World War III ?

Hantu Laut

Would you believe me if I say the KLCI is headed for a fall below 800 anytime before Christmas? I am sure many of you wouldn't. Just like the price of crude oil my guts feeling is telling me it would in spite of the huge three-day rally on Wall Street.Most Asian markets rose in tandem with Wall Street.They will, likewise, fall together with it.Wall Street is the doyen and barometer of the world of equity trading.

There is absolutely no reason even for Wall Street to rear its bullish head other than on false sentiments of make-believe.There is not a drop of good news to usher a steady pattern of positive long term improvement of the markets.The only good news is the forthcoming departure of that mad man in the White House by January 2009 before he could screw up the US economy any further.The euphoria on Wall Street is a flash in the pan.More bad news will come.

No news is good news, bad news is now no news. Nothing new had come out of the US economy except troubling economic figures.The US gross domestic products contracted by 0.5% annual rate for the 3rd quarter (July-Sept).Twenty-two banks have failed so far this year and more are expected.Citibank, one of the largest in the US is in the doghouse and needed huge dose of heart worm injection to stop its demise.It was given $300 billion bail-out, giving respite to the decline on Wall Street.The three giants in Detroit, GM,Ford and Chrysler are still stuck in the muck awaiting lifelines.

American views of the economy remain the gloomiest for decades as they grapple with massive layoffs, dwindling retirement funds and slumping house prices.American consumers, the lifeblood of the economy --- spending continues to slide down.The unemployment rate is 6.5% and expected to rise.The $700 billion financial bail-outs have not been able to restore stability to the financial markets and help the sinking economy.

With a massive $7 trillion in bail-out money and a huge budget and trade deficit where the hell are the Yanks going to get the money from? Issue more Treasury Bonds, print more dollars or starts World War III?.

It can start by bombing Iran first, than North Korea, than all Muslims nations and than last China and Russia will join the war to stop the Ugly Americans.Isn't that a good recipe for a world war and an excuse not to pay your debts.

In Malaysia the government has not released any economic figures to show how much the economy had shrunk.Even if they do, I suspect it would be slightly sugar-coated to make those gullible enough to believe that our economy is fine.

Looking at all the bad news the probability of the global economy shrinking further for the rest of this year and into early next year isn't pure fantasy.

Most Asian markets rise after US extends gains

HONG KONG, Nov 26 - Most Asian stock markets rose today after Wall Street extended its gains, but Japanese shares lagged the region as leading automaker Toyota Motor Corp. saw...

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Look! Who's Talking -Sense and Non-sense ?

Hantu Laut

Like everything else, you have the good and the bad.This world is not perfect, you can't have it all good.We should be happy if there are more good than bad.

Should a few rotten eggs make the whole basket of eggs inedible.Should we upset the applecart because we feel slighted by some idiotic remarks made by some equally idiotic people.

The government have always been known for not knowing what the left hand is doing when the right hand is busy.Two of a kind saying two different kinds.One to the left, one to the right.

See who is talking sense and who is talking nonsense.

Candle Light Vigils With A Flaw

Hantu Laut

The group against the ISA organise regular show of their anti ISA stand by having what they called candle light vigil in various locations in Peninsula Malaysia.

What they intend to achieve by this regular maniacal show of solidarity against the ISA is hard to tell.It's almost like banging your head against a brick wall trying to push an issue against a government that only aren't listening but reacted with negative responses.

I am not against the anti ISA vigils.That's not really the issue I am concerned with.It's fine if they confine the vigils only to adults.It's the children. I can see in many of those vigils the presence of children as young as 3-4 years old.Both organisers and parents should be taken to task for exposing their children to this kind of dangerous culture. They knew fully well they are breaking the law and knowing our police force who do not take kindly to illegal assembly those children could get hurt or got lost in a melee.

If those parents brought their children to use them as instruments of compassion so the police wouldn't arrest them because of the children than there is something seriously wrong with them.Those children should be at home in bed not out in the streets late at night to participate in political activities of their parents.

Those in Hindraf had also shown similar irresponsible behaviour by using children to write letters,messages and sent flowers to meet the Prime Minister to appeal for the release of the Hindraf detainees.Aren't those children too young to be used in a political struggle.

Those who organised the candle light vigils and those parents actively involved should open their conscience and think hard whether those children should be there in the first place and whether they should ignore the potential dangers they are putting those children into.

Paying for Eight Years of Bush’s Delusions

He should be tried by the World Court under the Geneva Convention after he stepped down as President.He has done more harm to world peace and the global economy than any other President or leader of any nation.He has killed more Muslims out of revenge and put Islamic nations in turmoil than any other President before him.He deserved to be locked up...... Hantu Laut.

By Robert Fisk

American lawyers defending six Algerians before a habeas corpus hearing in Washington this week learned some very odd things about U.S. intelligence after 9/11. From among the millions of “raw” reports from American spies and their “assets” around the world came a CIA Middle East warning about a possible kamikaze-style air attack on a U.S. navy base at a south Pacific island location. The only problem was that no such navy base existed on the island and no U.S. Seventh Fleet warship had ever been there. In all seriousness, a U.S. military investigation earlier reported that Osama bin Laden had been spotted shopping at a post office on a U.S. military base in east Asia.

That this nonsense was disseminated around the world by those tasked to defend the United States in the “war on terror” shows the fantasy environment in which the Bush regime has existed these past eight years. If you can believe that bin Laden drops by a shopping mall on an American military base, then you can believe that everyone you arrest is a “terrorist”, that Arabs are “terrorists”, that they can be executed, that living “terrorists” must be tortured, that everything a tortured man says can be believed, that it is legitimate to invade sovereign states, to grab the telephone records of everyone in America. As Bob Herbert put it in The New York Times a couple of years ago, the Bush administration wanted these records “which contain crucial documentation of calls for a Chinese takeout in Terre Haute, Indiana, and birthday greetings to Grandma in Talladega, Alabama, to help in the search for Osama bin Laden”. There was no stopping Bush when it came to trampling on the US Constitution. All that was new was that he was now applying the same disrespect for liberty in America that he had shown in the rest of the world.

But how is Barack Obama going to repair the titanic damage which his vicious, lying predecessor has perpetrated around the globe and within the U.S. itself? John F Kennedy once said that “the United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.” After Bush’s fear-mongering and Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” and Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and secret renditions, how does Obama pedal his country all the way back to Camelot? Our own dear Gordon Brown’s enthusiasm to Hoover up the emails of the British people is another example of how Lord Blair’s sick relationship with Bush still infects our own body politic. Only days before the wretched president finally departs from us, new U.S. legislation will ensure that citizens of his lickspittle British ally will no longer be able to visit America without special security clearance. Does Bush have any more surprises for us before 20 January? Indeed, could anything surprise us any more?

Obama has got to close Guantanamo. He’s got to find a way of apologising to the world for the crimes of his predecessor, not an easy task for a man who must show pride in his country; but saying sorry is what – internationally – he will have to do if the “change” he has been promoting at home is to have any meaning outside America’s borders. He will have to re-think – and deconstruct – the whole “war on terror”. He will have to get out of Iraq. He will have to call a halt to America’s massive airbases in Iraq, its $600m embassy. He will have to end the blood-caked air strikes we are perpetrating in southern Afghanistan – why, oh, why do we keep slaughtering wedding parties? – and he will have to tell Israel a few home truths: that America can no longer remain uncritical in the face of Israeli army brutality and the colonisation for Jews and Jews only on Arab land. Obama will have to stand up at last to the Israeli lobby (it is, in fact, an Israeli Likud party lobby) and withdraw Bush’s 2004 acceptance of Israel’s claim to a significant portion of the West Bank. U.S. officials will have to talk to Iranian officials – and Hamas officials, for that matter. Obama will have to end U.S. strikes into Pakistan – and Syria.

Indeed, there’s a growing concern among America’s allies in the Middle East that the U.S. military has to be brought back under control – indeed, that the real reason for General David Petraeus’ original appointment in Iraq was less to organise the “surge” than it was to bring discipline back to the 150,000 soldiers and marines whose mission – and morals – had become so warped by Bush’s policies. There is some evidence, for example, that the four-helicopter strike into Syria last month, which killed eight people, was – if not a rogue operation – certainly not sanctioned by Washington or indeed by US commanders in Baghdad.Read more.........