Don’t try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can’t be done except by liars. – Bernard Baruch
Author Archives: Lila
Goldman Predicts $200 Oil
Bloomberg, May 6
“Crude oil may rise to between $150 and $200 a barrel within two years as growth in supply fails to keep pace with increased demand from developing nations, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts led by Arjun N. Murti said in a report.”
Secretary Gates Announces New Key-log Pact: Cyber-War Without End, Amen…
“With that in mind, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently gave two sharp-edged speeches, one at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, the other at West Point, each expressing his frustration with the slowness of the armed services to adapt to a counterinsurgency planet and to plan for the next war.
Now, there’s obviously nothing illogical about a country’s military preparing for future wars. That’s what it’s there for and every country has the right to defend itself. But it’s a different matter when you’re preparing for future “wars of choice” (which used to be called wars of aggression) — for the next war(s) on what our secretary of defense now calls the “the 21st century’s global commons.” By that, he means not just planet Earth in its entirety, but “space and cyberspace” as well. For the American military, it turns out, planning for a future “defense” of the United States means planning for planet-wide, over-the-horizon counterinsurgency. It will, of course, be done better, with a military that, as Gates put it, will no longer be “a smaller version of the Fulda Gap force.” (It was at the Fulda Gap, a German plain, that the U.S. military once expected to meet Soviet forces invading Europe in full-scale battle.)
So the secretary of defense is calling for more foreign-language training, a better “expeditionary culture,” and more nation building — you know, all that “hearts and minds” stuff. In essence, he accepts that the future of American war will, indeed, be in the Sadr Cities and Afghan backlands of the planet; or, as he says, that “the asymmetric battlefields of the 21st century” will be “the dominant combat environment in the decades to come.” And the American response will be high-tech indeed — all those unmanned aerial vehicles that he can’t stop talking about.
Gates describes our war-fighting future in this way: “What has been called the ‘Long War’ [i.e. Bush’s War on Terror, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq] is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies.”
“There are no exit strategies.” That’s a line to roll around on your tongue for a while. It’s a fancy way of saying that the U.S. military is likely to be in one, two, many Sadr Cities for a long time to come. This is Gates’s ultimate insight as secretary of defense, and his response is to urge the military to plan for more and better of the same. For this we give the Pentagon almost a trillion dollars a year…..”
From Tomgram.
Comment:
Please note Secy. Gates’ promise of war in cyberspace .
In 1928, there was the pact to end all war (the Kellogg-Briand Pact). And now some 80 years later, out of the mouth of the secretary of defense, we have what amounts to a declaration of perpetual war; war that reaches into cyberspace, into your computer hard drive, into your innermost thoughts……like some sordid, key-logging snoop.
Yes, dear reader, as you read this humble missive, you too have become part of the great cyber-war-of- the -worlds; you too are a cyber-trooper, cyber-civilian, cyber-POW…… or cyber-kill…. as the case may be.
Whether you realize it or not.
The new frontier of the state’s aggression (actually, it’s always-and-forever frontier) is now your mind…your thoughts…indeed the space between your thoughts, from keystroke to silent keystroke…..
Fighting for Food: Mobs riot as food prices soar in Somalia….
“Down with those printing the fake money!” the young men yelled, denouncing the growing number of counterfeiters who have contributed to escalating prices. “Down with opportunists!”
The Mogadishu Traders’ Union said it decided Tuesday to again accept the old 1,000-shilling notes and ordered its private security units to enforce that at the city’s main Bakara market.
“We, the big traders, have already decided to accept the old note and today we want to tell other businesses also to accept the decision,” said Abas Mohamed Duale, deputy chairman of the union.
Protests and riots over rising food prices have recently hit other nations, including Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. The price of rice and other staples has risen more than 40 percent since mid-2007.
The Asian Development Bank said Monday that a billion poor people in Asia need food aid to help cope with the skyrocketing prices.
Soaring fuel prices, growing demand from the burgeoning middle classes in India and China and poor weather have contributed to the jump in food prices worldwide, economists say. Africa has been particularly hard-hit.
In Mogadishu, the price of corn meal has more than doubled since January. Rice has risen during the same period from $26 to $47.50 for a 110-pound sack.
The cost of food has also been driven up by the plummeting Somali shilling, which has lost nearly half its value against the U.S. dollar this year because of growing insecurity and a market clogged with millions of counterfeit notes. The shilling has tumbled from about 17,000 to 30,000 per $1…..”
More from AP.
Voltaire on the link between beliefs and actions
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
-Voltaire
Voltaire was talking about the church. But the dogma of the modern state is probably even more absurd.
Mumbai Madness: The World’s First Billion Dollar Home…
“Forbes estimated Ambani’s net worth at $43 billion in March. Reliance Industries was founded by Mukesh’s father, Dhirubhai Ambani, in 1966, and is India’s most valuable firm by market capitalization. The couple, who have three children, currently live in a 22-story Mumbai tower that the family has spent years remodeling to meet its needs.
Like many families with the means to do so, the Ambanis wanted to build a custom home. They consulted with architecture firms Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, the designers behind the Mandarin Oriental, based in Dallas and Los Angeles, respectively. Plans were then drawn up for what will be the world’s largest and most expensive home: a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai with a cost nearing $2 billion, says Thomas Johnson, director of marketing at Hirsch Bedner Associates. The architects and designers are creating as they go, altering floor plans, design elements and concepts as the build…”
with a hat tip to Kevin Duffy for the link.
In India, the Old Curry for the Goose is the New Curry for the Gander….
“The marriage of Naveen, an engineer in Florida, hit rock bottom in mere five months. “I just asked her why she was in touch with her boyfriend. She tried to harm herself with a knife. We returned to India and I suggested she stay with her parents for some time. As soon as I was back in the US, she filed a 498-A case against my family and me. My parents were jailed for three days,” said Naveen, a case against whom is on in India and an Interpol Red Corner Notice pending abroad. Anupama Singh, the secretary of Rakshak that has raked up such cases, said the voluntary organisation has received over 700 such complaints, half of them from the US alone.
“We don’t say all these are genuine cases, but many are. The government is not really concerned. It’s futile to talk about the plight of men and their families by the women they marry. “In contrast, the cases of women being tortured by their husbands abroad have been overplayed with the government claiming that 30,000 brides — 15,000 from Punjab’s Doab region alone — had been abandoned abroad,” she said.
But in 2005, the government said in Parliament that only 100 such complaints had been received. The ministry of overseas Indian affairs (MOIA) recently revised the figure to 152. The trend, therefore, is more of vanishing brides and abandoned grooms abroad, Singh added.”
Comment
That’s from the Times of India last year, describing the ongoing barrage of domestic abuse of non-resident Indian males (especially high-status, high-earning males) by their delicately-nurtured, oh-so-domestic, docile, doe-eyed, dosa-making desi brides).
No surprise. Whenever the state starts “doing-good” with its right hand, its left hand has the thumb pressed into the pan of the scales. Dowry laws were cooked up to protect victimized wives. But after gender feminists got done with the recipe, a new set of victims had been trussed up for carving on the marital altar – husbands.
Mobs: A Citation in ‘USA Today’
Should have posted this last month when it came out…
As Economy Dips, So Does Customers’ Generosity
2008.3.21 22:30
Hair isn’t the only thing being trimmed at Head Bangers The Salon in Pendleton, Ind.
Customers searching for ways to fight high gas and food prices are doing some trimming of their own – in tips.
“Even the regulars are cutting back,” stylist Joanna Anderson said. “Usually they are apologetic and say they wish they could give more. But they just can’t right now.”
Many workers depend on tips for a substantial part of their income, and those hairdressers, bartenders, cab drivers and food servers have been among the first to be hit hard by the slowing economy, experts say.
Those workers are feeling a pinch because talk of a recession has consumers putting the brakes on extra expenses.
“It’s simply panic, and people cut back in anticipation of what may or may not come,” said financial commentator Lila Rajiva, co-author of “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics.”
More at USA Today.
(c) 2008, USA TODAY International. Distributed by Tribune Media Services Internationa
“Barack, the Magic Negro”: Limbaugh’s parody is in poor taste…..
A parody song about Barack Obama has been making the rounds of the talk shows.
This from “Crooks and Liars”:
BREAKING: Limbaugh’s “Barack the Magic Negro,” on-air song has workers up in arms
By: John Amato on Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 12:44 PM – PDT
UPDATED: Rush Limbaugh has angered many black employees over this parody song called “Barack the Magic Negro” This isn’t the first or the last time that Limbaugh will go after Obama’s race:
I’ve been told that they have held meetings internally to deal with a ground swell of anger at Rush because of this.
UPDATE: I’ve anonymously confirmed that stations around the country who carry the show are having concerns expressed by listeners and even their own workers of color about the Obama parody, and the ensuing controversy in the media, and that respective managements are considering ways to address the matter with as little Imus-like backlash as possible,..This is starting to boil over…
A caller noticed there was a disclaimer added to the station she listens to and asks Rush why.
Comment:
Why is accusing the United States government (ala Jeremy Wright) of using biological weapons against its minority citizens racist, but demeaning a black presidential candidate, a perfectly vacuous candidate in our humble opinion, NOT? Oh, because “Barack, the Magic Negro” is hip sociological talk, we hear:
“The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. “He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist,” reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .
It’s an Al Sharpton phrase, Al Sharpton being tacky-race-theorist-in-residence on the American political scene. (Not that I don’t think Sharpton isn’t sometimes funny, but if you live by race, you’re going to die by it — and don’t complain).
In other words, it’s the old business of who says what. If rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg calls a woman a “ho,'” then that is social commentary; but if you (Joe Six-pack) do it, well, that’s sexist abuse.
Alright. Let’s stipulate that. If you’re a guy, you don’t get to call the ladies “ho’s” any more than if you’re white in 21st century USA you get to refer to blacks as “negros” (in a derogatory way) without raising up a few racial ghosts, even if the self-appointed guardians of racial morality do.
We get that part.
What we don’t get is this: when we’ve had evidence from Tuskegee onward that governments, and not just in the US, are capable of just about anything against their own citizens, why is it racist to state the perfectly libertarian proposition that states are inherently murderous, but OK and even rather funny to use a stealth-racialist label on an individual who’s no more or less a bland apparatchik than any white candidate? (And we’re not Obama-bots here).
Of course, the Right Reverend Wright didn’t do himself or Obama any favors by his firebrand performance over the weekend. His makeover into introspective new, new theologian by Bill Moyers was an impressive act of cross-dressing, but his subsequent reversal to black theo-speak at the National Press Club undid that performance thoroughly.
The chickens-coming-home-to-roost explanation of American foreign policy is a banality of left-wing analysis, at home on many academic campuses, but add a dashiki and the visceral cadences of black preacher-talk, and it becomes the verbal equivalent of Jimi Hendrix playing The Star Spangled Banner.
It’s powerful stuff dressing up American government history as a morality play. But as foreign policy analysis, it’s weak. But then again, having been happy to confuse the two whenever it suited us, we’ve only ourselves to blame for this conflation of the moral and the political…..
So we’re left impressed only by the Reverend’s sincerity (conceded even by Newt Gingrich ) and unerring eye for a You-Tube moment (and there’s that million dollar mansion and the book tour to come) and quite unimpressed by whoever it is who manages the Barack Balancing Act — you know, placate the base (Weatherman buddy,– hat tip to The Absurd Report for that – Farrakhan bodyguards, Wright sermons) but aim for the center ( working-class white fears, health care, jobs).
So far, Obama’s aim’s been pretty rotten. He was loyal to his inflammatory pastor….and for payback, the guy tossed him into the flames.
It should have been all over for Obama by now.
But now comes this…..
Sometimes I have to wonder if Limbaugh is an undercover Air America operative….
Boom Without End: What The Web Knows…..
“India and China combined are commonly acknowledged as the next two economies to be reckoned with, in terms of double digit economic growth. Prices for basic materials such as copper, steel, nickel and virtually every other mineral used in construction are marching steadily upward.Certain economic commentators are calling this a ‘super-cycle”, implying that the trend will eventually reverse itself, and these industries will contract as they have done since the industrialization of mankind.
It is no such thing.
The cyclical nature of mining is dead, a relic of the past.
What do you think is going to happen to the demand curve for basic materials when China, India, Africa, and Latin America’s internet penetration percentages rise to meet North America’s?
How bout Russia?
China is the largest consumer of copper, but the United States is second. Once a standard of living is achieved it must be maintained.
The rest of humanity’s existence will now be spent in bringing the rest of the world population up to a better standard of living. Or we shall perish in the effort.
The secret is out….”
James West in The Midas Letter