I found this article to be fascinating and informative. It’s all about how sheep-breeders are milking the hype over super-fine wool (you may have heard them referred to as Super 120, Super 150, Super 180, etc). At the end of the article, it kind of points out that all of this super-fineness has it’s downsides, Click Here to continue reading.
This from the New York Times….
As cultural coordinator for a resource center for new Quebecers, Gabriel Garcia is leading an effort to bridge the gap between the growing number of immigrants here and the mostly French-speaking society into which they have moved.
But one issue is proving to be a bridge too far for the province’s Click Here to continue reading.
The first chart of interest comes from Calculated Risk and it shows the percentage of equity withdrawal as a percentage of disposable income and in absolute dollar amounts.
You can find the chart here and the post that was built around it here.
Looking at this chart will make you realize how dependent the US economy was on rising real estate prices over the last 5 years.
Another chart of interest comes from Demography Matters. It shows how many woman in various countries think having no children as being the ideal. Looking at this chart, it is hard to imagine that Germany demographics are ever going to get better. As Edward Hugh says…
Now what is striking here is the situation in the German speaking countries, where the percentage in Austria who are willing to answer “none” is now 12.6%, while in Germany it is 16.6, and in both cases this is a large and significant change over the previous generation.
Lebanese army has been fighting an Islamic militant group and I have been somewhat surprised by how they have been performing. I had always thought that the Lebanese army main function in life was to avoid conflict. They avoid conflict with the Israelies. They avoid conflict with the Syrians. They avoid conflict with Hezbollah. But apparently, they are not averse to shooting Palestinians. This makes a certain amount of sense. None of the warring parties in Lebanon like the Palestinians. Even Hezbollah does not really care.
Snark aside, Fatah al Islam started the fight and it seem like the Lebanese army is going to finish it. I think that this was a bit of a surprise to Fatah al Islam. I don’t really think they expected to have this big of a fight on their hands. All they wanted was some money. This from the LA Times…
A bank heist Saturday led to the raid that started the fighting.
Four men believed to be members of the militant group robbed a bank near Tripoli, threatening tellers with guns and a homemade bomb before speeding off with $125,000 and a bag of blank checks in their black Mercedes, security officials said.
The next day, Lebanese security forces trying to arrest the suspected robbers were met with a barrage of bullets and grenades from an apartment in an affluent Tripoli neighborhood where the suspects had barricaded themselves. Soldiers later killed 10 men inside the apartment. Several were wearing explosives belts, officials said.
Two of the men were identified by the officials as Abu Yassen and Saddam Hajj Did, believed to be key leaders of Fatah al Islam. Other members of the group, meanwhile, overran a Lebanese checkpoint, and fighting spread to the camp.
I think the Lebanese response has been fiercer than Fatah al Islam bargained for. That is why I imagine they have just announced a unilateral cease fire. It is sort of like a request to the Lebanese army not to hurt them any more.
Not that it has been easy for the poor Lebanese army.
This from the Washington Post….
Fatah al-Islam gunmen fired at troops throughout the day. At times, gunmen and soldiers, separated by only a few dozen feet, faced off across a road bordering the camp. Families from surrounding towns fled along the same road, dodging gunfire.
Lebanese soldiers in armored vehicles lined up along the road served as warriors and traffic cops. When gunshots sounded from fighters hiding in the brush along the other side, military gunners held up a hand to hold back fleeing residents long enough for the soldiers to squeeze off several high-caliber rounds, then waved the civilian vehicles on.
At midday, Lebanese soldiers careened down the road in civilian cars, shouting warnings that militant fighters had broken out of the camp. “Go inside! Protect yourself!” soldiers shouted.
“Fatah al-Islam is coming!” small boys screamed as they ran along the road. Ambulances and U.N. vehicles with horns honking sped past them, retreating among scores of civilian vehicles.
At Borj Arab, a small town about 1 1/2 miles from the camp, 7-year-old Mohammed al-Mouri leapt for the handle on the metal shutter of his family’s sweets shop, struggling to pull the shutter down with his weight as women up and down the street hustled children inside and men took to rooftops with family guns.
“Do you hear the shooting? They are coming!” his 20-year-old sister, Tamam al-Mouri, said inside. “Everyone is afraid. There are children, and they will shoot them.”
The New York Times makes it sound like the Lebanese Army has been getting the worst of it casualty wise even if the militants are starting to cry uncle.
Government officials said at least 60 people had been killed — 30 soldiers, 15 militants and 15 civilians — in the fighting that began when a police raid on bank robbers early Sunday escalated into one of Lebanon’s most significant security crises since the end of the civil war in 1990.
The militant group, Fatah al Islam, which is thought to have links to Al Qaeda, fired antiaircraft guns and mortars and had night vision goggles and other sophisticated equipment. The Lebanese Army does not have such gear.
Here is a Belmont post with interesting links on the subject.
And here is a clip of the fighting.
This from The Times explains the civilians with guns amongst the soldiers…
Lebanese troops are using a small mosque as a front-line position. It overlooked the beginning of the camp, a row of shell-pocked and smoke-blackened three or four-storey apartment buildings, 200 yards away beyond a dense orchard of orange trees. Among the soldiers were several local civilians, dressed in jeans and T-shirts and wearing green canvas ammunition pouches. Most of them were veteran militiamen from Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war who had volunteered to help the army to fight the Islamist militants in the camp.
All of us barbarians here in the ethereal land are down on vegan’s for a variety of reasons. But their fundamental problem is that they are not connected to reality in anyway. This from the New York Times….
When Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan Click Here to continue reading.
The New Yorker hasn’t interviewed me, so I got aSeamstress to do it instead.
Gripping in-depth interview right here.
Filed under Letters.
As done by aSeamstress.
1.What is the best piece of advice that you’ve ever been given?
The best advice was from my Dad. Rather than being a piece of advice he has given on one particular occasion it has been his general exhortation to me in life. Distilled down to a pithy saying, it would be something […]
From the Financial Times…..
The Chinese government is to use $3bn of its vast foreign exchange reserves to buy a 9.9 per cent stake in Blackstone, the US buy-out fund, in an unprecedented move that underlines Beijing’s desire to tap into the private equity boom.
The investment will coincide with Blackstone’s landmark $40bn-plus stock market listing, expected in the next few months, and will allow the private equity group to nearly double its original target of raising $4bn.
Not only are the Chinese subsidizing the US government (through the purchase of treasures) and the US housing market (through the purchase of Fannie Mae and other agency bonds. They are now going to pour money into the stock market. And this at a time when P/E ratio’s in America are already at a record high. This is just unreal.
I wonder if the Chinese are awere that takeover booms traditionally herald a crash in the stock market?
Of course, 3 billion is small change in the grand scheme of things. It is certainly small change compared to the 300 to 400 billion that the China’s Central bank is going to spend on the US this year (on present trends). Still, it cracks me up. Next thing I know China’s central bank will be playing the lottery here in the US.
The poem of the week is the last of T.S Eliot’s Four Quartets and it is called ‘Little Gidding‘.
This week’s rant is from someone who has an unusual problem. She lives in an area that has been coming under constant rocket attack from Hamas and she tries to deal with the mental problems that result. If you remember that people who live with this fear and suffer from these attacks vote, you will go a long was towards understanding Israeli politics in the years to come.
