| FUCK IMMIGRATION |
[Nov. 15th, 2008|03:39 am] |
Pure chauvinism, racism (Spaniards don't like Latinoamericanos), and megalomania is the only explanation.
In their words, no woman travels alone, without husband or children.
I sent my wife to Europe as a Christmas present. She was going to the Canary Islands to visit a friend, back to Madrid for Christmas shopping, planned to either catch a round-trip flight to Paris or Marseilles for a few days, and flying back from Madrid in December; just over three weeks.
Instead, immigration police in Madrid airport tell her she has no business traveling alone, throw her in jail were she is stripped searched, abused, yelled at, interrogated, deprived of sleep, deprived of water, deprived of counsel, deprived of use of telephone, cannot call me, cannot speak to the Costa Rican embassy; they frequently enter her cell to take away her blanket or book, yell at her, take her away to other rooms, accuse her of having drugs in her stomach, telling her she must confess to crimes, telling her if she has medical problem they won't even call for help, she can die in her cell, etc. A social worker who was said to be coming never showed up.
Apparently the police will escort her into a flight, like a criminal, back to Costa Rica at noon.
Merry fucking Christmas.
Angry doesn't begin to describe my mood. No wonder people blow stuff up in Spain. |
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| Spanish Immigration (Lost Wife) |
[Nov. 14th, 2008|10:54 pm] |
My wife flew to Madrid yesterday, and was supposed to catch a connecting flight to Tenerife (Canary Islands), to visit a friend.
I find out this evening she never made it to Tenerife (7 hours after her flight was to arrive). I find out a few hours later that she's being held by Immigrations in Madrid, for reasons unknown. She called her friend finally (12 hours after arriving in Madrid). Apparently she is unable to call me (no international calls?!). And I still don't know why she's being held, neither did her friend. WTF! Immigrations offices are closed for the day, I get to wait until 2am to start calling Spain.
She's never traveled internationally alone before. She's only left Costa Rica twice, both 30 minutes flights (to Panama City and to San Andres), both times with me, and both times in the last 6 months. She's talked for years about wanting to travel to Europe (esp. France & Italy)... if this goes badly....
FUCK.
My hands were shaking when I got home. Making dinner for the kids settled me down, but I'm not doing well now, despite a few drinks.
First flight to Madrid leave at 9am. I'm tempted to take it. But I won't arrive until Sunday morning in Madrid. 17 hours in transit (+6 hr time difference); through Atlanta, there aren't any non-stop flights on the weekend.
Update: Friend called me again, my wife called her again. Immigration hasn't told my wife either why she's being held and denied entry into Spain. Costa Ricans need no visa to visit Spain for up to 90 days. She was on a direct non-stop flight from Costa Rica.
Speculating on the unknown is terrible. Why would she be denied entry? Copyrighted material on her Kindle? Interpol warrant regarding her very large e-gold account? (U.S. charged e-gold with money laundering). Are they arresting her, or sending her on the morning flight back to Costa Rica?
My hopeful guess is they don't like her old passport. I had her get a new one last year, the migration office just stamped an extension in the old one; refused to give her a new one. I'm reading information now that Spain may require a Machine Readable Passport. The kids have new ones, but the readers in San Andres wouldn't read them. There's a CR consulate in Madrid. Would they really deport her back to Costa Rica? The airline checked her passport at check-in, I'd want a refund or complementary tickets, AT LEAST. Hands shaking a little less. |
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| Wii, Aduanas and Desktop VR |
[Dec. 23rd, 2007|01:37 am] |
Our 5yr old is getting a Wii for Christmas.
Or at least we hope Santa will bring it on time. How do you explain to a 5yr old that aduanas (customs) has his Wii? Perhaps I can use the opportunity to deeply ingrain a hatred for taxation and government inefficiency -- Aduanas has your Wii!
Crossing my fingers the courier will get it out of customs on the 24th, so I won't be tempted.
Anyway, while the Wii remote seems quite cool, I look forward to playing with it, this guy takes it to a whole 'nother level.
Now I can't wait for Nintendo to pick this idea up and make a Wii 2 with point-of-view-tracking 3D enabled gaming. |
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| Ron Paul advocates competing legal currencies, including gold & silver |
[Nov. 9th, 2007|02:03 pm] |
"...we could legalize competing currencies. I mean we compete with currencies around the world all the time, but why can't we have gold and silver competing as a currency, and let people say 'get the taxes off currency, you can't tax money', so there's a way to develop a competing currency under the current situation, and if people don't like the fiat currency that continues to lose its value, they can opt-out and start dealing in gold and silver." — Ron Paul, CNBC Talking Monetary Policy (11-8-07)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hZsZ0_OLer4 |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 8th, 2007|11:39 pm] |
I'm the first person to transcribe this video, as far as I know. Feel free to redistribute its contents (with attribution to the Financial Times).
Jim Rogers on the dollar, Ben Bernanke, and US economy
FT: You said you're selling US assets. So what makes you so bearish on the dollar?
Jim Rogers: Well the US dollar is a terribly flawed currency. As recently as 1987 the United States was a creditor nation. We're now the largest debtor nation the world has ever seen in only twenty years. We owe the rest of the world over thirteen trillion with a "T" US dollars. That's a bad number, but what's worse is our foreign debts are increasing at a rate of one trillion dollars every 15 months. It's simple arithmetic at how fast it's going to go up, but its pretty terrifying arithmetic. I don't want to own a currency which is being debased that way. The central bank in America has said that they're going to print as many dollars has they have to drive down the value of the currency. The secretary of the treasury is trying to drive down the value of the currency. I mean it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it's a currency that's going to be going down for some time to come. They want to debase the currency. The head of the central bank has been printing money since he got there for two years. He's printing money very rapidly now, especially since this summer. This is a man who his whole intellectual career has been spent studying the printing of money. Now America is giving the printing presses. I don't want to be in a currency like that.
FT: So what's your assessment of Bernanke's performance so far?
Jim Rogers: Well it's been a disaster.
Did I make myself clear? He's been a disaster. I mean he's been printing much too much money, since the beginning. Last summer he bailed out his friends on Wall Street, said there was some kind of problem. I mean the stock market was down 6%. If a 6% decline in the stock market causes the man to go and cut interest rates by a half a percent, when inflation is running rampant, when the dollar is under pressure anyway, what's he going to do when the market is down 36%? What's he going to do when they have a real crisis? I mean he's going to print money until we run out of trees! I don't want to own US dollars in an environment like that. I don't know why you would. I don't know why anybody would.
FT: So is the US already in a recession?
Jim Rogers: In my view yes. We know that housing is in worse than recession. We know that automobiles are in worse than recession. We know that many parts of the financial community are in worse than recession. We know that machinery — Caterpillar Tractor, one of the largest machinery companies in the world, has said it's the worse they've seen in 50 years. There are a lot of sectors of the American economy that are in serious trouble, shall we say. The government says it's not a recession. I'd like to know from them, what's keeping it up, that if all these other sectors — and you know housing and automobiles are two of the very largest sectors — what is not in recession? Retail sales are down; I could go on and on.
FT: So what's next? What do you think is coming?
Jim Rogers: Well for the dollar? Well probably the dollar is going to have a big rally about now, because everybody in the world is short the dollar. In my experience in the investment markets, when everyone is on one side of the boat, you'd better think about going to the other side of the boat for a while. I suspect there'll be a rally; I have no idea what will cause it. And if there's a rally, for a few weeks, a few months, I would urge you to sell that rally — that's my plan — to get the rest of my money out of US dollars.
FT: You've actually been bearish on the dollar for more than a decade. So why are getting headlines now? Is it to do with promoting your new book?
Jim Rogers: I didn't know I wasn't getting headlines, you called me, I didn't call you. The dollar has been steadily going down, as you know, for several years. It's not been a wonderful place to be. I have no idea. Maybe it's because now the dollar's starting to crescendo a little bit more. And actually now that I think about — I don't think it has anything to do with me — as you probably know, the dollar has never gone below 80 as an index, which is a federal government report; it's never gone below 80 in the history of the world. Until the last two or three months, when Bernanke started printing all this money and cutting interest rates; in a terribly inflationary environment he was cutting interest rates. It's broken below that level, so it's now going to the lowest level in history. So maybe that's why more and more people are starting to pay attention to the dollar.
FT: You're known for being apolitical. Are you backing anyone in the next year's US presidential election?
Jim Rogers: Well, yes. A pox on both of their houses, as far as I'm concerned; the Democrats and the Republicans. I rarely if ever pay much attention — I always vote – but I don't pay too much attention to them, because I know they're pretty hopeless. However in this election, if Ron Paul gets anywhere near the nomination, I will certainly support him. I mean he's the only one I've seen in American politics that seems to have a clue about what's going on in the world.
FT: Will he win?
Jim Rogers: If I'm backing him, there's no way, no way I assure you. Poor Ron. |
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| The GOP has stepped *off* the path, nominate Ron Paul |
[Oct. 29th, 2007|03:32 pm] |
"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. … The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. … I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path."
— President Ronald Reagan |
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| International Talk Like a Pirate Day |
[Sep. 19th, 2007|11:40 am] |
Play a cool Pirate video slot machine for International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
I'm sure there are plenty of good flash Pirate games on the Net, but my company actually wrote this one, so I'm proud of it (BetGold being one of many licensees, but is the coolest as they accept DGC's). The game may even be coming to a land-based casino near you... (well, if you live in Latin America anyway).
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