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Sometimes watching the news just git me plain riled. Take last night, for instance. Across the world, footage of the 'mass protests' in Belarus, wherein a group of a few hundred agents provocateurs are crapping on about how they don't like the results of the vote. the western media shoot it nice and tight (like they did for the 'massive crowd' of 40 Chalabi apparatchiks who toppled Saddam's statue in Firdos Square) to make it look bigger than it is.
Forty seconds later, footage of George Bush being made to look like a complete dill by Helen Thomas.
The two things are linked in my mind thusly: on the one hand is a strongman that the US has decided to unseat... on the other is an inbred idiot who was put in place by a process at least as corrupt as the Belorussian elections - and who then went on to perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The US has decided that Alyeksandr Lukashenka has outlived his usefulness as a regional strongman... so it has sent in its agitators (just as it did for the 'Rose Revolution' and the 'Orange Revolution').
{The serfs in former Soviet satellites are stupider than their Latin American counterparts, so these attempts at subverting the political protest always draw a crowd (or more accurately, a herd) in the Baltic states... whereas they failed in Venezuela when the Yanks tred to oust Chavez.}
Frankly, I don't really give a rat's - I am far more concerned about the move to 'biometric' ID systems for passports. No WAY do I want my DNA anywhere that the government can get access to decent quantities of the stuff - the moment that happens we are in a world where the State has the tools to provide 'indisputable' evidence of one's presence at a crime scene.
Speaking of which, I am reliably informed of something interesting. Those of you who have experienced this phenomenon (which I will get to in a second) are about to experience an "AHHH!!!" moment.
The phenomenon is that of lovely well-dressed 20-something women, who accost a chap in the street (always a chap who looks like a foreigner) asking for change (as would a beggar). "Un petit piece pour manger, monsieur?" while wearing €200 shoes and €10 worth of face-spackle.
Well, that's the 'setup'. You might think (as I did originally) that it's just an organised gang - Lovely canvasses a given area, Lovely gathers X euros, and splits it with her 'handler'.
Not so, mes amis... it's an attempt to get hold of coins with small amounts of genetic material on them (that's the reason coins stink so bad) - just a bit of recent sweat will do, given current PCR techniques. They get paid by... the US Embassy.
What would you think about a country in which the city police arrested protestors for nothing more than the act of protest - and the chief of police then bragged about it in internal memos? What if this country's 'internal security forces' corralled all negative opinion in cages while the head of state swanned past in a limousine? Would you think that this country was the 'beacon of light for the world'?
More to the point - do you think such a country has a right to lecture ANYBODY about 'freedom', 'liberty' and the rest of the pleasant sounding babble that are now little more than the names of different models of SUV?
Oh, and yes... the Tooting... here's yesterday's little short note...
This will be a short post (I am writing another longer post which will apepar in a few minutes). The Dow is currently at 11318... short it now and laugh...
the market fell almost 100 points from that point - the closing level was more than 80 points below the short entry. As such, everyone should have taken their money and run...
TOOT!!!! TOOT!!! TOOOOoooot!