Tis the season to be clairvoyant

It's that time of the year again, when most people defer cynical normality until the New Year, eschew common sense and start spouting goodwill to fellow men.

But not Skinner, no sirree bob.

For me, it's the season for casting a gloomy, pessimistic, jaundiced eye over the year to come, read the runes, scatter the entrails, gaze into the crystal ball and attempt to predict what the year ahead has to offer.

We'll hold fire on last year's predictions until this year is officially up. (Though nothing's stopping you checking now.) Instead, it's full steam ahead with what's ahead in 2010.

1. I can haz double-dip recession? Sort of inevitable at this stage, really. Credit card debt should do it for Ireland, which is tragically appropriate for what has happened to us as a nation in the mass delusion of the 'Celtic Tiger'.
In America, it will be the ongoing slide in dollar value, while Britain will simply run out of cash. China is hamstrung by its dollar exposure, lack of Western demand for plastic tat made in sweatshops and the fact that the rest of the world will be slow to forget how China stitched up Copenhagen for its own ends.
In short, more red lines on the charts, more capital flight to precious metals, more lost jobs, more housing price decline, more negative equity, more foreclosures, more unemployment and more excuses from those responsible.

2. What does Africa need right now? You were thinking 'major soccer tournament', weren't you? Isn't that top of their list of needs?
Africans agree, of course, which is why they're having two in six months. Never mind the HIV epidemic, the grinding poverty, the neverending wars, famines and disease. I must haz mi football. Right?
South Africa 2010 will see predictions of violence against the occasional drunk affluent visitor sadly fulfilled. Stadia will be full of white people flown in for the occasion. A European team, likely Spain or Italy, will win, though an African team, likely Nigeria, will get to the semis.

3. General election in the Republic of Ireland.
Seriously, this government wouldn't even have lasted this long were it not for the dire standard of political opposition in the Dail, and the utter disorganisation of political opposition outside of it.
Enda Kenny is as effective and reliable as the Billings method, while the beards running the unions have already shot their bolt and allowed their campaign to be cleverly cut in two by a government sneakily talking up public sector V private rivalries.
But to hold together an administration this flimsy, talentless and aimless would require both the cunning of a natural alliancemaker like Bertie Ahern and endless pots of overflowing gold to pay everyone off and keep them all happy.
Cowen has neither Ahern's touch nor any money whatsoever, since Ahern spent it all already. So it's inevitable that sooner rather than later the faeces will fly into the fan.

4. Result of election? Fine Gael and Labour, that unhappily married couple, back in the saddle again, this time minus the self-exploded Greens.
Stasis for the Shinners, though a few new faces in their line-up, including Joe McHugh. A move against Churry as leader of the party finally coalesces around someone other than the unelectable Mary Lou. Toireasa Ferris, perhaps?
Fianna Fail to regroup around a new leader - with Martin facing off against Dermot Ahern for the job and Martin winning. Most of the current cabinet retire to count their ill-gotten gains.

5. A general election is already scheduled for next year in Britain and the North, so they're already in mid-campaign.
The toff Tories to edge it in a surprisingly close-run thing after an initial rally of the British economy in the Spring. But they will claim no seats in the North, leaving their alliance with the UUP in tatters.
Lady Sylvia to win as independent in North Down, taking their last seat, leaving them behind the TUV, for whom Allister will ascend Paisley's old throne in North Antrim.
Alisdair McDonnell to become the next SDLP leader, and subsequently hold South Belfast. A resurgence for this party might then finally be possible, especially if a Shinner generation shift starts to coalesce.

6. Post-Lisbon, the EU will grow ever more important. Initially in Ireland this will either not be noticed or welcomed when spotted, since it will come alongside support for our comatose economy or will be warmly contrasted with our indigenous mismanagement of our political affairs.
But elsewhere, the twin-track Europe does begin to finally emerge. Eager to push on with the long march to federalism, the elites of Brussels will seek to seduce an inner circle to move faster. Welcome to the beginning of a Europe of the centre and the fringes again, just like the Roman Empire.

7. Poor ole spook kid Barack just won't catch an even break in 2010. With the messiah sheen of his election campaign long lost in most memories, Americans will get on with the fact of confronting growing poverty and unemployment, a reduction in international relevance alongside a growth in international danger, not only in current war spots but also in some new ones too.
I'd expect more Islamoterror next year, likely of the old Nineties format of attacks on foreign -based US troops. And that will of course stabilise Pakistan hugely.
Not.

8. China realises its dollars are worthless and we don't want their tat anymore, and there's only so much African resources and commodities you can stockpile for future good times, so it belatedly decides to spree its dollar mountain on Western assets.
This overt accumulation of Western trophies, akin to the Japanese intervention into California in the Eighties, will be the first sign for many of the Chinese century everyone was suspecting might come about.

9. Chelsea for the league, Barcelona for the Champions League, Rafa for Real and Mourinho for Anfield after an Arab buyout of the bankrupt Yanks.

10. Russia will play silly buggers with the gas pipeline to the West again as it tries and largely succeeds in splitting both Georgia and the Ukraine in two.
Everyone talks tough, but the Kremlin ain't listening. Once again, decadent old Europe realises too late that the Eastern threat to its stability has never gone away but merely morphed into yet another totalitarian guise, following the Tsarism and Sovietism of the past.

Should be a good year.

Mystic Skinner foresees again

You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?

There I was, getting all carried away with my new Axis of Evil. I'd gone and forgotten to make my 2009 predictions. Nope. I hadn't. It's just that they're so depressing I was in two minds about posting them.

Make no mistake, this isn't going to be the best year for the vast majority of people on the planet. There will be economic upheaval, recession, war, famine, epidemics, poverty and the continued denial of human rights and democracy.

But specifics. You want specifics, right? Okay.

1. A severe crash in the housing market of Britain and Ireland, even worse than what's already occurred. The governments forced to intervene with banks to prevent massive scale repossessions and defaults.

2. The credit card lifestyle bill finally lands on the mat. Plenty of people with no assets other than a few payments on a 08-D car are going to find themselves defaulting on some very expensive credit loans. The problem of arranging refinancing, from semi-bankrupt banks who themselves cannot get credit, for these unsupported loans is going to stretch the banking sector beyond breaking point.

3. Multinationals use the excuse of recession to relocate to Eastern Europe. Cue 100,000 redundancies next year in Ireland.

4. Euro or no euro (and given that 40% of our trade is with the sterling zone even today, the euro is not currently helping), we might actually have to call in the IMF if the government cannot raise the funds to deal with their income shortfall AND that of the banks, especially if the credit card bill arrives too.

5. Empty shopfronts in high streets. Cars with for sale signs. Travel agents, estate agents, motor retailers all going bust.

6. A general election in Ireland after either the Greens grow stones and pull out of Government or they lose a crucial Dail vote, an election which Fianna Fail lose quite significantly to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

7. Obama's Clinton re-run presidency gets off to a poor start with a series of foreign affairs crises that even Bill and Hill can't solve for the noobie. For potential flashpoints, think Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Indonesia and as usual most of Africa.

8. Britain definitely starts pulling out of their occupations. Troops to start leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. As recession bites, there will be a further round of culls in the Northern Irish public service sector.

9. Chelsea for the league, with Liverpool nipping their heels in second. United a distant third. Fergie to quit at long last. Perhaps Wenger to join him in walking from the Premiership.

10. The beginning of the end of low cost air travel. As airlines consolidate, and routes decrease, and more and more craft are parked in the Nevada desert, the consumer ends up with the worst of all worlds - prices like the luxury days of the 1970s with service of contemporary Ryanair.

Mbeki is a genocidal criminal

Thabo Mbeki is a genocidal criminal who ought to be facing the International Court of Justice for the unnecessary death of 300,000 South Africans.

He also shares responsibility for the death of innumerable Zimbabweans who perished solely because Mbeki has provided the only support that syphilitic scum Robert Mugabe has.

Those in the West who continue to cheer the 'rainbow nation' because they did well at rugby and Uncle Nelson has a nice friendly smile need to start paying attention.

Mbeki has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Africans. His single-party state continues to defy genuine democratic principles. And worst of all, he has sustained the evil of the Mugabe regime a full generation after it should have ended.

Not that I expect the apologists for Mugabe's despotism - generally one-eyed Marxists who consider any opposition to the syphilitic loon to be neo-colonialism - to start caring about ordinary Zimbabweans now, all of a sudden.

But perhaps the PC credentials of opposing the spread of AIDS might prick a few Western consciences.

Mbeki and Mugabe are no better than the previous post-colonial generation of utter cunts who have murdered their people for their own profit since the Europeans left.

But while we rightly consider the names of Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, Mobuto Sese Seko and Mengistu Haile Mariam to be dripping in blood and ignominy, so far the same reproach does not adhere to Thabo Mbeki.

But it should. It really should.

What sort of cold-hearted cunt is Barack Obama?

George Hussein Obama, centre, in Huruma shanty town, Nairobi, Kenya, where he lives unaided by his somewhat wealthier brother Barack.

There are serious questions about Barack Obama that aren't being answered.

Questions like: was he actually born in Hawaii or was he born in Kenya, which would invalidate him from even running?

Questions like: what did he actually do during his years as a community activist and why have his employment records suddenly been made classified the minute journalists started asking to look at them?

But the most serious question about Barack Obama is the one about his character.

What sort of a man can run for high office, the highest on Earth, promising his vision of care for all, expressing his concern that no one be left behind and that the weakest be protected, while all the time he has abandoned his own brother to a diseased shanty town and Third World squalor?

Barack Hussein Obama is that man.

And George Hussein Obama is his brother, seen above being propped up by a journalist and friend due to either illness or drug use.

He lives in Huruma shanty town in Nairobi, next door to a low-rent brothel in an area where AIDS is endemic. He doesn't work, smokes dope all day, and lives with his aunt on a pittance he raises by begging. He also appears to be in poor health.

Barack has never given George any help. He's never even given George a penny to help himself. But he's written multi-million selling books boasting about his pride in family, in his heritage. Somehow, he's never seen fit to share the tiniest bit of that wealth with his own brother, who is forced to beg for a living in a Third World slum instead.

Despite that, poor George still supports Barack and has the whole neighbourhood backing him in the forthcoming presidential race.

I'm not American and I don't have a vote. Even if I did, I'd be a natural Democrat in US terms. But I cannot endorse such a man as Barack Obama.

I'm getting saddened at how so many otherwise intelligent people have fallen for the rhetoric here. Everyone seems to be sleepwalking into believing they've found the black JFK rather than actually questioning the candidate, and properly examining who they're seeking to elect.

John McCain has a thousand pages of medical records, was tortured in Nam and is running for this post four or eight years too late. John McCain, if elected, might die in office and leave Sarah Palin in charge, which is scary for many people.

John McCain has a lot of money, cars and houses. People pick on him for that. But Obama has a lot of wealth too. The difference, for me, is that John McCain hasn't left anyone in his family behind in a squalid gutter.

That's probably because John McCain was the person left behind in the squalor for years when he was a POW in Asia.

John McCain is demonstrably a man of integrity. A man who can't remember how many homes he has, perhaps. Let's say he's an old, occasionally forgetful man of integrity.

But any multi-millionaire man of power and influence who would leave his brother to fester in such a hellhole without even offering to help is no man of integrity.

And when that man then starts spouting about how he wants to care for everyone in his nation, I start thinking about his abandoned brother and wonder whether what I'm hearing is hypocrisy, psychosis or simply cynical lying to get elected at all costs.

Barack Obama is a man without character who left his poor brother to rot in a festering, Aids-ridden, malarial Third World shanty town, despite being himself a millionaire who boasts of his desire to help everyone he can.

Bear that in mind. Don't say I didn't warn you when he turns out not to be the black JFK after all.

P.S. Some Americans wish to help poor George even if his big brother the millionaire senator does not. Here's the link for Help George Obama, if you're interested in being a better human being than Barack Obama.

Now I wanna be your dog

Spam is certainly getting stranger. Of course, I still get as many offers to extend my cock with surgery or Viagra as I ever did.

But the 419 scams are definitely branching out from the usual Nigerian general seeking someone trustworthy to mind his millions.

I mean, I assume this is a 419 scam. In some ways, things would be much sadder if this were in any way genuine:

I WANT TO BE YOUR HOUSE GIRL

Monday, 11 August, 2008 9:20 PM

From:

"balissunm@yahoo.com"

To:

undisclosed-recipients

I WANT TO BE YOUR HOUSE GIRL

hi master/ mistress,

My name is magret kabore,i live in burkina faso ouagadougou,i am 22 years age,i will like to be your house girl and i will live with you in your country,if you considerring my world to live and work with you,i will be very happy to be your savant,i will send my picture after your respon.REPLY ME BACK TO THIS PRIVATE EMAIL ( magret_mu@yahoo.fr) PRIVATE TELEPHONE NUMBER/ 00226-76-24-21-55

i will be waiting to hear from you soon.

Thanks

magret.

A Vision for Africa

This is Robert Mugabe's new house:

It cost around $26 million dollars and took five years to build, five years during which Zimbabwe's economy completely fell apart, inflation spiralled up to hundreds of thousands of per cent per year, and thousands of the poorest lost their shanty shack homes in slum clearances ordered by Mugabe.

But Robert sleeps well at night:

He dines well too. Even though 80% of the population are without work in Zimbabwe, Mugabe's kitchen and chefs ensure that he and his Zanu cronies are well fed:

And they can always relax later for cocktails by the pool, and discuss perhaps the pressing matters of the day.

Like the election they lost then stole back. Like the tens of thousands of citizens who've fled the country. Like the fact that they'll get away with it because the only people able to enforce change in Zimbabwe are other African leaders who are as corrupt as Mugabe and who in general owe him one.

Like Thabo Mbeki, for example.

Despots like Mugabe continue to pose as post-colonial heroes throughout the continent, even as their policies following independence from European Imperialism have caused unending poverty, disease and corruption:

But I have a vision for Africa. A way out for the billion or more who are denied a chance at life due to the horrific and disgusting corruption of pondlife like Mugabe.

It's time to redraw all the borders.

The colonial borders slice through tribes and lands willy-nilly, creating many of the internecine problems in Africa. End the conflicts, the fears, the mistrust, and you create the conditions to deal with all the other problems afflicting the continent.

Time to recolonise too.

It is self-evident from a quick read of any decent African political history such as 'The State of Africa', that corruption has been endemic in every single African state following independence and up to the present day in preposterous amounts.

Instead of aid, we need to send governmental ability. Yes, I am talking recolonisation. Temporary recolonisation, with African interests rather than European ones at the centre of the project.

I reckon that the UN needs to found an African border commission to ascertain what lands should go with what, according to the desires of those living there.

Then the current post-colonial states can be dissolved and reconstituted into forms which will not be so prone to the sort of tribal outrage we've seen recently in Kenya and in pretty much every sub-Saharan state at some point.

The UN could provide security during an interim period and initial elections. It might also be beneficial, while these new national entities are still bedding in, to beef up the African Union to the level of an EU, with oversight abilities, democratic representation and the ability to institute relevant continent-wide legislation and negotiate as a trade bloc.

Then a 'Peace Corps' type intervention would be necessary to assist the foundation of governments and state agencies, as well as ensuring the operation of critical services like hospitals during the transitional period.

A single currency would be strongly advisable, as well as an African central bank. Logic dictates that the Rand function as one or as the basis of one, and Joburg as the location of the other.

And all of this would be needed just to turn things around.

After that, the problems of HIV, malaria, education, life expectancy, development and famine would still remain to be addressed.

But in the sort of context that I envisage, at least the inter-tribal strife would be largely circumvented, which itself impacts on all the other problems.

And the foundation, in terms of a stronger African union, and smaller nation states, for consensus action, mutual dependency, group negotiation and single currency, would be in place for real development potential.

Aid doesn't work, trading with despots like Mugabe only funds elites like Zanu, and the level of military intervention the West has involved itself in thus far often only delays further conflict.

It's time to address the mistakes of the colonial and the post-colonial era. It will require a global effort, not just from former imperial powers but from other powers, such as the EU, US, Russia, China and Japan.

The alternative, of course, is to remain in our bubble of affluence in Europe, watching them starve and kill each other, while they try to gain illegal access to our affluence, for another sixty years.

Did the BBC invent a famine for ratings?

Everyone over a certain age (let's say 30) can recall the harrowing impact of Michael Buerk's first reports of a famine in Ethiopia in 1984.

The sheer biblical images of starving black children - their hollow eyes pleading for food to placate their empty, distended bellies, their ribs stretching their thin skins, their limbs shrivelled to mere bones and skin - shocked the West in our relative affluence.

What followed was Band Aid, Live Aid, and the growth of global consciousness in relation to the appalling poverty suffered on the African continent.

Since then, charities have reported 'donation fatigue' and the diminishing returns of shock footage of African carnage or disaster. Mass rape and child slavery in Darfur barely stirs us now. Burma is flooded, and we can barely bother to put a hand in our pockets.

But surely it is a new low in the quest for ratings to actually invent a famine where none exists?

This is the allegation a Norwegian TV documentary team have levelled at the BBC.

After the documentary aired in Norway, it won awards and raised serious questions about the BBC's role in reporting a famine in Niger in 2005. It accused the BBC and the United Nations of acting in tandem to create a climate of intervention where none was required.

That suited the UN, who apparently wanted into Niger, and suited the BBC who wanted a good exclusive story, as journalists are wont to do.

Niger is a desert land in the Southern Sahara. But it is rich with uranium and other resources, and its population are predominantly nomadic, like the Touaregs (see above). They are used to moving around to obtain food. It's not like the pasture lands of Ethiopia failing at all.

But after the documentary aired in Norway, the BBC pulled the rights to their own footage, meaning that the documentary had to air in Sweden in a shorter, much less impactful form. It hasn't been seen elsewhere yet.

Auntie Beeb pleads innocence, and claims all the Norwegians need to do is ask politely for the rights to the footage and they can have it.

So perhaps we might yet get to see this interesting Norwegian film, controversially titled 'The Famine Scam.'

I fervently hope that the buyers in RTE will make a point of picking up this documentary and showing it during prime time viewing.

Then we will be able to decide for ourselves if the BBC and UN were right and there was a famine in Niger.

Or we might find that 'Niger's prime minister, local residents, doctors working in the region, a US aid organisation spokesman and other journalists' are more plausible when they say that no famine ever occurred.

Do you laugh, cry or recolonise?

It's hard to know what the correct response is, when you encounter a story as bizarre, shocking and innately tragic as this.

To summarise, dozens of 'witchdoctors' in the 'democratic republic' of the Congo have been arrested on suspicion that they have been using 'black magic' to shrink people's penises.

According to a report from Reuters correspondents:

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

This isn't just a Congo phenomenon. Previous outbreaks of penis-thievery have occurred in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, in most West and Central African countries, in fact.

How do you respond to this in the 21st century? Do we laugh at the stupid, ill-educated, superstition-ridden Africans?

Do we lament their ill education, their superstitions, their poor democratic structures and their silly belief systems as we have done for decades?

Or should we maybe start looking at the weeping wound that is Africa, the prevalence of Aids, malaria, demogogues, lynchings, rapes, civil wars, famines, plagues and general horrors, and think about that great taboo - direct intervention by the West?

Recolonisation runs against the liberal principles of many people in the Western bubble of affluence. But they - we - don't have to live in the reality, in the squalor, under the fear of random murder, or rape, or incarceration in a squalid torture prison.

Not to mention the real and present danger of having your penis stolen.

Perhaps if we did, we'd be calling out for Africans to come and liberate us from ourselves?

Asia and Africa

I'm currently in Asia, reading about Africa. It's an interesting compare and contrast.

I'm specifically reading Martin Meredith's 'The State of Africa', which chronicles how it all went wrong across Africa in the fifty years since most colonial powers pulled out and the various countries achieved independence.

What a sorry litany of kleptocracy, famine, pointless war and endless tribal conflict it all adds up to.

The irony is that many of those countries, whatever you care to think of the colonial legacy, were in pretty good financial shape when they were handed over to the indigenous 'Big Men' dictators who assumed control after independence.

But after a few decades of nutters like Amin, Mobutu, Bongo and so on, the continent is in worse shape than it ever was.

The contrast with Asia is simply staggering. Here in Bangkok, a city of sixteen million people, the work ethic of the Thais is impossible to ignore. Sure, begging exists, practiced by those with genuine disabilities. But this is a people prepared to better themselves, to try to work their way out of poverty and a people who are proud of their own self-determination.

They are fond of the odd bloodless coup, and corruption is certainly familiar to those at the top of the heap. The latter applies equally well to Ireland, for anyone familiar with our many tribunals. Nowhere's perfect.

In that regard, one could feel disdain for Thailand's sex tourism, the suppression of minorities in the south, and indeed the protectionist nature of its property market and currency.

But when compared with the latest news from Zimbabwe, for example, where what was one of the richest countries on the continent a mere three decades ago is now suffering 66,212.3% annual inflation (official government estimate; others put it closer to 150,000%) and at least 80% unemployment, it becomes clear that the Asian Tigers are, with the possible exception of Burma, infinitely preferable places to live.

Thaksin Shinawatra may or may not have lined his pockets to the tune of millions while in power. But he is wanted by the courts in Thailand who want to hold him to account. That's no different to how Russia has dealt with those oligarchs who have displeased Putin.

And you could contrast it with Charles Haughey's fate, which was to be permitted to live unmolested in a big house visiting his big private island while wearing his Charvet shirts, even though he had been found guilty of corruption.

On the flip side, not one African despot has ever been held to account in a court of law. They've either died in their sleep as preposterously wealthy men, or been dragged from their beds and murdered by their successors.

I'm coming to the conclusion that in the vast majority of African countries, there is little hope of expecting indigenous democracy, indigenous industry free from corruption. Can you imagine any African country recovering from genocide as successfully as Cambodia has? Rwanda may be healing, if you believe the various optimistic news reports. But it's still poorer than a church mouse, even compared to somewhere as poor as Cambodia.

It strikes me that in Asian countries, the people have more self-respect than to permit leaders to stay at the trough for decades upon end, or to expect the West to continue to finance their economic follies via the aid train.

Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and other Asian countries may well be poor, as poor as much of Africa. But they are determined to succeed on their own merits. They get up in the morning, facing the same heat, the same diseases as afflict Africans. The difference is, they take responsibility for their own lives. They do get up and they do go to work.

The Asian Tiger period may have passed, but there is much to note economically in this region apart from the usual suspects of China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore. Places like Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia are also on the up, and they will drag the slackers like Cambodia and Laos with them.

There is no such similar hope for Africa, I fear. Bulging with natural resources, African countries have been systematically ravaged by their own corrupt elites. When I look at the actions of that syphilitic loon Mugabe, and hear inflation figures that beggar belief, I wonder how long such a man would have lasted in South East Asia.

One day, Africans will have to stop looking to others to blame for their troubles, and start acting in their own self-interest. And that doesn't mean lifting machetes and going on tribal murder sprees as has happened in so many African countries, including Kenya and Sudan at this very moment.

They could usefully learn from Asians the benefit of working together for a common purpose, I believe.

Everyone waits for the madman to die

Last month, I went to the land where everyone is waiting for one madman to die.

It is also one of the most beautiful countries it has ever been my privilege to visit, populated by one of the most friendly peoples in the world.

I took Mini-Skinner with me. We went to a beautiful safari lodge where each night, as we sat on the veranda for dinner, literally dozens of elephants came to drink at the watering hole below us. Amazingly, there were only two other guests in the lodge.

We visited the nearby world heritage site, a spectacular place of awesome natural beauty that was almost deserted. We stared, awestruck, at one of the greatest natural wonders on Earth, appreciating the famous statement about it that 'Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.'

We went to the local craft market, where we were besieged by craft workers, desperate to sell their excellent work at almost any price, including swapping beautifully carved statues for the grubby, sweaty baseball cap on my head.

I changed one dollar into local currency, just for a souvenir. The country itself runs on what little foreign exchange it can lay its hands on. I got a 100,000 note in the local currency for my single dollar. I was actually short-changed, as the rate was around 260,000 that day. It's a lot more now.

Of course, I was in Zimbabwe, a country of immense natural resources, stunning scenery, amazing wildlife and wonderful people. A country that has been brought to the edge of ruin by one madman, Robert Mugabe.

Thanks to this syphilitic maniac who runs the country like his personal fiefdom, Zimbabwe is now suffering major social difficulties, international isolation and possibly the worst case of hyper-inflation ever seen, and that's including pre-Nazi Germany.

According to the International Crisis Group, which monitors world crises, Zimbabwe is now close to collapse. A quarter of the population has already fled the country, including almost all of the brightest and best, like the doctors, the academics, and the entrepreneurs, not to mention the white farmers. The inflation rate is expected to top 1.5 million per cent.

Tens of thousands of people have been murdered or incarcerated by his Zanu-PF thugs. The opposition parties are regularly intimidated, independent media discouraged by lengthy prison sentences, and the poor cleared from their shanties just as the whites have been murdered on their farms.

Even the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, himself black African born, is now calling for sanctions against Mugabe's regime in order to force the maniac to stand down.

There is an apocryphal story, possibly untrue but likely true, that when George Bush senior was calling a halt to the first Gulf War in 1991, he contacted John Major to ask that all British forces inside Iraq pull back to Kuwait.

Apparently, an SAS troop reported back that they were in Tikrit province, close to Saddam's family compound, and wished to know should they assassinate the Iraqi dictator first, or simply pull back.

History might have been very different if Saddam had been removed then. Perhaps the 1.2 million excess deaths in Iraq since the US occupation began might not have occurred.

But whether that tale is true or not, given the inability of Zimbabwe's neighbours, especially Thabo Mbeki's South Africa, to put manners on the madman, perhaps it is time for Britain to send the SAS deathsquad in to hasten the end of the man who seems intent on killing his country before syphilis kills him.

Dear Respectful One

Okay, so I've moved house but the interweb has yet to follow, so updates will continue to be at best sporadic until technology catches up with my new life in the Southside suburbs.

In the meantime, my recent love affair with Africa, of which I hope to blog about real soon, has taken a dent this morning when I received the following 419-Scam mail.

I am, apparently, a 'respectful one' (shows that Mary Mark, some sort of African hermaphrodite perhaps?, doesn't really know me).

I'm also still a bit bamboozled by the verb 'eructed'. Can anyone cast any light on this word, or is it merely some portmanteau nonsense forged in the illiterate minds of the netscammers of old Abidjan town?

Just when you start getting a degree of positivity and hope about the dark continent, along come the scumbags of West Africa to remind you of why the place continues to be a disaster area in the first place.

"From mary mark"
Subject:	Dear Respectful one,
To:	mm_mary46@yahoo.ca

Dear Respectful one,

I am totally convinced to write you in reference of the transfer of ( 4.5 U S$ )to your account for onward investment (industries) in your country. Though we have not met before but I strongly believe that one has to confiding in someone to succeed sometimes in life. There is this amount of Four Million, five hundred thousand U.S dollars ($4.500, 000.00) which my late Father (LateMr.T.Williams Mark) deposited for me in a private finance and storage firm here in Abidjan before he was assassinated by some unknown hoodlums in on going political
war here .

Because of recent political/civil war eructed here, I decided to invest this money in your country or anywhere safe enough outside Africa for security and political reasons.

I want you to help me to transfer this fund to your country for investment purposes on the followings below:

1). Telecommunication.
2). Automobile manufacturing.
3). Five star hotel.

If you can be of assistance to us, we will be pleased to offer to you the 20% Of this total fund (indicated above).

Further details will be made known to you on confirmation of your interest to assist me . Your urgent reply will be highly appreciated.

Thanking you and God bless.
Mary Mark."

God bless you too, Mary Mark. Now go shove your scam up your hole. I'm tempted to scambait you, but really couldn't be arsed.

Out of Africa

I'm still alive. The leopards and lions and hippos and crazies didn't get me, so I'll be back blogging shortly, by the start of next week at the latest.

Photos and commentary to follow

Hope you're all enjoying the rain!

(Sorry for being evil, but it's hard to resist.)

Bono and the crusty Aussies

Okay, so Bono's a tool. We know this, especially those of us who live in Dublin. I went to the loo in a nightclub once and when I came back to my seat Bono was sitting on my coat. He didn't even acknowledge me when I pulled it out from under his arse. So he's a tool. I know this.

We know he's a hypocrite too. He moved his money to the tax haven of Holland only last year, yet he's always lecturing the rest of us to dig deeper in our pockets for the common good.

He's an anti-poverty campaigner with his own investment vehicle. So yes, he's no stranger to contradiction.

He's a pompous arse, too. We found that out when he sued his clearly mental former stylist for the return of an old hat.

But in fairness to Bono, he could sit in his big house and polish his vintage car collection, as other members of U2 appear to do, and not give a shit about Africa.

He's made his millions. He doesn't need to be going around to G8 meetings or sitting down with African despots trying to find solutions to the problems plaguing the continent. He's clearly doing a lot more for Africa than any amount of unwashed, dreadlocked, Aussie backpackers with a ropey video camera.

Yet, strange isn't it, how those trustafarian wastes of oxygen are the ones who start hectoring and assume the moral high ground when they bump into Bono in the street?

If I was Bono, I'd have just smacked them in the mouth. They don't even deserve to be spoken with, this bunch of lazy, entitled, morally outraged professional wasters.

So, hypocritical, pompous tool that he is, I doff my old hat to Bono for even engaging with these crusty losers.

Global Warming is SO unfair

Here I am, in the hills of Northern Spain (in the preposterous republic of Basqueland), in mid-November, and the sun is splitting the trees. Not only that, but today and yesterday it was in the low twenties, centigrade wise.

Now, locals inform me that in times past, being in a mountainous region meant getting snowed on at this time of year. Instead, they´re wearing T-shirts to the shops and enjoying their swimming pools.

Meanwhile, in huge chunks of Africa, where the delightful combo of AIDS, war and corruption have already made life beyond difficult for most people, global warming is destroying what little arable land was left. Kenya, among others, is losing its farmland and, just as important, the habitats in which wild animals live.

And in Ireland, global warming has so far managed to lead to even more bloody rain than we had before.

My conclusion is that climate change is inherently unfair, and that those who benefit from it, like the Basques, should ante up for those losing out, like the Kenyans and the Irish.