The clowns of the new epoch are dancing gaily on their soap boxes,  all swept up in the fervour of ferocious neo-imperialism.  Their machines have hummed into life once more to dream up the tail-dogging treatise that whatever is presumed reality dreamed up by the Chinese Central News agency,  or the Columbian Vark, (sorry, farc) guerilla movement,  or the Venezuelan prostate-professor,  or His Royal Hitler,  Robert “Malaysian-trip” Mugabe,  or even that most prestigious of Ills,  King Jong “Young”-’un.   In SA everyone has a hit out at FW “bantustan” de Klerk.   He trends on twitter.  Probably for the first and last time ever.

I watch these social media despots of all colours and sizes and its a bit like observing the mentally deranged.   Nonsense in a 140 character cup of hash tag and a double shot of cacophony.

We are in a dangerous phase here,  folks, so lets concentrate on what remains reality as we sneak sentiment and hannah-hannah to each other.

We have the US president happily announcing his $40 000 per person banquet to doll in the cash for his “sort-of-I-kind-of-only-just-evolved-to-support-gay-rights-election-year” position while JP Morgan reveals a $2bn hedge that fell apart.  Mr Dimon,  the president,  will smile and happily remain in his position while Mr Obama’s lobby group ensures JP gets their next lolly-bail out come what may.  Wonder if Mr Dimon bought a table for his execs at the Hollywood $40 000 special?

Beijing is living on a quixotic mix of government bombast and Chinese accounting, where what appears to be a spreadsheet is actually merely a numerical propaganda document.

The Greeks don’t know who’s going to lead them through their crisis.  Probably the man who bakes dolmades next door.  Maybe the German milk-maid?   Then again, not likely.

Perhaps the left?  Perhaps the right?  Perhaps the military left/right/left/right?  Today sees Greek politicians entertaining what is called a “last-ditch” attempt at forming a government.  It’s the ditch part of that phrase that is disconcerting.  So very negative.  Why not “eleventh-hour”  or some other sort of journalese than “last-ditch”?

Fact sheet time.

So very painful this growth business.   China’s growth rate has almost halved in five years.

Not very productive.  And the forecast has crumpled still further.  At the weekend and in what appears to be a panic move,  Beijing announced earlier toughened rules about Bank capital were to be eased.  That has hardly dented the negative sentiment in the market,  mainly because traders are beginning to identify with reality.  The dollar is up and the yuan is down.

As Business Day reports today :

“Start with Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world’s most valuable bank, at least on paper, with a $238bn market capitalisation. Much of its capital consists of the remnants of bad loans dating to the 1990s, which ICBC now calls receivables. One such receivable represented about a third of the bank’s shareholder equity, as of December 31. It was scheduled to start coming due in 2010 but was not repaid, and still sits on ICBC’s books at its original value.”

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=171657

Not healthy.   But China looks good.  Billions of people.  China City in Johannesburg continues to parade its plastic flamboyance to the lower middle class,  all lining up for cheap sunglasses.  Beijing hosts various world leaders and shows off bullet trains and thick smog intimating just how industrially powerful it has become.

But as soon as the gaze switches from Greece, which will leave the EU eventually,  to the lack of real growth in China,  the commodity honeymoon will come to a shuddering halt and the World Economic Forum will have to reassess what it means to be a brick.   Where exactly is the money coming from to repay the bank loans which are oiling the construction boom in China?

It may end up with a mortar instead as the Chinese crack down on their own by the third quarter and into 2013.  However,  this is merely an analytical summation.  Go and check out Chinese banking data sheets for exposed loans if you want a real eye-opener.   As soon as corporate rents dry up,  so will the demand for rebar and concrete.  And coal.

Bets are on.  My self-made bookie Albert “vingers” van schalkwyk has the Chinese Spring starting by 4th Q 2012 at 3:1.

Picture this.   A man with a megaphone.

(tap tap) .. (screeeeoooo-eeeee-000-iiiii)

“Comrades…”

The folks jostle for position.

“Comrades.. leesin…  comrades…”

(screeeooooo-eeeeiii-wggghhhehe)

“…deeesah-plin..  dees-ah-plin!”

There are now an average of two protests a day registered in South Africa.

There are hundreds taking place right now in the USA, although for some reason,  Fox Tv doesn’t seem to know about them.  Anyway, moving along.

We are in the new age of the next revolution, apparently.   What next?   Here are a dozen likely events in a dozen unkind months.

1) Greek fire

Yup, uprising.

2) Italian kiss-off?

Bye bye Ruby the groin-tamer’s boyfriend.

3) Swazi Gold

Mswati’s hemp moustache synged – goes “Syrian” as opposed to Greek.

4) Slow trade boat from China

US job search ends at Beijing’s yuan.  Big bang.

5) Zoom Zuma

SA pres is “Thabo-ed” in 2012. Motlanthe as the third option triumphs.  Second option still facing discipline charge #54321/gone.

(read as forward slash .. gone)

6) UBS pops

Too much talk, too little action.

7) Damascus trends

Assad and Ahmadinejad get pointy sticks where it hurts

9) Vodka Vlad

Putin throws the bottle top at Medvedev

10) USS Washington shudders

The Big Ship America feels the effect of worsening protests

11) Oil spills in Nigeria

Because no-one can stop demand

12) Taxes go up in SA

Well someone has to pay

But don’t phone me.  I’ll be living on a yacht in the Seychelles.  My Somalian friends have asked me to join a new syndicate based in the Gulf of Oman.

I was wrong.

The social networking world may yet fundamentally alter the universe.   So too YouTube.   Ask the Syrians,  who’re posting images and videos of a dictatorship in crisis.    Sometimes it takes a while for images to ebb and flow into consciousness.

Possibly the most shocking of these is the 12 year-old Syrian boy who was tortured to death by adult soldiers.  Then his body was dumped at his family’s front door.  The most severe torture possible was carried out on this child.  Human Rights Watch have more details.   Are we shocked that Assad and his sycophants like various dictators around the world and even folks who were tortured themselves – like Jacob Zuma – find it in their hearts to actually support the Damascus regime?

Zuma and Medvedev having fun trying to save comrade Gaddafi's neck.

But here’s the news.  In China there was a rumour today that former President Jiang Zemin had kicked the Beijing bucket.  But no, he hadn’t.  Still, that didn’t stop the funny little uniformed trolls from ordering internet companies to stop any use of the words Jiang Zemin.

So web-savvy Internet users merely leap-frogged the slow pedantic (should we say doltish) Chinese state and are doing what all good people do when facing nazi’s and fascists.  They merely created a second group of words if you want to search for Jiang.

Go to any site in China now and type  “Jiang Zemin” and what you get is a blocked zone or extremely slow connection that just times out.  However… using the human capacity for creativity,   users are typing  “Uncle Jiang,” ”super-sovereign backstage ruler,”  “former emperor,”.

You see, Chinese has a problem.  IT has 4 words which can mean a verb, or a noun, or a proper noun,  or just anything.   “Jiang” also means “River”.  So lets debate about the river then ..

“Chang Jiang” is the Yangtze river.  So Beijing can hardly block that from search engines.  Do you begin to see the problems this centralized state has with digital information?

And why Assad is doomed?  Despite Zuma rushing around like a second-hand errand clerk trying to help his pal who gave him dosh,  old Muammar “kill them all” Gaddafi,   I’m pretty sure ease of access to information is eventually going to lead them angry Libyans straight into Muammar’s back yard,  then into his parlour, and finally,  his bed chamber.  Where,  like with Osama,  a few well aimed rounds will stop a civil war and then – we can all tweet in China that Gaddafi  ”appears to have departed this mortal coil”.

The grey little minions of Beijing won’t get it …

Newton’s third law that every action has an equal opposite reaction is not really his law.

It’s a fact of physics that he identified.  Its also known as the action-reaction law.

Beijing is ignoring this law of nature at its own peril by shutting down information on the Middle Eastern uprisings as it grows increasingly paranoid about anything that’s free.

The Chinese state is so petrified that Jasmine is now an un-pc word.

Here, have a jasmine-burger

Jasmine flowers from markets and the Mandarin characters for jasmine 茉莉花茶 or pinyin: mò lì huā chá – have been blocked in SMS messages.

Not only that,  but  President Hu Jintao singing “Mo Li Hua,” a Qing dynasty poem to the flower,  has mysteriously disappeared from Chinese sate-run sites.

The Jasmine Revolution  has scared them one-party Asian states silly  - but markets are still selling the stuff.  Just don’t say out loud what you want.  Just point.

Echelons of uniformed apparatchiks hunch over their monitoring screens trying to catch 1.5 billion people communicating in real time trying to market flowers.

Bit like hippies in the ’60′s putting daisies into the barrel’s of US troops M16s.

As Nixon discovered,  people bypass these horrible little state information orcs by finding out for themselves.

Newton would notice his third law belying Beijing’s actions.  Equal opposite reaction.

China is experiencing its worst drought in living memory.  It has food stocks for this year – let them eat Jasmine.

Then await the obvious action in early 2012 as the inaction-reaction law kicks into world consciousness.

The latest commodity update doesn’t inspire – particularly if you’re into this game.

In China, the country that has been buying commodities like copper and iron and coal like there’s no tomorrow has just discovered there is.

Price have plunged this week – so much for the China-files engrossed in telling the world how wonderful it is that Beijing is now going to lead the way out of the recession and show those capitalist pigs out west how to be real capitalist pigs.

Some real figures for real folks.

Refined copper imports dipped  43% compared with last March (2010) and coal imports are down 40%.

And China is now actually beginning to EXPORT commodities it recently IMPORTED.

For example,  the amount of refined copper leaving China in March totalled 36768 tonnes, nearly as much as in the whole of 2010 — but valued at $355,5 million, up 17%.

So you’d say that China is now becoming an exporter of a product it controls.  But why export when you’re building billions of copper-heavy devices like PC’s and Telecoms goods.  Maybe things are slipping in the middle Empire?  Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesian labour is now cheaper than Chinese – so the good little Chinese capitalists are keeping the cash but building manufacturing contracts in these countries instead.

Not good for Chinese lower middle class, or stability in the medium term.  Or proper growth of China itself outside of a couple of hundred connected billionaires.

China’s oil demand is 10% higher in March 2011 than March 2010.

But that’s actually down 4% on February.   Not a great looking graph at the moment.  The growth one that is.

Brics meeting.  Brazil, Russia, India, China.  And little ‘ol us.  South Africa.

The Africans have joined the Mestizos and Quechua and the Orientals and the east Europeans and the billion Asians.    But only 48 million Africans are really involved here.   Zuma will have trouble selling his position as valuable to the continent to the Nigerians, for example.

A faint whiff of weird modern race politics permeates the room.    The only non-colonial nation there is Russia.  Germany failed to colonize it in the ’40′s.   China was colonized recently by the Japanese.   And a part of China called Hong Kong was handed back by the Brits in 1999 – who colonized India for 300 years.

India/China hold bilateral meet on 13th April before formal BRICS kicks off on 14th April

Brazil is far bigger and more powerful than its colonizer,  Portugal and if the Portuguese would like – Brazil could bail them out of trouble by colonizing the colonizer.

South Africa was colonized too.   But is now a free country.  So we join quite a list of those who cast off the yoke of the past and are sashaying into the grand future of BRICs.

Or are we?    What fantastic export market in Brazil and China and India will open up for us?  Or Russia?  None.  Each of these entities except SA has a number of natural motivators to get involved in BRICs from a situation of strength.   Ours is purely based on a hand-out.  A little political AID handed out to the Africans.

So we get a previously disadvantaged colonized African voice heard above the Realpolitik din.  But when the BRICs is all about the money – one has to wonder whether or not South Africa’s position is really like the token fronting of BEE companies.

China has reduced the availability of rare earth minerals available to the world in a move that it says is planned to protect its own supply.  Seeing that Beijing now controls 95% of the world’s rare earth production, that is worrying.

Its mainly a concern because devices that test for cancer around the world use rare earths in production.  And if China gets its way,  these devices will rocket in cost.

That will have a knock on effect for the women of the world who’re now using mammograms to find out if they have breast cancer.

Gadolinium - a rare earth from the good earth

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