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.

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.

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.

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.