Tuesday thickens the soup

Trump trumps Super-Tuesday. Well, well, know what you're in for USA if he goes the full distance; if you don't know, try to imagine it. This is a reminder of the slippery slope that Europe went through during the first half of the last century.

The cooler

Just read an article in the New York Times about Arnaldo Otegi, the basque separatist leader who will be released from prison tomorrow after 6 years inside. I remember how continuously surprised I was that the authorities, in what should be a modern european country, prior to this six year term, had already been able to imprison someone, Mr. Otegi, through dubious interpretation of spoken word, some might say free speech. There had been no violence in his words, neither proven or sought to be proven, rather a suggestion of sedition, something that made the authorities uncomfortable. That sentence partly served was quickly followed by the longer sentence (originally 10 years) for having tried to form a political party seen to have links to the violent struggle. The peaceful route for the basque cause had already been embraced by Otegi; it was all a bit weird; as it is the NYT quotes a written statement by Mr. Otegi, from prison, as stating, in his view, that the Spanish government had no real interest in the disappearance of the violent struggle; [in my words now] suggesting that it gave them (the govt) justification to impose the greater control that promoted their interests in the Basque country.

That has also reminded me of the incident a couple of weeks ago when a two theatre puppeteers spent four days in prison in Madrid for having shown a banner during a puppet theatre production, that made a provocative (cheeky or bad taste) word-tie between the names of the Basque movement, ETA, and Al Qaida. .. worse maybe, someone had mistakenly booked these puppeteers for a children's hour! There was violence in that production and what-not (actually what puppet performance never has violence in it, whether it be the housemaid with a rolling pin or clown with a stick), not cool stuff for kids; but it was the 'excusing terrorism', something so subtle that most of the children wouldn't even have noticed, that got the goat of the judge and caused the puppeteers their undignified 'cooling-off' time in the cooler !! That'll sort 'em out!

What's cooking

Back to the fray. To put us in context; US primaries are still looking good for Donald Trump though increasingly embarrassing I would think, for the heavyweights of the Republican party. Hillary Clinton has been encouraged by a win in South Carolina – she will be chameleon - as they move on to Texas. Meanwhile Iranian elections are showing considerable success for reformists, let’s hope aspirations are obtainable. In Europe the Spanish still don’t appear to have a hope of arriving at agreement to invest a new president after their December elections; Leicester City lead the English Premier League in a clear indication that anything seems to be possible in English football and Brexit is on the tip of everyone’s tongue as the G20, entirely expectedly, advise against UK exit from the European Union.

The promised land

I heard that the Israeli forces attacked the compound of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza yesterday, it is a well-known location in the area marked with blue UN flags. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, expressed "strong protest and outrage" and demanded an investigation.

According to the Guardian newspaper, Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told Ban later that troops shelled the building in response to Hamas gunfire coming from within, but nonetheless said it should not have happened. "It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it," he added. "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry." ..as indeed should probably not have happened with the attack on the press building on the same day, or countless other far less public but more greatly populated sites over the days of this conflict.

The New York Times quotes Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, as saying that in a meeting with its representatives on Thursday, Israeli Army representatives “privately admitted” that the source of the militants’ fire was several hundred yards away from the compound.

Ok, lets imagine that's the case, or lets play devil's advocate and imagine rather that it were not the case and that shots did come from the compound. Shooting at an area, and here I'm making reference predominately to the countless non-well-known Gaza locations over the last 20 days, that contains aggressive, non-friendly elements but that also contains non-participative persons makes me think as metaphor, of a police action at a bank robbery where the armed bank robber leaves slowly from the bank with a woman and child hostage in front of him/her. ...we just shoot them all do we? That's a simple solution isn't it, then we can all go to lunch. Of course, as with the conflict in hand the 'simple' solution in this case completely lacks humanity and empathy with the spirit of fellow human beings. This planet should have left all that behind with the middle ages.

A new age has dawned

Well, well. stirring stuff, Obama won the presidency. By the time it came along most of us weren't all that surprised, but that didn't lessen it's importance, both in the needed sense and symbolically. So what twisted poetry then, that on the same eve of that golden new age, while a 106 year old black women can touch a screen to beam her preference into the democratic process, California should approve Proposition 8, anulling its support for gay marriages and possibly thus annulling those marriages that it has actually already approved. Shame on you, new age.

Financial crisis update

Hi! This is not a financial blog but it's beginning to look as if it might be one, being as how it's the only thing that has encouraged me to write so far.

Did you ever wonder how it is that the vast majority of teams of financial professionals employed to advise us mere mortals in the street what's coming along, fund managers that'd be, are unable to predict that the economy's going to go pear shaped very soon, or that share prices will fall through the floor ... or whatever. Normally they can predict that interest rates are going to go up or down but that's because the way is all paved by governments and bodies making the changes long before they actually happen ....and we all know they're going to happen.

So you might have your money in a pension fund. Suddenly the market drops and your pension fund isn't worth tat. But erm ... weren't we paying that team of professionals to manage the fund, to perhaps actually anticipate wayward trends in the market and take steps long beforehand, erring on the side of caution, 'just in case'. Well no, well 'yes' we we were paying them, but 'no' they weren't anticipating (or at least acting as if they were) wayward trends in the market. I see it rather logical that a long period of frenzied, greedy speculation should end in tears. Maybe _I_ should charge for that insight.

I read today '.. "The former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, has conceded that the global financial crisis has exposed a "mistake" in the free market ideology which guided his 18-year stewardship of US monetary policy." ..' If I didn't laugh I would cry. I mean ...really... what are we on? Baa baa.... US treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, told the New York Times "I could have seen the sub-prime crisis coming earlier, I'm not saying I would have done anything differently.". Well why not?

Financial crisis

Big news today, Congress refused to vote the 700 billion dollar bailout for the banks. I do ask myself if the 'f' cats who caused the latest crisis, who took the money and moreorless ran, having cynically taken commissions on deals that you'd have to have been pretty naive not to have seen as flakey (would that make it a criminal act?), are actually giving any of that commission back. ...well are they? Or is the joke really on those who were duped into believing that they really could cope with the mortgages being thrown at them and that by defaulting on them black-mark themselves in the credit pool for many years to come. The problem is that financial markets don't appear to have a moral code of accountability, you really can earn or 'glean' obscene amounts of money full in the knowledge that you can then walk away from your sting not only leaving the other players gagging on the floor, the unethical act, but that the law will laud your business prowess and its government reward the organisation that you represent with compensation money when the sh*t hits the fan. Of course the victim or at least the victim's peers, the taxpayers, are paying the government. Perhaps we'd rather that the government had just given the money to our peers directly, or at least helped fund recyclable housing for them. 700 billion would make a nice impression on housing help for the needy.