|
Austin’s summer blog. In which Your Hero reveals how he escaped to USA, found God, provided Him with a new message” Who would Jesus Bomb?”, foretold the collapse of the dollar, forcing the resignation of Bernanke and had a long interview with a Porn Star. Read on
STATE SECRET REVEALED. Keep it dark. I`ve transferred my aching backbone and the body hanging loosely from it to California for Rest and Recuperation. I’m swimming twice a day (damn sight less expensive than physiotherapy), walking and (if Linda allows it) cycling next week.
It’ll be like the Yorkshire joke when they view the body: “Ee ee looks well. ” “So ee bloody well should. Ee’s just come back from California”.
* * *
Total transformation here since last year. Instead of the outpouring of Republican rants of two years ago there’s lots of books putting the case against Bush, the war, corruption, the permeation of Congress by corporations.
The mood’s turning radical and Bush looks fumbling. The polls are against the war but Bush can`t get out. Even Fox News has toned down the rubbish a bit. Just a little.
On the other hand there’s majority support for Israel. It can do no wrong. The aim of government is to keep them supplied with missiles and do nothing until the Israelis have had a week to devastate Lebanon. Then Condi will bring in the UN and all the nations, so busily blaming the US, will refuse to provide troops for a UN separation force in Lebanon. Only Pat Buchanan seems to be talking sense viz the Israeli reaction is disproportionate, will destroy Lebanon, alienate world opinion and leave them with two failed states on their borders; Lebanon dominated by Hezbullah and its feminist arm Herbullah Palestine by Hamas, both with stronger support as protectors of the people.
One view here is that in the accidental broadcast at the G8 Bush didn’t say “Yo Blair” (talking down to an inferior) but “Yeah Blair”, (resigned to another dose of whittering from the importunate gold caddy telling Tiger Bush how to play during the lunch break). Bush was clearly trying to change the subject to the cardigan (knitted by Cherie) Tony had given him.
Having been fobbed off, Tony now has to follow me to carry on the whittering in Washington. Waste of time, Tony. But it’ll look good on telly.
Dubya’s other faux pas. His grab for Merkel’s tits was another bit of his Frat House humour - though if John Prescott had done it the Mail would have demanded that his hands be chopped off.
Bush’s problem is that where Blair worries and takes everything seriously and whines on, Bush takes nothing seriously. So nothing gets done until Karl Rove tells him to. He didn’t take New Orleans seriously. He didn’t take American evacuation from Lebanon seriously. He doesn’t take what Israel is doing seriously. He didn’t take the commitments on reconstruction made to Iraq and Afghanistan seriously. On the other hand he’s brilliant at Bush cutting and seriously anxious to get back to his bike like me.
* * *
One thing they do take seriously is regulation of capitalism which they`ve been doing with huge success since Theadore (not Franklin who strengthened it) Roosevelt. The land of capitalism knows too much about it to trust it and the land which invented the market knows only too well that it crushes people, compounds wealth and is open to fraud. Both are the enemy of democracy.
In Britain, on the other hand, we’re deferential creeps. We believe that chaps don’t cheat, that all is for the best in the best of gentlemanly markets, and that only chaps can regulate chaps. We leave capitalists to enrich themselves but crack down on the unions, the workers and squeezing the minimum wage. They’re not chaps.
Here they believe that businessmen are natural crooks. Unless they’re controlled and regulated, that corporations will cheat and lie. Unless they`re stopped. That everyone will fiddle their tax obligations, skim of profits and fiddle everything through tax havens. Unless they’re stopped.
They have the power to do all that through the Securities and Exchange Commission, Irwin Spritzer and the trenchant exposes in such organs of capitalism as Fortune or the Wall St Journal of failures, cheats and malfeasance.
A British Enron would be brushed under the carpet. An enquiry would take years and there’d be no legislative result. Here it was dealt with in five months, the perps sent to prison and Sarbanes Oxley passed to stop the account fiddles. It’s a jungle and the regulators have to be tough to deal with self-enriching corporate cheats.
Classic example. Last year we were conned into passing the Gambling Act under the pretext that it would regulate internet gambling. In fact it legalised internet gambling which the Americans are trying to control by invalidating credit card expenditure on offshore internet gambling, much of which is now conducted from Britain. Last week the Feds arrested the British CEO of the British based BetOnSports and took out a restraining order on the company. Good on `em. We should do the same.
* * *
Congratulations to the Browns. I’m still singing the English version of the Compagnons de la Chanson hit. Little Jimmy Brown was born “dans le village, au fond de la valee……”
END NOTE. Sorry about the sensational introduction. No time to deal with all that here. But do keep reading for further revelations. In California anything is possible. A foreigner can even be elected Governor. So watch this space. |
