Among the fake promises on the web, the worst is from gmail: “No messages in the Trash. Who needs to delete when you have so much storage?”
But I don’t have enough storage. We are still being barraged by Asian character denial of service messages sent via the website, www.global-investing.com, probably from China. We also get lots of spam because the website is accessible to the world. I get offers of everything from Nigerian inheritances against a tiny payment up front to ways to raise our position in search engines higher and higher than we deserve.
So mail is being bounced. Our reporters have been able to tell me about this using my personal e-mail which is not public. Or by telephoning. Some of you may have had problems contacting me. I am working on getting the system up and running. Readers and subscribers do not pick up the phone if they get bounced e-mails and they don’t have my personal e-mail address.
So just so you know, I am still around, still in business. The problem is that my gmail account does not have as much storage as google claims.
What is a Slav? What are Slavs is Russia is protecting from Ukrainians? Alexander Lukashenko, about whom more is offered to paid subscribers below, claims that Russian snatched Crimea to defend Russians and Slavs.
Ukrainians are Slavic just as Russians, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Belorussians are, but not always Orthodox Christians like them.
Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnian Herzegovians are also Slavs but not Orthodox Christians. Mr Lukashenko, who is of partial Ukrainian heritage and who bears a Ukrainian last name (although he has run Belarus for nearly two decades) surely knows that Russia’s takeover of the Crimea cannot have been in defense of Slavs.
This usage takes us back to the Slavophile anti-Westerner movement which Czarist Russian Empire acted upon in the mid-19th century.
In fact Lukashenko does know that Ukrainians are Slavs and is criticizing Moscow between the lines which has important impact on our portfolio. More on this for paid subscribers along with news from Mongolia, Mexico, Ukraine, Belarus, Canada, Ireland, Israel, India, The Netherlands, South Africa, and Hong Kong.
*The price of the April Tampa ammonia contract was settled at $580 per metric tonne, a whopping $120 above the March contract. It also is about $10-20 over the global price according to analysts at Bank of Nova Scotia. Farmgate fertilizer prices are up as spring planting gets near. Some experts expect that ammonia prices may again hit the $800 level seen last year. Plains state prices are now $560-595/tonne but already the US Dept of Agriculture says Illinois average price levels are much higher, up to $663/tonne. Agrium is currently trading at US$95.77 (add ~10% for loonies,) up 2.33% today.
