Gettin' by, money n'war...

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488242032172599023.post-80182366180071941352008-03-14T23:46:00.000-07:002008-03-15T00:47:28.912-07:00Gettin' by, money n'war...After the latest news that the fifth largest investment bank in the US now requires funding from the Federal Reserve to stay afloat and Darling's kinda 'hold the line' non-budget it seems no one, but no one's got the bottle to come out with the real truth. Sure the sub prime market in the US has had an effect and maybe the UK should have saved more for a rainy day but what's plainly evident (and should have been from the start) is neither the US nor the UK can afford the f****** war! Osama must be laughing like the proverbial drain as he watches the West's economy slide further and further into the mire. What galls me most is the sheer arrogance of the West in their assumption that they and only they can solve global problems. Did it never occur to the Rumsfeld's or the Cheney's (well...I suppose you are asking a lot there!) that they just might be walking into quicksand and that not everyone would be delirious about having US troops on their soil for many years. I'm sure they thought it'd be a quick, cheap and easy option to 're-balance' the Middle East. Against all advice - literally - they stumbled like the blind leading the blind deeper and deeper into the pit. Now with a folksy, mumbling apology for a President (the only one left of the the triumvirate, I mean have you seen head nor tail of Cheney lately!!?) about to set off into the sunset, Rome will burn whilst he fiddles (or whatever he does) in the vast flat plains of good 'ol Texas. No one wished to see a tyrant such as Saddam destroy a population and lord it over a land so rich in history and endeavour. But again the US continues to remain in denial about Saddam being feted by such as Rumsfeld et al whilst he did the US's bidding against Iran. Now of course the US remains more than just a mite twitchy about Iran's stance on a lot of things, both nuclear and militarily. Which will never be solved until there's a huge shift of emphasis in US foreign policy. And that's a long way off - if at all achievable - as whilst Clinton and Obama slug it out, I would hazard a guess that 'at the end of the day' the Republicans will triumph once again such is the paranoia surrounding National Security. Whilst Iraq festered and Afghanistan became the preserve of the Taliban there was nothing like enough diplomatic effort made to solve the problems. The whole weapons of mass destruction debacle only served to prove that the US had decided long before on military action as the only solution. One which should have been employed, if at all, in the first Gulf War. Then there's the sheer folly of 'reconstruction' which was never in place or even thought about. Which is beyond lunacy. I dearly wish for the people of Iraq to live in peace and prosper, as in Aghansitan. And I feel for those troops who do a massively difficult job in extreme circumstances with one hand tied behind their backs, and a paucity of the right equipment with which to do it. A situation which can be laid firmly at Brown's door. You only have to look along the front bench of the Labour party at PMQ's to see why we're forever in the sh** in this regard as those government ministers responsible are basically completely ineffectual individuals with nothing, but nothing to offer whatsoever. And their erstwhile one time former boss is now about to solve the Israeli/Palestinian question!? I don't think so. I can well understand the hurt, anger and outrage over 9/11. I've been to Ground Zero and it's a moving experience. The sheer scale of it overwhelms one. But wouldn't it have shown real guts and fortitude for the US to have taken a step back and thought maybe, just maybe there's a reason for all this and we should sort it out? And there's the rub as few at the top are 'great thinking' people, giants of political thought and initiative. Mostly we're run by medicorities on their own agendas. Anyone with anything apposite to contribute is sidelined. No one knows anymore. And few -if any -care. Across the board mediocrity rules. From the arts, education, wholly inefficient government to badly run companies, staffed by the scourge of the UK - 'middle management' - possibly the worst anywhere in the world. The pre-requisite for heading up such a company or organization is be a useless arse, screw the company up even further and walk away with a huge pay off. Beautiful. So inspiring. Whether it be dealing with banks, lawyers, utilities, whatever, and going through the endless pain that they and only they can dish out or indeed trying to get your broadband sorted and being tortured with totally unacceptable service, useless engineers and premuim rate utterly 'non help', helplines you're left with only one choice - that of remaining stoic. My point is if all this idiocy was correctly chanelled and addressed we might get somewhere. It'd need a sea-change of epic proportions for that to be achieved but in what could yet be a curious irony as the West's economy continues to slide into the abyss and we're brought up sharp on so many things, it'll all have to change in any case. Maybe the time's about to arrive. We shall see. What I do know is that music remans a constant, in a special place, and whilst there's the usual sh** out there, much remains inspiring and dwarfs the sludge and putrifaction that is the daily condition.BBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09933601701280517297noreply@blogger.com