Cliff,

You can use Liquid Paper to put a dot on the fifth and seventh
fretes. Some instruments also do the third, tenth and/or twelfth
frets. It's up to you.

Dan


On Jan 1, 2006, at 11:13 AM, Jim Devine wrote:

[from Juan Cole]

Amazing Predictions for 2006

*Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri, whom  the Bush administration has
failed to capture after all this time, and who was  probably
responsible for the July 7 bombings in the London subway and the
bombings in the Sinai in Egypt, will strike at US allies again in
2006.

*Saudi Arabia will use the $160 billion windfall from high  petroleum
prices to strengthen its military and security forces, and to spread
its rigid Wahhabi form of Islam.

*Iran's clerical elites will use the $36  billion windfall from high
petroleum prices to strengthen their military and  security forces,
and to spread their radical Khomeinist form of Islam. The US,  even if
takes some desperate step, will prove unable to shake the regime in
2006.

*The Iraqi government, on which the US is placing its bet, will  limp
along with less than $19 billion a year in petroleum income because of
 sabotage and guerrilla war, along with long-neglected fields and
dilapidated  plants and equipment. Most of that money will be absorbed
by the need for  internal security, reconstruction and paying off past
reparations and debts, as  well as by large-scale corruption and
embezzlement (billions of dollars went  missing during the government
of Iyad Allaw in 2004).

*The Iraqi  parliament will pass fundamentalist Muslim legislation.
Sometime in 2006, a  majority of Iraqi parliamentarians will call for
the withdrawal of US troops.  The Iraqi government will have warm
relations with Iran, but strained relations  with Saudi Arabia and
Jordan. The guerrilla war will continue.

*The  Israeli-Palestinian struggle will continue in staccatto fashion,
because the  Israeli government remains expansionist and land-hungry.
Because the Sharon  government refused to negotiate with real live
Palestinians over the Gaza  withdrawal no framework for peace was
erected. Israeli troops will go back into  Gaza from time to time.
Israel will settle thousands of colonists on Palestinian  land in the
west and will blame Palestinians as irrational and bigotted for
objecting. The subtle forms of ethnic cleansing of Arabs from
Jerusalem will  continue or accelerate. Fifteen percent of Palestinian
children will continue to  suffer from malnutrition, a result of the
poverty that derives from having been  put since 1967 in a large
Israeli jail.

*The Shanghai Cooperation Organization composed of China,  Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as members and India,
Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan as observers, will follow up on its
success in  getting US troops out of Uzbekistan and on strengthening
energy cooperation  between Kazakhstan and China on the one hand, and
Russia and Kazakhstan on the  other, as well as security cooperation
between Russia and Uzbekistan. The  conjuncture of gas, petroleum,
Islam, terrorism and great power jockeying will  keep the new Great
Game going, this time with Russia, China and the United  States all
playing. The US hand is weak.

*The US attempt to isolate Iran  by putting boycotts on Chinese and
other companies that deal with  it will only prove effective for those
companies that do a lot of business with  the US. Moreover, it is easy
enough for a company to hive off a de facto  subsidiary to deal with
Iran (ask Bechtel and Halliburton). And, rising powers  like India
that have relatively little trade with the US will tempted to choose
energy from Iran over good diplomatic  relations with the US.

*New Orleans will for the most part not be rebuilt  and will
increasingly be eclipsed by Baton Rouge. Louisiana as a result will
become a solid Red State. The Republican Party has no particular
reason to  rebuild a predominantly African-American city that reliably
voted Democrat, just  as its leader, George W. Bush, apparently had no
particular reason to implement  relief work there with any urgency or
efficiency after the flood. Most of the  $25 billion in reconstruction
aid promised by the Federal government will never  arrive.

*The United States will continue to lose global political influence
because its  government is running large deficits and going ever
deeper into debt. In the  1950s, President Eisenhower routinely used
the threat of calling in loans from  war-devastated Europe to get his
way. He threatened UK Prime Minister Anthony  Eden with loan
cancellations if the latter did not get back out of the Suez in  late
1956. He threatened DeGaulle with loan cancellations if the latter
didn't  get France out of rebellious Algeria before it went Communist.
Nowadays the US  is a massive debtor nation, and has lost that kind of
leverage with all but the  poorest and most beaten-down countries. The
US nuclear arsenal is relatively  useless because it cannot actually
be used, and the US military is bogged down  in Iraq. America remains
a superpower for the third and fourth worlds, but is  often a
helpless, pitiful giant as far as places like Western Europe and China
 are concerned.

[Caveat emptor: The author, a historian, has a fair  amount of
expertise with the past, but knows nothing out of the ordinary about
the future.]

--
Posted by Juan to Informed Comment at 1/01/2006 06:37:00 AM

--
Jim Devine
"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an
intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin

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