Is There Anything Knew Under the Sun (cont.) ?

For today, the answer is no.

World

Russia seems to be occupying a small country adjacent to its borders, a pattern of behavior shown by it for about 200 years.

Russian organizations admit in newspapers in eastern Europe that they were training and arming the Ossetian militias for years; those units were heaviliy shelling ethnic Georgian villages to provoke the governement of Georgia to act.

Russian troops are looting, according to press reports from Georgia. Nothing new there. From the WSJ: "Angela Sengelia, the wife of a Georgian officer, was gathering her belongings from Senaki's officers' quarters and taking them away in a truck. She said the Russians have already looted the place, removing anything of any value including clothes, television sets, DVD players and music centers. 'They will only leave when they have nothing left to steal,' said Shota Odisharia, the deputy mayor of Senaki."

Russia occupies a key Georgian port, "a day after Moscow said it had begun pulling its forces out of Georgia." Nothing new about breaking agreements.

I wonder if the purported leadership in Moscow really control the army ? Here's an interesting statement by a Russian officer quoted from the WSJ: "When asked when Russian troops would withdraw, government officials became irritable. Russian Army Capt. Vladimir Ivanov said it was 'a process.' It had taken a long time for them to deploy and it would take them a long time to withdraw, he added."

Isn't that proof the Russian attack was preplanned and not a mere resopnse to the stupid Goergian move into South Ossetia ?

Here's another quote from the WSJ: ""We all want to go home, and we'll probably be told to do so tomorrow," said a [Russian] lieutenant who identified himself as Kolya. "You can't pull out all of our troops all at once. There are five divisions in Georgia -- all the road would be clogged."

Readers should realize that the D-Day landings in Normady in WW II had five divisions at first. That takes a lot of planning. It's becoming very clear this operation was set up by Russia in advance.

South Ossetian irregular units wearing white armbands did much of the dirty work for the Russian army under its protections. Any Georgian man was killed preemptorily. Using unofficial irregular units for massacres has occured for a few hundred years in that area of the world. The Ottoman Empire did that in the Balkans and in Armenia.

Markets

Beefers raid the financials. What a surprise ! The dopes - or is it dupes ? or is that knaves ? - at the SEC gave them the "GO" signal last week. So they brought out their puppets, Meredith, Elmer, Barron's, etc. and started to sell virtual shares short with their computers.

I bought some GD and LMT for a long term play in the Alpha Fund. Krypto Fund was rebalanced Friday and Monday with some selling in real estate and buying gold & silver & the Vanguard Precious Metals Fund.

Regarding the "stress" in LIBOR, I wonder if Russia is playing games here with its dollar reserves ? We should be on the lookout for that.

Babblevision as usual provides no data or facts.

Word of the Day

"Scurvy" - noun and adjective [$10]
Scurvy means (noun) a disease caused by deficiency of vitamin C characterized by swollen, bleeding gums and the opening of previously healed wounds esp. afflicting sailors; (adjective) - archaic - dishonorble, contemptible.
Sentence: The scurvy actions of the Russian army in protecting South Ossetian irregulars in massacring Georgians must be laid at the feet of Vladimir Putin. He was reported to be "outraged" by massacres and war crimes by Georgians. But that was the standard Soviet pattern of behavior - loudly accusing others of doing exactly what they were doing. Being a well-trained KGB operative, he's just responding as he was trained.