Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (64956)	6/13/2005 3:14:24 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

Sean Penn's camera taken briefly in Iran. The regime allowed 70 foreign journalists to fly into Iran this week to cover the elections, including actor and anti-war activist Sean Penn Sean Penn's camera taken briefly in Iran Newswire Services By Newswire Services June 12, 2005 Actor Sean Penn, covering the presidential election in Iran as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, had his camera confiscated briefly Sunday. Several hundred women had participated in a sit-in outside the entrance to Tehran University, demanding rights they lost following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Chants and taunts grew louder and police surrounded the demonstrators and pushed people who were trying to join the group. In addition, authorities cut off cell phone service in the area and challenged reporters observing the protest. Authorities briefly seized the video camera of Penn, reported Editor & Publisher. Meanwhile, Iran saw one of its most violent days in more than a decade, with five bombs killing at least nine and wounding dozens in the center of Tehran. Copyright 2005 by United Press International.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (64956)	6/13/2005 4:20:30 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

iran: Where PhD = Pizza Hut Delivery The United States may see oil and terrorism as Iran’s main exports, but many young people in Iran will be quick to disagree. The Islamic republic, home to some of the most qualified young people in the Middle East, has been exporting its brain-power at an alarming rate -- with an estimated 150,000 frustrated graduates taking flight every year. And as a joke going around Iranian universities puts it, having a PhD means you’re more than likely to head overseas for a job doing “Pizza Hut Delivery”. “It doesn’t really matter what your graduation grade is. It makes no difference what contacts you have. You just cannot find a decent job”, complained Somayé, a 25-year-old graduate of industrial design. Officially, the unemployment rate among graduates stands at around 16 percent. Experts say the real figure is far higher, and caution further that the figures are also hiding an additional, far larger problem of underemployment. Somayé, for example, eventually found a job as an office secretary. She is now a prime candidate to join the visa queues outside foreign embassies, not the polling stations when they open on June 17 for the presidential election. “For a simple secretary who answers the phone, they pay 800,000 rials [90 dollars] a month. How can someone raise a family with such a low salary?” she wondered. The eight candidates bidding for the presidency have all been paying lip-service to the unemployment issue, but the signs are that few young people have been convinced that change is on the horizon. Turning around a stagnant economy strong on providing bland, job-for-life and low-paid administrative work but little else will be a tough task, most Iranians seem to agree. Ali, a depressed graphic designer in his mid-20s, can be found trawling though the Labor Ministry’s employment directories. He says he has all but given up hope of finding a job in Iran. “For a good job with decent pay, it’s a never-ending search”, he muses glumly, all set to join the four-million-strong Iranian diaspora spread across the United States, Canada and Europe. “Now I’m looking for something in Germany or Australia. It may be totally unrelated to my skills, like packing boxes, but at least the salary is decent”. The other attraction of heading abroad is greater individual freedom -- and this is another factor that leaves young people uninspired by the forthcoming presidential election. The polls will mark the end of the mandate of incumbent President Mohammad Khatami, who managed to win over voters in 1997 and 2001 but failed to live up to his promise to shake up the way the Islamic republic is run. “I do not think there will be a large number of people, especially among the youth, who will be voting” argues Somayé. “For Khatami’s first and second election, my family and I rushed out to vote. But he couldn’t solve the problem of unemployment, so what can the next president do?” According to Mahdi Sahraian, an economist and professor, the governmental five-year plans put in place since 1990 have consistently fallen short when it comes to job creation. “In the current 2000 to 2005 plan, the annual target for new jobs is 700,000, but the figures are only reaching 350,000”, he notes. “The government needs to prepare the ground for private sector growth to absorb the work force, but the problem is that 80 percent of the economy is controlled by the government. The government is the biggest rival of the private sector”. “The situation has instilled in young people a utilitarian approach”, explained Fariborz Raees Dana, another economist. “We can’t offer them opportunities in the fields of politics, economics or science. So they simply move on”.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (64956)	6/13/2005 12:04:20 PM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Ray - long time ago we had a discussion on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and Florida waters. I couldn't find the good MMS map I had seen. Here's a compact map that shows the extensive western Gulf drilling vs. near Florida - Really puts Florida drilling is prespective. sptimes.com

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (64956)	6/13/2005 3:08:38 PM
From: Slagle	Respond to of 74559

Raymond, Re: "9-11" The argument you present has many valid points. I still think these guys should refrain from using the term "melting" with regard to steel structures as it weakens and confuses their argument. But much of the rest of the material you present is hard to refute. For example the fact that the two planes struck the buildings in very different ways yet produced identical outcomes other than the time required to collapse. Even that is backwards as Tower 2 should have taken longer to fall as much of the fuel was bound to have exited the building. The whole affair just smells. But in that respect it is similar to other recent disasters like the Murrah Building, Flight 800 and even the 1993 WTC bombing. Why is it that the government is always in such a hurry to dispose of the evidence and even the perps (like McVeigh)? I was living in Manila in 1996 and was facinated by the Ramzi Yousef tale. I had been flying all over Asia in the same Philippine Airlines 747's in which Yousef and his helpers were planting bombs and when this went public I did some on site shoe leather investigation myself, going to the Taft Avenue fleabag hotel where Yousef and his merry men had been mixing up bombs in the hotel sink with the idea of throwing one out the window into the Pope's procession. The mess caught fire, bringing the fire department and the Manila detectives. Yousef got away but they caught his understudies, several Filipinos from Mindanao and one nit-wit from Pakistan. Using interegation methods that our "G Men" at Gitmo can only dream about the Filipinos soon had the whole story about the bombs on the PAL planes and also the fact that the #1 guy in charge of the 1993 WTC bombing was a Pak named Yousef and that he was running loose somehere in the Philippines. They chased Yousef right across the country, through my Mindanao "hometown" and out at Pagadian and across Sulu to the no man's land of Sabah and onwards to Pakistan where Yousef was finally caught. The Manila cops went public with all this immediately (there are no secrets in the Coconut Republic) and also informed the FBI that they had the 1993 WTC bomber on the run. The FBI was not interested! This lack of intrest apparently went on for months, at least that is what the Manila papers were reporting. What was that about? And another funny thing. When the story broke in the US months later, it was now US Flag carriers that had been the targets of Yousef's bombs. This part is baloney as very few US planes even go to Manila and those that do get serviced in Honk Kong or elsewhere, not Manila. The bombs were planted on 22 different PAL flights, this was covered in detail by the Manila papers. The single bomb that that went off killed a Japanese tourist at Narita, while the PAL 747 was still on the ground. Raymond, I enjoy reading your posts here on this board and elsewhere. While there are a great many of your opinions that I don't agree with you are incredibly well read and researched and I must respect that. And some of your leanings, I do favor quite a lot. Slagle