Eating In Russian Kitchens

“The Secrets of Russian Cuisine.”

This is a more elegant phrase employed by Western publishers to render a rather genteel english translation of the title of a book by East German Spymaster Markus Wolf, which was really called “Secrets of the Russian Kitchen.”

The subtle, nuanced difference, is that of the difference between a culinary art, and the results or consequences that require to be hidden, concerning what scullery maids get up to with the lord of the manor.

Personally, I'd love to categorically delineate who I think are 'the good guys' and who 'the bad.' Unfortunately of course, it is impossible to shake off those romantic myths and legends from the mindsets of the ordinary folk. I speak of myths and tales by which those who steer the course of State - exploit and manipulate the masses. The James Bond myth. The noble english lord myth. The honest policeman myth... The licence granted by the State...

A Great Russian Design

But look here, when you understand that the upper echelons of recent United Kingdom political leadership consists of mostly sunset industry moghuls – to put it at its very kindest – then you may begin to see that a huge tobacco company, for instance, is staring down the barrel of a total laying waste to the lifestyle that its bosses a long time ago became accustomed to... And that, it's entirely possible that those bosses in their social 'kitchen cabinetting' with political and even government, administrative, senior executives, asked for some leeway or relief from the rules and from the law, in order to protect their revenue and their lifestyle. And far be it from me to suggest that they might have been able to unduly influence the answers given, and/or the future policy of government!

However I have no such illusions about Russian realpolitik or at least, realforeignpolitik.

I am quite certain that Marcus Wolf had long established a system and a regime of generating, educating, or cultivating deep cover operatives who were aimed very specifically, at the very highest echelons of establishment power all around the world.

In my personal view, this establishment, asked for and got, during the Thatcher era, not a 'licence to kill,' but a 'licence to thieve...' And I further think that this misbehaviour has extended into the present climate of fear of terrorism in all its reputed forms – from home-grown nutjob to full-blown external sovereign insertions – in order to exploit this justification regarding 'saving us all from terrorists,' as the moral behind why some big players and their guided missile men, are allowed to defraud, forge, hack into, and steal from, whoever they designate as an 'open season target.'

But, as they say in the sporting world in which I sometimes dwell: "don't forget while you're thinking that you are invincible, that the other team is also going to turn up on the day and play too."

One of the very largest top echelon companies in England is Hanson PLC – a first class asset stripper that would make Mitt Romney blush. Baron Hanson partnered with a certain Lord White of Hull to form Hanson Trust originally. But – neither Hanson nor White are what I would call genuine aristocrats. There was a something-or-other of Hull, but that was long ago, before the Constable of London, Oliver Cromwell, did away with his opponents in the real aristocracy. And so all these modern this, that, and the other of so-an-so a place in England somewhere (and sometimes not even!) are all manufactured 'life peerages' handed out during Thatcher and afterward too, generally on account of massive successes in asset stripping, vast redundancies, abandonment of research and development, and grabbing their hands onto a lot of immediate CASH.

But the game of chess is slow and terribly fair.

Listen to me – I don't need anything Julian Assange has in order to kick the establishment in the balls.

Here is a picture of the young inheritor of the Hanson Empire – Robert Hanson – a wonderful fellow, highly-educated at the very best of toffy schools, wealthy beyond your, yay even YOUR dreams, and his wife the onetime Russian model Masha Markova.

Now when I say that certain people have been doing some bad stuff that involves gross illegality, I literally do mean exactly that. And sad to say, the police and the courts and government agencies and bureaucracies have protected them. Just as in the days of old Cromwell – who also, was saving the honest citizenry from the terrible misdeeds of tyrants and the unfaithful. Young Hanson is not guilty of anything that I am aware of, but I do rather think that he is now a leaky sieve, as it were, in a Russian kitchen, so to speak. Or, if not, very like unto those situations of a similar kind then that strangely enough involve some bright young thing, of very very well-trained origin. If you know what I mean.

Well, I think 'watch this space' is inadequate; I confidently predict for you, the utter demise of many once-were establishment lords and kings. And dare I say, I notice a few luxury product websites prognosticating that SINGAPORE, of all places, 'may by 2050 be the wealthiest nation on earth.' Oh, okay then. However, I always like to underscore the strong connection between London City and Singapore's oligarchic 'elite.' One falls from this sort of tree they all will fall. And that will be the end of that! The cause of my animus? Oh dear. Just stop listening to the myth-making! There is no James Bond. There has never ever been a James Bond. There is a BP, a British American Tobacco, and a Philip Morris, a Hanson Trust, and so on, though. And none of them are working for the taxpayer or the citizen. And no politician who goes along for their ride is looking after your interests. And the reason there is a banking problem today, is precisely because in stealing from everyone, the 'elite' has lost all capacity to use its brains. If Marcus Wolf were alive today, I'd be eating in his kitchen everyday. HE was the suave and cultured superspy. And HE has descendents even now.

I'm just an observer though, who once had uncles in the oil business, who left me with the luxury of being able to know a few handy names, and sit around a lot and 'read the play.'

The Silence That Falls...

Friday I have a good muslim friend of mine turn up and we have coffees, teas, even cigars maybe, and talk about good wine and blonde women, generally.
It is just past the middle of Ramadan at the moment and ye Muslime Friend - let's call him Hakim Philby - should be at the mosque. He is, however, over here.
He doesn't feel that welcome at any of the local mosques, because, unfortunately, not only is he regarded as 'Westernized' but probably corrupted by his expensive Western schooling as well. And that is not to say he is altogether understood and accepted either, by those current crops of privileged kids of African dictators and 'democratic leaders' who also went to places like Eton and Oxford and so on.

Turk's hats... in the cold snow

My friend is from a past generation.
This was the Golden Generation where money didn't mean a thing compared to principles, be they religious, moral, political or merely civic ones.
(I'm not completely sure such a generation ever really existed of course but I seem to recall that it may have...)
So... He should be fasting during the day.
Anyway, he brought over some chicken and a few odds and ends of ingredients and I went to work in my kitchen observing that both he and my wife and the next door neighbour were acting a bit like schooling sharks.
The whole mob of them were as noisy as all hell. There was a copy on the dining table of the very latest Marie Claire magazine filled to the brim with risque tales and over-skinny models and sex advice.
Nobody at my place lets me make Beef Burgundy or any of the Russian or Hungarian things that I personally like to make and eat. So I'm stuck with a sort of Tamil chicken curry and white rice with a touch of sesame oil in it. Not every Friday but well, fairly often.
I bring these two great tureens out and then all of a sudden there's this dead quiet and nobody says a word and the intensity and seriousness with which people serve themselves and get down to work eating is fascinating.

The silence - that kind of silence - is gratifying for any cook.
I'm not sure I will over a short term be able to introduce things like pickled cucumber and vodka or caviar or borscht because these things are a world apart from food you eat IN TOTAL SILENCE.
However it's very cold in places like Kiev or even Red Square often and you don't want to talk in those sorts of places unless someone absolutely insists that you do.
There is a certain pure functionality about some Russian cultural motifs, although there can be some ornateness present too.
You can see I'm doing a Russian theme at the moment. There may be a reason. In fact I'll tell you what the reason is - take the two cultures, American, and Russian, and take from out of them the best that you can find in both... ...and let's just dump all the Karl Rove, Ben Bernanke rubbish and propaganda. I'll bet there are some REAL problem areas in the Russian culture too that people there very familiar with it would also love to dispose of permanently. I'll ask my spy friend - not the Muslim guy, a different friend altogether - and let you know in another post what lunatic nonsense self-important but scene-grabbing people and ideas Russians themselves would like to do away with.
Oh yes, and there IS something going on at the Kremlin right now. You can be very sure of that. Whose side must I be on? Actually I will still be here each Friday; Mohammed and Marx can come visit anytime if they like. Well okay, maybe Tamerlane and Kruschev! I don't want to be bored!

Russian Firebird

Any time you encounter a folk tale or fairy story or fantastic myth involving 'a garden,' you are dealing with the classical 'Garden of the Hesperides' story. This is an unusual story because it is never very prominently rendered by the Greeks themselves, who have a few writers and philosophers who endeavoured to explain it. As is quite typical of them, though, they actually try to place the garden in a real place somewhere in the world, usually suggested to be 'somewhere in or near' modern day Spain.

Ksenia O.

If you ever get the chance to go and see the great ballet 'The Firebird,' you will observe that it is just when the day begins at last to turn towards the night, when all the critical action happens, and when the Firebird herself, fatefully takes the stage. ...Glowing like red-orange embers, strange dark and upward slanted eyes, and supernatural and with divine powers.

Fatefully... takes the stage.

Remember those words.

Classical myths and folk takes become popular and resist the changes of time and mere fashion, because people discover that they are at heart fundamentally sound in some crucial respect, either granting an insight into something that is impenetrable by ordinary perceptions and thinking, or symbolically describing some happenstance or event of human lives that remains a mystery to science and to The O'Reilly Factor.

I was absolutely astounded just the other day, when I heard that runaway from London City, Piers Morgan, give it away on television, that Western governments (and he quickly implicated England and MI6 by name also in his words) 'use everything at their disposal, all their resources, and throwing all their efforts' behind 'undermining the capability of people who might finance Islamic terrorism...'

Oh dear. I know what that means. It means that certain people are justifying criminal acts and illegal practices, in the name of destabilizing foreign terrorists, with possible negative effects on – quite possibly – totally innocent and uninvolved bystanders including bystanding corporates.

Same Russian Ballerina

Meanwhile, no doubt Standard Chartered Bank must be playing official double agent and handing over commissions from Iran secretly to the City of London somewhere, does it?

So am I saying that Syria and Iran are nations that have moral right on their side? What a laughable thought. No, indeed no. They are scandalously immoral. Moreover both practice computer attack strategies and tactics that harm and injure us 'ordinary man-in-the-street' folk.

What I am saying is that one ought not to assume that those who have their dirty little hands all around all the levers of State in their official capacities over here on the 'good side,' do so for only purely honourable and altruistic reasons that we would all approve of and applaud.

If, like me, you spent a few seconds wondering why the Russians really are supporting those miscreants in Syria, let me suggest to you that it might be because in listening in on what is being said inside Whitehall in private rooms and chambers, it must have occurred to the 'Czar Valdimir the First of This Century' – following which he consulted with Roman Abramovich and his colleague George Soros – that the fair thing to do in the circustances, was to interpose some hindrances in the way of Karl Rove and his artistes of propaganda, as he, Rove, creeped his way around Europe infecting politicians everywhere with the Gospel of Libertisation. And let me hint, that the power of the Greeks, as always, resides in and at that moment where they appear to drift into the twilight... My money is not on Germany. And as we see profits drops everywhere, no miracle will alter that fate even for Germans either. Stay away from Germany and German companies. Just a guess, of course.

The Champagne And Club Sandwich World

And then all of a sudden a thing is right there before your eyes in reality – rather than just on the net!

And the reality teaches you a great big lesson.

A Bacon-Lettuce-Tomato sandwich can be staggeringly good. That is, if it is made with the right kind of bacon, and if the mayonnaise is top notch. To hell with all this stuff nowadays about salt. It's got to be made PROPERLY in order to be any good.

But if it is good it is sensational.

Of course in the old days this thing was known as the 'club sandwich' and it might have had all kinds of other things in it too. My personally preference is to add a few thick slices of white chicken breast.

In a day and age of great pretentiousness – hey just look at the Fed – there are those who seem to believe you have to go to a Michelin 3-star restaurant in order to open a decent champagne with a meal, and that just simply isn't the case.

Chicken goes with champagne. A few bits of chicken in a first class BLT (therefore 'plus chicken') and you can certainly justify getting out the Mumm or the Veuve Cliquot.

And what a satisfying course all of that is!

There is 15 kilos of gold-leaf spread all over the newly renovated Bolshoi Theatre - so we are told - and the carillon bells ring out at each premier night of a new ballet or opera. The beautiful red velvet drapes hang against the sides everywhere and of course also over the private boxes, and a huge glittering chandelier dazzles atop it all inside the main hall. There, indeed you can open the great champagnes and imbibe the scents of Robert Piguet's Bandit French perfume and the effluvia of the underarms of Russian mistresses and second wives in their Imperial Bargunzinskya Zobol coats...

The function of money as expense, is never matched by its ability to reward. The scale of reward from a great BLT and a glass of even vin ordinaire, is exponentially 'off the scale' as they say compared to its dollar cost. Although I'll admit that a well-prepared night at the opera or ballet equates. But only equates, mind you, in the sense that it too goes exponentially 'off the scale' of value for money. The two sorts of things are good, put it that way. And I never resist either, when opportunity puts them in my way. They are both very very satisfying experiences.

Best to All,

Calvin J. Bear

What Barry Meyer Thinks, Maybe!

A sort of type of thinking that gives me a really comfortable feeling at night – or anytime when I'm on the verge of sleep – is this fantasy of being like one of these current-era suburban or country doomsday preppers who is lying in wait for alien zombies or reptilian aliens disguised as government people or politicians. And, having and hording weapons and hi-tech equipment and things.

But what I think of is aiming a Springfield Armory M1A SOCOM with a side-mounted laser optic and other fancy fruit at some tin can or metal sign or something and blasting some fragging round into it. Or into a zombie alien, literally – that is, if such a thing existed; which it does do of course in that place between awake consciousness and deep dark sleep.

Caption? Are you kidding!

The worst thing I could think of, and not comforting at all, is shooting a human being. Even the odd few real villains and enemies I know, I'm not really certain it would interest me to shoot and kill them...

Self-defence? Not really an issue with me. I have an unusual amount of prescience, you might even say, capacity to read minds. At fifty-three I don't bother to argue the 'science' of it anymore with my own mind – I have done it too many times to bother or care to doubt myself anymore. But you don't have to believe that bit of course.

I can appreciate a piece of mechanical engineering, whether of fine wood, or machined metal, or complex synthetics – just for what it is, rather than what it claims to be able to do.

I come from a long long and ancient line of people who really know how to be angry and to cause a lot of damage.

All this nonsense that spreads out everywhere these days about people being scared of evil conspiracies and crooked governments and corrupted banks and malicious dark overlords against whom there is a deep social angst – is all simple-minded nonsense to me.

You have a choice to slump into or wallow in a myre of all-deprecating self-misery and anti-everythingness. Without wanting to turn off here, those who admire him, Richard Dawkins is another one of these one-sided self-proclaimed super-'scientific sceptics.' If anything at all, though, to me, he does genuine science a great disservice. There is a modern tendency to keep saying 'science knows thus far, but it could change its position when further science tells it different...' No. It doesn't and it couldn't. Dawkins is symptomatic of a grand social malaise that stems from the inability to take charge.

The most dangerous person you know is a philosopher, that is, the genuine philosopher. Not the mad or even the mind-controlled gunman. I have read in several different places that the head of Warner, Barry Meyer, thinks that if he can control the roughly-on-average 3000 thoughts a day that the average person thinks, he can affect directions of business and buyers' interests and tastes.

And I think he's right – that is, if indeed he ever did really say such a thing.

But there is such a thing as a David-and-Goliath effect in philosophical thought, too. A densely-packed complex idea with a small cross-section of signal, can be leveraged up against all the photons of Fox TV, if it is capable of being augmented by other intelligent minds. That is, it has to be rational. Can be wildly unlikely, but still possible...

Let me give you an example:

I learnt this from J. Paul Getty, who I met once as a young boy in Singapore through my uncle who was then a director of Shell Far East.

Getty said that he was able to observe the incredible value enhancements of technology – for instance as they did away with entire office blocks and stenographers and typists (and their attendant costs), through for example the invention of the Xerox copier. And that he adjusted how he himself operated along with those technological advancements that he could see cut down capital costs and operating expenses.

If I look at Daimler the automotive manufacturer, and consider the huge capital investment base they have to work from, I have to laugh about what they consider is a great achievement for them, say, something like their Mercedes SLS AMG. How can you produce what is essentially only a copy of someone else's past design, admittedly with current materials and technology, when you have so much capital at risk?

The car has some nice aspects, but it also has some desperate flaws.

The Alfa C8 Competizione gets me more interested...

We are thinking entirely incorrectly when we still give face to banks and governments and so-called ratings agencies and to the pop media and their running dogs in politics. Cut all of this expense out. In the sense of stop being concerned that the big financial solutions to modern markets must come from any of these. The big solutions will come from guys with just a few computers, iphones, ipads, usb sticks, video cameras, printers, satellite connections, and basic (by modern standards) software programmes. We make a huge mistake in not personally accounting for the frankly, billions of dollars of capital cost savings, that we make, when we can successfully integrate these bits and pieces of common technological gadgets, and link with even half-way decent individual brainpower.

I'm not really in the mood for self-critique, or morose whining about moribund banks and sharemarkets, when right now I get to play with effectively greater resources than NASA had in the Sixties. Okay, maybe I'll come up with only a decadent way of using them. But so what?!! There's a lot of freedom and power in there. And I'm not feeling either powerless, or suppressed, or concerned that there will be a lot of hyper-deflationary forces out there. Those forces are only applying to the dying economy of the office blocks and the sunset methods and thinking styles.

The Kangaroo Arms

Once again I sing the praises of the Joondalup Resort in Connolly, Western Australia. And this time, allow me to focus on their english-style pub - 'The Kangaroo Arms." Yeah okay it doesn't have an english name, but it is at least located in what was once a Brit Colony so there is natural authenticity in there somewhere. Leaving all that aside, you are talking about an establishment with rock solid staff and great pub food. As with everything else at this premier golf course resort, the ingredients in the meals are simply over-the-top standouts as far as quality is concerned - truly, truly excellent. You combine that with professional and legit bar staff and you get the basis for a proper sports bar. Pleasant in every way.

In a way though this place is always going to rate as 'understated.' Which of course suits me anyway. I'm not searching for either the fame, infamy, or glory of the big splash. And that means no one, absolutely NO ONE is going to give a damn that I AM SHERLOCK HOLMES!

...I walked off the pages of an Irishman's fictional tale, and into the real world. But frankly, there are a lot fewer mysteries in the real world for me than you might think. And I am certainly at least as arrogant as the fictional Holmes was. Certainly. One day I shall present you all with a mystery the reckoning of which will thrill, and tax, and enervate, and reward.

Best,

Calvin J. Bear

Lifestyle Destination

A bank is not a lifestyle destination. Why not? Mine is.

Talise Spa - a Lifestyle Destination

How much money do you need? You wouldn't need any greater sum than what goes through the so-called 'dark pools' or 'dark liquidity' funds that are the secret behind why no government or central bank anywhere really is interested in 'fixing up' the banking system today.

The banking system isn't broken.

Got it? The system IS NOT broken. It is simply NOT. By all means you go ahead and read all the crap that is posted everywhere else and in every newspaper and is shown through every av media channel throughout the world but hey, you know what – they are all just proving how much on the outside they all are.

The reason you even bother looking at this web-log is that deep down inside you have a disquieted little feeling that maybe you really are reading someone on the inside.

The single biggest problem in the world of finance today is merely the hijacking of terms and phrases that mean one thing in the hands of intelligent people – and another thing altogether once they get rough-ridden through the mire of modern let's-pretend journalism. There is no way the hedge funds – as they are called now and even rated by rating agencies(!) - are, really hedging anything. The structure and investment process of these funds rely on the same driving forces that installed idiots like Bob Diamond in clown paradises like Barclay's. Barclays died around 1989. Barings officially died. Barclays – like a lot of other corporations riddled with tertiary qualified twits at management level – hung around through the political nuance of family connection its employees had with members of government and political parties. Barclay's did not manipulate LIBOR. LIBOR wasn't there. It still isn't. The end game for pretending that moneyed interests who got snipped a few points because of a 'reference rate' require to be compensated through the courts will wash up onto the wrecking shore either of staggeringly higher interest rates (I'd like to see the modern politician deal with that context) when proper admissions are made, or bankrupt governments through an economy without any circulatory lifeblood by continuing the pretence of artificial low interest rates.

I hope, that the phrase 'dark pool' doesn't also get hijacked by all these idiots. It has significant meaning to those who know what it is.

For gold bugs, dark pools are where the difference between the actual deliverable physical price of precious metals, and the New York digitally-groomed price, goes. Once again, read all the rubbish you like about this ancient relic and how 'the bankers' are suppressing its price and how it earns no dividend. Rubbish people = rubbish ideas.

Armani Spa is a Lifestyle
Destination

That is why Bob Diamond's old job is now a 'lifestyle destination' for some lucky (though still rubbish) bastard with a degree from even some backwater university. Because even a half-smart clown realizes that Barclays is, as are all other fake banks, dead as the proverbial Dodo bird and that he/she will have to be compensated for taking the next fall when it happens again.

There is a man somewhere (several in fact, and one or two women) who owns a dark pool. That man is a bank. And he sends his wife to Armani Spa Dubai on weekends and his mistress or mistresses to the Talise Body Regenerator. As for the one or two women, I have no idea what they do for their husbands and expensive friends.

The lifestyle destination of idiots with degrees who are playing around in deathtraps – is eventually to be fucked. The lifestyle destination of the wise and knowledgeable is the hamam, the place you recoup from doing a lot of fucking.

Diamond Bob, Not Diamond Jim

So London gets religion all of a sudden, does it? Bob Diamond goes and half of the USA says 'we should learn from the Brits...'

The only thing you can learn from the Brits in these circumstances is how to push stuff under the carpet.

The media is covering the story at the moment as though it is about the collusion of several bankers from different brand name banks 'manipulating' the interest rate call between themselves (bank-to-bank rate, aka LIBOR, or the London Interbank Offering Rate), supposedly for a financial benefit to themselves.

Bar at the Savoy, London... Old men and...!

Uh-huh. Sorry. Let me remind you that the problem was that when the Lehman thing happened the LIBOR trade COMPLETELY DRIED UP ALTOGETHER. You know that was the position back then and I know it, and we both remember this coverage by the Bank of England's Governor put out into the media at the time. And with the subsequent effect of a global series of actions by Western Central Banks to provide liquidity TO BANKS to ameliorate the feared run on them and any prospect that they would not be able to meet withdrawals. We ALL remember this.

I cannot reconcile that story back then, with the current idea being floated that somehow, bankers or their designated LIBOR traders 'artificially' suppressed the cost of interbank money and 'artificially' dropped the interest rates with any kind of financial advantage to themselves. EVERYBODY knows that the plain and simple fact is that every single bank was asked at the time by the Bank of England to continue to lend to their fellow banks – and in order to catch a bid, as they say, I'm sure that it was a legitimate action to offer lower and lower interest rates until someone started borrowing.

And yet, even this characterisation begs the question of why, apparently, banks also at the same time were said to have feared the creditworthiness of other banks. So now we have this convoluted story that 1. banks conspired and colluded to create artificially low interest rates, wheras 2. no one was willing to lend in any case, and 3. no one apparently was seeking to borrow at the LIBOR rate (which is generally the lowest rate) in the first place.

And the only resolution to that cockamamee mix-up, is one to do with collateral and security, rather than lack of actual need to borrow money. Therefore, one must ask, is there already in existence, an independently scrutinized process whereby LIBOR borrowings HAVE TO comply with set collateral and risk ratings? And if so, isn't the problem rather more that the banks have no collateral left to hock? Or that all their collateral is purest rubbish?

So I guess then that when the ECB and others speak of 're-capitalising' banks, they must mean supplying them with adequate collateral... And where, one might ask, are they going to get this 'decent' collateral from, since the property valuations all over the place are now known to be wildly overstated.

Argh maybe just write properties down to what they should be and get on with things... You know deflation. Wait a minute, then governments would not be able to collect stamp duties, and rates and taxes at the usual exorbitant levels! We can't have that! So, what we must have then, is collusion between GOVERNMENTS and bankers to manipulate 'market' values and prices – but not between bankers and other bankers to do the same thing. Oh I get it: good old hypocrisy.

Not Nekulturny

Supposedly, Bob Diamond is worth around $650 million. He wears atrocious clothes for a fellow of that kind of wealth; they're cheap-looking in the sense of common and banal. And I would never have stuck my money anywhere near an organisation headed by someone common and/or banal. Vulgar, yes, common, no.

Best, Calvin J. Bear (nod nod, wink wink to the wise.)

Tricked-up Gangsta Rap

How It's Done - the real MI6

All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Rupert Murdoch's empire is falling apart. Oh, sorry, I mean 'he's splitting the company into the lucrative entertainment assets, and the useless newspaper parts...'

Useless newspaper parts. Worthless, tainted, non-performing, loss-making newspapers.

God who needs newspapers. Not Rupert, that's for sure. Is he actually literate?

In my day, 'literate' did not mean 'able to read and write;' it meant well-read, a person of letters. What a bastard. He's paid every politician this side of the old Iron Curtain, dumbed the public down through rotten newspapers and the influence he's had through publishing companies and government policy – and now he's finished off newspapers for keeps.

I was absolutely appalled to see the then Chief of the London Metropolitan Police actually fly the kite of 'terrorist cells still active in the city,' on the Parliamentary public media inquiry, even while he himself had been tied to the disgusting mindless activities of the phone hackers and the political mates of Rupert and their cosy club of twisted self-involved, self-interested, self-righteous, indignant Right Wing Modern Roundheads.

The inquiry was the thin end of the wedge of what these fellas have gotten up to. I mean we are talking about a massively wealthy cadre that decimated British industry in the Thatcher era, sold Rolls Royce and Bentley, utterly destroyed Leyland, and spent the years thereafter roaming around the world doing backhanded arms deals and over-invoicing on huge public works projects that drew attention from Malaysia, to Zimbabwe, to the Sudan and Saudi Arabia. You would be utterly nuts to think that the British Intelligence Establishment were not up to their necks in the whole entire messiness of this clique.

Mind you, they have a few 'successes.' I mean, speaking of bugging telephones and things, let me explain to you how they got Saif Gaddafi to trip himself up and 'run into the waiting arms of the Libyan Revolutionary Army.'

Project Kahn Design Evoque

Okay, let me not though, I could get into serious trouble.

What I will tell you about is this thing called 'masked programming.' It's about manufacturing high-end micro-chips in the countless of zillions, which can also be used in washing machines, fridges, airconditioners, audio entertainment systems, telephones - as much as they can be used in spacecraft, airforce fighter jets, and so on. Inside the chip architecture, are a series of programmed layers with pre-set programmes for all kinds of things, including for example, turning your stereo speaker into a microphone and sending the picked-up conversations and sounds to somewhere very shadowy. Everybody knows about it; it's stock standard the-way-it-is, folks.

Personally, I would not buy a new Range Rover Evoque Victoria Beckham, if I were going to have sex in it with Max Mosley, if you see what I mean. Not that I am intending to have sex with Max any time soon. And even though it does have a very good computer-controlled sound system.

Anyway. Cut a long story short. Ain't no Rupert Murdoch doing bugging of people's phones boys n girls. That's just the same old claptrap they always sell you in the fishwrap that Rupert is about to cancel shortly. Wouldn't do to let the common folk know how it's really done and who done did it all, now y'all though. Would it? Still... It's very hard to leave off something completely addictive like getting private shows of the celebrity world's kinky bitches on the government Secret Service's bill. Like Princess Di.

It's so-o-o easy-peasy too, you know. They just get some guy to change his name to something Middle Eastern-sounding, and give him a WHOLE LOT OF MONEY to start a specialist after-market bespoke car boutique. Say like 'Afzal Kahn.' What 'Kahn' do you know from the Mid-East. Khan, I know. Kahn, nope. ...And the kids come in and get their sportscars tricked-up.

Anyway here's a great gangsta rappa, at least, to get off this dismal subject. This guy is genuinely talented. Great group. Great production. Great song. Wild One, by Flo Rida ft. Sia.

You gotta remember, my uncle was M.D. Of Shell Far East some years ago. And I'm pretty sure it was Lady Daphne Guinness in the chrome and diamond mask at the kinky private show in Sydney in a twenty thousand dollar designer get-up... ...that I was also at. Too much money. Too much time. You know how it is. Secrets and whispers. Lady Daphne's great though – I admire her heaps. And she doesn't give away secrets. I don't mean to imply that by talking about her here. I'm just saying these are the sorts of places where you hear stuff which generally tends to be pretty reliable, and from people who generally tend to be very well-placed! Me, I've just got a lot of money and a very big er...

Who Don't Learn From History

Yeah well I didn't say this! Current, Harvard Professor of History Niall Ferguson (originally from Oxford) - who is supposed to be some Bilderberger/Right Wing/Colonial Apologist Historian lunatic - last week accused the German Chancellor A. Hitler (er, I mean A. Merkel/Sauer/Kasner) of being the sole bloody-minded impediment to genuine monetary union. He said something about people not learning the lessons from the 1930's.

Personally, I don't like Niall Ferguson's face - it reminds me of a current MI6 spy and provocateur Neil Loftus who was part of the scandal running from out of Investec South Africa and London to forge land title deeds and land transfers and rip off clients to the tune of billions and billions. Apparently, Loftus died in the fairly recent earthquake in New Zealand and has therefore 'disappeared...'

Again, personally, I think the whole euro 'crisis' is another scam deliberately organised to syphon productive output from taxpayers and line the pockets of whoever is going to get 'the bailout.'

I don't know who any of these nameless/faceless 'elite' individuals are. But I do know the subprime and CDO thing was crackpot lunacy from the get-go and yet it too, managed to have been put up by people - strangely enough - originating from Oxford again (Blythe Masters et cetera).

Lord - Allah - Jehovah - Giant Pumpkin, whatever you want to call yourself - please save us from a solution - if it comes - from being another one devised at Oxford.

Calvin J. Bear

All That Glitters.

I want to tell you about the character of gold; what it is, where it comes from, and what living spirit it contains.

Some say it is cursed...

It is not cursed.

In this day, Chinese people have money that can be used in the West, and so they can exercise their desires and aspirations through the spending power of money.

I personally quite literally come from a Venetian family – that is, partly from genuine Venetian blood, and in all respects from a long long history of seafarers, adventurers, merchants, soldiers, and kings.

Murano glass everywhere...

Venice in the West, sent envoys and ambassadors and magistrates-of-trade (for that is what they were called) into China, and returned with a tie of some inner and spiritual kind, to the Great Dragon of the East.

Vast balloons floating in the still air and light breezes, were covered in lightest silk from China. Rich brocades and ornate carpets, strange food and preserved fruit, medicines, paper, scent, and skyrockets... All entered into the consciousness and experience of the Venetian people because of the influence of China; its culture, ideas, and science. And because the heart and mind of the Venetian is open to subtle influences.

We, today, in the West, look at the purchasing and ownership of gold, as quite definitely a means to make money, as its price rises, in a huge bull market. We know that never was there a time when it was absolutely without worth at all, but we see it recently having risen so quickly, and, those of us who are also bulls in this golden market, hope that it will continue to do so sufficient to make us a good profit quickly.

Those who doubt the point of it all, might adopt the position of sellers, and hope that its price will fall like everything else in the deflationary conditions of the global economy today.

Two things are necessary and vital to understanding where the price of gold might go from here and when it will do so: an understanding of the spirit of Chinese higher culture, and a conception about whether or not and at what intervals the Chinese Central Government will allow its currency to appreciate now and then against the rubbish of the rest of the world that is passed off for money.

There is a traditional Chinese classical piece of music called 'Jasmine Flower.' You can easily see and hear it being played on YouTube. Listen to this, and think about whether the classical Chinese mind would buy gold for a profit – or, only for a profit. And then when you next go down to your gold mint, or gold seller, buy some like a Chinese person might think about doing, if he or she has just come into some money - after they have bought and eaten a bowl of noodles, bought a new shirt, a piece of fruit, a bolt of silk, the horse racing tips for next week's races... A billion people are buying alongside you. Mayhaps too they will also have more spending power than they did the week before. Of course gold is very beautiful. And it's also very smart a thing to have. The Venetians powdered it and burned it in glass to make a special type of red-coloured glass. They, by hiding their wealth thus convinced thieves by such means that they were only wine drinkers afterall and fibbers, and not anywhere near as rich as people said. The future price of something walks around today wearing a mask. It is Venice once again. Every lie hides a truth. And frankly I'd rather have the pockets of my cloak lined with real gold coins than with real receipts from the vendors and brokers of Buffett's 'Mr. Market-never-lies' price action on everything. I just can't trust 'Mr. Market' anymore!

Gold will never die; it is the symbol of, and possesses the spirit of, truth, and eternal and universal dominion.

Calvin J. Bear

Guilt

Okay I'm feeling slightly guilty.

One of my business partners has a real thing for fast cars; I'm not all that fussed about them.

The whole world is apparently on the edge of some kind of financial precipice. Jim Rogers says let the bankrupt guys just fold – stop bailing them out. And I totally agree. But what I mean is that people are really saying things are really bad...

So... Yesterday my other business partner took me to Western Australia's best restaurant (Galileo's) and we went there at a hundred miles an hour in his 458 Italia (Ferrari, obviously).

Three bottles later of some Sicilian wine called I think Santa Cecilia, um, we took off back to his place and opened the very last bottle in existence of some kind of 'nuther red from Mount Barker.

Er, these wines were all absolutely spectacular.

I don't know much about the car ride home because the way the driving/passenger position is in the Ferrari (you sort of lie on your back with your head being the only upright thing... well kind of upright, anyway) the blood going to the back of my head and the swirl and swoosh of stuff flying by in my peripheral vision on either side meant I can't really tell you what the hell was going on – I never saw it, and don't remember much of it anyway either, really.

I'm doing a $260,000,000 Stage One project financing for a UCG and ammonium nitrate plant on a huge deep seam (non-fracing) coal resource in Queensland and I basically have a whole bunch of money from some Chinese guys whom I've never personally even met and including, I think so anyway, actually the Chinese government.

Okay things are bad apparently. Everywhere. I swear to god I have brand name banks tell me this every day these days and I don't know what to say back to them. I've never before personally been in charge of $260,000,000. Well not as far as I know or can ever remember. So I don't know what 'bad' actually might mean... Not by comparative experience or compared to the way banks must know why they are saying things are bad everywhere.

Well but they're not bad here, though.

I don't have political friends and my parents would be over 105 if they were still alive so I don't have family connections either, other than my wife's. Nobody knows me. Meaning, I am not a public figure. And maybe I never will be too. But things are certainly not bad here for me right now.

Calvin J. Bear

Hot Firecracker Ice And Silk

In Switzerland there are a few – not many, but a few – precision industrial weaving machines with the capability of creating beautiful silk fabrics with up to about fifteen different colours in the design of the fabric.

So we're talking not about printing onto the fabric various colours, but rather, weaving crystal-clear and precise patterns with different coloured silken threads. This sort of finished silk product is extremely expensive. Depending on the visual designs, some of these new silks are quite sensational.

Yet on the whole I don't like too many of these new-fangled things – well I'm talking about expensive things anyway with an old tradition to them. Sometimes more is not better. I really don't, for example, like the modern complicated styles of cutting diamonds. Yes yes I get the basic idea of so-called perfect symmetry 'hearts and arrows.' What's the other one – 'hearts on fire' or something. And there are others too. All departing through extra complication from the fully-developed American Standard 60/60 Marcel Tolkowsky cut. There's a reason for tradition and they're the ones who don't get it.

Then there is the 'Grand Complication' wristwatch thing too.

To me some of this stuff is a bit like George W.-speak: it's 'complexified' rather than really that advanced and complicated afterall.

This image is digitally rendered -
real life diamonds are much more exciting

And the same is true in the modern world of pop fashion sex idioms too: it's how much further, how much more absurd, how much more exaggerated. There is also the whole power overlay thing which to me seems all too equivalent to the current male world of politics and banking – 'waddya mean we have no clothes?! We're in charge, aren't we. You should be happy. Why aren't you happy. Do it my way. Every other way would be bad for you... And by the way, can we have another bailout?' ...The contradictions are too too numerous.

'Inability to resolve the stone's dispersive fire.' This is the key phrase to why overly-complicated cuts are wrong for diamonds. 'Inability to resolve' also includes 'imperfect or incomplete ability to resolve' – which is the result of too many facets and too many small edges, even when the stone itself is large.

D &G classic

A plain black silk cocktail dress when fitted properly is the peak of adult female elegance. A top-cut Tolkowsky brilliant is the paramount when it comes to jewelry. If you want some colour try a Russian Posad silk shawl as an accessory.

Silk gets hot when you put a little fire to it. What Prometheus really knew was to do with the fire in the ice. Let me tell you, when you get a really well-cut diamond, you turn it in the light and you can almost hear the snap crackle and pop of the dispersion: it's sharp, and hot, and snappy, not flashy. A good diamond is a firecracker, not merely a sparkler.

Hedonics Of Diamonds

People today really misunderstand the point of owning diamonds: even some big commercial organisations that are in the business of selling them – other than paying the standard lipservice that dates from another era - fail to give any kind of indication that they either really care about what they are doing, or care for the nature of the product itself. Like so many other things these days, the modern-day inheritors of other people's original achievements behave to a large extent as though they seem to actually begrudge the role they were handed along with the wealth which of course they readily took.

“Diamonds are a girl's best friend.” Well not if you go by the five investment banks that recently completely stuffed up the proposed float of Laurence Graff's diamond house. Apparently they – diamonds - are not anyone's friend at all. Not only did the banks fail to execute the supposedly planned book build, but they let slip to the market and to competitors in the process the very limited number of key clients that Graff had – no more than twenty in all. Many questions can be asked about what those investment banks were doing in conducting such a strategy that claimed a float target of a billion dollars – unnecessarily large if you couldn't be sure to make at least close to it – and wildly irresponsible to the client if in the normal exposure that occurs in a public float, sensitive and otherwise also confidential commercial information is scattered around in the breeze gratuitously when that event then becomes a failure.

And to another 'large extent' this sad tale is really testiment to the nothingness that the big brand-name investment banks have themselves become. Once proud and to-be-reckoned-with names like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, even H.S.B.C., cannot but expect to be castigated because of such a market failure (again!) of something they have tried to take to the professional financial investor. You can't make such an insane hash of something as prestigeous as a major diamondaire's public flotation and hope to maintain credibility.

And so now we're going to have to put up once again with the same old 'spin-city' peppering in the media about how diamonds are not good 'investments' and how synthetic diamonds have altered the profitability of the traditional market, and how diamonds have fallen out of favour with today's super wealthy (probably Chinese) elite. And how at the low end the ordinary consumer cannot afford them... And how the Greeks ought to pay their taxes and how austerity must prevail... Meanwhile of course, Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF pays no tax at all. Pure self-interest driven spin drivel; the whole lot of it. Welcome to today's world, though.

'Girl' is a general term; Elizabeth Taylor is a specific name.

See, the thing is – 'certain specific diamonds are certain specific girls' best friends...'

Best,
Calvin J. Bear

Hey Jesus... The Beef And Potatoes?

I just binned a fairly negative post I was going to stick up here about some nonsense the tendentious Australian media is writing about at the moment. In a nutshell though, the media is writing nonsense that is not even slightly factual: they are making false claims about something that is non-value added and straight out of the ground belonging to the Crown and that is leased to entrepreneurs, whilst forgetting about the decades of value-added profits that other people around the world have been generating and have tucked away into Swiss banks already.

But if I posted all that nasty stuff you wouldn't get to see or appreciate the wholesomeness of what truly wealthy people get up to... So... I binned it. And instead,

Yesterday, my wife took over a chicken mozambique (kind of mild curry thing) to a brilliant and very very wealthy deep coal gas engineer who lives in a mansion in the premier local suburb.

I had to warn her to tell him though, before he ate it, that there is a difference between fresh hand-ground spices and proper traditional cooking, and the commercial cooking he might have been used to from going out to commercial restaurants.

Now I watch Dr. Phil as much as any of the other several million+ of his viewers, but let me tell you, illicit drugs are dangerous but I don't think it really is true that illicit drugs are as powerful as a properly-made Tamil curry or a Mozambique chicken 'casserole.'

Well, okay though, this is how you get to eat these things with me at my place:

...firstly, it's late afternoon or evening. There are uniformed people who massage you for as long as three hours or so in the massage rooms, using myrrh and benzoin and almond oil. You wear comfortable slippers and something loose and you are taken into the dining area, which is in candle-light and the orange glow of the warming brazier. Suddenly 'Diving Faces' by Liquid Child hits up deeply on the Bose. People wear emeralds around the table.

Glass Slipper - by Louboutin

You sit in Jarrah and leather dining chairs designed by my friend Karl Teuchert (I drag him out of heaven for this) of ARTRA and someone offers you champagne. And then the food is brought in and you are served. And you get to see some novelty, or some innovation, something new, always something new...

And let me tell you, you are not going to remember much else until you wake up the next day.

See the water, wine, bread...? We are the meat & potatoes.

And another thing – this is all real stuff I'm talking about here. Ordinary cardamom seeds out of the pods, if toasted a little and mixed with cloves tops and mace shroud (fresh), in some kind of delicious food will knock your socks clean off. Try it if you don't believe me. The staff don't need to be wearing Nombre Noir or SL's R de N, but that also helps and if you are conned by me into drinking the champagne out of straws (concentrates the gasses), you won't last thirty minutes. Wealth is what it is. And it isn't money per se.

Next post, I talk about Beef Bourguignone, one of the most complex dishes to do correctly, but one of the most rewarding when done correctly.

John E. N. Ward (himself).

Samsara - the eternal return

“Travelling forward to the past...” (A phrase from an old SAMSARA perfume advertisement.)

I must confess I was a little disconcerted when I saw Dame Stella Rimington on morning television today. She's been on and off the media over a few years now and she still seems to speak with a freshness and interest in her voice that either tells me she's been having a great retirement, or that she loves to share reminiscences about her old job as the one-time head of MI5.

And who wouldn't?! I knew this and that and I couldn't tell – and now I can. Sort of.

So we've had Germaine Greer tour through Oz just recently, and now Dame Stella. What's going on – that we should be 'graced' with these U.K. luminaries at the moment?

Dame Stella said her role at MI5 was as a protector. And she kinda said a few words about Islamic terrorists and begged off what she did about it in her time saying: hey, well, she had had her hands full with the IRA back then.

Not a spy

At least she acknowledged it wasn't exactly 'a war...' As in, 'a war on terrorism.'

I think these people are all a little naiive. Actually I am referring to the entire enclave that has had the public – especially the public of the United Kingdom by the throat since around Thatcher. In the evenings recently I've been watching Rebekah Brooks talk down both to a very senior judge as well as a quite brilliant QC. And I'm also sick of listening to Greer and hope she'll soon be consigned to a wheelchair and parked alongside that other piece of Oxford/Cambridge mischief Stephen Hawking.

Here's my question: did Dame Stella have no clue whatsoever that Rupert Murdoch was running quite the efficient little industry bugging thousands and thousands of people all over the United Kingdom all that time? Not even a tiny-teensy little clue...? Well hell boyh! MI5 screens and monitors the top cops and civil servants don't they? For gun analysts they sure as hell couldn't apparently work out the significance of the associations that were being maintained!

The top lady spy's story appears to be that one of the great capabilites of the master/lady spy from London Town is to be able to walk into a pub full of men, and strike up a conversation and extract a lot of detailed information about stuff from the unsuspecting target.

Uh-huh. Okay.

Actually I hope that Brooks doesn't get stepped on too much, go to jail and all that kind of thing. She's just doing a job for lots of dough. Same as I might, maybe, given similar circumstances, maybe. Who knows. Her boss is a crooked-minded individual who simply just doesn't realise that he is that – who's had the run of the whole place for a good long while. Enough already, Rupert!

Anyway, if they drag it all out, Rupert Murdoch will fall off the perch before Brooks is squeezed too hard. At least they've been apprehended at least. Though not by MI5, m'lud.

But notice how the media's use of Rimington has set the agenda again? Back to 'the terrorists!' And away from those right under her nose trampling over people's legal rights every day. Still. I wonder which media company publishes her books. Well, actually I don't wonder, do I.

Best Austerities,

Calvin J. Bear

Immersive Luxury

Immersive luxury. That's the current catch-phrase in the big marketing houses who do Mercedes, BMW, and all the rest of that expensive middle class trash. I think an academic name of Gilles Laurent came up with some kind of study that claimed really wealthy people, when examined as to their lifestyles and habits, spent a lot of time – in other words, were immersed – using certain items and objects that could therefore more truly define the concept of 'luxury,' compared to many other commercial products that were generally, and probably incorrectly, also given the title of luxury products. I've scanned the study itself and think that it is terribly flawed, but that hasn't stopped the manufacturers of expensive stuff exploiting the academic cachet of the phrase 'immersive luxury.'

So, according to the researchers, food, music – and basically a lot of things commanding smaller dollars per unit – were not luxury items. What utter rubbish. It takes around 18 months to properly process a vanilla bean pod – not sure how much longer these idiots want you to immerse yourself in a luxury thing, but layering your mistress's french lace panties over half a dozen bourbon vanilla beans is decadent, and having her soak her tender pink feet in vanilla pod foot-baths will draw the vanilla essential oils up through the ascending bloodstream and help you correctly identify pussy in a masked party in a dark ballroom underneath a black satin-shrouded table on a dark night with only a few tea-lights showing the way to the ends of the obfuscated tunnels...

A vanilla bean is, I believe, in fact more expensive by weight than a new Mercedes... But it doesn't take a ridiculous sum to own the experience thereof, nor utilise the value therein.

A decent sweaty martini is a very great luxury between people who know each other well enough to have martinis together with.

Okay, I like the pink diamond in this pic, I find it a touch too middle-class Sino-design centric for my own absolute taste, but now, it is expensive, but I rather doubt anyone will be immersed in it so long that it would seem like an unhealthy obsession. But it is luxury! And so is the martini, the vanilla bean, Al Pacino's espresso, Cavalli's latest fragrance edp, and any number of things some of which may be had for small money by unit of. It isn't about money. Luxury is about quality, pleasure, and passion. And knowledge. A Paul Van Dyke album is extreme luxury. If you understand it.


Best,

J.

Abducting The Cook

What do people get up to when they have few real problems?

Well, there was a thing that used to go on occasionally when I was around ten or so... Abducting of cooks. Yep. In fact there was this one particular older lady from India somewhere – though from memory I don't think she was northern Indian. She was incredibly good. She could cook dishes from absolutely anywhere but she had a few specialties for which she was absolutely famous. In fact she was unreasonably good.

Who started it all were a set of brothers and cousins who all carried the middle names of 'Roxborough.' Although their mother was from a stonkingly wealthy shipping family (not related to me however, sadly), their father shockingly insisted on making his own money as well, from doctoring or surgeoning or something of the like... The outcome was that the kids always had better toys and gadgets than the kids from all the other wealthy families with generally one stay-at-home parent. And, for some reason no one could ever fathom, they managed to have the time and patience to put together those ridiculously big and complicated Revel plastic kits of huge battle ships...

But they didn't possess the best cook.

The best cook belonged to another 'doctor family' – this time with the wife being the doctor and the husband an Oxford law and history graduate who for family reasons and politics was 'merely' a senior school teacher.

My own thrown-together mild chicken curry
from last night.

...And then one day the cook was abducted by the reprobate kids and forced to cook for them one weekend in secret when there was a gathering celebrating Churchill's birthday or Gandhi's ascension to heaven or the General Milk Company's contracting the doctors for some mercantile purpose, or something. The big families were going to have their household cooks do the honours, you see.

The whole thing was as far as I can recall both the greatest scandal and the most intrepid and successful event the country had witnessed since WWII ended. The tale of how the victim-family was invited to sample the dishes at table to see whether they could detect what was going on or not ranks as the biggest prank ever carried out in the hallowed dining rooms of the upper crust of this particular country that shall remain nameless here. I feel absolutely sure that cases of Tiger Beer were donated by the brewery beforehand so that the targeted doctor was as sozzled as possible before eating his own abducted cook's fare.

But then, it didn't end there because ransom was demanded in fact, for the cook to be returned, no one ever admitted formally to who had purloined the cook, and I am pretty sure both money changed hands, and the cook had to spend time at another household as well, that had bribed the kids to get her for a week, I think.

Oh yes wait a minute, I remember, (now) Professor Derek Llewelyn-Jones and Major Hunt of the Everest Expedition were g's-o.-h., at the dinner. Nothing to do with Gandhi or Churchill or General Milk.

Ah, those were the days. And those were the people. They don't make 'em like that any more. Well not much like that anyways.

Best, Calvin J. Bear

The Roman Pornocracy

If you are very well-read, let's not say 'educated' - it means something entirely different today to what it meant fifty years ago... Well, if you are knowledgable, the thought will occasionally occur to you that so-and-so must have access to the higher books of learning, in spite of what is commonly portrayed about them.

I ask myself, now and then, for instance, what books does Paris Hilton read? She shows, apart from the obvious things she shows, that she has some fundamental appreciation about higher culture. What that will turn out in the end to shape of her life I cannot detect, but she will likely not make certain types of mistakes that others have made who are in the spotlight and have wealth and position of some kind. I think in particular right now of Lord Black – Conrad Black – of Hollinger International, the previously quite substantial media group. And I think of Lord Black in terms of the current Lord Leveson Inquiry into the machinations of the print media in London. Oddly, at least it seems so to me, there has been no instance or indication that any of Conrad Black's newspapers were engaged in the same scandalous behaviour that Rupert Murdoch's were. How two competing participants within the same industry grouping could behave apparently so diametrically differently in their commercial practices begs the question why Conrad Black experienced so much animus against him.

No, there is no printable answer; for we are living in the last times of Rome under Nero, that is abundantly clear. There is a particular kind of stubborn stupidity in anyone believing that we are not; it is unreasonable any longer no matter how pacific you may want your equanimity to be. It's the ostrich-in-the-sand thing!

It has been all too easy for Rupert Murdoch's Octopus arms to imply mud where there wasn't any, and to have the hypothetical mud stick with tangible effect, while the strictly legally tangible stuff was dragged out in tricky courts over too many years with underlying animus driving officers of the court, frankly. Young Conrad Black was, I fear, a rich youth naiive about the sharks in the pond. He displayed his wealth too openly to too many and had too much fun, and this was of course a sin to the Puritans. Ever was it thus: Jesus was feared by the Romans to be the literal blood claimant to Caeser's family wealth and title, and at least 50-something claimants to the legal title to inheritance of James Stuart's Mint of silver coin were around the place when the self-promoting Puritan, Cromwell, stole King Charles' money.

Little that I should care though. I care for things like what Paris Hilton reads, and how Deanne Berry keeps motivated in her fitness regimes, and who the hell devised the SuitSupply of Holland's advertising campaign. As I say, we are living in those times that in Rome were called 'the Pornocracy.' And when in Rome...

Best,

Calvin J. Bear