Shorting Russia and sundry other items of the day

Who needs terrorists if you have security forces like that?

Beslan is already the second time in a row after Moscow where the Alphas proved themselves completely incapable of handling a situation appropriately without any apparent corrective action being taken on the political level to address that incompetence. Quite on the contrary: The editor in chief of Nowije Isvestija is being sacked "suprisingly" shortly after authorising a highly critical account of the machinations of the government. That's not talking about the human grief, which hardly ever is of concern to governments which are not subject to close public scrutiny. And then there's Yukos, and ..., and ... like I am saying, I am getting rid of all Russian equity exposure now since obviously the Russian government is increasingly moving away from its earlier path which led it more and more towards a modern, western style open society. And that is most unfortunate.

On a more enjoyable note, and one which has precious little to do with Russia, apart maybe from some orthodox musical influences, Björk's Medulla was in the mail today, together with Joni Mitchell's Song to a Seagull, which album they now decided to call Joni Mitchell for reasons unknown. I haven't had the opportunity to listen to either of them intently, yet, but I certainly will on the trip over to SF. The one thing I can tell you already: Björk is always good for a surprise, that's why she's one of the very few pop icons I have made a habit of watching.

Again less pleasing is the email received from Amazon: The guide to the road trip in California left their dispatch centre only tonight, so it's hardly going to make it by Wednesday morning ... but hey, I've got 736 more pages to deal with when there!

So, that's about it for the day. Oh yeah, swimming was great - I've had the whole 25m pool to myself! It's a very gratifying feeling to plow through totally still water. OK, I may be overdoing the metaphore a little bit, but you get my drift.