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March 2009
March 23rd, 2009
New Afghan Puppet to Be Appointed
The United States is poised to appoint a new leader in Afghanistan. It seems that Washington is disappointed
with the work of current Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Karzai is the former Unocal executive who was appointed
and then later "elected" President following the NATO invasion and defeat of the Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2001.
Karzai's rule has been marked by two related and disturbing trends: a deteriorating security situation and an increase
in opium production. Though these developments are nothing new, almost to the point where they could be considered
traditional in the region, (read your history) the Americans seem to have had about enough of Karzai, thinking that
they can find a better puppet.
The Americans have accused Karzai of being too corrupt and ineffective of a leader, and are looking to create another
position within the Afghan government to balance executive power. Obviously, they are looking for a more pliant Viceroy
who will more readily dance to Washington's tune. It's not that Karzai hasn't done everything that he has been asked to,
its just that recently, he has seemed to develop a bit of a populist streak, handing small portions of political
influence and a share of the country's plundered wealth back to his constituency.
Let's face it, Afghanistan is a corrupt place, and to serve as leader there, Karzai has had to enrich at least
some of the local heavy-hitters who have kept him in power and prevented a home-grown coup from overthrowing him.
In the case of Afghanistan, the big players are a collection of warlords, drug cartels and "Moderate" Islamists.
Some of Karzai's sins have been to strike cease-fire deals with various Taliban factions, to hand power in some
of the provinces to the local warlord's militia/cartel and to allow elements of the Afghan police forces to turn
a blind eye to the poppy plantations of specific Karzai cronies. This is standard stuff for an Imperial enclave,
but the Americans seem to have lost their patience with it. After all, it's time to get serious about the mission again,
they've got a pipeline to build.
Washington's official line is to state that Karzai's corruption level is too excessive, even for Afghanistan.
Afghan elections aren't scheduled to take place until late summer, so in the meantime, f@ck democracy, the US will
create the position of Prime Minister and implant their own stooge.
I'll make a prediction now. If this planned appointment goes forward, the man chosen will be Ashraf Ghani.
Take it to the bank. I've seen Ghani paraded around on Western television, he is clearly being positioned as the next
leader of Afghanistan. His English is good, he knows how to deliver a soundbite, and he'll know that he owes Washington
big for his rise to political power. That makes him the perfect puppet. Get to know the name, for he will be the Empire's
next man in Kabul.
March 15th, 2009
Why We Shouldn't Be in Afghanistan
It seems that we're seeing more and more ramp ceremonies at Kandahar airfield. At least once a week we hear
those somber bagpipes playing, marking a final salute to yet another dead Canadian soldier before his remains
are flown back to Canada. In light of this, I want to repost my podcast about why Western countries
should not be in Afghanistan, and why we will not be able to defeat the Taliban militarily.
Why We Shouldn't Be in Afghanistan Click to Listen
The clip is a 12 minute long MP3, the file size is 2.8M
March 7th, 2009
Yes, the site is still alive, I'm just really busy so I'm finding it hard to update it right now.
In the meantime, I want to send people back to something I wrote in October. This piece may help you to
get a better sense of why we're in a depression, and why it's all the fault of firms like Goldman Sachs,
Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and other mafia-style organizations known as investment banks.
Explaining the Credit-Crisis: Why The Bailout Won't Work
People don't seem to understand the conditions that have led to what is being called the "Credit-Crisis."
I've been doing a lot of research on this and I think that I have a pretty good handle on what really happened
here, so I'm going to try to explain it in a way that people unfamiliar with the disastrous practices of Wall
Street can easily understand. Its complicated, but bear with me.
First, banks and other agencies began issuing what have been called sub-prime loans. These were mostly mortgages
with really low interest rates. The loans were structured so that the people who took them out would have very
low payments for the first eighteen months or two years of the agreement, but much higher payments after that.
In many cases these loans were given to people who had no income, no job, no assets, and no ability to make
payments once the higher rates kicked in. However, because of the time-lag between the issuing of the loans, and
the day when payments would inevitably stop, firms realized that they had a brief window of opportunity to turn
temporarily valuable loan papers into billions of dollars.
Enter the Collateralized Debt Obligation. (CDO) Firms would carve the sub-prime loan debts that they owned into
pieces and repackage them as a product called a CDO. A CDO would have little slivers of all sorts of different loans
pieced together. A CDO might consist of 1% of Mary's second mortgage on a house in San Diego, 1% of Manuel's car-loan
in Atlanta, 1% of Mohammed's mortgage on a house in Kansas City, and 1% of the money that Acme Widgets Inc. borrowed
when they wanted expand their factory in Pittsburgh.
Even though the firms knew that many of their loans would and could never be repaid, because of the time-lag between
when the loans were good and when they went bust, the firms could temporarily list their CDO's as assets. Because
of this, it was in the interest of firms to issue as many dodgy loans as possible, in order to create as many
CDO's as possible, in order to hold as many assets as possible. Firms began buying and selling their CDO's and using
them as collateral when taking out loans of their own.
Enter the Credit-Default Swap. (CDS) Firms holding CDO's made deals with highly-rated firms. (Companies with good
credit ratings like the now nationalized AIG) The small firm would pay the bigger firm to co-sign with them on a very
large loan, often from a privately owned bank called the Federal Reserve. The small firms would list the income they
were making on their CDO's as collateral, and then make a payment to the large firm for their golden signature. Having
a large firm with a good credit rating as co-signer, dubious firms were able to borrow at astronomical rates, in some
cases at a ratio of up to 40 times of what the CDO's were (temporarily) worth.
Big firms saw windfall profits through their ability to sell their signature to smaller firms. Smaller firms borrowed
tens of billions of electronic dollars at low interest rates from the Federal Reserve Bank, among others. The stocks of
the firms involved in the scheme went through the roof as they were able to show massive amounts of money on their
balance sheets. A handful of CEO's made billions of dollars.
Now the chain reaction. The time-lag has caught up to us, and the higher payments on the sub-prime loans have kicked in.
People can't make these payments, so one of the slivers in a CDO package, then another and another becomes worthless.
The value of the CDO is compromised, but the firm who holds it had already borrowed an astronomical amount of money
against it. With nothing coming in from these now worthless CDO's, firms holding them no longer have enough income to
make payments on their debts. Since the smaller firm can't meet its debt obligations, the company that co-signed the
CDS deal with it has to pay. The larger firm, which has made many CDS deals finds themselves owning the debts of many
smaller firms, and they have to "write-down" their profits. Stock prices dive and some firms go bankrupt while others
are nationalized.
Now the final piece. These large firms are the ones who have been lending money to regular people, regular businesses,
and your bank. Perhaps your RRSP or 401K has put part of your life savings into some of these firms' stock. Now the
big firms can't make loans anymore, they have diverted all of their assests to making payments on the bad debts they
hold. It is all that many of these firms can do to avoid going bankrupt themselves. One fails, then another, and the
problem is compounded. There is very little money available now for people to get a loan to do anything at all, from
buying a house, to sending their kids to college or buying new infrastructure for their businesses.
The suggested solution to this problem has been for the US treasury to give troubled firms a "bailout", but that's not
even going to come close to solving the problem. With interest factored in, there are tens, or maybe even hundreds of
trillions of dollars worth of bad debts out there. The bailout, if it were passed, would do very little to the solve
the problem, though perhaps it would delay the inevitable collapse of the credit markets until after the US election.
Personally I think that the bailout is just a scheme for Bush to loot the treasury as a parting gift to the US...he did
this to the other companies he bankrupted earlier in his career. A better option than the bailout would be for the US
government to nationalize the Federal Reserve Bank, but that's a discussion for another day.
Really, things are way worse than the media is letting on. Wall Street bet your house and mine, and now everybody loses.
There are some monumental days in our near future. The entire financial system is about to be re-organized. Think of the
last days of the Soviet Union. It could only be a matter of weeks before the American System comes crashing down. If this
happens, try to remember that the money being played with is actually an illusion, and that troubled times will pass.
On a positive note, the destructive ideologies of the "Free-Market" and "Neo-Liberalism" are about to be completely
discredited. I hope that whatever financial system rises up from the ashes will be more principled, transparent, and
equitable for everyone.
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