This week I am throwing a little twist in Here, I have many stories that you wont find in American newspapers, these stories are coming from papers in other nations, interesting to see how they are thinking don’t you think.

Two Sides Of The 'Double Dip' Debate: Consumers, Fed To Save Day - Or Not

BY CHRISTINA WISE
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Consumer confidence has taken a hit. The Fed's beige book report shows a lackluster economy. The index of leading indicators has logged its longest losing streak since the '90-91 recession. And job growth is painfully absent.
But is the combination nasty enough to send the economy sliding back into recession?
Among economists, opinions about the chances of a double-dip recession are as mixed as the economic data that are rolling in.
Those who see a second downturn cite the sluggish global economy and no job growth at home.
The optimists see growing consumer spending, helped by home loan refis, and low interest rates, which help people and businesses. Rallying stocks are a plus, too.
Stephen Roach, chief economist with Morgan Stanley, sees a double dip ahead.
"From Asia to Europe, to the United States and to Latin America, the world economy seems to have lost any semblance of upward momentum," Roach said in an Oct. 14 newsletter.


First things first there was never a recovery from the first recession, the only people that claim there the recession ended and that we are headed back there are people who would not know the word recession if hit them on the head and then ran them over, they are to intoxicated from munching on mushrooms and LSD to see any light other than the colors that cloud their vision. We were, are and will be in a recession and are more likely to head into a depression than a recovery at the rate we are going. Another fact is how in the hell could someone with the name of Roach be chief economist, is his name a symbol for what he truly is, a cockroach, one thing nice about roaches is there move in groups so when you are ready its nice and easy to exterminate the lot of them. So forget the Double dip word here the only double you can remember is the double Scoop of crap they are so willingly and knowingly serving you. Stand up and say no more or “no mas” ( Spanish) and start to educate the mind, As I love to say open your mind and not your ass that has been open from the day you were born. Your life begins today, decide which path you will take darkness or light

The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move.
--John Wooden

Ukraine draws strength in Iran

By Hooman Peimani
Since its independence in 1991, it has failed to secure reliable markets outside the limited market of the Commonwealth of Independent States and it has also proved unable to obtain a major Western economic assistance package.
Ukraine's relations with Iran do have a political move, although, as President Leonid Kuchma is keen to demonstrate his independence from major Western countries, especially the United States. A few years ago, the latter forced Ukraine to withdraw from its joint agreement with Iran and Russia to supply to Iran certain equipment for the construction of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power reactor. And over the past few years, Western countries have severely criticized the Kuchma administration for its alleged human rights abuses. The alleged sale of Ukrainian air defense systems to Iraq has further damaged Ukraine's ties with the US and Britain.
Their unhappiness with the US also demonstrated itself in the type of economic agreements, which can be expected to upset the American government. At the time when the Americans are seeking to stop Russia's non-military nuclear cooperation with Iran for its alleged positive impact on Iran's alleged military nuclear program, Ukraine's offer of nuclear assistance to Iran only shows its efforts to demonstrate its independence from the United States. This is also reflected in its helping Iran produce civilian aircraft, which the Americans claim to be easily convertible into military ones. Like Russia, Ukraine seems to opted to pursue its national interests in its ties with Iran regardless of American approval or not.

A very interesting development, Ukraine is tired of being snubbed, a few years ago America stopped them from going forward with a very nice profit generating deal, and we never offered them any sort of economic aid, is it any wonder that they have decided to basically say F***K you, there are after all a very powerful nation in terms of weapons, and we would never dare go to war with them just as we would never dream of fighting Russia, yet we try to bully them around economically, you can only do this for so long, the day of reckoning is drawing nearer, the stupid foreign policy is going to be the result of our undoing, all great nations have without fail succeeded in the one task they thought they were were to smart to avoid and that is so masterfully and skillfully plan their own down fall through the election of the dumbest nitwits on this planet and then give those one celled organisms un restricted power to dig their graves for them. Don’t ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country is what we have been taught
Well I would like to add this to that lovely idiotic phrase,
Tel me what it Is that you wont do for you country, for tis your country that is spreading your legs as far apart as possible and ramming your up the you know what to the hilt.

The forever war carries on and its getting hotter.

THE ROVING EYE

China, Russia and the Iraqi oil game

By Pepe Escobar

Eleven percent of the world´s reserves (second in the world after Saudi Arabia); 112 billion barrels of proven reserves; and at least 220 billion barrels of probable reserves. As Iraq is universally acknowledged to be the new promised land of oil, the name of the game in the industry is PSA.

PSA stands for "production share agreement": Iran and Kuwait, for instance, don't approve PSAs, they flatly refuse to share sovereignty over their natural wealth. Iraq is another matter entirely.

The war of positioning for a possible post-Saddam Iraqi environment is getting more ruthless by the minute. American oil conglomerates are openly courting representatives of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella opposition. The darling of Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco is Ahmed Chalabi, US vice President Dick Cheney's pal and major contender for the title of Iraq's number one opposition figure. Chalabi, the INC leader, has already stressed on the record that he favors the creation of a "US-led consortium to develop Iraqi oil fields. American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil."


People like former CIA supremo James Woolsey are not even disguising Washington's plan to turn Iraq into an American protectorate with an Arab Hamid Karzai al-la Afghanistan eager to open the oil taps for American oil giants. Woolsey had been openly saying that if France and Russia contributed to "regime change", their oil companies would be able to "work together" with the new regime and with American companies. Otherwise, they would be left contemplating passing cargoes in the Gulf.


Iraqi oil is so attractive to anyone most of all because it's cheap. Industry sources in the Gulf and Singapore confirm the production cost of a barrel of oil in the Caspian sea is around US$8. The same thing in Iraq costs only 70 cents. So the new oil frontier in Central Asia for the moment is little more than a mirage. The same sources confirm that Iraq is currently producing around 1.5 million barrels a day. But its production capacity is supposedly between 3 million and 3.5 million: this is what Iraq produced when it was an oil giant, in 1979, before the Iran-Iraq war. Even without an American attack, two years and a lot of investment would be necessary to get back to this figure. And to double oil production, it would take five to six years, and extra billions of dollars.


There we go now you know what the scoop is, oil, oil, oil baby, reminds me of that song ICE ICE baby, we should now be putting oil into those lyrics and start raping maybe it might become a million dollar hit. This is going to one badly misjudged war, would it not be funny if such a war actually lasted longer than it was expected and produced more casualties than it was thought possible, and then the world sees hum the infidel are really not so strong as them claim ( infidel in the eyes of the Muslim extremist) and what happens if one at a time they start to challenge us, I see the crumbling of a great Empire, we have spread ourselves to thin. Hopefully all this is just a figment of my imagination and I can wake up in the morning and slap myself silly and say wake up and smell the coffee or when I wake up I realize that I am actually smelling shit and it’s a lot worse than I thought.

GETTING SADDAM

PART 3: Iraq readies

By David Isenberg

Rhetorically, Iraq remains defiant. On July 17, marking the 34th anniversary of the revolution which brought his ruling Baath party to power, Saddam said that Iraqis were well prepared and equipped to defend their country against any military assault. "Temmuz [July revolution] returns to say to all evil tyrants and oppressors of the world: you will never defeat me this time. Never! Even if you come together from all over the world, and invite all the devils as well to stand by you," Saddam said

If war comes, Iraq cannot be expected to fight as stupidly as it did in 1990, when it deployed its forces into the open desert. In Pentagon jargon, Iraq can be expected to fight "asymmetrically".

Similarly, forcing the US and its allies to fight urban warfare on a city-by-city basis means close combat of a kind where many of the technical advantages enjoyed by US troops are far less effective. It also would mean giving the war a far more negative public profile in the eyes of the rest of the world.

· According to the private consulting group Strategic Forecasting, Iraq can:
· Use its extensive air defenses to impose at least some level of attrition on attacking air forces. In that regard Iraq has been on an arms buying spree. It has been reported that Iraq is trying hard to buy new radars, mainly the Ukraine-made Kolchuga radar. It is probably the best of its kind, compact enough to be hidden in a jeep and able to locate virtually any target in air and at sea at a range of 60 miles, even if it has stealth technology protection. It can also be located only by satellite intelligence.
· Conduct a campaign of dispersal and deception designed to deny the air campaign the real-time intelligence needed to conduct a decapitation attack.
· Use its counterintelligence capability to monitor US covert operations in Iraq and in particular to identify potential collaborators. It will allow these to remain in place until shortly before the attack, then strike and liquidate them, leaving the US military without the indigenous support it would expect.
· Disperse heavy forces in such a way as to pose a threat to light-infantry forces if and when inserted. The Iraqis understand that the air campaign will cause heavy attrition to Iraqi armored and mechanized forces. However, they also understand that an effective air campaign against these forces, if it can be extended by Iraqi deception, could create an unacceptable situation for US air power, already stretched thin by other simultaneous operational requirements and denied support

In an interview with the influential Saudi-owned London daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, General Wafiq al-Samarra'i, former chief of the Iraqi military intelligence, listed some of the advantages Iraq would have in countering an invasion. Among the most obvious is the use of weapons of mass destruction, which the general says Iraq still has.

"Yes, Iraq has long-range missiles loaded with lethal 'VX' substance, specifically biological weapons and anthrax. Iraq has also succeeded in fitting these elements to long-range missile heads. Iraq is capable of fitting these elements to medium-range - 150 kilometer - missiles. Iraq has a large number of these missiles and is capable of handling such targets with its biological weapons."




And I rose to my pulpit and I said the day of reckoning is dawning and the world is indeed getting hotter all these miscreants are just itching to start something, and then I said to myself you are truly a genius for having seen this a long time ago, hum and I heard everyone clapping and singing praises, oops then I woke up and I realized it was the TV in the background and that I was on a opiate induced trip, except that I had taken no opiates, oh scary thought lol, now that I am awake and realize that I am just another normal person I can carry on with trying to analyze the above piece of news and giving you my insane take on the situation, or maybe some of you might actually think I am a somewhat of a smart chap, hum more insane things have been know to happen.
Okay the situation here is the same old story, now that these boys know that bush wants to replace their regime, they are going to fight like cornered cats, and you when a animal is cornered it suddenly becomes very ferocious because it has nothing to lose, it has already lost everything so might as well take as many as it can with it as it goes down, this is exactly what’s going to happen, Iraq will use biological weapons against our troops this time, they wont fight in the desert like they did last time, this time they will hide in the cities and render all our advanced technologies obsolete, and the wild card is Israel, Iraq has stated that they will attack Israel also, so what happens if Iraq sends 2-3 or more missiles loaded with biological weapons into Israel and takes out thousands and thousands of people, the trigger happy boys there might just send of a nuclear shower to Iraq and then the world becomes quiet for one millisecond before everyone is on red alert, where do we go then.
Pray or cast spells whatever it is that you do in order that those up there might see the light, however hard it maybe for them to do so

I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years.
--Sam Kinison

THE ROVING EYE

Al-Qaeda's global terror franchiseBy Pepe Escobar

Karachi, Djerba, Yemen, Bali, Moscow - and now Amman, where an American diplomat has been assassinated. Al-Qaeda is back - with a vengeance. But is it al-Qaeda? Guesswork flies from the US to Western Europe to Southeast Asia and back. Al-Qaeda is a portmanteau code word to define anything from a terrorist attack to virtual threats, dormant cells, alleged conspiracies, axis of evil-related states and even deranged serial killers such as the Washington sniper.

In a sense, Osama bin Laden - now "resurrected" in his ancestral tribal land in north Yemen - has already won. His strategy of fear has proved to be a tremendous success. Al-Qaeda may have changed its name to Fath-e-Islam since early September. It may have started concentrating on soft targets. It may have subcontracted tasks to indigenous groups everywhere. And although al-Qaeda is still an ideology - even a cosmology - it's not an organization or a movement any more. It's now a mutant virus, an invisible international jihad spreading its tentacles, like a real McDonald's of terrorism.


There you go what a nice phrase McDonalds style terrorism, I suppose instead of asking you if you would like to super size your meal with large fries and a coke, they will be asking you hum do you want anthrax or small pox with that and would you like a side order of uranium we have a special going on right now buy one and get on free. If this was not somewhat real we could all sit and laugh and my attempts at being a comedian. But its sad to say that Bin laden is stronger than before and the worst thing is that these terrorists are now hiding a lot of their wealth in gold and diamonds, perhaps they went to the Austrian school of economics or have a former fed head counseling them, but these bad boys are becoming more sophisticated and are forming major alliances with all other extreme networks which have become even more sympathetic towards them after America’s hard stance at the UN. We are helping them become 20 times stronger than they could have without our help, isn’t it funny in an ironical way, that in trying to pulverize them we will have made them stronger than they could have ever become in theirs and our wildest dreams. We chopped one head and up reared a thousand more to take its place. The even more scary thought is that AL Qaeda does not even have to do the work anymore they can just subcontract the work out to another extreme branch, like they most probably did with the Chechen rebels in Russia. It looks like the next place they might try to hit will be Thailand another popular tourist area, and they have finally figured this out, hey we don’t need to attack America at home to get them we can do that outside America with equal intensity, then watch them attack us in Europe and you can forget about global warming, because with global terrorism the situation will be much hotter than any weather man could have ever forecasted, and watch the economies of the world just dive, because remember we have become a just in time economy, everything is subcontracted out, so nothing is made at any one place, especially in Europe and America it all comes from other parts of the world, can you imagine the chaos when the supply lines are destabilized, the Swine’s ( Islamic militants ) are I am very sure at this very moment studying this.
And remember they are spending money on education, now they are sending their recruits to study overseas and specialize. And they have all the advantage on their sides, they can strike and fade away in seconds or minutes and then re emerge to strike again.

The terrible thing about terrorism is that ultimately it destroys those who practise it. Slowly but surely, as they try to extinguish life in others, the light within them dies.
--Terry Waite (b. 1939) British religious adviser, hostage in Lebanon

Tanker blast spawns a Yemeni coast guard

By Nabil Sultan

SANA'A, Yemen - The political spillover from the terrorist attack on the French tanker Limburg is beginning to spread as wide as the oil that flowed from its breached hull.

That this was a terrorist attack and no accident is now certain. "The results of investigations into the blast along with French and US anti-terrorism prosecutors proved undoubtedly that the explosion was a deliberate terrorist act by an explosives-laden boat," Interior Minister Rashad al-Alimi said following investigations.

The boat that hit the Limburg was remote-controlled, Yemeni officials now say. The attack on the Limburg on October 6 came almost two years after the attack on the USS Cole off Aden port on October 12, 2000. Seventeen US sailors died in the attack on the Cole and 39 were injured.


More of the same stuff, this week I decided to focus on theme of the forever war as I like to call it, but my favorite term for it is the coming religious wars, as the Islamic militants believe that the west is ready to do Islam in, its an old religion and its traditions are very old and out of date with the modern era, so the radicals will do all they can to make sure their religion is not crushed by some westerners. The fact that Billy graham sons and some other well known jackasses who pretend to be Christians but are busy putting down other religions does not help much, when you are calling muslins are bunch of terror loving bandits. The problem is you grouping everyone that is Muslim in the same camp, remember the regular Muslim hates these radicals as much as we do, but if we keep grouping them in the same category as the radicals don’t be surprised when they finally become more sympathetic to their cause. Ignorance knows no limits in depth, dimension or , magnitude, its one area that will never cease to amaze you perpetually, as everyday there is another idiot out there who is hell bent on winning the world Guinness book of records on idiocy.

Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is the one that gets past you.
--Paul Wilkinson (b. 1937) British scholar

Bin Laden's terror wave 2

By Marc Erikson

Reports - or call it hopeful assumptions - of his demise were exaggerated. Osama bin Laden is alive and proving it. The attack on the French supertanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen on October 6, the Bali bombing on October 12, and the Moscow theater hostage drama show all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda coordination, optimization of the organization's remaining capabilities, and characteristic striving for symbolic impact. Add to that Israeli intelligence sources' claims that bin Laden, his operations chief Ayman Zawahiri, and several hundred hardcore followers since the end of September are back and safe in bin Laden's ancestral territory in the border region of Yemen and Saudi Arabia (the most inhospitable area of the Arabian peninsula, the Rub al-Khali or Empty Quarter, the largest sand sea on the face of the earth), and the prospects for continuation of the present terror wave and others to follow are high.


There you have it the terror loving sons of bitches are all fine and smiling and busy catching even deeper tans in the desert. Their tentacles are getting longer and more complex as they work their way into every radical group they can and forge alliances with them. It’s a matter of time before they move from being a small problem to a huge explosive unstoppable beast, if policies are not changed fast expect them to expand exponentially and affect us in ways we never dreamed possible just a few years and it will all be thanks to our stupid foreign policy, we are not the police of the world, we can barely control things back here at home and we are busy trying to control things everywhere else. This crazy war cry and hell bent determinism to force the UN members to see the light as we do or proceed regardless of their approval is a dangerous precedent, and the cowards in the house and senate all voted to give the president the final say, oh well remember the idiots in charge are reflective of the population at large, and as a result we have no reason to cry when the shit hits the fan. The best thing that could happen but wont happen for many more decades, is that if all the presidents in the world were, you guessed it Females, then there would be a lot less fighting since there would less testerone in the air.

If you are a terror to many, then beware of many.
--Ausonius



Life is so great in its opportunities and possibilities, that you should rise confidently above the inevitable trifles incident to daily contact with the world. Life is too precious to be sacrificed for the nonessential and transient... Ignore the inconsequential.
--Grenville Kleiser


World - AP Europe

Russia Arrests Alleged Chechen Rebel

Thu Oct 31,11:17 AM ETBy SARAH KARUSH, Associated Press Writer MOSCOW (AP) - A suspected Chechen terrorist was arrested in Moscow carrying 18 pounds of poisonous mercury while allegedly planning a new attack, and Russian officials said Thursday that evidence gathered after last week's hostage siege implicated Chechnya (news - web sites)'s top elected leader.
Sergei Krym-Gerei, allegedly a member of a gang led by prominent Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, was carrying the mercury in a bottle when he was arrested. He has refused to answer questions.
"Such an amount of mercury would poison a very large number of people," police spokesman Filipp Zolotnitsky said on NTV television.
Krym-Gerei, 36, from Russia's North Caucasus region, was detained several days ago by police acting on a tip, he said.
And so the terror escalates, more and more we strike once and they kill hundred of innocent victims then we strike again and this time they take out thousands, some day it might be millions how many time are we going to keep doing that which guarantees nothing but hatred and more violence, a war against terrorism is doomed to fail, just as trying to create bull mkt out of bear right now is nothing but self delusion and an exercise in futility and an expansion of ones levels of stupidity.
Attack the route cause of the problem and we might just solve this war, everything else is bound to result in more violence or just be a temp fix in an otherwise very volatile and unpredictable situation, take that which gives these terror loving bandits their power, provide economic relief for their people and hope and we will effectively kill this beast just as fast as it emerged, they are gaining momentum because their people have nothing to lose.
It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful
--Anton Szandor LaVey

“The wise voice is a like whisper in a desert, while the insane on is a loud horn in a city” sol

Iraq VP Sends U.S. Harsh Warning

Fri Nov 1,10:04 AM ETBy DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s deputy warned Americans on Friday they would be "sent to hell" if they attack Iraq

Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan also called on the U.N. Security Council to prevent the United States from pushing through a tougher resolution about Iraq's weapons programs, seen by critics as an automatic green light to attack.
"The aggressors will be sent to hell if they attack Iraq," Ramadan told reporters.
He called on Russia, China and France, all three veto-holding Security Council members, to reject the U.S.-sponsored draft resolution that threatens Iraq with "serious consequences" if it does not allow U.N. weapons inspectors unhindered work when they return to Iraq.

Keep pushing a tame animal into a corner, more and more and it might just do something that you never thought possible, turn around and fight you for its life and you might actually end up getting hurt a lot more than you ever dreamed possible, in desperate times even a meek animal finds a way and resolve to fight. Iraq is preparing for a full fledged battle, where they consider that their lives and what they believe for are at stake, yes that’s true since the beliefs of the country originate from one imbecile but does not give us any right to go there and oust him and replace him with some other idiot who might even be worse. At least know we are dealing with a known devil rather an unknown one. We keep pushing and pushing and you all know what happens when you push and push.
Hum remember gentleman that pretty girl you tired so hard to get once and you tried and tired and you just could not get to the promised land of milk and honey J
Why over efforting is sometimes just as bad as not trying at all. Yes I know many of you will say oh not me it never happened to me, I am a ladies men okay so you can fool us but not yourself haha , that’s the best way to illustrate a point sometime, through a little sexuality and people go ahhhhhhhh I see the light
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
--Will Rogers (1879-1935

Market commentary
For awhile now the newsletter will be only available via email and after two weeks or so will post them on the net, but what I will today is now have a daily mkt commentary page that will be updated almost everyday, there will be some comments on the mkt. The homepage will now be www.tacticalinvestor.com, from this site you will be able to access all issues of the newsletters, there will be a two week delay now on posting maybe even longer so email will be the only way to get it fresh out of the oven so as to speak of, or more like fresh out of the hard drive.
Hum lets how observant you guys are tell me what is out of sync on that page.
I posted comments from some of our readers, if you don’t wont to be mentioned please let me know and I will remove your name and your comments of.
By the way as I mentioned before that this newsletter is only a recommendations based service and so even though it would be easy to expand through advertising I don’t want to just have a mass of ignorance populate my website, even though I have already been approached by some individuals that wanted to market my newsletter and take the reign of controls from my hands I have not succumbed to that, mainly because I do not like working under someone else conditions and whims, this kills creativity and passion. So for those of you that have been recommending individuals to the site and newsletter I thank you and keep up the good work, this way we can at least ensure that we have a reasonable chance of meeting like minds whenever we have chats or post messages on the forum board.
This weeks newsletter is not going to be huge, its not going to have all that analysis that I will now be doing only every now and then depending on the time I have, I do that in order that you might be able to see how mass psychology is really a very intricate part of the mkts, as you now recall I was one of the few people shouting out that it was time to close out all pure short plays towards the end of September and that everyone bearish calls was now making me becoming bullish and towards the end of September I became bullish, I was early on the call but no one can time it perfectly if they do its just pure luck, here at the tactical investor the most important thing is to get the direction right and as long as the timing is relatively decent than everything usually works out. That lucky call on our part produced some nice gains for us on our strangle plays.
So as we look to the future we are entering what is known as dead waters, the QQQ’s are leading the way in terms of strength having broken through their 100 MA and on decent volume they held their ground even when the mkt sold of, so the next target looks like it could be 30.32, then you might ask why the hell are we still holding the QQQ puts well they are long term puts and have a year plus in time, but we are going to convert that play into a strangle play and not just a pure put play, look below for the play. In addition we are going to convert the Tol brothers play into a strangle play to by adding a call to it.

IBM and the Dow

RESULTS FROM THE CONTRARIAN POLL I WAS CONDUCTING

Mutual fund play