Africa and other countries

What if every country just retreated back to its borders and decided to mind its own business? What could possibly happen? Every country would be left to figure out its own problems and manage its own prosperity. Yes, there would be plenty of commercial trade but no foreigners would remain in another's country longer than thirty days, even for tourist excursions. What could happen? Weapons would not be allowed to cross borders. Every country would have to manufacture its own weapons if it chose to do so. Defense treaties would be outlawed. Of course, strong, aggressive countries could militarily attack and subjugate other countries but they would themselves be subject to the same actions by other countries. No country would have any legal or moral obligation to step in and defend any other country. What could happen? Would things be worse than they are now? 

The Queen and the U.N.

I'm sure you know that Queen Elizabeth was at the U.N. today promoting peace. It is so annoying to hear the same old tired speeches by all world leaders. They all essentially say the same things over and over again. They all love peace and justice and democracy and prosperity and a good economy and rights for every imaginable organized group of citizens. All of them say things the people want to hear. I seriously think all they are really trying to do is keep the lid on potential catastrophe. For this they get paid? It is simply too amusing.

More fun and games

According to a recent news item, the government of Honduras is filing a case in the International Court of Justice against Brazil for interference in its domestic affairs. The Brazilian Embassy in Honduras is providing refuge for the ex-president - Manuel Zelaya - in the hope of getting him reinstated. He's been there for over a month. I would have guessed they are tired of him by now. He only has 12 supporters left within the compound. The other 298 went home. Conditions are rough inside. However, the court has to decide first whether it can take the case and the case can take years. Zelaya's term would be up in January, 2010. New elections are scheduled for next month. Where is the logic? This topless woman is not a candidate, by the way. Sorry.

Civilization first

From a Yahoo! News story: “GENEVA – The United Nations opens its first global racism conference in eight years on Monday with the U.S. and at least five other countries boycotting the event out of concern that Islamic countries will demand that it denounce Israel and ban criticism of Islam. The administration of President Barack Obama, America's first black head of state, announced Saturday that it would boycott "with regret" the weeklong meeting in Geneva, which already is experiencing much of the bickering and political infighting that marred the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa. The Netherlands declared its boycott Sunday, while Australia, Canada, Israel and Italy already have said they would not attend. "I would love to be involved in a useful conference that addressed continuing issues of racism and discrimination around the globe," Obama said in Trinidad on Sunday after attending the Summit of the Americas. But he said the language of the U.N.'s draft declaration risked a reprise of Durban, during which "folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were often times completely hypocritical and counterproductive. We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you adopted all of the language from 2001, that's not something we can sign up for," Obama said.” Almost everyone knows by now that there’s nothing more that U.N. diplomats love than a good long conference in a nice civilized city somewhere. The whole exercise is dumb, meaningless, and hypocritical.

The end

This is from another story in Yahoo! News: "There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy. Panarin didn't give many specifics on what underlies his analysis, mostly citing newspapers, magazines and other open sources. He also noted he had been predicting the demise of the world's wealthiest country for more than a decade now. But he said the recent economic turmoil in the U.S. and other "social and cultural phenomena" led him to nail down a specific timeframe for "The End" — when the United States will break up into six autonomous regions and Alaska will revert to Russian control. Panarin argued that Americans are in moral decline, saying their great psychological stress is evident from school shootings, the size of the prison population and the number of gay men. Turning to economic woes, he cited the slide in major stock indexes, the decline in U.S. gross domestic product and Washington's bailout of banking giant Citigroup as evidence that American dominance of global markets has collapsed. "I was there recently and things are far from good," he said. "What's happened is the collapse of the American dream." Panarin insisted he didn't wish for a U.S. collapse, but he predicted Russia and China would emerge from the economic turmoil stronger and said the two nations should work together, even to create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar.” What to do??? Who is Panarin anyway???

Unemployment

Someone once said that when prices go up, inflation results. Yes, thanks for telling me. Now, we see jobs being cut and job losses mounting ever higher so unemployment is rising. Hmmm - what to do? The trouble with unemployment is that it produces nothing. It's like sitting in front of a TV - it produces absolutely nothing. Now, don't get me wrong, being unemployed is not all bad - people still get something while unemployed, namely, unemployment benefits. If people had savings to fall back on, there would be no crisis - savings plus benefits would be the same as having a salaried job, although without insurance benefits. However, receiving unemployment compensation while producing nothing is just not logical. It helps nobody. Only the government would do something like that.

Told You So

Now comes Mr Sarkozy, President of France, at the U.N., saying in no uncertain terms that something must be done to stabilize the credit markets - meaning that the U.S. must act. He must have been speaking for a lot of other countries. I told you so. The pressure is coming from Europe and China. Then there was a call to expand the U. N.'s Security Council, meaning that the power of the U.S. in that body - if the suggestion is taken seriously - will be diluted. The new Council will probably include Germany, Spain, Japan, and Italy as permanent members. They saw an opening and they took it. They fear that a mismanaged U.S. economy will bring down the entire world financial system. In other developments, Warren Buffett bought a few shares ($5 billion) of Goldman Sachs stock. I was going to buy some myself but I ran out of money last week. Wall Street is not doing well, but it's not doing as badly as they would have us believe. Also, the FBI is investigating several banks over possible criminal activity.