Ramen Review

I talked to a fuckload of anonymous Arabs in the last 2 months. And I can vouch for one thing: these people know perfectly well that they cannot rely on Western governments’ sweet-talk. But they simply want their dictators to go down down down, dammit and inshaAllah.
And they go and try to do that. And people die in the process.
Some of the people I chatted with, as a matter of fact, are dead now, killed by some dictator’s … read more

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

(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

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

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

Not much more needs to be said.

Now, here we have a document titled
NATO IN AFGHANISTAN
MASTER NARRATIVE AS AT 6 October 2008
A bit obsolete, but nonetheless… It is part of a batch of documents liberated by the good people at Wikileaks. As they dryly remark,

The encryption password is progress, which perhaps reflects the Pentagon’s desire to stay on-message, even to itself.

Said “password” also “encrypted” the three other documents. Note that Wikileaks is intelligent enough not to submit the password of one Chris Riley, to whom the … read more

Ah, the eternal challenge to actually discuss cooking on a weblog originally intended to be about the culinary only. So… what did I make for Hanukkah? Searching for something similar but not alike to latkes (which I had been advised to prepare), I came across some pakora-style concoction incorporating peas; I figured that given the fact that this would not be unknown to the Bene Israel, it would be adequate. Being probably as goy as goy can be, what would … read more

Preliminary[de:] accountancy checks at Hypo Real Estate reveal nearly EUR600mrd, that is, nearly
600.000.000.000 euros,
or approximately the annual GDP (as per PPP) of The Netherlands,
in grey and black funds — not or not sufficiently accounted for.
The total sum on the brink of combustion is 10% of the annual GDP (as per PPP) of the US. It is a Lehman-scale event.
The problem is twofold:
First — if HRE is allowed to go bust, the impact has a reasonable chance to smash the global … read more

Back for picking up some pieces.
Icelandic krónur, somewhat worse for the wear, definitely qualify as "filthy lucre" these days.
The IS króna is being re-floated; trade in that currency was essentially suspended since mid-October to prevent hyperinflation. As is to be expected, “float” is fairly misleading here. The official term is “managed refloat” anyway, which basically is the fiscal equivalent to dropping a fat chunk of volcanic rock overboard somewhere in the GIUK Gap, with a safety line tied to it … read more

When I cam home from that party yesterday, something interesting happened in the tube train.
All of a sudden, there was a ruckus, guys screaming around and everything. Some man had jumped up and was gesticulating at some adolescents and shouting at them furiously. He was Persian perhaps; he looked vaguely “Arab” (this is not to insult any Persians that might feel insulted by this ;-) ) but not quite; he certainly did not have the looks of a Maghrebi, but … read more