chicken

no not the rubber kind that turned me into a veggie,
but rather that age old game of chicken, currently
being played by amerika's king and iraq's president.

so far, nothing but a lot of posturing, not much in
the fur flying department....

APRIL FOOL'S DAY, a mere 90+ days away. so what do
i predict ?

basically, $5 a gallon oil if you can get it, and the
other dislocations that would go along with it.

well, you won't see much about the current afghanistan,
where it is unsafe to go outside the city at night. and
that's the only area controlled by the us military.
i guess it didn't make it onto the tv 'news', that last
month the 'taliban' won control of southern 1/3 of
pakistan in the recent elections. actions speak louder
than rhetoric, no ushering in of a pro-washington
government by a 'grateful' people liberated by the
shining light of western scientific rationalism.

so it's a pretty somber omen. check the military history
of kyber pass in afghanistan. the british empire started
collapsing in 1950 and the soviet union in the eighties,
all touched off by their activities there...

so saddam's end gambit. he won't let georgie boy and his
cronies play with his oil wells. so a few hours after
the coalition invades (seems like a done deal to me) the
iraqi army will disintergrate. and when saddam leaves the
country he will blow up the oil on his way out, and probably
send all his scuds into the kuwait oil fields. (maybe some
bio-chems for the kuwati royal family).

bin-laden if alive, would probably use the instability
to overthrow the saudi royal family (his primary dream
in life) and/or die trying.

so that's 1/2 of the oil shut off for a period of time.

i am moderately worried, but, as i look inward to solve
my problems, i don't have to listen to the news for
the reassurance that the gov't has it 'under control'.