Who has really won the Afghan ‘War’ ?

August 12, 2010 – 12:55 pm

Clue: not the Taliban

Last year, full of dudgeon, Thus posted a modest and moderate commentary on the 2009 Afghan ‘election’ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/11/afghan-democracy-postponed-in-an-orgy-of-hypocrisy/. Read it and weep – or laugh sardonically, depending upon your smug levels. I’m certainly not proud of stating the obvious, then or now.

The ‘war’ (called, with no hint of irony ‘Operation Enduring Freedom‘ intensified following the ’surge’ – which in Orwellian fashion was designed to lower the threat of continued violence by killing and maiming as many ‘insurgents’ as possible and winning hearts and minds by drone bombing civilian populations. General Stanley McChrystal, reluctant figurehead of this thinly-disguised ’shoot-em-up-and-get-the-hell-out-of-here’ attempt to plait sawdust and sell it as a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, was allegedly none-too-keen in the first place but refused to take the blame for what he and others saw as desperation tactics on the part of certain Obama administration figures. His ‘unwise’ comments to Rolling Stone magazine in July got him carpeted and fired by Nobel Peace Laureate Obama. His replacement, saintly General Petraeus, ‘inventor’ of COIN’s Iraq surge strategy has had the lasting benefit of a recent increase in violence and an effective caliphate of Shia militias, despite the continued presence of over 65,000 US troops and $7 billion spend on ‘aid’ per month (2009).

The McChrystal-led strategy depended upon legitimising the position of Karzai, whom most of the Afghani population and anyone else with a grain of intelligence knows – not including the US and UK governments of the time – presided over an endemically corrupt, kleptocratic regime which was ‘re-elected’ in a fraudulent pantomime of ‘democracy.’ Petraeus will need to work with the same materials. Over 80% of the enormous Afghan ‘aid’ budget is administered by the Afghan government. As the US continues to ‘devolve responsibility to the Afghan people’ Karzai’s extended family will have correspondingly greater access and even less accountability, I’d say the winner of the Afghan conflict/war/insurgency/Jihad – call it what you will –  is none other than His Excellency President Hamid Karzai, dead heating with the Mullah Omar, whose Taleban Ulema will be ‘allowed’ to lark around chopping off heads and hands, tearing out hearts and warping minds in their own special playground in the south – or wherever they like, given the ’strength’ of the Afghan forces.

At the risk of sounding unfashionably contrarian, I’d advocate making moderate elements of the Taleban – like the IRA, such people do exist – custodians of civilian-targeted regional aid rather than hand it all to the incumbent narco-kleptocrats. Or withdraw all the aid, 80% of which is stolen anyway. Even though former Thus favourite Ashraf Ghani, now on speaking terms with Karzai in what is presumably an attempted reprise of his time as Finance Minister from 2001-4 is there to keep an eye on the US cash, I doubt he will be capable of keeping Karzai under control as the ‘handover process’ accelerates – with increasing velocity as the next US elections approach – which Obama may lose, especially if the US is still in Afghanistan, now America’s longest war after Vietnam, and, like Vietnam (and Iraq), an ideological shitfight which it has clearly lost at huge cost.

John J Kelly

PS. Funny how we don’t hear much about al Qaeda , much less Osama Bin Laden, nowadays. Does anyone know why?

By John Kelly | Posted in Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Insurgency, War on Terror, democracy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

What’s the difference between Mandelson and dogshit?

August 11, 2010 – 5:16 pm

You can get rid of dogshit.

The UK Labour Party leadership election machine

As I was picking up dog mess on Hampstead Heath recently – my own dog’s mess, I hasten to add – my thoughts naturally turned to ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson and the current Labour Party leadership crisis. The image of this creature selling his interminable, self-serving, platitudinous and badly-written account of the rise and fall of New Labour in a cheap TV commercial makes whippet turds look positively enticing.

Others have commented at length on the iniquity and hypocrisy of Mandelson’s admission that he knew Brown was a sociopathic, authoritarian blobby sack of neuroses with no right, sanction or business to be running a whelk stall, much less a country, yet he urged the party and the country to vote for him all the same. Mandelson quotes Blair’s opinion that Brown was ‘mad, bad and dangerous’ and does little to disagree with this kind assessment of the co-architect of the ‘Project.’ On these grounds alone the twice-sacked, expenses-happy, oligarch-friendly Blair mongerer should be picked up on the Heath and incinerated along with the rest of the mess.

Mandelson’s artless display shows his unashamed addiction to perfidy and intrigue. More Gollum than Machiavelli, he is unquestionably playing a leading role in the farcical ‘campaign’ to ‘elect’ a new leader of the Opposition. My guess, despite protestations to the contrary, is that he’s behind Banana Boy David Miliband. For that reason alone, whoever has the power should vote for brother Ed.

In passing, Thus predicted Mandelson’s resurgence as kingmaker , with no enthusiasm, back in April 2009. Before he completes the job of completely destroying Labour, we should perhaps reflect on whether this was what he and Blair planned all along. There is no other plausible excuse for his actions.

John J Kelly

By John Kelly | Posted in Media, Policy, Political spin, Politics, Spin doctors, UK politics | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Thus was wrong about Methadrone, sort of, uh, I guess

June 24, 2010 – 11:51 am
Actually I quite like smoking and all the things advertised on this poster so it shows how messed up I am and how tricky and pointless it is to pontificate about this sort of malarky.

A couple of posts back Thus got on an uncharacteristically high horse about the dangers of Methadrone. My comments were not based on the government’s (subsequent) decision to ban the Chinese designer drug, but on reports from people I know and respect that it is generally horribly moreish and does one’s head in on an industrial scale. While the same or similar might apply to all sorts of legal highs, including alchohol, Methadrone/Mephedrone is a particularly potent drug.

But there is still no evidence that it kills people, per se. In March, after the death of two teenagers on Humberside, the then government of Gordon Brown jerked its knees and banned the drug, causing the resignation of Professor Nutt (Thus passim) who appears to be a bit of a blowhard but who probably had a point about the government using drugs legislation for political purposes.

A few weeks ago, after the general election, it was (not very widely) reported that Methadrone was not, after all, the root cause of the deaths. Without impugning the intelligence and impartiality of our glorious police force, which we all know is wonderful, the most worrying part about the ‘findings’ is that the police may have confused the word ‘methadrone’ with ‘methadone’ – a heroin substitute which the boys may also have been taking.

Notwithstanding the above, I apologise for straying into the drugs debate. The problem with Methadrone, like Crack, is that it’s far too cheap for the hit it provides. Apparently. But I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m certain that neither the police nor the government do either.

John J Kelly

By John Kelly | Posted in Drugs legislation, Law and order, citizens' rights, civil rights | Tagged | Comments (1)

Conclusive evidence that Oxbridge produces financially illiterate, lying sociopaths.

May 24, 2010 – 8:40 pm

Ed Balls went to Oxbridge, thus making him eminently eligible to lead ‘New’ Labour through its next incarnation as the Pinochio Party. Then again, so did all the other ‘contenders’ as did most of the Coalition cabinet, but let’s stick with Balls for a minute . . . .

David Miliband/Ed Balls/Ed Milliband/David Balls - the new face of New Labour

Responding to a question from Peter Allen on BBC Radio 5 Live , Balls claimed that the £6 billion UK emergency budget cuts announced today would cost ‘hundreds of thousands of jobs.’ When asked to clarify, he repeated that the £6 billion cuts – many of which are earmarked to cull quangos, civil servants’ travel expenses and the like, would result in many hundreds of hundreds of thousands of  job cuts.

In perspective, UK unemployment increased by 53,000 over the past quarter alone to reach 2.51 million, the highest figure since the three months to December 1994 (three years before the New Labour project). By this reckoning, the Balls boys could have fixed the economy and romped home at the election for less than the price of an RBS bailout.

But they didn’t.

Oxbridge taught me the value of a banana. Let me lead you.

Balls had the further audacity to claim that the Lib Dem/Tory Coalition was bent on doing ‘what the Germans have told Greece to do’ – as if this was some sort of madness on the part of those whacky spendthrift Krauts. He furthermore blamed the UK recession on global economic conditions but claimed we were better off than most because we entered with lower levels of debt – oblivious to the fact that New Labour inherited a budget surplus from the Tories but have left the UK in its most indebted state since the Second World War.

As most people in the real world know, the £6 billion cuts announced today are a prelude to very scary and probably destructive slash and burn measures later this year, as the world’s credit markets, under pressure from Euro defaulters and other scallywags, take an increasingly dim view of Britain’s Stalinist-inspired cardboard economy and question our ability to repay burgeoning debts with exports of talent shows, sweary celebrity chefs and private equity Ponzi schemes.

Keep that banana away from me. I know it's not Fair Trade.

There is no question that we cannot continue to run a balance of trade deficit and public sector debt on anything like existing levels, but the question facing the Coalition is how to stimulate export trade in what increasingly looks like another downturn while enacting necessary cuts without choking off the domestic economy. By anyone’s definition, the UK is in crisis. Anyone but Balls, that is.

Andy Burnham: turned out nice again? No, it hasn't

The Rocky Horror Show

New Labour, meanwhile, is staging a talent show of its own. Ed Balls, running on the Gordon Brown’s posterior ticket is jostling with Banana Boy David Milliband, running on the Blair Duke Nuke ‘em ticket, Ed Milliband, running on the Eco-by-gum Worzel Gummidge ticket and Andy Burnham, running on the George Formby Blackpool tram ticket. Diane Abbott, running on the black, proud-to-be-working-class and never mind about sending my kid to public school ticket and other, yet-to-be-revealed whack-jobs may yet emerge to remind us that our politicians are a reflection of the economy – weak, preening, deluded, second-rate.

The one thing they all have in common is that they all went to Oxbridge, as did 18 members of the Coalition Cabinet. What does this tell us? This is Britain, where every middle class white person (and the occasional VERY CLEVER and VERY PUSHY black person) has the right to become elitist, useless and destroy the economy. All you need to do is blag your way into Oxbridge.

I have very little confidence that the Coalition will do the right thing and enact genuine efficiency initiatives, sensitively protecting the jobs and services provided by front line workers while cutting the cadres of overpaid middle managers who have mismanaged the public sector to its present parlous state. I know this because they are incapable of listening to the people who know how to get the work done, and cannot possibly empathise with the people for whom the work needs to be done. That’s because they were educated in dreaming spires from which they never saw the need to emerge. How do I know this? because I went to Oxford. I left after a term, though that’s no excuse.

Oxbridge is the problem, not the solution. Maybe the cuts should start there. But they won’t.

By John Kelly | Posted in British identity, Political spin, Politics, UK politics, democracy, political theory | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

New Labour gambles on turkeys not voting for Christmas in May

March 30, 2010 – 2:39 pm

The UK media have been scratching their pointy heads of late as the opinion poll gap between New Labour and the Tories has closed to indicate at best a hung parliament. Despite looming and actual strikes, a record budget deficit with no prospect of recovery, real and impending tax rises, unemployment levels at a 30 year high, a weakened currency with no corresponding rise in exports, threats of public sector cuts, particularly in the education sector, a costly, murderous unwinnable, and strategically inexplicable war and a hopeless, bullying unelected gargoyle with little or no charisma, the nation apparently remains undecided. Why?

Leaving aside their general incompetence, bad advisors, dodgy donors, hooray Henry Metrocentricity and extreme reluctance to clarify, much less detail, any sensible policies, even the New Tories should have been able to savage the field of half-dead sheep that passes for the incumbent UK government. Part of the reason is demographics – Britain’s ‘much-admired’ first past the post voting system has been comprehensively gerrymandered so as to make it very difficult indeed for the party which gets a popular majority to ensure a working majority of seats. This has worked in favour of the Tories in the past, so no sympathy there. To ensure a landslide along the lines of the Labour 1997 victory, the Tories would need to be looking at a 15 point opinion poll lead at this stage. This time last year, it was trending that way. So whatever could be the matter?

It’s the economy, stupid. Or rather, the bubble economy which constitutes the UK public sector. Under New Labour, it now accounts for 6.1 million jobs out of 21.6 million full time workers, representing 28 percent of the UK workforce, the vast majority of which must be assumed to be ‘natural’ Labour voters. In addition, there are 7.1 million part time workers, many of whom either work in the public sector and participate in McJob schemes. That’s not to count the 2.3 million higher education students and 176,000 academics who teach them. The vast majority of these cadres wouldn’t be considered natural Tories. – nor have the Tories given them any reason to change their collective minds – but now they aren’t so sure of their masters’ intentions either. Proposed Labour cuts in the Higher Education budgets will definitely reduce jobs and the number of student places, plus a growing wave of discontent amongst workers in areas of the civil service, Network Rail and (privatised) British Airways, may mean that a significant number will lose faith in the ‘devil you know’ nostrum and punish the incumbents.

Moreover, despite the recession and clear evidence that the sporran is empty, Gordon’s job creation schemes, designed to massage grisly employment figures, have continued apace. Overall unemployment rose by 54,000 in the three months to January 2010, but this was mitigated by 20,000 new jobs in the NHS – 1.3 million employees – alone. Employment in the private sector fell by 61,000 in the last quarter of 2009 alone. Nobody can seriously believe that this version of Maoist economics can lead anywhere but to the IMF.

Voter turnout in the 2001 and 2005 General Elections was 59.4 and 61.4 percent respectively, compared to 77.7 and 71.4 percent in 1992 and 1997. John Major’s Tories won with a vastly-reduced majority in recession conditions mainly because Neil Kinnock’s ‘nearly-new’ Labour failed to convince the electorate that they represented a viable alternative. Five years later, the outgoing Major administration left Tony Blair and Gordon Brown with a budget surplus at a time of unprecedented global economic growth. Having put the budget back on an even keel, Major lost, apparently, because he couldn’t drum up the necessary ‘feelgood factor.’ From 1997-2001, after a four year period of pretending to adhere to the ‘golden mean,’ Gordon set about taxing, spending and consequently wrecking the exchequor just in time for a global economic downturn.

With the stakes as high as they are, I predict that the 2010 percentage voter turnout will be as high as in 1997. It would require epic numbers of turkeys to vote for Christmas for the pink-tinged Cameronites to secure anything like a landslide on a Blairite scale, given that from 2001 to the present time, the much-trumpeted growth in UK jobs has been driven by the public sector, so whatever goes down, we are unlikely to see a landslide. But public sector workers will need to weigh up as to what degree the inevitable budget cuts which will follow the election will be more savage under the Tories than under Labour. Meanwhile, those in the private sector know that taxes will rise whoever sits astride the woolsack. They won’t vote Labour.

So I’ll stick my neck out and say that, despite the unconvincing Tory arguments, most voters are going to wake up on polling day, survey the mess and vote for anyone but Gordon. The Tories will win a reasonable working majority, show their true colours and set about vigorously dismantling New Labour’s constituency, the public sector, partly because of the imperative to reduce the obese deficit and partly because that’s what they are ideologically inclined to do. This will be a shame, since it employs a lot of hardworking people who work for the public good, who deserved better leadership than they got under the Great Helmsman.

Thus the next election, which should be about the environment, sustainability, public sector reform, a fairer society, education, training, infrastructure and health will be won by the Tories on the feelbad factor, and Britain’s half-assed stab at the Middle Way will be history.

John J Kelly

By John Kelly | Posted in Economics, Education, Policy, UK politics, citizens' rights, democracy, political theory, public sector reform | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Methadrone IS dangerous. Knock it on the head right now

March 29, 2010 – 12:12 pm

Shilly-shallying about what to do about Chinese designer ‘plant food’ drug Methadrone/Mephedrone/MCat is another unwelcome example of how New Labour’s passive/aggressive approach towards protecting citizens’ rights does the reverse. It’s enough to drive a man to spliff.

Last October, former NL drug czar, the (perhaps) aptly named Professor David Nutt resigned/was sacked from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) for stating that so-called Home Secretary Alan Johnson must have been on one if he thought that upgrading cannabis from class C to B was a good trip. I was not surprised when Johnson later confirmed that Prof. Nutt had indeed been sacked, because his ‘advice’ cut across government policy to attack soft targets, such as weed-smoking kids, in order to maintain the pretence that the police, NL’s lard-arsed  political wing, were meeting their targets. Or something like that.

Nutt was sacked for arguing common sense. Alcohol misuse is linked to the overwhelming majority of violent crimes, ditto the number of admissions to hospital accident and emergency departments, breaks up families but is perfectly legal. Weed, and even Ecstasy are far less dangerous. Stoners can’t be arsed to do much more than flop around. Ecstasy becomes dangerous when taken in conjunction with alcohol. Banning one and not the other is a heavy trip down the road to – er  - somewhere else, man.

David Cameron as he might look were he unfortunate enough to become a Methadrone addict

But the Professor killed his own credibility when he strayed into the twilight zone of policy. A couple of his colleagues joined him and nobody apart from the Guardian gave a monkeys, until last weekend somebody called Dr. Polly Taylor also walked the ACMD plank. Speaking on the radio from Amsterdam yesterday – where he was possibly researching the wonders of legalised hash bars (despite what he was saying, there aren’t many left and it’s a load of bollocks to say that drug use in Holland is any less seedy than in the UK) – Professor Nutt reprised his theme that cannabis/weed is less dangerous than alchohol, criminalising it drives the price up, policing it costs money and wastes resources etc. Heavy.

Of course it is, but it’s a different argument. There is a time for expediency, and in the case of Methedrone, aka Mephadrone/M-kat, the time is now. I’m not a user myself, you may be surprised to know, but living in the ballsachingly trendy Bethnal Green/Shoreditch/Hoxton triangle, I know plenty of people with direct experience  - probably more than Alan Johnson or the nutty professor combined – who state categorically that this stuff is very, very bad indeed. Unlike the government or the squabbling scientists I’m happy to hear their unvarnished opinion that Methadrone is more moreish than Ketamine, Amphetamine Sulphide or Cocaine, can quickly reduce kids to a ‘feral’ state and, whether legal or not, creates a burning habit which sucks away money, energy and self-respect. Bummer.

Alan Johnson, as he may appear to David Cameron in his hypothetical state as a Methadrone addict

It is regrettable that political correctness, as represented by Professor Nutt and his grateful-not-to-be-dead academic colleagues, has fetched up against political opportunism, as represented by Alan Johnson and his soon-to-be-dead-in-the-water authoritarian bastard squad. I almost certainly know more about drugs on a first hand level than most of the boneheads in government – not sure about the Tories, though – but surely here is a clear case for decisive legislation. Regardless as to whether it played a small, middling or large part in the recent deaths of three kids, Methadrone is far more dangerous and nasty than weed and hash – think crystal meth and crack cocaine. Criminalising it may well create an underground black market and drive up the price, but it’s facile to argue that notoriety will add to its popularity, since it’s all over the news that the stuff is legal and relatively cheap. Banning its import and resale will only hurt those who wish to go out of their way to use it, and will almost certainly deter recreational/casual/impressionable drug fashionistas. Result.

Ban Methadrone with immediate effect, not because it may or may not have the potential to kill, but because it sure as hell doesn’t do anyone any good. Nor is this a Human Rights issue. If it drives the price up, then boo hoo for the prats who want to use it. And let’s not confuse this with the cannabis/marijuana debate, policy which is in itself influenced by Britain’s costly role as the 51st state of the USA.This is too serious a debate for the chatterati, so while we’re at it, bollocks to the Guardian and the Daily Mail. The drones who write for those rags should get out more. End of.

John J Kelly

By John Kelly | Posted in Culture, Drugs legislation, Law and order, Policy, Political spin, Uk Home Office, Uncategorized, World health, citizens' rights, civil rights, consumerism | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (10)

Australian researchers discover the heaviest element yet known to science

January 31, 2010 – 9:35 am

This report came to me by email, so it must be true.

Queens University researchers have discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called pillocks. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that

Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many pillocks but twice as many morons.

By John Kelly | Posted in British identity, EU policy, International Affairs, Policy, Political spin, Politics, democracy, political theory | Comments (7)

Why Quality is important and why we need more of it

January 5, 2010 – 3:04 pm

A bunch of people out there believe that doing things better is the answer to our economic woes. I can’t argue with that, so I’ve recently joined the Chartered Quality Institute as its External Affairs spokesman, because I firmly believe that until and unless we get to grips with the wholly unnecessary and avoidable malaise which has afflicted our country, we’re doomed to second world status. I’m starting a CQI blog which will argue for a radical change in attitudes. Here’s a preview:

Few would argue that Quality, Service, Value are the cornerstones of a happy, prosperous and competitive economy. It is not good enough to explain the recent painful economic downturn on global macroeconomic conditions and wait for the upturn. No amount of economic or political smoke and mirrors will save a company, much less an economy, from the inevitable consequences of charging too much for indifferent products and services, produced wastefully. A high cost economy with diminishing competitive advantages cannot afford a £130 -160 billion budget deficit, growing at a rate of £11 billion per month.

The CQI is committed to opening a transparent debate as to whether UK Plc wishes to reaffirm its commitment to quality or continue as a casino economy with a few beacon enterprises but a static domestic manufacturing sector and an increasingly outsourced service sector. Politicians acknowledge that cuts in public spending will be necessary to make inroads into this unsustainable deficit, mitigated by improvements in efficiency and productivity. But this begs the question as to why this didn’t happen earlier. The answer is that quality management, in its absolute sense, took a back seat when cash was king.

Public sector net debt has risen from 50 – 60% of UK GDP since 1999 and public spending now accounts for over 43% of the UK national budget, or £13,000 for every adult UK citizen. Unless radical inroads are made to the cost of providing services – or radical cuts - the UK’s credit rating will be downgraded. This will not only affect the government’s ability to borrow,  but will impact on every business left standing.  Only a concerted, nationwide drive towards reducing costs – not reducing the numbers of people in work, by the way – waste reduction but, above all, realistic, sustained continuous improvement, in the way we work, in private and public sectors, will reduce the deficit between what we make and what we consume and enable us to export our surplus, competitively, thus creating jobs. Failure to do so will cripple our economy. This much is self-evident.

The CQI argues that the alternative to slash-and-burn is a root and branch revisiting of the Quality ethos. This in itself begs the question as to how and why we lost sight of these principles. One fundamental reason is that there is a fundamental semantic disconnect between the consumer perception of Quality and its technical application. Consumers value quality. Companies demand it from suppliers, but a significant number of businesses associate the term with quality assurance, compliance and conformance, which they regard as costing time, money and complexity whilst creating little added value. Standards and targets are important – the opposite is no consistency and no goals - but the first is an audit function and the second is an aspiration. The earliest formal definition of Quality states that:

Total quality control is an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance, and quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organization so as to enable production and service at the most economical levels which allow full customer satisfaction. (A.V. Feigenbaum, 1956, Harvard Business Review).

The logic is simple and incontrovertible. Development, maintenance and improvement efforts are the basis of sustainability. Maintenance is relatively easy. Development should be a continous effort, but analysis of successive business cycles have shown that Quality is all-too-often a crisis driven initiative. Step changes in waste reduction, increased productivity, more satisfied customers and higher profits are often followed by a period of maintenance, characterised by audit and target-setting. But without holistic continuous improvement, entropy is inevitable and the root causes re-emerge. At this point the patient blames the medicine and fires the doctor and reaches for a new panacea.

Quality -or whatever you want to call it -  means making and doing things well and then working out how to do things better, at prices people can afford. There is no quick fix or magic potion – quite the reverse. We need to realign the ‘Q’ word and all its powerful nested values, tools and techniques, and rally our workforce around the slogan ‘making things better makes everything better.’ Customers need to be assured by the value and pleasure they derive from buying and using the best products and services that money can buy, not by adherence to international norms and standards. Workers need to be proud to deliver these goods, confident that in doing so, their careers and futures are assured. Anything less is simply not Quality. This much I know.

John J. Kelly

By John Kelly | Posted in British identity, Business, Development, Economics, Education, Finance, Welfare State, consumers, management strategy, manufacturing, public sector reform | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Afghan democracy postponed in an orgy of hypocrisy

November 3, 2009 – 1:43 pm

Thus predicted this outcome so long ago and so many times that I can scarcely be bothered to highlight our previous posts. Yet the grotesque reality of the US, Britain, NATO and especially the UN rewarding endemic fraud, corruption and weak government by a second term, all enacted under the banner of democracy, surpasses all expectations. Yesterday Tajik warlord Abdullah Abdullah declined to stand in the farcical runoff to the disgracefully-mismanaged Afghan ‘election.’ Not having the wherewithal and collateral to bribe as many ‘voters’ as President Karzai, he would have lost. His supporters have promised ‘Kalashnikovs on the streets.’ We predicted full-blown insurgency if Karzai got re-elected on a shoe-in. My views haven’t changed. Cry havoc and let slip.

Meanwhile, the same UN who spent between USD 150 – 250 million arranging this wet fish in the face of democratic practice, fired Peter Galbraith for daring to suggest that the outcome would be flawed and endorsed Kai Eide, the Norwegian Blue Parrot at the head of the UNAMA license to steal, are lining up to line their pockets anew. Why did the UN (and EU) doggedly stick by the election process, despite all the evidence that this will take the country (even further) down into the depths of violence and authoritarian kleptocracy? Sources in Kabul point to a new round of contracts, estimated at USD 4 billion, for the 5000+ UN agencies and NGOs running around in big white trucks doing fuck all. Bookmark this and see if I’m right. I apologise in advance if no new money is voted, Ban Ki Moon kicks Kai Eide up the arse and the ‘international community’ threatens withdrawal and sanctions. But the awful hypocrisy of  a rush to congratulate to Karzai from puddinghead Gordon Brown, wanky Ban Ki and the increasingly Bushlike Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama are as emetic as anything I’ve seen for a very long time.

None of this was worth a single dead soldier, much less thousands of dead Afghan civilians. By the way, the ‘bad guys’ are in Pakistan – now. Drone bombing villages is winning no hearts and minds there either.

And another thing: while the grim spectre of mass murderer by proxy Tony Blair becoming EU President recedes, the boat is floating for David Miliband to become EU High Representative. His only qualification, apart from being a Blairite, is undying loyalty to Hillary Clinton and the US. If that’s what we want – the United States of Europe – he’ll be perfect and the EU will be involved in full scale conflicts, wherever liberal intervention sounds like a good idea, before you can skin a banana.

John J Kelly

By John Kelly | Posted in Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Development, Global security, Insurgency, carpet bombing, citizens' rights, democracy, ethnic cleansing | Comments (0)