Kyros, Yes, I seriously do think the embassy bombing was deliberate. Which then demands an answer to the question; why? There has been a great deal of militaristic invective directed against China in recent months. There have been Senatorial and Congressional accusations of theft of nuclear bomb secrets, bribing Clinton and disrupting the USA electoral process, stealing satellite technology, being given illegal soldering secrets, with Bernie Schwarz being a go between in some weird conspiracy with the Democratic Party. Senator Lott and the latest report are all the old commie Reds-under-the-beds stuff from the 1950s.
The concept that Schwartz, the Democrats and Clinton would sell out to China in some absurd treasonable way is absurd. But there are plenty of rabid Republicans controlling sufficient of the military, the CIA, National Security Agency, Senate and Congressional budgets that they would take the opportunity to do China in the eye. Clinton might be perfectly comfortable with the idea too. Zhu Rongji didn't toe the line and one thing Clinton dislikes is people not toeing the line. Look what $ill Gates got! A Federal lawsuit despite playing golf with Bill Clinton [$ill shouldn't have said that Clinton 'doesn't drill down' on issues because he is sure drilling down on $ill now]. Clinton is NOT a nice man [as far as I can tell]. He is not an honest man. He, the Congress and Senate [with the military in agreement] seem to be of a mind to show China who's boss. They have got Taiwan under threat from China. China has done little demonstrations of military force in regard to Taiwan. A bit of a counter demonstration would make perfect sense to a few military, Senatorial, Congressional and Presidential minds.
When something happens, it is always a good idea to ask 'who benefits?'. Especially when it is not in the nature of an Act of God, but an act of some politicians and soldiers.
We can see that there are good reasons from a military confrontation point of view, world trade point of view, Taiwan point of view, Serbia/Kosovo/China/Russia point of view, internal USA political support point of view and general fun and games to put a hole in the Chinese Embassy [the accident was probably the loss of life of people who were not expected to have been there at night]. Don't forget, we need to parse Clinton's words very carefully. It was an accident. We need to define 'it'. Does he mean the impact or the deaths of those particular people? You can see that Clinton's apology can be believed about as much as "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky".
There is plenty of reason for bombing the embassy [if one has a particular attitude towards China]. Denying that it was deliberate doesn't reduce the impact on China, which gets the message that the USA is a big, ugly, wolf and won't take any crap over Taiwan, trade, Serbia/Kosovo, human rights in China, Tibet, the Spratley Islands, or much else either.
So, let's see the financial compensation if it was genuinely a mistake. Sheer incompetence and stupidity is always a popular answer to things and is usually correct. I don't think that's the answer this time. We can tell from the USA actions in regard to China's complaint where the truth lies. We know how Clinton lies, so let's see actions, not words.
You sure sold out at the right time! Well done.
<Last week I sold almost all my stocks, including QCOM, and switched to cash and zero-coupon bonds. I only kept some utilities and some company stock. Here is my reasoning...>
<The stock market is about 30-40% overvalued compared to treasury bonds. This overvaluation may be sustained for a long time in a perfect world -- such as we had in the last few years. We no longer have a perfect world, not only because of sharply rising tensions between the US and Russia and China, but also because of Y2K.>
It is an exaggeration to say we had a perfect world, but I know what you mean!
<In the past I have been rather early in getting out of stocks, so I want to emphasize that my actions this time around are probably premature and the stock market (and QCOM) will continue to live and prosper. The above is just my very humble opinion.>
Premature? I don't think so. Looks as though you caught the peak.
Okay, let's ride it down!
Yeeeehaaaaaaaaaa.........
Mqurice
Dow 8099 21 June 1999
10,314 6 Feb 2000
16,000 Feb 2002
[Clinton claims to be for free trade - let's see how he handles sheep meat sales next week. He weeps over bodies, terrorism, human rights and all that stuff - let's see how he handles dead Chinese killed by his soldiers - let's see how much he values human life [well, Chinese life, which isn't the same thing is it folks because they don't value human life like we in The West do - I heard they actually don't have pain receptors in their brains - probably because of all the opium they smoke]. |
