Most flag carriers proudly paint their aircraft with national cultural emblems and usually the flag will prominently appear somewhere on the fuselage. Not so with British Airways; ten years ago they decided to take the flag (it didn’t really even resemble the Union Jack) of the tails and paint each aircraft individually in pop art fashion, mainly resembling the colors Willie Mandela, Nelson’s ex Missus, dressed herself up in. They should have renamed the airline as well. Ugandan International would have been appropriate. They started calling themselves BA instead of British Airways and the rest is history. When they directors of BA realized how much damage was done through loss of identity, they reverted back to their old colors and today the airline, just like BP, is also fighting for its very life as its flight attendants are taking them to the cleaners.

BP was once British Petroleum and until Margaret Thatcher’s government was 100% state owned. British Petroleum was a huge company even then but in so many ways because of its heritage it kept its competitors in check. Any dividends declared went straight into the government’s coffers. There were probably thirty large petroleum companies in the eighties all competing for the shrinking resource. The only cowboys in the business were independent “wild catters” based in Houston. Whenever they screwed up and were responsible for blow outs, along came Red Adair and his team to snuff the fires out.

When closet gay, John Brown rose to the top of British Petroleum in the early nineties, he wanted to show off his masculinity (that is until he was outed and ousted by a twenty-five-year old rent boy) by reinventing the darling of the London Stock Exchange. The first thing he did was to give it the generic name BP. He then set about colluding with Shell, Exxon and Chevron and within ten years the big four transformed what was once a very competitive global business into an oligopoly. In the States, BP purchased amongst others, Amoco and Atlantic Richfield with the result BP now controls the vast majority of crude which comes out of the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. That is why apart from CEO Tony Hayward, every BP official we see on television is American. They either were employees of the old ARCO or Amoco.

As an oligopoly, successive administrations (particularly the Bush/Cheney outfit) have been bought and sold by the oil “magnates” heading the oligopoly. The result is they can do what like, where they like and how they like. The culmination to date of this new order is the disaster in the gulf. Just weeks ago President Obama was proud to declare he was behind more drilling. What a fool he looks now. And what a bunch of idiots BP executives look too. Why? Because of all the changes within BP, the company is totally bereft of either a soul or a conscience. Had BP remained as it was twenty years ago, it would be Amoco (or whoever else might have taken them over) fighting for its life. The oil oligopoly has proven to be bigger than President Obama’s administration and until we re-invoke the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and totally regulate the energy business, this disaster will pale into insignificance to what could take place into the future,

By contrast there is nothing but lose/lose courting Karzai and his bunch corrupt thugs. For me all this war has done has cost us valuable lives of brave young soldiers and lowered the street price of heroin to compete against crack as the drug of choice for addicts. We don’t really know who our enemy in Afghanistan is, as experts now tell us Al Qaeda jumped across the border to reside in Pakistan. At the beginning of the war it was all about flushing out bin Laden and his fellow cave dwellers. With this as the goal I was under the impression the Taliban came over to our side because the equal disdain for this mutual enemy. Today the Taliban is claiming responsibility for all sorts of acts of violence against our soldiers in Afghanistan.

The reason for Karzai’s visit was nothing short of a mission of blackmail. The sole purpose of his trip was to demand more cash and if he didn’t get it then he would be “forced” to surrender to the Taliban. This man is the best friend of the war lords who control Afghanistan’s only industry; black tar. Some knowledgeable individuals say Karzai and his family are the biggest traders of the drug to the western world and have been for decades. My argument is who cares about the Taliban? They are not international terrorists and it appears few Muslims outside of Afghanistan have ever supported their cause. Karzai, sorry mate, if I were the President of USA, I would immediately order the troops back home, let the civil war begin and may the best man win. Afghanistan is of no value whatsoever and as much as I hate the human rights that exist there, let the Europeans (Europe is all but a close neighbor) become advisors/policemen. I then would redirect all the drones into blowing the Pakistani border into oblivion so every last vestige of Al Qaeda is eradicated. Immediately after that I would quit and let that other arch enemy of ours, Pakistan pick up the pieces. Without Al Qaeda, Pakistan is no threat because they are so pre-occupied with the possibility of an attack from India.

I’ve said it before; America has to sort out who are our real enemies. It certainly is not North Korea or Iran; they are China, Russia and India in that order. They want to see an economically weak and universally unpopular America so they can wield their own influence upon the world. We are slowly being sucked into that web. It is called globalization. The sad thing is it is the American multinational corporations who are effectively sponsoring it. Unfortunately we do have traitors in our camp.

Ever since the consolidation of the pharmaceutical industry into about five players, China has become the major source of supply for all the component raw materials. From drywall, to petfood ingredients, to baby milk, to toxic toys, to contaminated fish products, to faulty tires, to toothpaste laced with anti-freeze; the list of defective products could fill a book. I am sticking my neck out here, but I believe the recent recall of children’s Motrin, Benadryl and Tylenol will be because those bloody Chinese have shipped defective ingredients to J & J. Earlier this year J & J recalled another bunch of over the counter products because the raw materials were packed onto wooden pallets thus cominating the contents!

Since the pharmaceutical companies’ love affair began with China, their lobbyists have been hard at work undermining the workings of the FDA to all congressmen and senators who accept their campaign donations. Because that is a large majority of our representatives and since Bush came to power on the Republican platform of less government, the FDA has literally gone from a fierce policeman protecting all Americans from bad medicine to the typically ineffective government agency. The issue we have here is profits count more than the health of Americas. Fancy getting to the levels of buying pharmaceutical raw materials from a country that for starters places no value on human life. Add to that their history will doctoring up any sort of crap, call it by an impressive name (in this case its chemical definition) and then have the audacity to sell it to anyone who is willing to buy the rubbish sight unseen.

Shame on you J & J and shame on the Obama and previous administrations for allowing the FDA to lose all its muscle! To me these sorts of things are happening with accelerating propensity all around us in all aspects of our lives. Although this comment may appear somewhat cynical, I believe the era we are now in is similar to the reign of King Caligula when the Roman Empire finally totally collapsed. Sure the times were different, but the greed, corruption and debauchery are exactly the same. Maybe it is another case of history repeating itself.