Ramen Review

going very quickly any time now.
There will, of course, always be a week or two of warning time, when you can stock up on legumes and grains. But the whole mess — call it Capitalism or The System or whatnot — is dangerously close to the edge.
It may fracture in 2012 or it may shatter in 2014.
Any case, in one year one week and a day’s time people will look back on the 13th b’ak’tun and surmise this or that. … read more

Actually, it’s a folk myth[de:].
The crazyshitness quota is quite high[de:] these days, as you have heard. If they will talk of the 21st century world revolution afterwards, we’re already in it. It is quite unlikely that this can be stomped out anytime soon. Particularly since the hottest years of this decade are yet to come (remember the temperature curve lags about one year after the radiation curve).
As a side note, 2013 is the year of the scheduled Federal elex. However, … read more

Watch:

Guy looks like he was from inland the Horn. Sudan, Eritrea. Perhaps Ethiopia, Somalia, Chad, northern Kenya. Djibouti of course. Probably not Jemen, but might even be Saudi.
Peace to those who brought us this video.
Also peace to those who documented events in Zhaiqiao Village, Puqi Town, Yueqing City (People’s Republic of China) on Dec. 25th, 2010. This is what happened.

So, revisiting the river valley overlooked by Hill 431, where two nights before the CinC[*] and his “publisher of a major newspaper” friend went to their little outing.
While the Minister was back in Berlin getting 80% of the major media pissed off mightily (and one Mr. Wonka of the Leipziger Volkszeitung[de:] presumably shitlisted — watch 1:20 to 1:32 and 1:50 here:)

some Afghan guy who presumably will forever remain nameless had decided to take matters in his own hands — alas, … read more

Hanging tough at Hill 431 with the publisher of a major newspaper (To be ’splained below)Image by fritz13.
Dax floating free above the train wreck (but still within grund effect I presume — TINA was a capitalist whore all along after all). DJIA is so-so, definitely not off the ground. N225 remains groundbound essentially.
Them sandniggers are getting restive, and neither Sammy not Johnny (nor the Kaiser nor anyone else) can seem to hold them at bay. Too bad too that it’s … read more

(My Portuguese may suck; I apologize. I am barely able to grasp the basic rules, and have been forced to do so by necessity alone.)
There is a lot of talk these days about admigration. Google knoweth not that word, yet Germany does[*]. We do not know, or have, “immigration”, except in the negative: Germany is not, and will never be, a country of immigration. Or so it has been said.
The following quotes are, à votre plaisir, rendered into English trying … read more

So, on May 20th, 2010, I said in a private conversation (that was duly noted down) regarding the economy:

the significant index values of the coming ?weeks:
dax 6500 and rising
djia 10000 and falling

Meaning that until one of these marks is breached, and robustly so, the global economy will remain in limbo, and other matters of concern may be leisurely regarded as utterly more important.
Almost 3.5 months later, I have no reason whatsoever to change my opinion on this issue.
The last week … read more

Stupid WordPress bug.
Back to Part I
So, at one end money is melting away — creditor-debitor relationships are blowing up –, and this questions (by questioning the future windfalls based on which private banks did draw that money = credit from the central anks in the first place) the existence of further money. Such money may be involved in backing a creditor-debitor relationship that is due now, and its disappearance may cause this relationship to bust, too. It may be indirectly … read more

Πιθοσ της Πανδώρας NO!
Boy, what a night.
But first things first. As you doubtlessly have heard, markets rebounded pluckily (as English and other assorted weirdos would say) following the announcement that the ECB may in fact buy national bonds after all, provided they are laundered through an intermediary. Which may or may not be a good thing (the Well-Endowed One’s Pitcher has been invoked[de:]) — it did certainly shore up the Euro, but it is liable to create increased inflation in … read more

Picture is not that much related.
So… by now it should be clear theat the Greek Situation is dead serious.
No Flachs[de:]
The SocDems are doing perhaps the first major thing since long that looks like it might actually work, instead of making you think “ho hum, again? Prions or brain flukes, I wonder…”.
Which is to say they abstained when the Greece bailout bill was put on vote today[de:]. The Socialists went for an all-out Nay, as was expected. The Greens were … read more

It will be pretty interesting to see how Capitalism will digest that Greece thingy. And to see how many of the PIIIGGS will go down before this is over.
In any case, those that had already deadsaid Teh Kryzys[en:/pl:] stand corrected.
Big things do need a lot of time to proceed after all. And it is not like we could not have told that this’ll take some time, ね?

As regards the funny things in life, Jane Buergermeister’s[*] lil old click-grabbing … read more

“Gutti“’s conception of things military must have been heavily influenced by his clan’s ancestor worship of his great-great-uncle. After all, Karl Ludwig was the Good Nazi[de:] of the von und zu Guttenbergs, and many of us Germans did not have even remotely good Nazi ((great-)grand)fathers at all. Mine were both moderately to fairly serious assholes for example. Not involved in exceptional brutality, but definitely eager cogs in the machine til the end, and that is about average. But Karl Ludwig … read more

All this is severely shocking for das deutsche Volk of course, given that it has been less than one week since the dead of not-at-all-Good Friday were buried. But that’s life in Afghanistan for you, and it is not like the locals would be given much of a respite by any party in this disgusting war splendid little thing that colloquially might be called “war” by some either. And if you think: “at least it has been going for a … read more

German speaks you.
Ich bitte Sie, Herr BeBeZeh-Mann. Bei allem Verständnis.

Not much more needs to be said.

(Too pissed off of the universe to add links right now, also need to run some PCR 2mo’. Maybe l8r.)
A month as uneventful as it was full of summer heat and monochrome karma.
Kim the Lesser’s guys have assembled some more rockets in NKorea and are showing off. Everybody is pissed, except the NKoreans, who are partly elated and partly… … I don’t expect it to matter to their daily lives too much.
Peace in Sri Lanka? I fear not — though … read more

We didn’t go to the demonstration 2day, but I went to where they had their final speeches and cultural programme. Met w/a few ppl I know, though I’d hoped I’d meet some other folks who weren’t there. One guy is a local activist, in whose case his non-presence represents quite epic FAIL. Or I have not understood his methods and he’s in a weird tree-hugging magickal cult that hopes to bring civilization as we know it crashing to its knees … read more

This year has had some funny weather that far. Not bad though. First decent winter since I moved here or so, >10 years ago. When the cold started to get obnoxious, spring broke out. Lasted for 3 weeks or so, unexpectedly turned into summer. April has been what you’d expect May to be. By now, it is colder again and wet, has been raining on and off again for the last few days. But again, the sun is coming thru.
The … read more

Back to Part 1

And then the topic turned to a plane that was flying in a no-fly zone near to Camp David and heading towards Site R. I had no idea what Site R was. And to me Camp David was a place where George Bush went on vacation. I didn’t know any more than that.

And now the topic is getting really interesting. As will become clear, this plane is most likely Flight United 93.

BR: And this was information … read more

I missed Lafo’s speech, but I could hear the boos’ and cat-calls’ echo:
ACHTUNG, FOREIGN WORKERS!Feeding not permitted!

FAU anarcho-syndicalist union in front of the HeLaBa HQ.The Hessische Landesbank is another example for why "socialize the banks!" cannot much resolve this mess.
He is not very popular with many of the less populist leftists over here, because of his anti-immigrant stance. True, it was some years ago, in the beginnings of his new pet party project. But he has not clarified his views … read more

Last Saturday’s mass protests in Germany were not like this:

T. rex vs. Big Bad Bank Building
I was in Bankfurt, where around 20k ppl gathered, take a few thou, give a few thou; the official figures ran mostly between 15k and 30k. More — closer to around 30k, perhaps as much as 35k protested in Berlin.
The demonstrations were generally peaceful, to the point of being boring. In Berlin there was some aggro at the very end, when police charged into some … read more

N225 chickened out Monday morning as closing time approached, lost 4.5%; indices are bleeding like a butchered pig today. DAX struggled w/4k, lost. Tomorrow’s gonna be interesting; the bears, though, seem to have lost this round, though the N225 in Mon-Tue night recovers some.
Still, they know that they can make some sort of “recovery” — make some money, sort of. Which is all the collective hive-mind of the buck marketeers would want at such a time: swap some derivatives or … read more

The Con supreme-mayoral candidate of Cologne announced today that he’ll quit the race for re-election (elections due August).
He had been a staunch supporter of the subway project that came to almost topple a church belltower[de:], killed two, destroyed much of the documental archive of Cologne, sunk millions of euros; he had been investigated by the police more than once, had been entangled in networks of bribery, kickbackry, ill-spent funds, construction scandals and the likes. His time of office benefitted … read more

via the good anonymi at 4chan.

Indices bounced back, jerking, stuttering up steeply — about as steep as they, on average, had fallen throughout most of February, though the volatility is decidedly less. The DJIA has already made good 50% of its Feb loss; the N225 goes alongside.
The DAX, which performed marginally better (IIRC) then is more equivocal. The gov’t is taking its tiiiiiiiime[de:] as regards HRE; they think about having made their mind up whether to exercise their damn[de:] constitutional … read more

The DAX made a brave attempt at recovery yesterday, but the DJIA was, for the time being, malade. So the N225’s attempt to pass on the hot potato and hope for a transatlantic recovery had not quite worked. Especially as it pulled itself above 7.5K, only for the DAX to come down in flames over the whole Opel and AIG and the Citi and whatnot mess.
(Note that to make up for a loss, you need to gain more percentiles than … read more

Indices cavorted all over the place, settling in for a solidly red week, though today — as did the DJIA a few days ago — the N225 manages to make a near spot landing with plusminus zeroish change. The last 3 weeks’ bumpy bounce, tumbling down a broken and rough slope, shaved some 12.5% off the DJIA, while the N225’s losses could well (for a while at least) be limited to just below another 10%. The DAX, in spite of … read more