on what pages people read the most. Day in, day out, from 3 to 5 headlines out of Top 5 would not be out of place on the Sun's front page.

The Beeb, the last bastion of sense and good taste has been brought down by our own hands clicking on the links to pseudo-news about crime, disasters, sex and glamour.