As IF Times

link Obama to Unveil New Aid Plan for Mideast – WSJ.com.

Aid to the Middle East.  Hmm.  This is as logical as a telethon for Vancouver realtors.  Wasn’t there a rumor of plentiful  oil there?  The West has been providing aid to the Middle East in some form since someone figured out there was black gold in the otherwise barren moonscapes back at the turn of last century. With western technology, the gusher of oil and money have continued unabated since then.  Somehow we are to believe that the font of the most lucrative commodity revenue on the planet requires welfare payments?  Somebody has some explaining to do.  What has happened to the shiploads of dollars paid to those sheikdoms all of these years?

Over the decades, the great oil wealth created by world demand has enriched only a very small number of insular autocrats fortunate enough to be the gatekeepers to the west.  The enormous gulf that has developed between these small numbers of oil haves and the vast majority of  oil have-nots have created a tinderbox for the religious swamis who have never bought into the idea of western ideologies, particularly with Israel as a neighbor.  As we are seeing now, that tinderbox is being lit throughout the Mid East.   Now, none of the Mid East states even pretends to be nice to the West.

Somebody may want to send Price Waterhouse in there to figure out where the billions upon trillions of dollars of oil wealth is, because it’s beyond belief that the West, particularly the Americans,  are still sending aid to this region at all, especially given their own precarious financial state.   The relationship between the West and the Middle East is somewhat analogous to a patron paying higher and higher prices for restaurant food to a chef who keeps all of the money for himself.  The patron is then required to supplement the other disenfranchised restaurant workers  to appease them and keep the food coming.  So, even though he is the biggest customer,  the patron risks food poisoning from the  resentful workers every time he goes in.  As well, the part of town where the restaurant is located gets increasingly dangerous.   This tortured analogy falls short of modelling reality, but you get the idea.  At a time when the demand and price for their staple product has never been higher, it’s about time someone told the chefs to start paying their own workers.  Time to start paying their own bills.

link IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn feared political enemy would pay woman to allege rape | Mail Online.

This guy must have some talent.  In advance of  his arrest for assaulting a hotel maid, he predicted that his political enemies would ensnare him in just such a scenario.  Not a bribery scandal, which would be more likely for a man in charge of the ‘world’ bank, but in a sex scandal.  Hmm.  When the dust settles after this scandal is all over, he will likely be out of a job, so perhaps he can set up a booth at a circus where he can guess people’s weight for  a dollar. 

As to why Dominique still has a job is also bizarre.  People are pressing him to resign.  Resign?  Why don’t they bring in the Donald to pass the news on to him? You’re fired!  Predictably, the French are all in a huff about the treatment of poor Dominique, claiming entrapment and abhorrent treatment of M. Strauss-Kahn.  Yes, the hotel had sent up a young female chambermaid to clean his room on purpose, fully knowing that this would inspire Strauss-Kahn to jump out of the bathroom naked to attack her.   In fact, at Rikers prison, where he is being held, he has an area all to himself, away from the rest of the riff raff, so he actually is getting preferential hospitality.  Of course, at Rikers, his room will be cleaned by a burly janitor named Zeke.

While the media are moralizing over the regrettable behaviour of Dominique, who was acting like a sex tourist in the Philippines, his biggest faux pas is that he is cheap.  Even though a member of his country’s Socialist party, the one that is for egalitarian distribution of wealth, he is probably paid more money in year than he can possibly spend on champagne and caviar.  In addition, his travel and living expenses are all picked up by the people so that staying at The Sofitel in New York at $3000 per night is no hardship.   The fact that he would rather try to cop a freebie from  the chambermaid rather than spend a few hundred bucks on a professional is not only stupid and criminal, it is cheap!

A guy who makes a living spending other peoples’ money and is supported by the state couldn’t bring himself to pay for a service which he obviously needed.  Fo’ shame.  In honour of M. Straus-Kahn, we’ve penned an ode to his adventures in New York, to be sung to the melody of Dominique by the Singing Nun of ’60’s fame:

Dominique-a nique-a-nique

Loves to chase the hotel maids

He flaunts, his gallic charm,

But they do not like his ways,

So he has to run away

Dominique has lost his charm…