Greetings, loyal fan. It has been five years since the rant was concocted by yours truly. What a five years it has been, too. The last year has been a particularly entertaining one as most of my predictions have come true.

The Idiot of the Year, 2008, was George Bush Jr. Here is a man who was never remotely qualified to be a President of anything who used money, lies, dirty tricks and various forms of subterfuge to take power in the USA twice. He is man with no redeeming qualities. He has bankrupted his country, cause a depression throughout the world, caused hundreds of thousands of war dead and done absolutely nothing to make America safer from its enemies. The Bush administration has shredding the Constitution, tortured people and paid some of the worst regimes in the world to do it for them. I did not ever think that at my age I would ever witness any major power do such things and could hardly imagine the United States being at the forefront of such monstrous behaviour.

The greed if the Bush years will go down in history as the highest form of larceny even devised. Literally millions of Americans, the loyal, flag waving lemmings that elected the Idiot in the first place, have seen their savings swiped by wealthy elites. People are losing their houses, which they should have never been had in the first place and losing their jobs. This is because Bush’s economic “boom” never was; it was based in printed money that didn’t actually produce anything. Ever wonder why the housing “boom” was centred on the South? Well, that is because the cheapest, illegal, Mexican labour was there to do the work. What has Bush done to get the Mexicans out? Sweet Fanny Adams, that is what.

The ironies of the Bush years are so great that the after affects are scarcely comprehendible. The national debt the USA has now doubled, to $12,000,000,000,000, a figure so huge that people can’t wrap their brains around it. Let’s look at oil, shall we? Well, oil hit $147 a barrel in July and now it is at $37. Well, what a coincidence, it is not exactly what it was at in September 2001. Sure we have almost killed GM and Chrysler but we will nationalize the debts of these companies (called a bailout). GM in particular has screwed all asunder, especially its shareholders but do they care? Of course not! The corporate brass will still get their huge salaries and bonuses, courtesy of the taxpayers. The “economic crisis” will allow GM to shed about half its workforce and concentrate on using government money to finance low interest loans on the cars that really make money for GM, trucks and SUVs. Wagoner and Lutz will still get their fat salaries and that is all that matters.

You see, GM is not in the business of making cars for money for its shareholders. It is in the business of making money for the top brass of the company. Now, if I owned stock in GM I would go the annual general meeting and raise one helluva stink; where has my money gone, the stock is worth one twentieth of what it was five years ago? But this doesn’t happen because the stock is largely owned by investment banks through mutual funds. As long as these bankers get their big, fat pay cheques, all is well enormous bonus payments, courtesy again of the taxpayer, the fabled bailout, that wonderful instrument that allows complete greed and corruption to be rewarded with huge mansions in Florida.

Watching Wagoner before Congress was about the worst thing I have ever witnessed; this bald faced liar had the gall to state that GM’s product was not the problem it was finance! Well, gee, the only way we can get our knuckle draggin’ customer base into an SUV that costs $50,000 is by leasing it to him at 0% to get the payments low enough so he can afford it. Then when he cannot make the payments, you can get a bailout from the taxpayer to cover the residual, which ain’t Jack Shit because the tuck is Jack Shit and will fall apart the day the warranty expires. The thought that GM might actually produce a competitive car that people would actually buy with their own money, that won’t fall apart in three years is not even considered and is indicative of the entire rot of the USA as a whole.

We, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, are going to be in some really tough times soon. It hasn’t hit Cancuksitan as hard as the USA yet and it probably will not because we have programmes that actually help working families retain buying power but there are going to be many young people as well as the unskilled who are going to have tough times. I kind of pity the under 30 set because they don not know hard times, nor can they recognise them when they are on their way. The main reason I stay in Korea as long as I did and left when I did was I saw the economy on an “upswing” and I knew damned well I had better get home and get things established before they went down again. I have been successful in that, got a nice place to live, a nice car, a good business going and don’t owe anything to anybody. But look at generation Y, raised on cheap and east credit. They are going to have it bad because when one of them loses a job, they won’t be able to make their payments. They are used to restaurants, leased cars they cannot afford and ski holidays. Living without that will be a shock and will have a ripple effect down the entire economy.

So, here we are, at almost 2009 with a new President and uncertain times. Last year was easy to predict, this year much more difficult.

Here is Kimchipig’s to do list:

-Health Care: One of the major reasons American companies cannot compete is health costs. American has to have a national health insurance programme similar to ours.

-Bailouts: They have to stop. Instead of bailing out the TOP of the system, the greedy fucks that caused the crash to begin with, bail out the BOTTOM, the working stiffs who are going to end up on the street. Defer their mortgage payments, put them on partial payments, do future value financing, anything but give millionaires more millions.

-GM: Let it fail. Nationalise the pensions and sell assets to cover them. Health benefits will be paid by the national health insurance.

-Energy policy: The USA has to stop being held hostage by big business. The super corporation has become so mind bogglingly corrupt it defies logic and most of that is based on the oil and car companies. More so oil because it doesn’t actually cost much to produce oil compared for what it sells for. These bastards owned Bush and got what they wanted. The best way to pull the rug out from under them is a real energy policy that mandates real energy use reductions. If America could cut its oil use by one quarter, not a single Arab could hold America hostage again.

-Education: In the last 30 years, I have witnessed one of the greatest dumbing downs of society in history. It started with Regan and even Clinton could not stop it. It is not about math and science scores, these are meaningless; it is about teaching people that they have to think for themselves and question what is going on around them. The blind (foolish) “patriotism” I witnessed in the USA after 2001 was about the most shocking thing I have ever witnessed, second only to Nazi Germany, and it led America into disaster. Unfortunately, uneducated lemmings are not terribly productive and tend to wallow in drugs, alcohol, tobacco and jail and unless you have a whacking great war to cull them, they are kind of useless in the long run because they don’t vote (or can’t due to a conviction) anyway. If you educate people they will find productive things to do.

-Off shore money: This has to stop. The elite exports the money they US taxpayer shovels into them via either defense or bailouts so it cannot be taxed. This is the main reason the money supply is so grossly huge and the market place has been distorted. The government doesn’t have the ability to tax it back like it did in World War II.

-Illegal aliens: They have to be booted out so Americans can have a chance to get jobs. Really, it is a scandal that more that 25,000,000 Mexicans labour in the USA, something like 20% of Mexico’s population. What Kimchipig thinks will happen:

-Obama will try to do just this. The corporations and the Republicans they own will scream, holler, lobby, go to court and try to get the stacked Supreme Court to strike anything down that might strip away the power of the super corporation to enrich it leaders. -

Oil will stay cheap to in an attempt to pull the rug out from any real energy programme.

-The economy will not bottom out in 2009. It will continue to decline until real spending power is restored to the working people. This will take some time and is couple with improvements in education.

-Obama has about a year to really get the ball rolling. We’ll see how successful he is because America really is teetering on the edge now.

I seem to be somewhat more in the blogging mood these days and I have a few things I would like to get off my chest.

The new Korean president is now facing his first big challenge and it is in a place that I would have never thought possible: Mad Cow Disease. There have been a grand total of THREE cows found in the USA with BSE and two more in Canada! OH MY FUCKING GOD! Imagine that! Two cases of BSE in the USA since 2003! That in about a gazillioneen cattle. There have been a staggering THREE cases of vCJ, the associated human disease. In a population of 300,000,000 million, half of them obese, you are more likely to be hit by a satellite falling from space.

Alas, it has nothing to do with safety or health. It is all about good old fashioned Waygook hatin’ and America is always the favourite target. You see, this nonsense is being led by the Korea Federation of Trade Unions, the Dear Leader’s mouthpiece in the south. Korea is being kept divided because if it ever reunited, it would become the world super power and put America in its place and them there Yankees wouldn’t like that, would they?

I watched, with great sadness, Korea destroy itself between 1994 and 2007. For ten years the Dear Leader set the agenda in the South and that agenda was invariably waygook hating. I had hoped the new president, Lee Moon Bak would do something to stand up to the mobs that the North so successfully mobilizes whenever it can. Of course, the timing of the resumptions of US beef exports could not have been better because summer vacation is starting and it is easy to get the kids on the street.

This will the be the new administration’s first real test of whether it can stand up to the mob. If the mob wins, the presidency is doomed. Korea is presently trying to get a Free Trade Agreement passed with the USA. It would be very much in Korea’s interest to get said document ratified before Barack Obama becomes president. I have a pretty strong feeling that Obama will not take closed markets and Yankee hatin’ any better than Bill Clinton did.

On another topic, the Retarded Canadian Auto Workers Union.

Gasoline is hitting historic high prices. So it should because we Canadians, and our American neighbours, are profligate wasters of energy. I am old enough to remember both the 1973 and the 1979 oil “crises.” The sales of US made tanks tanked and guess what, they are tanking again. Japanese car sales went through the roof and people found out that they were fuel efficient, well made and fun to drive.

Well, déjà vu all over again. The “Big Three” can’t give their sleds away. Who the hell would want to drive a car (and they are used as cars) that has higher fuel costs than the monthly payment? Not many. The two hottest sellers in the USA are now the Toyota Yaris and the Honda Fit. And guess what? A whole new generation is finding out that small cars are fun to drive, easy to park and have more space than you think. They don’t fall apart faster than you can bolt the shit back on them.

This leads us to the Retarded Canadian Auto Workers Union.. The RCAWU is reeling because people don’t buy gas hogs anymore. When worked for Chrysler, we were all stumped when we saw cars like the 300 and Magnum so proudly introduced. We knew then that gas prices would spike and that auto workers would lose jobs. Well, now we are seeing it. And what is the reaction of the RCAWU? Well, they want import quotas! Wow, that worked so well in 1979. Instead of bring in Corollas, Toyota used their quota to bring Camrys, and people realized that they were really good bigger cars. Then they built factories in the USA and Canada and built their cars here.

What else does the RCAWU want? Well they want market access in Korea and Japan. I suppose if I had never been past a beer parlour in Oshawa in my life, I would think this is a good idea. But what product do the Big Three make that anyone in Korea of Japan would actually buy? I can’t think of one. You could ship a hundred thousand Malibu cars to Japan and nobody would buy them because those crafty Japs would realize, correctly, that their own cars are better.

We have been wasting energy for years here on a massive scale. We waste everything, really. Had some real leadership been on place in the 80s to continue the energy efficiency programmes started by Carter, we would not be in the situation we are in now.

For some reason, the urge to blog has hit me again. What do we want to rant about today? Well, here are a few choice things on my mind.

-Canada’s birth rate. We are, in Canada, sitting on a demographic time bomb. That baby boom generation, that I am so proud to be a member of, is retiring in droves, causing a serious labour shortage. What, pray tell, are we doing about it? Well, I see women of child bearing age all around me with no kids. What is this? Well, it is because women marry up. I have never met a woman who truly wants to marry a guy with less coin than she has. The salary gap between men and women has virtually disappeared. Thus, women, waiting for the handsome rich prince to sweep them off their feet, are waiting a long time. Like forever, and no matter what Dr Phil may say, at 40 you are too old to have a baby.

So we import people. Is this a good thing? Well, I am not so sure. The immigrants I see here have no interest in integrating into Canadian culture in any way whatsoever. They live in their Chinese world. This may work for now, but where are we going to get our leadership in say, thirty years?

We also allow people to buy visas into Canada under the investment programme. Problem is it costs a lot more to buy your way in to Vancouver than say, Trois-Rivere, Quebec. The way around it is easy. Set up a shadow company in Quebec, use it to buy yourself a house in Vancouver and then get on the plane. Land in Montreal and register with immigration. Then get on the plane to Vancouver. It works because once that “investor” has that Permanent Residence Card, nobody from Citizenship and Immigration Canada will ever check. Keep your nose clean for two years and you have successfully bilked the Canadian government out of a cool half million bucks.

Meanwhile, there are 900,000 people waiting in line for their cases to be processed. CiC is so busy doing “fast tracks” like “investors that honest working stiffs, who have ponied up a lot of coin to even apply, wait in line. Not only that, but our fascist government has introduced new legislation trying to reintroduce “Ministerial Discretion” that would allow the minister to allow or reject anyone he or she wants without justification. That is hardly what I call fair.

Recently, the much vaunted Vancouver Canucks again failed to make the playoffs. This led me to think about what a stupid thing professional sports are, and especially hockey. Even more absurd is Don Cherrry.The most annoying Canadian by far is Don Cherry. I flicked on the TV the other night and there he was, dressed up in an even more silly clown suit than the last time I had the pain to see him. The guy's only claim to fame was by some total fluke, he managed to get the best team money could buy the Stanley Cup. They won it despite him, the players all detested Cherry. He then proceeded to bomb the rest of his coaching career. He then got a job as a hockey "pundit." I hate pundits and Cherry has to be the worst of them all. The only thing he can say, in his caveman drawl is:

"Duhhh, them guyz gotta hit more and play like a team and them Yourapeein playerz is all ferries."

It is like the Canadian Homer Simpson, sans animation. And you know what, the kids on the prairie eat it up because if Europeans are so bad, they can get into the NHL

Even the CBC hates him. Only knuckle draggin', pick up drivin' retards like him. But wait, these are the people that drop $1000 for a hockey game. They drive in from the farm, get a hotel, hookers, coke and beer and watch the game. The CBC tried to shitcan Cherry a couple of years ago but the groundswell of morons had him reinstated.

Speaking of hockey, and professional sports, I have never understood it. Look at out much vaunted Vancouver Canucks. Never won the cup. Got into the final ONCE and got beat four straight. Failed to make the playoffs two years out of three, which is pretty hard in the NHL which plays all year only to eliminate the one team in the divisional basement.

Why, pray tell, are the Canucks so bad? Because they don't have to be good. They have sold out something like the last 200 games. Clonebot retards line up to but they made in China overpriced merchandise like the good little clones they are supposed to be. They even change it every few years and the clones still pay $200 for a mesh jersey that cost $2 to make.

It was hilarious to watch the press conference after the Canucks bombed. All the management had sullen faces. The didn't say much. They didn't have to; they had accomplished their goal. They had made the team owners a pile of money. After their hang-dog act, they went into the back room and broke out the bonus cheques.

It is not just hockey, it is all sports. I really respect the parents of the kids I teach,. All are very, very wealthy people. They all, to a one, strike me as intelligent, kind people. They are SMART. Their kids are cramming calculus instead of wasting their time trying to be an NBA star
(or any other star for that matter). Now, if you really want it, how do the odds of being a  Civil Engineer rank compared to being an NBA star?
Any kid will have a much better chance at being an engineer than being a "professional athlete." 

Well, it has now been exactly four years since I returned from Korea. What a ride it has been, a real learning experience. Here is what I have learned about Canada and the ESL industry in the last four years:

1) Down Homers are the Uncle Toms of the ESL industry. Whenever some scumbag school owner needs a nigger to do his dirty work, it is inevitably a Down Homer. I have seen Newfies and Down Homers do some pretty atrocious shit in the name of their masters over the years; all in the name of their shit jobs that pay shit money. I guess when you have never actually had a job that can pay your bills being an Uncle (or Aunt) Tom has some attraction but some day you are going to have to look in the mirror.

2) The ESL business is absolutely rotten to the core, in Korea, Japan and here. It is the last refuge of scoundrels and thieves. It is not better here than it was in Korea. The schools in Vancouver have proven themselves so greedy that Japanese have basically stopped coming. The last school I had the displeasure of working at had a revolving door and a core of Down Homer Aunt Toms. These women came with a beat-dog complex and went home at night and took their frustrations out on their husbands. Imagine being so chained to the wheel that you couldn’t leave such a hell even if you wanted to. All in the name of making interest payments to a bank for something you will never actually own anyway. I suppose if Export A, hockey and a 24 pack is your idea of a fun it would be fine. Come to think of it, that is the Down Homer idea of fun.

3) The real money is in tutoring. If you are good at it, and most aren’t, you can make bags of cash doing it. Most male ESL teachers have realised this and migrated into tutoring and most are doing very well. With the influx of Mainland Chinese into the West Side of Vancouver, opportunities have never been better. These people are stinking rich and if they like you, will refer you to ever more students. Even if you jack your prices to absurd levels they will keep paying because these people are so rich that it is pocket money to them anyway.

4) Anywhere there is a shit job that pays more than $10 an hour, there is a Down Homer. Look at Ft McMurray. If there ever was blighted place on the asshole of the earth, that is it. Forty fucking below in the winter and sixty-two billion ravenous mosquitoes in the summer. The place is full of Down Homers who think that they are making good money. I suppose of you keep yourself blind drunk any time you are not working you could stand the place. Come to think of it, that is how I coped in Korea. But I digress.

5) What is the motivation of Down Homers? Are they so perpetually whipped that they will settle for 23rd best? Even the educated ones settle for 22nd best and then they inevitably run Down Home as often as they can so they can drop out with their dope smoking buddies. Well, that about settles it. The only good thing is that Down Homers are such whipped dogs they don’t cause much trouble. They sure keep Air Canada busy, too.

There has been a lot going on in Canada since my last post but the booming economy has also caught up with me, which means I have little free time. To begin with, I would like to sincerely thank my American friends for driving SUVs to Walmart to buy a quart of milk and voting GOP. Few of my American neighbours would realise that Canada is the biggest (by far) exporter of oil to the USA and this has caused our economy to boom and our dollar to hit US$1.07 today. Exploration and pipleline building is hitting new records so I don't see the boom ending any time soon.

Much of the thanks for this can be traced to good ole' GW the Idiot, who is fighting an unwinnable war on printed money. This war also has the effect of jacking oil prices to unreasonable highs; you don't have to be Einstein to realise that America is in Iraq to LIMIT oil supplies and thus keep prices high. If America were to leave Iraq, the government there, which incidently hates the Americans as much as anyone else there, would clean up the mess in about six months. It would then start pumping oil at the rate of 4,000,000 barrels a day or so, which would cut the price of oil in half and really not benefit us pesky Canucks or GW's oil buddies. Meanwhile, Canuckistan continues to run budget surpluses in every level of government and give meaningful tax cuts to working stiffs so they can go out and spend even more.

There is a downside to this for us, of course. The auto companies in Canada, especially Chrysler, are being hit hard. When I worked for Chrysler I was stunned when I saw what they were introducing onto the market. Big trucks, cars and SUVs. We all knew then that Chrysler would be fucked in a few years. And guess what? It is and announced another wave of plant closures yesterday. This of course elicited the brilliant response from Canadian Auto Worker's CEO Buzz (I am a Moron) Hargrove:

The real problem, he insisted, is a flood of imports from Japan and South Korea that are displacing Detroit Three vehicles in their home market. Problems in Canada are aggravated by the high value of the Canadian dollar, he added.

Buzz, you are an idiot. The real problem is the "Big Three" are not building products people want to buy when gas is over $1.00 a litre. Further, most of the "Japanese" cars sold in Canada are built here. There are now 35,000 Toyota workers in Ontario and they and Honda are expanding here. This, Buzzie-boy, is almost exactly the same number of members you have in your union. Fact is, Buzzinder, there have never been more auto manufacturing jobs in Canada as there are now, they just couldn't be bothered paying part of their salaries to listen to you hurl baloney.

Here is yet another snippet of Buzz-esque Wisdom:

"There's a crisis in manufacturing," he told reporters yesterday, lambasting the federal government for cutting taxes and Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge for not reducing interest rates to halt the rise in the value of the dollar.

I guess flunking out of grade nine and workin' on the line makes Buzzie an economist. If the Bank of Canada were to cut rates our blasting economy would overheat even more and we would get unacceptable inflation. The reducing tax part is part of the Leftie Mantra, where it is, for some reason, always good to raise taxes and never good to cut them. In fact, Buzzola, the GST cut will help big ticket purchaces like cars and the income tax cuts will leave average Canadians with more money in their pockets. They are just not going to buy hulking monsters like the Pacifica and the Magnum that cost $100 to fill up. Chrysler employees like myself knew that when those models were introduced. Hell, none of us drove Chryslers anyway, which our brilliant employer should have sold us at cost as free advertising, Duhhhhhh! The only crisis we have, Buzzdom, is morons like you preaching the status quo. The days of dropping out of school and heading to the line are over, Buzzerinni, and anybody who is stupid enough not to realise it is a retarded as you are. I got some bad news for you, Buzzdumb: The bank of Canada is much more likely to raise rates next time to cool the economy down.

Buzzola, I am going to have to give it to you straight: the decline of the "Big Three" started 30+ years ago when they, in spite of the evidence that was plain to see, condinued to build gas guzzlers that were put together so badly they fell apart faster than you could both the shit back on them. That was added to the awful customer service culture that permiates all the Big Three, including your union I may add, has caused their demise. Their so called "economy" models like the Cavalier, Escort and Neon were such pieces of shit they were the best advertisements Toyota and Honda ever had.

Perhaps, Buzzoleum, you should ask Joe Canadian what he wants wants from his ride. I happen to be Joe Canadian, and I will tell you:

"I want a car that is reliable, drives well, is versatile and does not cost much. I want a car that gets 30mpg in Vancouver traffic and 45mpg on the highway. If it does have a warranty issue, I want a dealer to actually fix it instead of arguing with each other who pays for the repair. Finally, I want a car equipped the way I want it, not the way some bean counter says it should be."

Buzzeener, I found that in a Korean car.

It was rather surprsing to see that the old formula of idiot+gun+massacre has yet again happened but not unexpected. In a country awash with guns, these things are bound to happen. Further, when I heard that the shooter was "Asian" I knew immediately that he was a Korean. This comment from a Korean netizen was pulled from Marmot: “I’m so surprised that a Korean could do something so cruel I don’t believe it… I wonder if the investigation results are mistaken, so we have to keep watching.” So fucking typical.

I have some news for you, honey: Koreans do insane, murderous acts all the time. Remember the Deagu subway arson? Morea than 120 people were killed, both by the arsonist and the driver of the second train who lock the doors and then fucked off with the key, letting the people on the train incinerate. There are many such atrocities, including the bombing of KAL flight 858 in 1987. In the 1970's a cop when on a rampage in his own village and killed dozens. Yoo Young-chul killed 20 women while posing as a taxi driver. There are lots of such incidents in Korea's recent past. It is just that Koreans have a collective memory of 30 seconds or so.

When I describe Koreans to my friends in Canada, I use this explanation: "Koreans are like Japanese on LSD and most of them are completely insane two weeks a year." Another posted used the lame excuse that Koreans have a hard time here because of language and racism (talk about the pot calling the kettle black!) that they face here. I don't buy that one iota. Koreans make little or no effort to integrate into Canadian society whatsoever. There was even a case here locally very recently where a Korea shop tried to refuse service to anyone not Korean. When told in no uncertain terms that this was not acceptable, the shop owner threated a demonstration in front of Langley town hall. I guess he was warned of the consequences of doing so because, unlike in Korea, thorowing Molotov Cocktail at the mounties is liable to land you in jail until you are a geriatric. I could go on but we all get the picture. I have actually stopped teaching Koreans. I teach Chinese students only now and what a world of difference. The Chinese people I deal with are cultured, polite and most importantly, reasonable. At the end of the day, the authorities in the USA will fail to ask the most important question: how can a person who is clinically depressed (as the shooter apparently was) possess firearms?

That is, everybody but our Learned Genius, Bush.

His great response is to send 20,000 more soldier's assess to be shot at. US losses now often exceed 100 a month. It is pretty obvious that the soldier's morale is breaking down as they see their mission as unwinnable and futile. Recent US documentaries and news stories have shown military members using language that would have been unthinkable a year ago. Bush, the Great Military Leader, has violated one of the most basic principles of war: reinforce success, not failure. Bush is wasting his forces and tying them down. This allows China to flex its muscles and allows a lunatic like Hugo Chavez to get into his antics.

You know, there is something seriously anti-democratic about a ruler who can start, continue and conclude military action against any person, institution or country at any time. Regan may have been a space cadet but at least he went along with the withdrawal from Lebanon in 1983. He, or whomever wrote his scripts, did not make the military blunder of reinforcing failure.

 Gas prices will stay lower, too. High gas prices would put too much heat on during the next presidential election, or should I say dynasty change and will be kept low. If a democratic is installed, gas prices will stay low or else the oil companies would be forced to really invest in clean technologies. If by some sort of miracle the GOP gets elected expect high prices and no new technology.

So there is the first of 2007's posts. I think I will get more on the ball this year and tap more out here. The idiot of the year should provide tons of material.

It actually amazing how many people have asked me to post something on my blog. Well here it is!

To all the American Patriots who flamed the hell out of me three years ago, a big fat:

I TOLD YOU SO!!!! The Americans are 100% completely and totally fucked in Iraq. Their entire policy has been completely unsuccessful from the first day. I doubt there is one sane, thinking person in the United States who thinks that the war can be won or come to any conclusion that is favourable to the USA. Staying will increase the death toll of Americans. Leaving will make them lose face. Frontline had an excellent documentary on Iraq two nights ago which plotted the American blunders step by step. American and Bush has alienated so much of the Iraqi population that the resistance to the US being in Iraq grows on a daily basis. They correctly realise that in order to establish any kind of order in Iraq, the Americans need to get the fuck and let the Iraqis deal with it themselves. Those guns Bremmer let them keep are now pointed at Americans and shooting at them at any chance they get.

The sad thing about all this is everyone knows that sooner or later, the Americans will have to leave. There is no way the US public is going to tolerate the death tolls being recorded now. As of yesterday, 70 American troops have been killed in Iraq this month. This is getting to Vietnam levels. The resistance movement will only get bolder as Americans continue their "intelligence sweeps" and put innocent people in jail. As soon as they get out they are going to take up arms so the insurgency is growing at a rate the US cannot ever hope to contain. The troop levels that the US has in Iraq are very difficult to maintain and put huge strains on the reserves. A draft is politically impossible lest the elite's kids get killed.

It is my belief that the increased numbers of US killed is mostly due to a morale crisis. You do not have to be Einstein to realise that the insurgency is totally beyond US control, the Sunni and Shi'ia are killing the fuck out of each other and America is in the middle of it all. Guys on their second and third times around are going to be more interested in saving their own asses than any kind of action, which in a military parlence cuts unit coheshesion, leading to more casualties. The same thing happened in Vietnam. Protracted wars are never successful for an occupier unless victory is clearly in sight. Even in World War 1, troops were seldom under fire more than a few days a month at most. The stresses that US units are facing now must be tremendous; they are never safe and constantly under the threat of fire. This leads to stress and stress leads to mistakes, which in turn leads to more deaths. The soldiers know this, too.

 It will be interesting to see what happens in the mid term elections. The polls seem to show that Americans realise the mistake they made in re-electing Bush. Let's hope the Dems get control of boths houses and shake up the staus quo. I do see a lot of good signs; anything critical of the war was unthinkable and branded as "Anti-American" or "Un-American even a year ago. There is now a healthy debate in the US media about the war and this is a good sign. Even the GOP is strangely quiet about the whole thing. Gas prices are falling, though, right before the election, completely true to my prediction.

To readers: Flame away but tell me how America can ever possibly have a positive outcome from the war. Tell me. I want to know.

Greetings, Reader. Yes, the Rant continues. Sorry for such a lack of material lately but life continues very well in Vancouver for the family. I have a good job, Mrs Kimchipig has a good job and the piglets are busy with various piglet activities. The news I am intersted in? Well, it was great seeing Comrade Roh getting his ass kicked. I remember during the Race Roits many of my students, with Starry Eyes, asking me "What do you think about Roh Moo-hyun?" They seemed to think that he was some kind of saviour that was going to unite Korea, solve the unemployment problem, etc. I knew from the first day he came on the scene we was nothing but a silly commie stooge. My reply was "Ask me in three years." Well, three years later the economy is in tatters and the corps of "beak-su" grows every June. These loafers will never be included in the unemployment figures in Korea. As an interesting aside, 63% of all the people in British Columbia are working; in South Korea is is barely over 35%.

 I also get a huge kick out of stuff like this from the Korea Lies:

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200606/ kt2006060917205854040.htm" title="http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200606/ kt2006060917205854040.htm" target="_blank"http://times.hankooki.com/lpa...

The huge desire to blame big nose for everything is alive and well. An F-15k crashed into the Sea of Japan and Blame Big Nose stared immediately:

 "Air Force officials cite three possible causes for the incident; mechanical defects, poor maintenance and/or operational error. One can't help but note their order. The pilots were among the best in the nation and had completed a five-month training course on the new plane in America. Military experts note there are no technical manuals written in Korean for the F-15K planes, causing considerable difficulties for repairmen."

 Translation: There is no way one of the motherland's pilots could have fucked up, it had to be because Big Nose was so arrogant he did not traslate the manuals. But there is more:

Looking back, there were controversies when the nation decided to introduce the Boeing-made planes, which proved inferior to those produced by Dassault of France. Critics said the need to maintain Korea-U.S. military cooperation held precedence over function and price at the time. But Air Force officials countered that the technology transfer and the large number of Korean components in the plane as well as technical localization were major factors in the decision. The latest crash, however, is forcing them to reconsider the plane's continuous purchase.  

Ahh, gotta love the Korea Lies! Like, so, if you buy a French aircraft, one that has never been in operation before, it will come with Korean manuals, software and be easier to maintain? Fat bloody chance! Buy an airbus and it comes in English. I remember trying to have a rational discussion with a student about the F-15K purchase and throwing in comments like "Well, if you buy the French plane every tool you have for your previous planes will be usless and when you cannot fix it, who are you going to call?" Of course it went in one ear and out the other. I used to drink with an Englishman when I was living in Pusan. He was there in response to the rash of crashes Korean Airlines was having, working for Airbus. The tales he told me prevented me from ever getting on a KAL flight again.

On the national front, a group of "terrorists" have been busted and thrown in jail, most probably for the rest of their existances. It seemed pretty amateur and not much to worry about but I am sure that our present Nazi Leader, Herr Adolf Harper, will try to make the best politcal hay out of it he can and of course, the nutbars in the USA will do their best to demonise us.

My favourite columnist and historian of all time is Gwynne Dyer. Have a look at his website. I also had the great fortune to have lunch with him one time, which degenerated into both of us getting pie-eyed in the process (big surprise, an Irishman and a Newfie....). He wrote and excellent piece this week titled "Jumping at Terrorist Shadows." It should be on Gwynne's site soon as I do not want to post it here in respect for Mr Dyer.

Well, summer is here and I have lots to do. Let's see some comments but be nice, OK?