Friday, March 30, 2007

90's soft rock sux, I just realized

Sitting at the Madison right now, doing JD.
The third floor where it is quiet they have the Goo Goo Dolls on the
flatscreen. Have, in fact, the Greatest video hits of the last decade.
It's annoying.

Never realized how much of that stuff was utterly disposable. No wonder
I wasn't particular rebellious as a teenager. How was I suppose to
identitfy with something so sucky. Go fuck yourself Smashmouth.

Hedi Slimane fired from Dior



Fuck. I hope they keep making those skinny suits. I love those things. And they fit me like a glove. On the other hand, I never like those fake patches and tears.

Conservatives lukewarm to BCE deal

Election first, takeover later
Theresa Tedesco Chief Business Correspondent, National Post


A certain unease must be settling over the business community as the Harper Conservatives are showing more and more that they aren't really that Business-friendly.

Under Chretien/Martin, Liberals would just say the usual patrotic stuff, then they would just let companies do whatever.

But the Conservatives are more vulnerable to attack on issues like this, and the old Reform base still has significant influence in the party.

So, Liberals are in fact far more big business friendly than the Conservatives. Something to keep in mind when corporate donations comes around next election.

Jim Cramer - Master of the Universe

Jim Cramer’s Guide to Market Manipulation

The NYT just did a little piece on a video Jim Cramer made about how to manipulate the market.

This is the money quote:
What’s important when you are in that hedge fund mode is to not do anything remotely truthful, because the truth is so against your view, that it’s important to create a new truth, to develop a fiction.
- Jim Cramer



Well, at least he is honest.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Macanese Wordlessness

I am sitting in a little Portugese bakery, just west of Bloor and
Dundas, thinking of my earliest childhood home -- Macau.

It's always been a disadvantage to be the minority voice. Macau is
dominated culturally by the near by British Hong Kong. In elementry
school, I learned English instead of Portugese (Cantonese, of course, as
the primary language.)

I do feel a certain amount of regret; we had a fairly different colonial
experience than the Hong Kongnese. The cultural fusion was less, but
somethings were more common place.

In this little bakery, all the food items were familiar to me, but I
don't have the language to express them. There is the little shred
tarts. There are the custard-filled, twisty danish. They have the those
hard baked rolls -- in cantonese called "piglet-shaped buns." And my
favorite, the deep fried salted cod balls. I could barely order them
since I don't know their names. But the taste of them are some of my
earliest recollections.

What must be, must be.

Import Models - why do they exist?







I was looking thru the Justice for Comfort Women group on Facebook when I saw this ad. I clicked on it and it brought me here.



Import models. I never quite get the concept of them.
Then again, unlike most guys, I never got the visceral feeling of being behind the wheel of a really big engine as it roar down the street.

Least of all, I never got the bikini babes that adorn the car shows to make them pliable to the 18-25 male demographic. I investigate further and found that a discussion group that is complete devoted to these women.



I am suprise to learn that it is almost 80% Asian. I wonder about that.

First off, what is a "import" car anyways? All large companies have factories and parts manufacturers from all over the world. Why do people gather around to look at cars that are probably built the next State over?

Why are all the Asian women posing in them?

I had a friend once who was obsessed with the idea of fucking a import model. He told me that it wasn't so much as the girls are hot, it's the fact that they are import models that makes them hot. I had put it out of my mind then, but now I wonder about it.

I tried Googling for some intelligent response about this thing. I quickly found a car enthusiast forum where a poster had this to say.

Import Models: Attention Who.res or Misunderstood Saints? A Psychoanalysis... *SNWS*

**Disclaimer: If you are a feminist, you should stop and become an import model instead. And if you are an import model, I’m already impressed that you’ve gotten this far in the sentence.**


It's a pretty funny article. It doesn't fully explain much, but does insult women who plies the "trade," along with examples of some who probably shouldn't be plying it. The poster's premise is that basically, import models are attention-hungry dumbasses. There is little financial incentive or future opportunities. Men treat them like lobotomized sexual pieces of flesh that wear costumes borderlining on some kind of triple-x circus clown. The industry eventually used up these women until they are dried hunks of fruits then toss them aside.

The most sucessful ex-import model is apparently Tia Tequila. She is one of the most popular persons on MySpace. She has transitioned to the big time gig as a cyber-model for Playboy and the cover of Maxim. She also recently released a single. Tia's autobiography reads like a massive journal of angst, rebellion, drug abuse, and massive emotional confusion.

I suppose that being Asian in the West, sexuality has always been a little warped. Asian women, especially, tend to get exotized. Confucian culture itself always more or less prohibit sex as a topic. Perhaps, being an import model is one of the few ways for Banannas to fully assume the type of sexual identities most Americans take for granted -- albeit, in an over-exaggerated, almost toon-ified manner. I am not really sure. I never met an import model before and talked to them intimately about it. I am sure the money is not too, too bad. Does it enhance one's sense of self?



Heaven only knows,
Cause I don't understand.
K-OS

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Bedside reading: 7 Indicators that Move Markets

Sick today.

So read this book I took out from the library.
Great intro to the futres market as a leading indicator to the market.

I don't fully understand it all, but I know it doesn't get easier than
this. The book doesn't seem to have much editing done beyond the usual
spell and grammar check.

Half-way through already.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Approached by a streetwalker for 1st time.Yes!

I had to park in Corktown today because Regent Park along Dundas was
getting re-done for the new streetcar tracks.

I parked in an alleyway. I was shutting off the ignition when a woman
came up to my car. She was intoxicated. She looked over sand said, "hey,
don't you work over at the grocery store?" I said no.

She asked, "where do you work? I mean, I am just curious, wanted to
know."

I work in the other side of town, I told her. I was getting
uncomfortable as she slowly leans down against the sill of the car door
and asked "Do you want company tonight?"

I did not fully register what she was asking until she looked at me and
waited for a response. Then my mind blanked out. Uhm, I said.

"I guess you don't want anything, not right now."

I said, no.

She paused, then asked, "Do you have a dollar I can borrow?"

I told her no.

She opens my car door for me, and said "have a nice day!"

I thanked her, locked the car, and walked off.

Right to exist

Just thinking abstractly and absent-mindedly.

Nothing in the world has an right to exist or to UN-exist.

Dell on the rise



I thought I wrote a blog about how Apple and Dell shares were priced strange, but apparently, I didn't.

Well, last month, I was suprised to learn that Dell prices went into a freefall after then-CEO Kevin Rollins quit, forcing Michael Dell to resume the role. Well, Dell has been getting smack even prior to that. HP retook the role as #1 PC maker. The market for desktops continues to be cannibalized. Dell kept missing its filings.

Dell's death march has been running around for years.
Is Dell Dying? What's wrong with America's greatest computer company. By Daniel Gross

On the other hand, everybody loved Apple. It has iPods. It has iTunes. It has a cool, computer unit, especially it's laptop offerings. What I never did like about Apple is that most of its products relied on not what the company is doing right, but how its competitors keep messing up.

Take the iPod. There hasn't been any credible challengers to the iPod because most other companies approach mp3 players as a computing device (more memory, faster processor) or a technological jewellery (Smaller, twisty-butons.) That's nice, but mp3 players are a piece of consumer electronics. iPods are good because of their usablity. In reality, you can get a similiarly equiped mp3 player for 20%-50% less.
And no matter how cool the new Intel-Macs are, they still only occupy about 5% of the market.

The biggest shock was market cap. AAPL is now almost $30 billion more than DELL. AAPL is great, but not $30 billion more than the world's second largest PC maker. Incidentally, all this time Dell still enjoys superior ROI compare to its competitors. They're just have a really bad year with a bunch of PR stuff.

I am glad to hear that Dell is bouncing back. But, I am changing my mind again. I am not reading any concrete plan of action that addresses many of the concerns most people are having about Dell. So we'll see.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Stephen Harper is ... for real.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks to a crowd of Conservative Party supporters at a rally in Toronto, Ontario

Our dear Prime Minister made a speech last week that was really quite good. Go ahead, read it yourself.

It is actually a fairly revolutionary speech. It attacked the "Great Experiment" image of Canadian Federalism and politics. The sub-text of this is that it more or less undermine the concept of Canada as the Confederation of the Un-American Americas. Domestic issues aside, the Fathers of Confederation signed on to the Dominion stretching from sea to sea, partly out of fear over a resurgent United States that had became a military and industrial power after the American Civil War.

The Great Experiment -- was the deal worked out between the French, the Ontarians, the Maritimers for some sort of powersharing, to co-exist, and to ensure a British foothold in the Pacific.

Harper seems to dislike this part of Canadian history. He almost envision himself, not as the Prime Minister of a G7 nation, but a little burgermeister waiting on the call of his overlord:

The Canada that I see on the world stage is the reflection of its people: a diligent worker, a cooperative neighbour, a courageous warrior, a compassionate helper, a loyal friend.


All positive characteristics, of course. But, not mentioned here is who exactly is our neighbour? Who are we a worker for? Whose wars are we warriors of? Who do we help? Who is our friend?

Harper also wanted the average Canadian to know that he is not for all the fancy-pants elites.

Canadians in the broad middle – Canadians who were for far too long invisible and overlooked by the political process.


But rest assured, our dear leader has a simple pancrea for all our problems, if we will just follow.

All you have to remember is this: Conservative forward, Liberal back.


And maybe he will tell us next that all about the two-legs and four-legs and the goods and betters of them.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market - John Allen Paulos

Light and entertaining. Takes a look of the stock market from a
mathematician point of view (He specialty is in probability and logic.)

I recommend it to anyone who want a beginner's guide to pricing
equities. The main advantage is that the author consulted some academic
sources. Topics such as technical analysis (voodoo), fundemental
analysis (Buffet Watch), Modern Porfolio Theory (Greek for geeks), and
chaos theory (butterflys).

I didn't like the fact that the author sometimes goes on long tangents
unrelated to the topic. He has a complete obsession to the WorldCom
stocks he lost a bunch of money on -- in fact the book is almost an
elegy to his WorldCom losses. He also had a bunch of random stuff that a
better editor should have greened. He devoted several pages to an
imaginary moviescript he wanted to write about a mathematician turned
con artist. The reader is also privy to his personal life: he lied to
his wife about money, he buys books at Borders and invests with Swzarb.

In either case, a good primer, if it weren't so random.

China Dolls

There is a display in front of the Chinese cultural centre that is
tucked away on the second floor of Market Village.

56 dolls, each dressed in the traditional costume of the groups of
China. The Hans, the old hundred last names, (like myself) consists of
92% of the population. The remaining 8% consist of the various peoples
my Han ancestors conquered and subjugated.

Statistics and history is available:
http://www.c-c-c.org/chineseculture/minority/minority.html

The GAP is gone!

The store on the corner of Yonge and Dundas is abandoned.

What happened?

Saturday Morning with Cartoons and Fashion

Woke up today much too early. And went to be much to late last night.
Went to Afterlife, a club I can quickly forget. On my way home, bumped
into some old TSN guys and talked game.

I woke up this morning completely dehydriated. Had some Gatorade and
couldn't get back to sleep. Turned on the TV and saw that Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles was on. Whoo!

Then I watched a new episode of Fashion Files. Apparent Romantic, Art
Nouveaux (Romantic derivative), metallic clothing, and Moonraker are in.
Showed the LV, Boss and Oscar De La Renta Spring/Summer.

I am not impressed with Marc Jacobs. The LV line is so-so. Then he tried
to be edgy by having the models carry those tri-colour twill bags that
are often used by homeless people. Except they looked really new and
seem (at least on camera) to have a very fine finish. Who know? Maybe
available soon at LV store near you.

The Boss men's collections were both typically Hugo, bold, shiny, and
anemic. I always like the way some Boss jackets fit on me, but they just
never seem that haute. Like, Boss is an almost-brand.

I always like bold colours. Oscar De La Renta was very vivid. I like the
look, floral prints on white, royal blue silk. However, I can never find
anyone aside from the amazing latino models that can pull it off.

One of the commentators were telling women that they should consider
metallic dresses to be an investment, since "they never go out and last
forever." I guess I'l be investing in some chainmail this season.

After Fashion Files, I watched Avata: the Last Airbender. I have seen it
before and slotted it as a great, light pseudo-anime. This episode,
Tales of Ba Sing Se, completely changed my mind. It was very tightly
written. Filled with pauses. It was a series of unrelated vignettes of
the major characters in the city of Ba Sing Se.

The best was Tale of Iroh, which itself was composed of vignettes. They
seem like a series of unrelated activities of a happy old man, out on a
nice day. Each are more humorous than the last, but are all related
thematically with a elegiac ending.

I am impressed. I think it was only a few minutes long, but expressed
beautifully, what it intended to convey. Symbols, of putting a Moon
Flower in the shade so it may bloom. A marching song sung as a lulaby.
The repetition of a well-worn adage, followed by its reversal. I don't
know if I necessarily agree with its msg, but it was well-written.

Anywho, I think I may go and buy a Nehru jacket today. Here's to Roger
Moore!

Friday, March 23, 2007

Boisclair vows to change Quebec's voting rule

Boisclair vows to change Quebec's voting rule
TU THANH HA
Globe and Mail Update


If he is elected premier, Parti Québécois Leader André Boisclair says he will amend Quebec's electoral law to make it impossible for veil-wearing Muslim women to vote without showing their faces to identify themselves.


I guess the pure laine vote can still be had by race-baiting.
Maybe Boisclair will begin to say that those that do not pass a comprehensive French-language test and a history quiz on the oppression of Quebec by the Anglos will also be disenfranchised.

Private Equity. Modern capitalism redux.

The Free Market Free-for-All: Proof that the stock market is irrational.
By Michael Kinsley


This article would be more funny if it weren't so right.
Another sign that there is something wrong in the equities market.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Stocks! The choice "Investment" of the proles

Stocks -- Coach Class of Capitalism: Michael Lewis By Michael Lewis


I was thinking about this issue for sometime now. I was looking at P/E and can't figure out how anybody can put money into most of the stocks in the market. This article is hardly informative, more invective, but very entertaining.

Word of the day - Kohl


samchiunlao: define kohl

SmarterChild:

kohl:

Noun

A cosmetic preparation, such as powdered antimony sulfide, used especially in the Middle East to darken the rims of the eyelids.

EtymologyArabic ku*l, powder of antimony, kohl; see k*l in Semitic roots.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Poor Usability at TPL

Why am I picking on this poor recycling bin?

Because it isn't a recycling bin, it's a book return box.

Libraries typically have the problem where users often want to be
helpful and put things back where they find them. Except that many don't
do it quite exactly right.

Since nobody can track where a item is after it has been improperly
shelfed, nobody can find that item upon the request of another patron.

Many libraries have placed signs asking users to leave the books the
tables or have bins for users to dropoff books they have finished during
in-library use.

The TPL branch at Don Mills is following in this trend. Unfortunately,
they decided to use old recycling bins. While ideally, everybody should
read the signs, most people are familiar with the shape and design to
instinctively use it as a recycling bin.

The library had about 7-8 of these and I noticed that only a few had
books in them. The rest were filled with complete recyclable paper.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Cantonese Soul food

Cow intestines with turnip.
Deep fried caplin with roes.
All washed down with tea.
Always makes me feel better.

Last of winter, I hope.

I had to drive out to hamilton on Friday. Took forever. Sudden snow
turned the half-hour trip to three hours. The QEW turned from a 120km/h
kill-zone into a stop-and-go parking lot.

This snowfall, I hope is the last of the season.

Friday, March 16, 2007

les yeux brides

Boisclair stands by 'slanting eyes' remark

Boisclair defends 'slanting eyes' comments

I wish I spoke French. Apparently, this is an acceptable turn-of-phrase in French. In English, calling an Asian "slanty-eyed" would be pretty racist.

CCTV on Yonge Street

Toronto Police Service - Closed Circuit Television


I remember when I was younger the joys I had walking down the street hand-in-hand with a lover. We'd push and heave along Yonge, then in a moment's passion drag ourselves into the many secluded sideroads and alleys. Sometimes, it is just a kiss. Other times, it was innocent, adolescent gropings.



Now, the Toronto Police may be privy to these activities by other, perhaps less innocent Torontonians.

I have to say that, personally, I support the idea of CCTV in public streets. It should be noted, however, that the cost/benefit analysis hasn't really been supportive of their use. Not all experts agree that CCTV actually deter crime.

Nor, is the TPS using this argument. They just want camera in high-crime areas that can record incidence that has taken place to aid in investigations. The by-law governing its use (City of Toronto By-Law 689-2000) is too opaque for me to read. I am confident in our Police Services though.

It should be noted that whatever the policy is, it seems (I might be wrong) to be less rigorous than the way the City of Toronto itself had handled request for CCTV records. According to this report, Director of Access and Privacy for the City of Toronto requires a judicial warrant before releasing anything to the police. Whereas the TPS cameras will be viewed as long as there is a report of a possible incidence.

For those who are more suspicious of the boys in blue than I, it should be noted that cameras are a double-edge sword. This incident in England suggests that it can also record incidences of police abuse.

My new super stapler



Bought it yesterday, before the black, slim jeans.
This thing is awesome. It is about 20 inches long. It is just like a normal stapler, except 5 times more heavy.

I love this thing. As soon as I got home from Business Depot, I cracked it open and stapled everything in sight.

It made me feel so good and powerful. I can staple ... anything.

Great Romantic Classics

I was at Value Village yesterday, trying to look for a new pair of slim black jeans.

I didn't find any; but, then, I walked over to their selection of used books and saw this.



Their Romance section suggest a highly innovative new form of critical theory.

The few that caught my eye.
- Hobbes' Leviathan (or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil)
- The Plague by Camus.
- Life After God by Coupland

Deconstructivist everywhere, take note.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Current book: All Times have Been Modern, Elisabeth Harvor

I don't know why I keep reading books about starving artists.

I really hate them. All overstuff with heavy prose.

It must be my some kind of guilty pleasure. Some women have Harry
Potter, others have Harlequine novels, I have brooding, anemic starving
artists.

Fuck.

Stock-picking

Philips to Acquire TIR Systems Ltd.

Almost two year ago, I was trying to learn the ins-and-outs of the complex world we live in. One of them was the stock market. I found a small Canadian company in BC called TIR Systems that do LED lights. They specialize in do display signs that were many times more energy efficient and last many time longer. They already had Esso and Shell as clients. I thought that it was a great business. True, it was losing money. But it's a startup. They all lose money. LED lighting technology is being lead technologically by little companies nobody has ever heard of. BTW, this was way way way before anybody was even considering banning the conventional lightbulb.

I kind of lost interest after awhile because the company didn't seem to be doing anything. I subscribed to their mailing list which gave me regular press releases from the company's PR person.

Last night, I openned up the business page yesterday and found that my little company, TIR was being acquired by Phillip for $1.60/share. It represented a %16 premium, according to management. I don't own any shares, but I was excited. I made a good decision back two years ago to see an emerging market and picked one of the rising companies in solid state lighting. Yeah for me!

Then I went and looked at its two year price chart.

The initial price at IPO was almost $6. It was at $4 when I first laid eyes on it. Since then, the stock has steadily gone downward with every new convertible debentures offering until it settled around the dollar-fifty mark. So, if I had money several years ago and invested in TIR, I would've lost more than half of my money.

The funny thing is that this is a well respected, well runned, company that had lots of good people working on it. It was providing a new technology (several in fact) that will revolutionalize the way we see the city at night. I still think that it is true. But if I had put my money wher my mouth is, I would have a lot less money.

By comparison, Fairfax Financial Holdings, another company I was looking at around the same time, is now in the $200 range. When I first saw it two years ago, it was at $85. And what does this company do? Nothing. It's a financial holdings company. Most of its investment is in insurance companies, but the company itself does absolutely nothing except buying and selling shares of other companies. It's not revolutionary. The average joe won't miss FFH if it disappear tomorrow. They won't change your live.

They do finance. They are very good at it. Hence, they have very rich shareholders.

I suppose TIR is very good at lighting too. Hence, they have shareholders with very light pockets.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

My Westside story

I had to drive thru the Westend of Toronto, off Jane and Dundas. Malta
Village and Junction.

Fuck. The place is like time out of time. All lost in the rustbelt era
of the 80's. Punks and hobos run around in torn army jackets and black
tight jeans. Faded technocolor building stumped the streets. Lots of
people with pretty, vacant eyes watching the cars go by, and sitting
there and not moving.

Almost got into a couple of "accidents."

One man refused to believe in the reality of my 2500lbs car moving at 60
km/h. He waited patently until his light turn red and the proceeded to
cross the road with his two bright, yellow grocery bags. I waved, I
rev'ed my engines, I honked, I even sped up. But he decided what buddha
decided a long time ago: the material world is an illusion. So he kept
on walking into the path of my car. Missed him by a couple of inches as
I swerve into the opposite lane, which was luckily unoccupid.

Another man in his black spandex shirt, black speedo, and iPod decided
that he was the Man of Steel. Faster than a speeding bullet, and of
course, impervious to a puny automobile. Jumped in front of my car, then
looked disdainly at my efforts to reduce speed. "Why do you bother?" his
half-opened eyes, brimming with sadness and infinite charity to
insignificant humanity, "my super human physique can easily dodge your
vehicle and the skintight, invisible barrier around my body shall
protect me and my pitch black speedo." He looks away, changes the track
on his iPod and leaps off to more adventures.

The photo shows the weird state of the Westside. I wish I could take
more pictures, but it was too backlit everywhere.

CDG2



I am wearing my ailing Comme des Garçons 2 today. I don't know why. I don't really like the way it smells on me. CDG2 is a complicated scent and it evolves wildly thru out the day.

When I spray it on, I reminds me of the stale cherries they put on top of sundaes at Ponderosa. On my drive to work, it reminds me of overstuffed makeup rooms. It disappears briefly as a step out of my car and into the building. But, it comes back again --- lord, it comes back again, as an over-riped cantelope. By lunchtime, it is the artificial watermelon lipbalm on 13yrs old girls. And, as I get ready to leave work, as I throw my leather jacket over my shoulders, a whirlwind of it spins into my nostril: pink and greasy lavatory soap.

CDG2 and I always had such drama and history.

I have had this body for a little less than a decade. It just kind of lie there on the nightstand by my bed. (it can't really sit; the designers made the bottle all flat and rounded, so you have to rest it on its side, label facing up.) I guess I always feel bad neglecting it like that. The little aluminum paint chips pealing off the glass bottle like elementry school craft glitter. I like the bottle. I try really hard to like the olfactory revolution that is CDG2.... I just don't.

Oh CDG2, Oh CDG2, why can't I like you like Eau Sauvage?

Monday, March 12, 2007

Ford F-150

It always suprised me to learn that a pickup is canada's most popular
car.

I mean, who drives a pickup? have they seen the gas prices lately?
But then, everybody drives a pickup. All along the Trans-Canada, in all
the little villages, people need these kind of vehicles.

But in city, they are almost a tourist attraction on account of their
rarity.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Lord Fisher, Xerox, and modern computing

Laser printing, Ethernet, GUI, the mouse, WYSIWYG word processors, multi-user domains, object-oriented programming, personal computer, TCP/IP, laptop – or, all the things that made modern computing what it is today. These were all things that Xerox PARC either created or refined. Dominance in anyone of these fields would have made any company richer than Croesus. Xerox once dominated in ALL of these things, yet it let it lie and stuck with photocopying. (Actually, they are doing information management, but most of its business still comes from the sale, leasing, and service of photocopiers and printers. I cannot find mention of data management services in their last 10-K.)

I remember reading Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War by Robert K. Massie. One of the great criticisms against Lord Fisher, the Admiral of the Fleet prior to WWI, was his introduction of the Dreadnought class ships. Lord Fisher was a great innovator; he oversaw the conversion of the British Navy from coal to oil. He scrapped obsolete ships to lower costs and devoted British industries to build the fastest and most powerful ships then in existence.

The problem that everybody had with Fisher was that his Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers made every ship in the world obsolete – including the whole British Navy. British naval supremacy was threatened, because now, every Great Power can just start making Dreadnoughts and ignore all of Britain's pre-Dreadnought hardware. And many Great Powers, Germany, US, Russia did try. In essence, Lord Fisher also innovated the first, modern technological arms race.

Xerox critics often points to the managements failure to market all the products that their dream-team of research created. Management were often more concern with how the new technology will interfere with their existing business model. Maybe the management-types were right. Maybe Lord Fisher was right. Who knows?

Thursday, March 08, 2007

That's fucking rich. "No military solution to Iraq" sez the General

From Times Online
March 08, 2007
No military solution to Iraq, warns new US commander

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1487615.ece

What the fuck.

So the top US military commander in Iraq just pronounced "There needs to be a political aspect."

So what the fuck has these guys been doing for the last several years?

Now, I understand that this guy (and all of his predecessors) has a hard job. They are trying to set up Democracy™ after all.

To quote The Prince:

[T]here is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.


Machiavelli advocates that a lot of arm-forcing is neccessary:

... the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force.

But co-opting the existing elements should always be a top priority. After all:

[t]here are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and interest, and does its utmost to support him; and therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.


Now US wants to get out ASAP and Iraqi oilfields are too important to destroy.
So they let the Iraqis "rule" themselves. When some kind of economic stability returns to Iraq, they will "decide" rationally, like every country in the world, to buy T-bills and help fund US supremacy all around the world. It works for China, Japan, Russia, and Germany.

Where the fuck is the CIA?
These guys have been installing puppet dictators around the world for years. They have the experience to pacify promoting democracy and stability in around the world and to ensure that natural resources are dirt-cheap for the US and her allies economic prosperity for the free world.

Given the multi-polar dynamics in Iraq, a round table of Iraq oligarchy should've been gathered years ago, and each one bought off. American "friendship and interest" should have been extended to Sadr and SCIRI.
If these guys wanted to occupy a country, why can't they do it right?