Osama bin Ladin, a friend of George H.W. Bush, a willing co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks and an employee of the CIA viz their control of the Taliban fighting the proxy war with the Russians, is dead. He died of renal failure at a Peshawar military hospital in mid-2003. The hilarious "bin Ladin tapes" are made in Texas by a CIA employee who speaks correct but very stilted and unidiomatic Arabic. That's why you see his "tapes" whenever the CIA wants an appearance in support of an official project, like a Bush election, and why you never hear him, just see a snippet with an announcers' overvoice. Most of us saw through all of their silly nonsense years ago and at this point, the public does not care. The problem with this dumb charade is that were we to take over all of Afghanistan and, more important, those parts of Pakistan where he once held court, what if we never found a trace of him? My, my we can say the PRC is hiding him...that is if the CIA is angry with China on that day.

On the financial scene, the rising price of gold is drawing a frenzied horde of investors and as more and more use the precious metal for investment, the price continues to rise. There is one very serious flaw in this process, a flaw that has more to do with human nature than anything else. Once the hedge funds were the darling of those with extra money and they rushed to invest with the same zeal that the goldbugs are now grabbing gold but like the hedge funds, most of which were pure fraud, the gold market also has its flaws, the most serious one of which is the indisputable one that at least fourteen Chinese firms are pouring out an incredible flood of entirely faked coins, both bullion and numismatic. Counterfeiting foreign gold is not illegal in China and, as usual, the Chinese government has turned a blind eye to illegal acts that enrich their economy. By laser-cutting dies from original pieces, the counterfeiters are able to produce coins that are visually almost perfect but because they are Chinese, the makers are determined to increase their profits by adulterating the contents of the coins. The hundreds of examples of fakes, to include American and foreign coins and, most interesting, various gold bars supposedly coming from prestigious Swiss banks, are made of less than pure gold and silver and to offset the lighter color of adulterated gold, the fakes are then plated with 24k gold for the proper rich color. However, there is the pleasing bit of information that the fakes, being made of less pure gold and silver, always weigh less than originals. It is estimated that there are millions of dollars in fakes now circulating in the United States, the Middle East and gold-hungry India. If and when the knowledge of the massive counterfeiting efforts becomes public, many greedy collectors will do what they should have done, and been doing, and that is to weigh their holdings, coin by coin. The fakes always weigh less than originals and can easily be detected with a cheap digital scale. It is also to be noted that the Chinese forgers are now making coins that show honest wear, that are not UNC but only VG+ so that a collector seeing what appears to be a used coin believes that it is genuine. Just weigh it and see, children, weigh it. Neither my opinion nor that of an “expert” means a thing. Just weigh the suspect piece, that’s all. What such a discovery of massive fraud is going to do to the gold market is anyone’s guess but those fortunate, and prudent, enough to have the real thing will see their own investments increase in value because their worth can easily be proven. A piece of obvious advice: Do not buy gold or silver coins, ever, unless and until you weigh them before buying. A digital scale is cheap (less than $25.00) and well worth the investment.”

And finally, here is a quote from the Internet, scientific division, rebutting the hysterically inaccurate reports from paid scientists that the melting of glaciers is “just minimal” and that billions of gallons of fresh water will not pour into the world’s oceans and the sea levels will not rise one meter in the next five years. “In its 2007 report, the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: “Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.

“Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres by the year 2035,” the report said. It suggested three quarters of a billion people who depend on glacier melt for water supplies in Asia will surely be affected.

“The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates – its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometres …” Mr. Kotlyakov’s report said.