Falk Off, They're Ours

Aaaah Chavez, he's definitely on my list of top 10 favourite dictators of all time; not for any presence of being a hard man like Pol Pot, or, like Stalin, and in fact being able to deliver any kind of military backing for any of his words, EVER; but he just screams "look at me, look at me, please world, please think that I'm relevant." In this way he is the dictatorship equivalent of a non-alcoholic beer; looks the part, even tastes like the part, but doesn't make you go all wobbly at the knees after a 12 hour bender.

So, the year is 1982, I mean 2010 and The Falkland Islands, or "Islas Malvinas" are being claimed by the Argentinians, again. Britain is saying "No, no, no, they're ours" and the British oil company Desire has already popped a massive hole in the seabed searching for black gold 60 miles off the shore of the islands. The Argies are all pissed off and having a go at dicking around with shipping routes of their coast, the US is staying out of it, and the rest of Latin America is apparently behind Argentina grandstanding and banging their hands on tables somewhere in the middle of Mexico.

This is a load of bollocks.

I don't mind Argentina, they're alright, I love Carlos Tevez, their flag is one of the most original out there (yes that always scores points with me), and I even gave Madonna's portrayal of Nazi sympathiser Juan Peron's wife Evita a try - although all that singing on balconies was just a bit too much for me. But it is absolutely laughable that they should claim the Falkland Islands for their own, please allow me to regurgitate some facts that I believe are why the islands firmly belong to Britain...

• The islanders hold British citizenship
• The islanders have stated that they want to remain British (I'm a fan of self determination, so is the UN by the way)
  
• The population of the island is over 70% made up of British peoples, with the other 30% being a mixture of French, Dutch, and Chilean ancestry
• The islands were first spotted by the British in 1592, visited in 1690, and settled in 1765

The Argies however don't agree, and they believe that their ownership of the islands lies in the fact that the islands are off of their coast, and that they took over the dispute of the islands that was formerly between the UK and Spain when they won their independence from Spain back in 1816. And so now they're going around pontificating about the bad "colonial" and "imperialist" Britain in the hope that they get to kick out British peoples from the islands and colonise it themselves and get their hands of some of that love-er-ly oil moolah. The irony of the situation has reportedly made Alanis Morissette's head explode.

And don't even get me started on this recent "summit" in Cancun, actually I'm already started so let's point out a couple of things about that too. For humour's sake, I'm going to assume all of these leaders were shit faced and wearing novelty sized sombreros like all other visitors to Cancun...

Firstly, let's point put which countries would automatically lose their independence should sovereignty be tied to geographical proximity to a significantly bigger neighbour - Belize, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay.

Secondly, how many of the governments in these countries could use a nice press hit to boost ratings back home and serve as a much needed distraction from actually bettering their people? I'm going to list these in four categories - 1.Our economy is in the shitter because we produce only fake leather shoes and 3 metre lengths of string 2.Oh fuck I need to get re-elected soon 3.My country is run by gang-banging drug smugglers 4.The Joe Stalin Award for Awesome Oppression (JSAAO) goes to...

1. For the sake of time, I'm going to say all of them with the exception of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico who make up 3 of the G-20 countries. Although Chile and Columbia come in as also rans.

2. Thank you to the lovely people at commonborders.org for this...

Country	Date	Term
Costa Rica	Feb. 2010	4
Peru	Apr. 2010	5
Colombia	May 2010	4
Mexico	July 2012	6
Brazil	Oct. 2010*	4
Nicaragua	Nov. 2011	5
Guatemala	Nov. 2011	6
Bolivia	Dec. 2010	5
Argentina	Oct. 2011	4
* First round.

3. Special mentions must go out to the whole of central America, Mexico, Columbia, Bolivia, and Peru - but this map should help you visualise it a bit better...



4. Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, and arguably a few more too.


Thirdly, well there really is no thirdly, but your honour, let the record show that the backing of Argentinia was hardly given by the most credible nations in the world.


So then, what of it? Not much really. In the aftermath of the Falklands war Britain upped the level of security on the islands, and as we speak a sub is on it's way to the region to protect British citizens should the Argies feel like trying anything on. The ironic thing is, they planted so many landmines around the island in the first war, any attempt at invasion similar to last time would surly lead to massive casualties. But I expect very little to come of this, this is merely posturing by countries and leaders that are following the rhetoric and stances of populism and distancing themselves from the richer northern hemisphere nations in an attempt to win back some public favour after what has been a disastrous couple of years for the global economy.


For the record awesomely original flags include the countries of Wales, Nepal, Qatar, and Sri Lanka - who doesn't love a fucking lion wielding a sword?

On Borrowed Time

So the debt ceiling just got raised to almost $15,000,000,000,000 - an almost incomprehensible sum, a ludicrous sum, an amount so high that I'm getting spasms just thinking about it. Whose idea was this? "Well boys and girls we're in a lot of debt, and the economy is in the shitter, what shall we do? I've a great idea, let's borrow some more fucking money until we've borrowed so much that all of the toner at the fed and the treasury run out of ink."

Good plan eh? But seriously, who actually believes that you can borrow your way out of debt and economic downturn? I know everyone loves the Keynes bandwagon, but there has to be some kind of threshold as to where his philosophies just come short. I can't possibly believe that if this country continues to try and borrow it's way out of the problem while the citizens continue to be frugal then the shortfall between what the government is spending and what the government is bringing in just has to be too large of a gap to fill with anything shorter than taxing the living shit out of people.

The latest figures on each American's portion of the debt is estimated at around $45k, that doesn't sound too good does it? But this also is a skewed figure, the formula they used to make that projection is debt/population, or roughly 15t/300m. What really should have been the formula to get a good rough estimate is debt/population that actually pay taxes - and by that I mean people who ACTUALLY have to pay taxes, so no kids on there, no illegal immigrants on there, no one below the threshold of when you have to pay taxes (aka poverty line folks etc...) - when you re-do the math, and this is important for those who actually do pay taxes, it works out to roughly $100k per tax payer. Add on top of that interest that is going to compound over time, or add the leniency for separate tax bracket groups and this gets a lot worse for certain people on the social spectrum. THAT IS ABSURD.

I can't really offer any more on this post, I normally like to be snarkier than this too, but so egregious the nature of this problem is I don't think I can bring myself to do it. That's a jaw-droppingly large figure, and stands as proof for me that this government needs serious reform; we need to cut the fat, get back to the basics, and stop trying to provide everything to everyone. Being everyone's provider isn't the most selfless thing to be, the most selfless thing to be is taking care of yourself so that no one else has to.


Cash for Wankers

...Also, did anyone hear about the new cash for appliances program? Same theme as cash for clunkers except now you can help your neighbour get a brand-spanking-new dishwasher. Are you fucking serious? I already shit the bed after watching cash for clunkers give the market an unnatural spike in car sales for about a month and a half because people waited for the legislation to pass before buying their new toy - on a side note thank you ever-so-fucking-much for disqualifying my shitty 1997 VW Jetta (I love you Jetta Jameson, don't break down because of my harsh words) from the program because apparently it is better off on the road (technically usually on the side of the road) whereas a 2009 Hummer wasn't - illogical!

Anyway, I'm being discursive. The point is that yet again my money is going towards improving other peoples' homes and lives through the buying of dishwashers, dryers, and fuck only knows what else. On top of this it really pisses me off that when stuff like this is done it's done for the massive voting block called the middle class. The upper classes don't give a rats ass about this because they can afford to buy shit on a whim. The middle class eat this shit up because they have enough put by to take advantage of stuff like this. Us little poor folk who have no savings because we live pay cheque to pay cheque get nothing out of programs like this, in fact in the cash for clunkers deal we didn't even get the possibility of a lot of second hand cars for cheap because they were all scrapped. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for a hand out, I enjoy being self-sustainable and budgeting for myself, it's called being responsible, I just hate that when you preach inclusiveness and the merits of an equal society and a fair society and whatever other bullshit rhetoric that is the buzzword of the week to the masses, and then you turnaround and roll out programs like these that go against everything you've just said. Don't you assholes see the hypocrisy?!

I'd now like to address "the man" - "Excuse me, Mr. Man, please stop fucking me. I can barely afford to get by myself, but it is quite disheartening to know that the money I give you, in trust that you will use it to keep me safe from rapers, terrorists, and to educate little fuck-bag kids that aren't mine, is actually going to be used to subsidise Mr. and Mrs. Jones over at number 43 while they remodel their kitchen. Again, I feel the need to reiterate, please please please, stop fucking me. Sincerely yours, The Little Guy."


Pink Floyd -Welcome To The Machine - The best bloopers are here

What's the Point?

Or really more, where do they come from? We're staring down the barrel of a gun currently as our run of form has taken a dive from what looked like an early season slip up to an almost full blown catastrophe. Luckily for us the other teams around us, are, well frankly, shit. To stay up this season may be a case of being less shit than those around you. But where are we going to pick up points from, and what is going to stop me from committing suicide before the season ends? Lets look at the remaining fixtures and allude to what could be...

Key: Must Win No Chance Possible Result

Sat Dec 20: vs. Chelsea
Sat Dec 26: vs. Portsmouth
Mon Dec 28: @ Tottenham

Sat Jan 09: vs. Wolverhampton
Sat Jan 16: @ Aston Villa
Tue Jan 26: @ Portsmouth
Sat Jan 30: vs. Blackburn Rovers

Sat Feb 06: @ Burnley
Tue Feb 09: vs. Birmingham City
Sat Feb 20: vs. Hull City
Sat Feb 27: @ Manchester United

Sat Mar 06: vs. Bolton Wanderers
Sat Mar 13: @ Chelsea
Sat Mar 20: @ Arsenal
Sat Mar 27: vs. Stoke City

Sat Apr 03: @ Everton
Sat Apr 10: vs. Sunderland
Sat Apr 17: @ Liverpool
Sat Apr 24: vs. Wigan Athletic

Sat May 01: @ Fulham
Sun May 09: vs. Manchester City

There are 8 must win games in the selections that I have made, I do not assume all will come true, but every single one of these must be played like it is our cup final for the year. Each of these teams is beatable, and only 2 of the games are away - Portsmouth, and Burnley (if there's ever to winnable away games you'd assume it's those). Winning all of these would almost certainly guarantee our safety with a grand total of 44 points (if we go down on that we beat our old record by 2). All of the blue games must also be seen as games that we get a result from, nick a point or possibly three here or there in these and we'll either offset the red games that we lose/draw, or improve our overall league position. And hell if we gets some points from the pinks too we'll be laughing.

The point I am trying to make is that the season is far from over, but we do need to act fast, at the very least starting at the pompey game (which I'll be at so they better fucking win), and Upton Park has to be a fortress for the rest of the year. So come one and come all, players stick your bloody fingers out, Managers don't be afraid to give them the hairdryer, and supporters let's turn Upton Park back into the fortress of old that it used to be, and make it truly uncomfortable for the away team to play there. No more whinging, let's get down to business.

Grin And Beer It

Thank you Lynn Fucking Sweet for asking the question that has now driven the whole media into a frenzy over the Crowley-Gates ordeal. Thank you for asking a question so off topic that it drives me mad. In the middle of Q&A over health care you have managed to distract an entire nation's worth of media on to possibly one of the most mundane and over-hyped "news events" possibly witnessed. The fact that people are now complaining about what beer the President will drink is all down to you, you bitch, thanks a lot.

My anger is because there is just so much more going on in the world than having to worry about a white cop and a black professor. Was it a legitimate question? Sure, why not, what question isn't? But it was so off topic, and there are so many better examples of poor race relations that you could have pointed to. In fact, on the same day a black ambulance driver was choked out by a white cop because he didn't yield his vehicle to him during an emergency response - you want to talk about race relations in this country? That's probably a more appropriate situation than a well-to-do Harvard professor breaking in to his own house being arrested for refusing to comply with a white policeman. But no, some nobody from the south won't generate media orgasms like a well known Harvard professor and a police officer that gave CPR to the Boston Celtics' Reggie Lewis, will they? Oh God the controversy makes my bowels move.

Well done Obama too, Mr. I don't know all of the facts but I'll take a side. I mean c'mon, the story had barely broken, the police report wasn't even written yet, nor was the accused's testimony out, but using sound judgement that I just plucked from my arsehole I can predict what actually took place. Poor judgement on your behalf sir, should have kept schtum.

I'm not taking a side in this at all, the moral for me is don't be an ass to the police, don't send a racially loaded email to the Boston Globe, and don't assume things are necessarily about race. Either way now we're forced to listen to what beer all these idiots will have to drink at this "beer summit" - for fuck's sake Crowley should order a Guinness and Gates a White Russian, lets all hold hands again.

A Post From A Year Ago I Just Found...Call Me Lazy: From Moscow, With Tough Love

So as I sit here, on a lazy Sunday in Arlington, I think to myself “What should I listen to?” and I just so happen to have a feeling that it should probably be Radiohead – so track one on Kid A gets the green light, and myself and Thom Yorke bond through the medium of song – Everything in its Right Place.

And indeed it seems as though things are returning to their right places, the Ruskis are getting in a bit of a huff and puff over Georgia, maybe they just really like peaches, and the Chinese Olympic cloak has been falling with accusations of faking fireworks (they invented them, surely they should be allowed to fake them if they want to), and lip synching performances unmatched since Milli-Vanilli’s last world tour. So what do we make of all of this?

Well the Chinese, as we all can agree upon, don’t exactly have the most forthright government – did anyone actually expect them to look like angels with no sign of authoritarian coercion in the midst? And so are we really surprised that the fireworks were fake, the girl couldn’t sing, and that some of their gymnasts were given fake documents to make them qualify to compete? Not at all I say, because surely Chairman Mao would have loved to have seen the spectacle on a 62” HD TV, so all is good.

The unfortunate thing, is that while the Chinese government has been funding this Hollywood-esque masquerade, millions of your average citizen are living in extreme poverty. But that’s the problem when communism meets the need for PR, let’s just put a big smile on and pretend everything here is good. In fact, most governments do this, but the fact that communism is all a bit utopian, it seems more cringe worthy. More money was spent on that opening ceremony than what will be put towards education, or even relief efforts, all for the sake of trying to make the west positive on China – I personally would certainly have cast a blind eye on an ever growing list of Human Rights infractions all because one thousand Chinese people can simultaneously bang drums in the dark with glowsticks; don’t know about you.

Drums gives me a nice transition to the “Russian Federation” who seem intent on banging their war drum in Georgia, where the hapless Saakashvili is in all kinds of trouble. Saakashvili, not content with running a semi-successful democracy decided he’d punch above his weight, and decided to test King, Czar, Chairman, Chess-master, whatever Putin by shooting a couple of bullets in South Ossetia – a place that until last week nobody this side of Kiev had ever even heard of before. The result, as we all know, was a very efficient bitch slap by the Ruskis, and a pseudo-world-crisis. “Oh no, what should we do, the commies are back”. Yes they are, but really they were there the whole time, we just decided to ignore them for about the last 15 years, while we all had wet dreams about the fact that Poland and the former Bloc nations were buying our cars (shame really as the aerodynamically challenged Lada was a brilliant little motor) and familiarizing themselves with Microsoft Office.

Russia is back then, and it won’t be too long until Russians begin to be touted as fat men stroking bald cats in James Bond films. This was all on the cards though, Russia has been posturing for the last couple of years. In the last two years alone the RAF has had to scramble jets at least three times off of the northern coast of Scotland to ward away Russian bombers, within the last few months the Russians were playing war games with themselves off of the Iberian peninsula, and we all remember the laughable planting of the Russian flag under the North Pole by their Navy. Yes, their waning world influence, it has been decided, is to be no longer, and now we must all deal with it.

But this is all a result of the Russian psyche, and traditionally always has been. Throughout the years the Russians have always treated world affairs as a game of chess, and in that game they’ve always felt like they’re behind by at least both of their bishops and possibly a rook. The Mongols ran rampant there centuries ago, as too did Napoleon for a little while until he lost his blanket, the Swedes had a crack at them in the Great Northern War, and of course we exploded an atomic bomb on an island off of their coastline around 1945 – the pattern here is that the West is a threat to Russian sovereignty and freedom to drink vodka at will – and this notion has really driven contemporary Russian foreign policy – there goes another rook, lets use Eastern Europe as a buffer zone, oh shit we lost a pawn lets stick some missiles in Cuba, in fact the majority of our pieces are now joining the EU and NATO lets show them what we can do if they step too far out of line by ruffling some feathers in Georgia.

And so the old Russia, that we know and love, is noticed again, making their stock go up, and everyone around the Kremlin is happy again and can pat each other on the back for a job well done.

I do feel a lot of this is our fault, what did we do to Russia in the post-Soviet era? Not much to be honest, but there was certainly a sense of a fallen giant and we all jumped on that bandwagon and treated them as if they had no chance of recovery, and made the best for ourselves while leaving many of them to rot. Very little investment was put in to Russia compared to the other ex-Soviet states, Europe let Poland et al come and sit at the dinner table whilst leaving their Russian neighbour a text message stating that they’d have to take a rain check “something has come up.” America was more focused on countering the EU’s gaining economic strength by hashing together NAFTA just so salmonella tomatoes (climbing up the Eiffel Tower) would be a couple of cents cheaper. It still amazes me that Starbucks, which can be found on almost every street corner in the world and possibly Mars only opened up shop in Moscow last year (mushroom sandwiches and all) – and while much of a stagnant economy can be put on the KGB-led government’s shoulders, you have to wonder why a Russian Marshall plan was never thought of – surely the best thing at the time would have been to clamp down Russian friendship and mutual cooperation – they have a UN veto vote for God’s sake! And whilst it’s all fine and well that Russians now wear Levi’s jeans, and Paul McCartney can make his settlement money back by doing a couple of gigs in Red Square, I feel that we missed out on a big opportunity to change the Russian mindset towards the West. And so now we’re going to have to deal not only with posturing, but Russian action, and yes it could come down to another cold war scenario, with the millions of Russian youth turning their attention from intimidating Gary Kasparov to finally purging the Chechens and letting the world know that Russia has influence and brevity.

Expect the press to have a couple of 10 second sound bites that they’ve taken out of context to prove the latter. Expect Fox to hate Russia, expect CNN to try and defend Russia, and expect no one to say that nobody is righteous in this whole cluster-fuck of a situation, and that in fact we’re all to blame.

Regardless, this scenario will only get increasingly more interesting, the press will make it out as if we’re all going to start throwing rocks at each other, but deals will be cut in smokey rooms and we’ll all go back to the status quo shortly and start hashing up game theory matrices to demonstrate Putin’s options and decide whether or not to invest in LukOil. It may be the status quo of the 80’s but nevertheless, status quo is good, and besides, the Cold War was the safest time in history to live in.

I don’t know if there’s a point to much of what I just said, maybe it is just commentary/opinion. And I’m still listening to Radiohead, and will aptly end now whilst listening to the track No Surprises.

BRICs and Mortar

According to the Times Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) have just formed an alliance that is based on economical and political policies that will be used to take away total power in the world system from the United States.

The article explains that;

...The first summit of heads of state of the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — ended with a declaration calling for a “multipolar world order”, diplomatic code for a rejection of America’s position as the sole global superpower...

...The declaration also satisfied a key Kremlin demand by calling for a “more diversified international monetary system”. President Medvedev is seeking to break the dominance of the US dollar in financial markets as the world’s leading reserve currency. He favours the establishment of more regional reserve currencies, including the Russian rouble and the Chinese yuan, to prevent economic shocks. Mr Medvedev said: “The existing set of reserve currencies, including the US dollar, have failed to perform their functions."...

Extraordinary, but extremely hard to accomplish, and a little unrealistic. For starters China has billions of US dollars owed to them which they are using as securities for their own currency. The value of the Yuan would plunge with the decline of the value of the dollar.

Brazil is regionally challenged due to it's geographic relativity to the US as well as having the majority of it's neighbours and trading partners being so tied in to the US economy. Plus, where is all that surplus coffee they started making going to go?

Russia is a mess in their "democracy," the Ruble is worth next to nothing, the leadership and high profile businessmen over there consist of mostly ex-KGB warlords and higher-ups from the old guard. This move for them is more about world status than actual effects.

And India is a country whose educated workforce (think phone banks, IT Tech support, debt collection calls) and uneducated workforce (think tea and rice production, clothing and apparel, and now Range Rover) is so tied in to the US/UK economic system that it would be murderous for them to try and change that balance.

Let's not even start talking about Russia's idea of "regional reserve currencies" either...did all of these world leaders forget to bring a map with them to this conference? Hint, and I'll be nice and whisper it, Russia, India, and China are right fucking next to each other, wonder if that could cause a dispute?!

I'm not too sure that I want to go into this too much more as it's all a bit over the top, and I really don't see it hashing out into anything productive. If anything it will increase trade relations between these countries, but as for political and economic dominance it will do very little, and if it does start to make an impact you'll be sure to see either trade barriers/tariffs against these countries rise, and/or a further closening between the US, EU, and British Commonwealth (with or without India on board). I wonder what Orwell would have made of that?!

Hmmn so now I can blog via mobile device eh? Wolves away first game? I hope we stuff em!