Bill Clinton left office with a balanced budget and a fiscal surplus which Bush has turned into a deficit of 11 trillion dollars with his moronic tax refunds and the Iraq war. Now the US government proposes to rescue banks with a bail out of over one trillion dollars. The danger is that the dollar may collapse and inflation jumps in the US. Asian countries are sitting with huge dollar reserves. China has about 2 trillion dollars, Japan has 1.5 trillion and other countries together another trillion. If the dollar collapses all this will become confetti, oil and commodity prices will surge and exports will plummet bringing the entire region into recession. Asian countries should get together and raise a trillion dollars from their reserves and give it to the US on easy terms. This will rescue the US economy and every one can get back to making profits. Unfortunately politicians are small minded people incapable of generosity. They are enjoying US discomfort and may kill the goose with its golden eggs in the process.

More than 50 thousand children taken to hospital and at least six already dead, this is the latest crisis in China. It came about because water was added to milk to inflate volume and profits and, to disguise the dilution, melamine powder was added to the milk to enhance its nitrogen content. The situation becomes critical because of the harshly imposed one child policy of the government. The head of quality control has been sacked and a few low level officials of the milk supplying firms will be found guilty in due course. After a dubious trial they will be executed with one shot to the back of the head and a bill for one bullet will be sent to the respective families. Their organs will be sold to wealthy foreigners in need of transplant. The state always wins. Angry parents will be threatened into silence and things will revert to normal until the next crisis breaks. During the recent earthquakes schools collapsed killing thousands of children but government buildings stood firm. Parents protesting against corrupt local officials colluding with builders were arrested, threatened and bullied into silence. In the last few decades China has become enormously rich. Huge buildings, fantastic roads and the Olympics blind people to its reality. A person just returned from there was awed at their progress but remarked that he did not see any birds. He presumed they had all been eaten. These are a brutal, uncivilised, barbaric people incapable of humanity and will probably never be democratic.

Charles Taylor, Idi Amin, Bokassa, Mobutu and on and on, the list of murderous thugs running countries in Africa is endless. However even in this rollcall of villains Thabo Mbeki of South Africa holds a special place. Not because of anything that he did but because of all the good he could have done but chose not to. Becoming president after Nelson Mandela he inherited a country in peace, still basking in the afterglow of the end of apartheid and the best economy on the continent. During his tenure a few blacks have become rich but inequality has increased. Crime has exploded and everyone with money has to have bodyguards or face being mugged, raped or murdered. Mbeki has stubbornly denied the existence of HIV saying that it is a nutritional disorder. He sacked Assistant Health Minister, the widely respected Routledge but has supported Msimang, the Health Minister, a woman accused of corruption and of getting a fast track liver transplant to treat her alcoholic liver disease. He waited for two weeks, while mobs were killing immigrants, before calling the army to restore order. His support of Mugabi has meant the death of thousands in Zimbabwe and the peace treaty he has brokered still leaves Mugabi with control of the army and is bound to fail. The ANC have voted to oust him but the man they have chosen is Jacob Zuma who was accused of raping a HIV positive woman. When asked if he had taken any precautions he said that he had taken a shower. Africa still remains the Dark Continent.

After bomb blasts in Delhi in 2005 CCTV cameras were installed in markets in Delhi but not one was found to be working on saturday when the recent outrage took place. A car stolen in Navi Mumbai was found loaded with explosives in Surat but the CCTV cameras at the toll station through which it had come were not working. Meanwhile Customs fellows investigating evasion of duties by wealthy individuals in importing aircraft for personal use accidentally stumbled upon airplanes entering Indian airspace illegally without permission. Apparently six planes, a Boeing 727, 3 Challenger aircrafts, a Lear jet and a Gulf Stream have been flying in and out of India and landing at smaller airports for years without permission. I feel confused, perplexed and stupid. An airport is not a petrol pump where you drive in, fill up and drive out. How can any plane fly into our airspace undetected? What about radar and satellites? Why were they not challenged by our Air Force and forced to land? Why were they allowed to land at any airport without filing a flight plan? How did they pay landing fees and refuelling costs? I am too terrified to think of what cargo or passengers they may have been carrying. In 1995 a Russian built AN26 was captured dropping arms into Purulia in West Bengal and yet six planes are able to fly in and out of the country unchallenged and, shockingly, undetected. Worse, there is no concern among politicians, civil or defence personnel. Politicians are busy abusing each other in preparation for the coming general elections while the kleptocrats, police and army officers are occupied in matching pay packets and whining about getting less. Useless parasites with no sharam, no izzat.

Another day of carnage, this time on the streets of Delhi. While the rabid muslims continue to kill innocent people the government is assuring them that Haj fights will be subsidised as before with taxpayers' money. No doubt the criminals were equipped and financed by the ISI of Pakistan, a moribund state being kept alive by US help. At last the US has woken up to the fact that Pakistan is the source of 90% of terrorism in the world and Bush has authorised cross border raids. Unfortunately Bush is not the only moron to occupy the White House. Support for Pakistan and a blind eye to all its abominable crimes have been the policy for decades in callous indifference to the slaughter of innocent Indians. It was the US that poured money and weapons to Zia Ul Haq to oust the USSR from Afghanistan, a hellhole with no resources and an illiterate and murderous people. Today NATO soldiers are paying the cost. When the USSR broke up Russia embraced democracy but instead of embracing it as a partner and helping it to become prosperous the US continually insulted and humiliated it. It helped break up Yugoslavia and Chechoslavia and expanded NATO to Russian borders. Today Russia is fighting back. Bolivia, Venezuela and Honduras have expelled US ambassadors and Ethiopia is on the brink of famine with its soldiers dying in Somalia in a US inspired war. The next President of the US has to understand that Pakistan and China are the main threats to the future of the world and not Cuba or that buffoon, Hugo Chavez. If he does not the future will indeed be bleak.

When is a pig not a pig? Depends on your culture. When Harbhajan Singh was accused of calling Andrew Symonds of Australia 'a monkey' there was a huge furore in Australia. Singh's defence was that he the words ' teri maa ki' which means 'your mother's *****.' Australians are probably used to their mothers being friendly with many men and an allusion to their mother's organs was not as offensive as calling Symonds a monkey which was deemed to be a terrible racial insult. For Indians abusing your mother will probably elicit a violent response whereas many parents lovingly address their children as 'little monkey'. So to Obama. The Republicans have objected to his quip about putting lipstick on a pig as an insult to Sarah Palin. Obama has aggressively denied the accusations accusing the Republicans of falsehood. So who is right? The answer lies in Obama's middle name which is Hussein. He converted to Christianity from Islam. In Islam the pig is considered unclean and pig meat is 'haram' or forbidden. The thing to do is to find out if Obama eats bacon, ham and pork. If he does then he may be forgiven. If, however, he absolutely never has pig products then he is guilty of serious abuse. On man's meat etc. etc. as they say.

The Indian Institutes of Technology, IIT, are prestigious institutions and are even recognised abroad. There were five such institutes in five different cities in India but seven more have been set up this year without buildings, faculty or infrastructure. Thus the students enrolled in the newly set up Rajasthan IIT are being taught in Kanpur. It is doubtful that Kanpur will have the resources to suddenly handle double the number of students and standards of teaching are bound to fall. Students to the IITs are recruited through an elimination examination called the Joint Entrance Exam or JEE. This year's results are shocking. The last candidate in the General category got out of 200 in each subject 63 in Maths, 72 in Physics and 45 in Chemistry for a total of 180 in 600. The last candidate in the Scheduled Caste, SC, category got 38,8 and 58 respectively for a total of 104 while that in the Scheduled Tribes, ST, category got 36,12 and 56 for a total of 104. The really shocking thing is that the General category candidate had an all India rank of 6773 while the SC one had a rank of 689 and the ST one was 159. This is extreme injustice. Next year cut offs will be lowered still further which will allow SC/ST candidates with zero in Physics to secure a place in IIT. Professors will be forced to pass these students or they will be accused of bias. Their certificates will not show their JEE marks and they will be treated as equal until disasters happen. How long before IITs are seen as rubbish? Genius is unique and hated by the garbage who want everyone to stink like them. Sadly India will be seen as producer of only garbage.

Bye bye Obama, welcome Sarah Palin. Beautiful mother of five. A huntin', fishin', shootin' gal who believes in Creationism, is Prolife and supports gun ownership is an automatic poster girl for the grassroots Republican rednecks. She started gently introducing her family. Older son going to Iraq, younger son with Down's syndrome. She talked about her experience as mayor and governor of Alaska. Putting the luxury jet on EBay was a nice touch. Having sharpened her claws she moved into attack. She made Barack Obama into a windbag and tore into him. Her quip about the 'styrofoam pillars' must have felt like a stiletto in Demacratic hearts. She questioned his record in the senate and was oh so sarcastic about his community service. If she continues like this and there is no big banana skin on the way no one stop the Republicans waltzing into the White House. In four years McCain will be too old and Palin could be the candidate. Hillary Clinton vs Sarah Palin, now that really would be thrilling. All of us men can relax in our armchairs with pints of cool beer in our hands and watch the biggest catfight in history. Cannot wait.

The government has accepted the recomendations of the Sixth Pay Commission which gives massive pay rises to corrupt and lazy government employees. This will cost 2.8 billion dollars and add to the inflationary pressures on the economy. The perennial complaint of the kleptocrats is that they are paid less than the private sector. The IAS officers are especially clever in getting higher pay rises than any other branch of government causing jealousy and resentment. the IPS and IFS fellows have already protested and now it is the turn of the army. They want pay rises comparable to the IAS and the private sector. This constant comparison with the private sector is so false that it takes your breath away. They only look at the the salaries of CEOs of large companies but not to the fact that every private sector employee is answerable to the management and to the shareholders. Kleptocrats, on the other hand, are not accountable to anyone. The most incompetent and dishonest is able to continue in his post and gets time bound promotions automatically. They are permanent and cannot be sacked. Surely this security of employment without having to do anything productive must be worth at least 10 million rupees a year. If a sarkari fellow dies of any cause his wife is given employment in the same office. Often that means a semi literate woman signing on everyday, sitting on her backside doing nothing and taking home a good salary at taxpayer's expense. Kleptocrats get to travel abroad at our expense without anyone ever asking for the reason. They are paid handsome pensions on retirement and many take jobs in the private sector. Solution is simple. Reduce the number of government employees by 75%. New employees will only be recruited if they agree to hire and fire. Triple the salaries but no perks or pensions. With higher salaries they will contribute to health and pension insurance. Promotion only on merit. Will any kleptocrat agree to an honest job description? Perish the thought.