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B4 the Bell Fryday, Aug 27, 2004


Guest yobob1

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Plunger......

 

OK, I didn't know I offended so many people here.....

 

I'm just trying to have a sense of humor.

 

No, I'm not posting more here because Brian4 is gone, I've posted plenty when he's around, and he doesn't seem to mind.

 

But maybe I'm wrong.

 

But I'll keep my posts here to a minimum, maybe not post at all.........

 

I've been hanging out more at Clearstation.  More trading ideas there, both short and long, limited discussion about off topic stuff.

 

I promise I'll back off.  I don't want to create any bad vibes over here..........

 

Good luck, you guys.........

Mark:

 

I don't believe that you "offended so many people here". You didn't offend me directly, but I could empathise with those you did. I don't take anything personally in the online world, so I'm actually impossible to offend.

 

The "topic" in this thread appears to be "life", the good, the bad, the ugly, in all its forms. During the trading day, rants are kept to a minimum, though lately (while watching the paint dry), discussions during the day have been pretty varied and diverse, and the occassional rant has not caused any of us to miss a huge move, as there hasn't been one. Those who are disinterested in discussion of geopolitical events and their implications for the markets - AND in our lives - might find this forum to be "off topic." That there is no topic here, is the point...sort of like "Seinfeld"...a show about "nothing."

 

As I'm in the midst of developing a business plan, I'm doing lots of in-depth research in many areas that must be considered - and these discussions right here - among some highly thoughtful individuals (including numerous links to insightful stories on a daily basis) have provided me with valuable insights which are finding there way into the plan. Like many here, I obviously have a need to express my opinions, and "drink in" those of others.

 

Life is about more than trading (thank God for that). You made it clear in Mark to Market that you didn't want to hear the non-trading opinions of some exceptional minds. Your requirement to keep things regimented and "on topic" felt like censorship, and has led to a new forum on Capitalstool... which is becoming an increasingly popular place for the diversity of opinion expressed here.

 

I for one hope you do not stop posting here, as every opinion counts and I welcome your voice...it brought me here...and I love your stuff...that's not the point. The point of my posting was to encourage you not to come down too hard on anyone, with the potential result of losing a valued community voice. I understand your sense of humor and my skin is as thick as armor - as I'm sure yours is too. I just wanted to call to your attention to tread lightly in the area of telling others how to "be."

 

Rant-Off :grin:

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Want to know how it is that we ended up attacking Iraq...and on whose behalf...the answer may lie here:

 

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/na...lnews-headlines

 

 

 

CHARGE OF AIDING ISRAEL

Spy probe targets Pentagon aide

 

 

BY TIMOTHY M. PHELPS AND KNUT ROYCE

WASHINGTON BUREAU

 

August 28, 2004

 

WASHINGTON - The FBI is investigating at least one mid-level Pentagon official on charges of spying for Israel, possibly as part of a larger probe, according to government sources.

 

Officials said the target was an aide to number three Pentagon boss Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, who set up his own intelligence operation that was closely linked to now-discredited Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi.

 

According to one intelligence source, a warrant has been issued for a person in Feith's intelligence operation who allegedly passed Pentagon secrets about Iran to a pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which then passed it on to Israel.

 

The group said Friday night it was cooperating in the probe.

 

But according to one senior government source, the investigation has been ongoing for more than a year and has also focused on other officials in Feith's operation who may have passed other information on to Israel.

 

State Department officials were questioned by federal investigators last year about allegations that Pentagon officials working for Feith passed detailed plans for the U.S. attack on Iraq to Israel, the source said.

 

Feith himself has close business and political ties to Israel. His former law firm, Feith and Zell, had an office in Israel and represented Israeli defense contractors and other businesses. He wrote articles in the 1990s criticizing former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not abrogating the Oslo peace accords

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Back in grad school now, not much time for this watching of markets.  Long gold and silver and waiting for the end...or until I sell a book ;) 

A local indie bookstore (Bookends in Ridgewood NJ) bought an "Instabook" press for $18,000, which reportedly can produce a 250-page paperback with perfect binding in ten minutes.

 

For printing, the first ten copies cost $150; the second ten, $100; and $75 for a third batch of ten (i.e. $7.50 each). The prices are said to be lower than iUniverse and XLibris whose minimum orders start in the $450 to $500 range for 5 copies.

 

It got me to thinking that a "Best of Capitalstool" anthology is now within the realm of practicality ... or even a "Best of Beardrech" which would suffice for me ... ;)

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An Israeli Embassy spokesman in the U.S. capital called the allegations "completely false and outrageous". AIPAC called the charges "baseless and false".

 

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has frequently highlighted his warm relations with U.S. President George W. Bush and has visited the White House nine times since taking office.

 

But the case of Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence anal cyst sentenced to life imprisonment for passing secrets to Israel in 1985, is still an irritant in U.S.-Israeli ties.

 

CBS News, which first reported the story about the FBI investigation, said federal agents were about to arrest the suspect, who it said may have been in a position to influence Bush administration policy on Iran and Iraq.

 

According to CBS, one of the documents passed to Israel was a draft presidential directive on U.S. policy towards Iran -- placed by Bush in an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea.

 

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticl...95&section=news

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Spying: Time to Think Outside the Box

 

By David Ignatius

Sunday, August 29, 2004; Page B07

 

President Bush, the son of a former CIA director, has embraced a short-term fix for the CIA that -- surprise! -- gives the CIA director more power. But that's just a Band-Aid. The real issue is whether the United States needs a fundamental restructuring of its intelligence agencies, as recommended by the Sept. 11 commission.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Aug27.html

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But according to one senior government source, the investigation has been ongoing for more than a year and has also focused on other officials in Feith's operation who may have passed other information on to Israel.

Still ... why now to go public?

 

We all recall Sharon's highly public April 14th press conference with Bush, where there seemed to be an understanding that while Israel was laying permanent claim to the West Bank, it wouldn't embark on major settlement expansions either ... at least not during a U.S. election year.

 

Then a couple of weeks ago, Sharon jerks the rug out from under Bush, announcing a THOUSAND new settlement houses to be built ... and making Bush look like a fool, a bagholder and a clown.

 

One would think that "he who has the gold makes the rules," but since that seems politically infeasible for the USG to do, maybe Bush has chosen an indirect sanction.

 

Former Congressman Paul Findlay, in They Dare to Speak Out (1985) alleged that spying of this nature has been omnipresent in Washington D.C. for decades. So in the rare instances when it is publicly confronted, one has to assume that a strong message is being sent by The Powers That Be.

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MH:

 

Who knows how deep this thing really runs or how many are involved or what relationship it may have to Iraq - or even the events of 9/11. When an investigation like this is exposed by "anonymous sources" - it can be to tip off those being investigated and to hault progress at a critical time in an investigation...but who really knows?

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The worldwide criminal bank with branches in the U.S. bought and owned twenty five per cent of Congress, 108 members of the House of Representatives and 28 U.S. Senators. Including, of course, the U.S. Senator himself, head of a suppos ed Senate watchdog committee.

 

Supervising BCCI was the Bank of England. As an open record, mysteriously only for thirty days at the London-based Central Bank, was the BCCI bribery list of U.S. officials. Wow! A very wide-awake reporter for a major news o rganization copied down the list before it was suppressed. [begun in London, January, 2004, is the trial of Bank of England as defendant accused of covering up BCCI crimes. The trial is expected to take at least a year. BUT IT IS NOT ADEQUATELY MENTIONE D IN THE MONOPOLY PRESS. It has taken all the time from 1991 up to 2004 to put together the case against Bank of England. Also, on our website, see the various stories we have how the Bank of England fraudulently manipulated the gold market.]

 

Shown to his editor, the list brought a profound gasp, "We can't go with this. Why, it would bring down the U.S. Government." [This was in 1991, just after the U.S. slaughtered Iraq in Daddy Bush-instigated Persian Gulf War One.]

 

So the list was turned over to us; we being known as independent-minded, free lance journalists and investigators running a court reform group disclosing certain instances of judicial bribery and political assassinations, and sav vy about banker-judges and the role of banks in corruption of public officials.

 

The major news reporter told us the steps necessary to corroborate the bribery list. We went to work checking out the list for ourselves. For example, in 1991, we interviewed Senator Phil Gramm (R., Texas, since retired) on the b ribery list. He was a key senior member of a Senate Committee as to bank matters. His wife, Wendy Gramm, for many years was the head of the highly corrupt federal agency regulating the commodities industry, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC . Later, she was on the Board of Directors of the infamous Enron Corporation, and has, so far, because of links to the Bush Crime Family, escaped being prosecuted for her role in reportedly covering up this vast money laundry.

 

As we confronted Senator Gramm with being on the verified BCCI bribery list, he did not deny it. Instead, raising his voice, he threatened us with physical harm if we dared set about to circulate the list. We got similar thr eats after confronting other members of the House and U.S. Senators.

 

http://www.skolnicksreport.com/ootar46.html

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As part of a highway bill now in a House-Senate conference committee, lawmakers are pushing Senate-passed language that would allow the government to withhold any information from the public that would be "detrimental to the security of transportation, transportation facilities or infrastructure, or transportation employees."

 

Karla Garrett Harshaw, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, says that the provision is so broadly drafted it could lead to the withholding of any information on contracts involving taxpayer-funded highway projects.

 

The Environmental Defense organization protests that the Department of Transportation could use the provision to withhold information on hazardous-waste spills on the basis that it might provide information to terrorists about system vulnerabilities, and to restrict information about rail and transportation routes for nuclear waste.

 

Moves to keep secret more government information come in the wake of the report by the 9/11 Commission, which found the government already had too much information that was over-classified. The Information and Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives that oversees government classification programs, reported that the classification of government documents is increasing.

 

In its first two years, the Bush administration made 44.5 million decisions to classify material, about the same number made in the last four years of President Bill Clinton's term in office.

 

A coalition of Washington watchdog groups, led by the Project on Government Oversight, said in a new report that government over-classification costs taxpayers $6.5 billion a year. Each document costs $459 to secure and store.

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After 9/11, privacy is a luxury Americans supposedly can no longer afford. The administration has left no stone unturned, giving itself powers to sweep up people's e-mail with the FBI's Carnivore system, unleash FBI agents to conduct surveillance almost anywhere, allow G-men to secretly search people's homes, bankroll Pentagon research on creating hundreds of millions of dossiers on Americans, expand the military's role in domestic surveillance, and vacuum up personal data to create a federal "color code" for every air traveler. The administration is defining freedom down, pretending that protection from federal prying is no longer relevant to liberty. Americans are supposed to accept that freedom from terrorism is the ultimate freedom ? and nothing else matters any more.

 

Bush is dropping an iron curtain around the federal government. The Bush administration is hollowing out the Freedom of Information Act, making it more difficult for citizens to discover government actions and abuses. Bush invoked executive privilege to block a congressional investigation into the FBI's role in mass murder in Boston and in framing innocent men for those murders. The Supreme Court tacitly endorsed the Bush doctrine that the feds may carry out mass secret arrests and suppress all information about the roundup (including names of those detained, charges, and details on prison beatings).

 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/bovard2.html

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Doug Noland recognizes -- right here in Fortress America -- the same Late Bubble Syndrome seen in other deteriorating Third World bubble economies just before they blew out:

 

I recall reading articles highlighting noteworthy examples of spending extravagance that preceded by only months the respective crises in Mexico, Thailand, Russia, Brazil, and Argentina. But, then again, lavish purchases and ballooning trade deficits are a hallmark of Monetary Disorder. And while profligate spending is not a fresh development here in the U.S., I couldn't help but to think that almost 400,000 empty cargo containers leaving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports during July is a signal along the same lines of booming Mercedes sales in Russia during 1998's first half.

 

Bubble at the Fringe

 

And what feeds the Bubble? Look no further than Mad Al's unauthorized, off-balance-sheet, $1.25 trillion bond/dollar hedge pool:

 

1901.gif

 

Al's predecessor John Law only wrecked one country -- France. Robert Citron only brought down Orange Country with his reckless bond bets in 1994. They were just local operators.

 

But Mad Al Leeson has gone worldwide. This may be the first time in history that one incompetent goofball at the core -- who, in the typical manner, has insulated himself from scrutiny behind a cult of personality and obsequiousness -- could bring down the entire global economy.

 

Bob Dylan, as usual, was prescient --

 

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth

Blowing down the backroads headin' south

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth

You're an idiot, man

It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

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For printing, the first ten copies cost $150; the second ten, $100; and $75 for a third batch of ten (i.e. $7.50 each). The prices are said to be lower than iUniverse and XLibris whose minimum orders start in the $450 to $500 range for 5 copies.

The POD (Print on Demand) advocates dream of a world where a Customer walks into a store, selects a book to purchase and the book is printed from an electronic database through the machinery in the back of the store while the Customer has a Latte and waits for it the order to be completed.

 

Total time from "I want that book" to "I have that book", maybe 8 minutes, lots faster than Amazon. :o

 

In any case, even the prices quoted by your local indie are not as low as you can get. In Melbourne, Australia I was quoted for 324 page manuscript (maximum), perfect bind, 100 gms acid free paper, 4 color front and back cover on cardstock, minimum order 1000 copies-A$6.75 per, delivery 96 hours after my OK of artwork.

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