Idiocy Knows No Borders: Mice with Human Brains

Hidden Camera Picture from Inside NIH Laboratories

Well, just when you thought you'd heard everything, something new pops up.

The Republican candidate (who else of course) for Senate from the great state of Delaware apparently rang the warning tocsin of a manifest danger to our nation back in 2007.  Sadly though it appears no one heeded her:

"They are -- they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they're already into this experiment."

Now I suspect many of you out there are wondering if this could possibly be true.  I'd point out that Ms. O'Donnell made her remarks on Bill O'Reilly's show.  And if that doesn't settle the issue for you, I'm not sure what other arguments would.

One thing we can be sure of from this story though is that we have pretty conclusive proof that scientists have been successful in their efforts to cross-breed humans with mice brains.  I think Ms. O'Donnell's words speak for themselves.

You may also be wondering who "they" are.  I'd tell you but I'm pretty sure I can here the very faint "whump, whump" of the black helicopters circling overhead   I did ask the real estate agent if we were outside the range of the UN spy satellites.  She assured me we would be.  But I guess she didn't know or, perhaps, may have been in on the plot.  

 Outside my window, right now.

Additional posting may be delayed today.  I'm going to nip out to the local store.  While I did line my enormous tarboush with tin foil last week, I think it's time I put tin foil on the walls around the area in which I blog.  One can't be too safe. 

If  I don't post again, well you'll know what happened. 

And for God's sake keep your eyes open for mice on bicycles!

You Said What?: Sue Myrick "The Iranians are Coming"

Well the thing that concerns me, and you mentioned this briefly, Iran is working with Venezuela. And they're transiting through Venezuela, taking Spanish for maybe six months. They're getting the false documents that they need, coming up through Mexico and if they're stopped, they just say well I'm Spanish. And it, oh I mean Mexican, and it only takes a smart border agent who knows the difference in the accents. He can tell, but if he doesn't have that, there's no way to know.

And the other thing that we're seeing, and we're seeing it in your state in particular in the prisons is Farsi tattoos. Farsi is basically a Persian language, which Iran is, and we know we've seen Arabic tattoos in our prisons for a long time, but we haven't seen Farsi tattoos in a long time. That's a pretty good indication that these people coming across our border are not just coming from Mexico and other countries that are looking for work. And that's what scares me. Being on Intelligence, we know there are people who are are here who do want to do us harm who are already in the country and it's not a matter of will they get in anymore, it's a matter of they're already here because of our lax border laws.

Well, as I'm sure you'll agree, this is mighty disturbing.  Rather sophisticated Iranians - capable of learning Spanish in six months - are infiltrating our country.  The only thing that stands between "them" and "us" are the language skills of our border patrol.  If they can't tell a Mexican or Spanish accent from  a Farsi  one, we're in for big trouble.

Of course, if they have those "Farsi tatoos", I suppose that would be another way to catch them.  Though I have to admit it's unclear why they would have these tattoos.  Wouldn't that undermine their clever disguises?

And if they're in jail, haven't we already caught them? Or is this a diabolical plan to take over our prisons?  And what greater threat to our nation?  For what more symbolizes a nation than its prisons? 

Perhaps, convenience stores?  And there's another threat lurking there.  And it isn't Apu.

After all this AA is pretty scared but not more than by two chilling facts:

1. Representative Myrick has represented the 9th Congressional District in North Carolina since 1995 .
2. She has a seat on the House Intelligence Committee.

I'm hoping the name signifies the Committee works to raise the intelligence level of its members.  No Representative left behind, no matter how far back he or she starts out.

Boubyan Bank - Time to Sell?

So say Saud and Naser at AlphaDinar.

Some very interesting implications for 

1. TID, CBK and the creditors of TID
2. Existing shareholders with the upcoming Rights Offering

ABC US$1.11 Billion Rights Offering: Libya Takes 70.9%

As per the announcement on the BSE today, ABC's Rights Offering was successful - the full US$1.11 billion was raised.

No surprise there.  The Libyan Central Bank underwrote the Offer.  In addition to its own entitlement under the RO of 327,738,545, it purchased an additional 376,979,361 shares - which were not taken up by other shareholders under their entitlements.

All in all the Libyan shareholders in ABC (Central Bank of Libya, LAFICO,  and LFB) purchased 70.9% of the total offer.

It would appear from that announcement that LCB took up ADIA's full 305,889,306 share entitlement plus 99.9% of the 71,180,797 offered to non founding other shareholders who are mostly retail investors.

Since ABC trades below nominal value and by Bahraini Law Rights Offerings must be at nominal value, there was little likelihood that this latter group would take up their allotments under the RO.  Why pay US$1.00 for shares trading in the market at US$0.605?

From the data presented it appears that KIA bought its full allotment of 329,534,084 shares. 

As a result

1. Libyan entities will now own roughly 48.5% of ABC versus 36.3% prior to the Rights Offering.  
2. ADIA's share will drop from 27.6% to  17.7%.   
3. KIA's shareholding remains 29.7%.

A copy of the Rights Offering Prospectus is here.  Page 12 provides details of pre RO holdings and some projections for post RO holdings - which have turned out to be essentially correct.

In terms of effective purchase price (considering the CBL's US$110,000,000 underwriting fee - to be paid from the proceeds),   the Libyan entities (considered as a group) got their 780,375,173 shares at roughly US$0.86 per share.

As noted above, ABC is currently trading at US$0.605 per share., though this is not really reflective of intrinsic value.  The BSE is not a liquid market.  Compounding that fact is that the free float on ABC was 6.4% pre Rights Offering.  So on both scores there's not much price discovery in the market.  Relatively minor transactions on either the buy or sell side can move the price dramatically.  The situation will be even worse after the Rights Offering.  The free float will drop to roughly 4.1%.

Earlier post here.

Apparent Dramatic Improvement in GCC Security? Or Outbreak of Diplomatic Illness?

The Sixth Annual International Institute of Strategic Studies Regional Security Summit is being held in Manama from 11 through 13 December.

In an apparent sign of markedly decreased tensions in this formerly volatile part of the world, neither Secretary Gates from the United States nor the Foreign Minister of France, Bernard Kouchner, needed to attend. Secretary Gates was in Kirkuk for a clearly much more important "sunny day town hall meeting" with 300 US troops. Foreign Minister Kouchner was in Paris to join President Sarkozy for critical meetings with President Mubarak of Egypt who is arriving Sunday, which coincidentally is the last day of the conference.

Completely unrelated to this bit of news were the comments by the Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Bahrain, Shaykh Khalid Bin Ahmed Al Khalifah, against imposing additional sanctions on Iran and criticizing the exclusion of the Arab states of the Gulf from the negotiations with Iran.  And it appears even more comments here.

Also completely unrelated to both was the reported presence of the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the conference.