more cat pictures

AN APOLOGY IS IN ORDER, READERS, FOR THE DELAY IN POSTING MATERIAL FOR THIS BLOG, what with a since-cancelled Severe Thunderstorm Watch for these parts putting the likes of Your Correspondent on edge wondering how intense the storms to the west of us could get once it reached Winona after bringing its share of destruction upon southern Minnesota and much of the Dakotas in the overnight and into this morning.

Still, though, things could get rather warm into the weekend here in the Minnwissippi region.

*************

AS OF TOMORROW, ZIMBABWE WILL HAVE INSTITUTED A "CURRENCY REFORM" INITIATIVE THEORETICALLY DESIGNED TO CONTROL HYPERFLATION exceeding (as per official estimates) 6,000,000%/annum for the year to date.

Which, for the most part, entails removing ten zeros from the Zimbabwean dollar so that Z$10,000,000,000 (old)=NZM$1 (and note the abbreviate "NZM$" that I use, to avoid confusion with the New Zealand dollar, in referring to the New Zimbabwe Dollar).

But still, there can be no mistaking the fact that the cronyism, corruption and general mismanagement of the Zimbabwean socioeconomic system under Robert Mugabe's de facto one-party rule can be partly to blame for the socioeconomic mess Zimbabwe has been reduced to--and for which the New Zimbabwe Dollar seeks to make up for, inasmuch as calculators and computers in general use lack adequate memory to make up for the ongoing hyperflation.

Still, though, you have to wonder how Zimbabwe's hyperflation would stack up against the notorous German hyperflation following World War I, when the Reichsmark lost value against the dollar over four years by a factor of 762 million before "currency reforms" managed to bring about some relief--never mind that such helped fuel Hitler's appeal among the Weimar Republic's Great Unwashed over time.

=============

MEANWHILE, HERE IN THE SUPPOSEDLY "MORALLY SUPERIOR" UNITED STATES, His Fraudulency's Grand Delusion of socioeconomic recovery aided by ill-advised Economic Stimulus Payments starting @ $300 failed to produce the results as expected, never mind The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang's articles of faith calling for "staying the course" in seeing free-market capitalism with American characteristics as Great White Father @ the expense of further worsening the situation made all the worse by flawed and inept intelligence excusing ur-RAHOWA in Iraq.

For which His Fraudulency is expecting us to rejoice and give thanks to G-d for in his sugar-coated and manufactured stylee in citing a number of supposed "glorious victories" in the Iraqi Theatre of Occupation, not unlike North Korea expecting its peoples to celebrate when it detonated a supposed atomic bomb a couple of years back.

=============

AND SO MUCH FOR NORTH KOREA'S "REJOICING" IN DEVELOPING ATOMIC WEAPONS WHILE STARVING THEIR OWN PEOPLES in the name of "Eternal Leader" Kim Il Sung--it seems that the Japanese may have played an indirect role in North Korea's developing an atomic-weapons programme "on the side" @ their atomic-reactor facility amongst the Azaleas of Yongbyon.

The BBC explaineth:

Police in Japan have raided the premises of a company suspected of illegally exporting machinery that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Officers targeted the headquarters of Horkos Corp and several related sites in the southern city of Fukuyama.

The company is accused of exporting tools that could be used in enriching uranium without government permission.

Police say the equipment, which was sent to South Korea, could have been sold to North Korea or the Middle East.

The tools are normally used to manufacture automotive components, but they can be modified to produce the centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

Export of these items requires approval from the government, but Horkos is accused of falsely labelling items to avoid the need for permission.

Police suspect a batch of tools sent to South Korea in 2004 could then have been resold to a country for use in nuclear weapons' development, Kyodo news agency said.

Japanese police have carried out similar raids in the past.

Last year four former executives of precision equipment maker Mitutoyo were convicted of illegally exporting devices that could be used in nuclear weapons' production - one of which was reportedly found in Libya.

*************

ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER EHUD OLMERT, HIMSELF FACING CHARGES OF CORRUPTION AND MISUSE OF FUNDS, PROBABLY DID THE RIGHT THING in announcing his resignation with effect from around Rosh Hashanah ... in turn prompting opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to suggest that Mr. Olmert timely call elections for the Knesset to ensure a seamless and orderly continuity of the Israeli situation.

Never mind Olmert's insisting that he still wants to broker peace settlements with the Palestinian Authority over soverignty of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza all the sooner.

(Incidentally, did you know that Arabic is an officially recognised language in Israel, alongside Hebrew?)

*************

AND WE CAN ONLY IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES OF FORMER SERBIAN MAJORDOMO RADOVAN KARADZIC BEING NO BETTER THAN THE LATE SLOBODVAN MILOSEVIJC @ the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in Den Haag with all his attempts to question the legality and legitimacy of same as he faces charges of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity after being so long in hiding as a medical quack in Sarajevo.

Or, for that matter, Saddam Hussein.