Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.
It's been a while, and Ariel Cochon still has his headache. Couldn't happen to a nicer mass-murderer (although a similar fate for Shrub and Cheney wouldn't go astray.
the Western media is full of absolute bullshit about Iran, because Iran's euro-denominated oil bourse is due to commmence trading in March. What odds will you give that the Yanks (or the Eastern-European reffos who call themselves "Israel") bomb Iran before then?
It is massively unlikely that the Yanks (and the Brits) will get the matter through the security council - after swallowing Colon 'Plantation Negro' Powell's "proof positive" of Feb 5 2003, there is no way that the UNSC will fall for a similar line of bullshit from Crawford's Third Wheel. Plus, the Russkies are smart - they (and China) are getting quite buddy-buddy with the Peacock Throne (even if its' occupied by semi-radical mullahs).
So the Yanks will drop some ordnance (or will permit Israel to drop it) on Isfahan and a couple other places, in defiance of international law... and then those human scum Bush and Blair will declare that they were in fact "doing the will of the International Community".
Anyone who has ever heard of Dresden, Hiroshim and Nagasaki knows full well that the Americans are absolute barbarians who have no consideration whatsoever for the lives of civilians; from deliberate massacres of civilians during the annexation of the Phillippines, to Eisenhower's refusal to honour requirements for the treatment of prisoners at Reimagen, through to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, history is awash in the blood of children and old folks at the hands of the Yanks... so spare me any bullshit about concern for human rights.
Of course I am not talking about American civilians in the foregoing - they, like all civilians, are victims of the butchers in their State apparatus, not 'enablers'. I reject completely the idea that any civilian is a valid target (which defies the view of the US, which bombed industrial plants in the Ruhr during WWII on the basis that the civilians who worked therein were contributors to the war effort and therefore valid targets). Using American logic, the CIA 'shop' in WTC-1 made that building a completely valid target for any enemy with the resources to attack it: any civilian victims were just - to use their own vile equivocation against them - simply 'collateral damage'.
Oh - and despite every idiot on the planet getting wet in the groinal area when the Dow went through 11k early in the New year, I would point out that every man and his dog (well, folks that I respect like Bill McLaren) had forecast a top for the Dow to occur on or about January 13th.My own forecast from before mid-2005 was for 1300 on the S&P500, as you will recall. I was not at all happy about promulgating that number, but when the analysis leads you to a conclusion you put it out there and if it bites yo uon the arse then you take it like a man. I also forecast (you will recall) the fact that there would be the market equivalent of a lap-dance and "rub'n'tug" in the lead-up to Greenspan's retirement.
so nobody ought to have been surprised that the thing wafted up like it was 2000 all over again.
Forecast for this year: PAIN. A great deal of pain. The housing bubble is now almost global (even in debt-averse France, gross rental yields anywhere within an hour's travel of Paris are under 4% - a sensible yield is somewhere in the 8-12 range), and you can get an apartment with no money down instead of renting it. Very bad signs indeed.
I am waiting for the thing to burst - three to five years from now there will be distressed sellers.
We think we have found a place to live permanently (in le Vesinet - the only town in Fracne that is also classified as a National Park); once I find a way to get the photos from the memory card of our camera onto the Internet, I will post a photojournal of the stay thus far.
And last but not least, notice that the Dow is currently within 40 points of where it was for the last USRant... so in fact you haven't missed a goddamned thing! (Obviously the Australian indices have continued to go stupid - it's like the Charge of the Light Brigade... how many of them made it through?)
Short the SPI here... it is money for jam, and will probably end up being one that we ride all year. (Sorry to SPISpyers for leaving the good oil in a public spot, but I can't get access to my mailer from a public internet cafe).
