This week’s essay comes from the American Digest. To describe this essay would be to ruin it. It is sufficient to note that it is about one man’s thoughts on New York City and the place he now chooses to call home.
I knew nothing about manufacturing or business when I came to Acme, so I heave learned all my notions of the proper way to do things from influences within the company. Any time I point out something that is not being done the right way, there is a discrepancy between theory and practice in Acme.
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It is getting to the point where the European nations cannot even handle the garbage they generate. And I mean that literally….
The European Commission is currently undertaking legal action against 14 member states for failing to enforce landfill regulations, with large fines expected to follow. Similar waste disposal crises have led to strikes and riots in Greece and Bulgaria this year, while Britain was recently warned that landfill capacity will be exceeded by 2016.
Naples’ rubbish crisis may worsen tomorrow with the planned closure of the only remaining working landfill in the area. The southern Italian city has been turned into a stinking dump this week as rubbish collectors have gone on strike complaining that they have nowhere to take it. Angry residents have burnt refuse piled up in the streets. Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano, in a letter published this week in the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore, appealed for a quick solution, warning that further delay would “precipitate an ecological and health disaster, with serious economic and labour repercussions.”
Collectors have stopped hauling the rubish away because they have nowhere to take it. The government has approved construction of more dumps but there have been delays in getting them working because of opposition from local communities.
The Blog called the EU referendum has some nice pictures of the mess. They blame the EU rules for the problem. And I can well believe that EU is a contributing factor. But not all the blame cannot be put on the EU doorstep (this from France 24)….
The chronic problem is the result of a lack of space in existing dumps, some of which have been closed by court injunctions after their operations were taken over by organised crime, dubbed the “ecomafia.”
A May 10 decree by the centre-left government creating four new dumps — fiercely opposed by people living nearby — will not come into effect for several weeks.
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.
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.
This week’s essay is from the New York Times. We can’t get any lower then that can we? But in certain mental states, we like a good sappy story that celebrates the irrationality that makes life worth living. And the essay from the New York Times on a adoptive mother’s irrational love certainly celebrates that.
For comparisons sake, you should also read this story so you understand how rational people act. The comparison and contrast provides a good example of the deficiencies of rational thinking.
The Cyber Assault on Estonia…..
The Russians are not giving up. The cyber attacks on Estonian keep getting worse. Yesterday over one million computers were used to attack Estonian. It will be interesting to see if the Estonian’s ever figure out a really good way to fix the problem short of cutting off all accesses to their computers from outside the country.
The best defense would be a good offense. But I imagine that the Estonian’s are a little nervous about trying a cyber assault on Russia. They are a little outnumbered when it comes to manpower on the ground.
You can read the latest on cyber attacks on Estonian here and here.
In the absences of human support, how long do you think it would take before an urban neighborhood to turn into wilderness rural again? I have always wondered about that question.
But apparently, I need not speculate too much. The process is actually happening in Detroit. This from Detroitblog…..
It’s always fun to go up north here Click Here to continue reading.