Thursday 22 May 2014

Mission Accomplished!



Baltic Dry Index. 988  -22

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

Politics is not an exact science.

Count Otto von Bismarck.

This morning it’s “Mission Accomplished.” Accomplished that is for Russia and China. In yet more fallout from America’s disastrous botched coup in Kiev, so far America has managed to give back the Crimea to Russia, driven Russia and China to complete a long stalled natural gas deal, blown up Japan’s attempted rapprochement with Russia attempting to split China and Russia apart, put Continental Europe on a course to commit economic suicide, by attempting to switch from cheap Russian energy to much more expensive LNG, and best of all from a Russian perspective, transferred the cost of subsidising the Ukraine, the thoroughly corrupt, oligarch basket case of Europe, from Russia onto the EU and America. In further collateral damage, Russia and China will step up the use of each other’s currency cutting out the dollar. Who are these Russian’s who work so successfully in Washington for Russia?

The only eventual upside for continental Europe, once Russian gas is actually flowing into China, the price of LNG might drop as the extra supply weighs on the market. Unfortunately for continental Europe, that is about four to five years away. I suspect that the one day signing delay, might have been an attempt by some to profit from the one day drop and following surge in the Gazprom share price.

Below, “Mission Accomplished.”

I trust no one, not even myself.

President Obama, with apologies to Joseph Stalin.

China and Russia sign 30 year gas deal

CCTV.com 05-22-2014 06:51 BJT
China and Russia have signed a long-awaited gas deal worth more than US$400 billion, ending a decade of natural gas supply talks between the two countries.Two documents and a memorandum were signed at a ceremony in Shanghai attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to a bulletin on the China National Petroleum Corporation’s website, the contract will come into effect in 2018. A new pipeline will provide China with 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. The deal comes the day after the two leaders issued a joint statement that said that the two countries would "establish a comprehensive energy cooperation partnership.

Putin Tilts to Asia With $400 Billion China Gas Deal

May 21, 2014 9:00 PM GMT
Russia’s $400 billion deal to supply natural gas to China after more than a decade of negotiations is tilting the world’s largest energy exporter toward Asia as ties worsen with the U.S. and Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is turning eastward as sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union because of the standoff over Ukraine batter the Russian economy. The increasing alienation makes trade with China, the country’s largest trading partner after the two-way volume surged sevenfold in the past decade to about $94 billion last year, even more important.

----Putin yesterday in Shanghai called the signing an “epochal event.” While the price wasn’t disclosed, he said its satisfies both countries. The deal to supply gas through a new pipeline was completed after a decade of negotiations, mostly because of a disagreement over the price.

The ruble strengthened 0.3 percent to 34.415 per dollar by 7:39 p.m. in Moscow, gaining for a third day. OAO Gazprom (GAZP) shares advanced 0.8 percent to 146.58 rubles.

---- Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexey Miller signed the deal with Zhou Jiping, chairman of China National Petroleum Corp. The agreement is for 38 billion cubic meters of gas annually over 30 years, or about 20 percent of its sales to Europe, Miller said. While he declined to give a price, he said the total value would be about $400 billion.

“This is the largest ever contract for Gazprom,” Miller said, adding the deal was clinched at 4 a.m. Shipments will start in four to six years, he said.

---- China may make as much as $25 billion in advance payments under the contract to invest in the necessary infrastructure, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters yesterday. The government in Beijing, responsible for a pipeline on its territory, will spend at least $20 billion on its construction, Putin said.

Russia and China will start talks on a second pipeline to the west of the initial route, Miller said.
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Cold War Return Leaves Abe’s Russia Strategy in Tatters

May 21, 2014 4:00 PM GMT
Japan’s escalating tensions with China in recent years spurred Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to resolve decades-old differences with another neighbor -- Russia. Just as those efforts offered promise, the Crimea crisis hit.

Now, Abe is backing U.S.-led efforts to punish Russia and President Vladimir Putin is tightening ties with China, with the two nations this week mounting their first joint naval drills near Japan-controlled islands that are at the center of the Chinese-Japanese rift. With a warning against other nations’ planes or ships entering the exercise zone, the budding Russia-China relationship poses fresh challenges to Abe.

The prime minister is the first Japanese leader in a decade to make an official visit to Russia, and has met Putin five times, including on a trip to the Sochi Olympics opening ceremony that was shunned by U.S. President Barack Obama. The initiative, designed to resolve Cold War-era territorial differences and expand the supply of Russian energy to Japan, hit a snag when Abe joined his Group of Seven counterparts to back sanctions on Russia over its Crimea seizure.

----Japan’s relations with neighboring China and South Korea have frayed further since Abe came to power in December 2012, with suspicions in both countries of a revival of Japan’s militant past, aggravating existing territorial disputes.

In contrast to the five meetings with Putin, Abe has yet to sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and South Korean President Park Geun-Hye refused to meet Abe until Obama brokered a summit as he sought to mend ties between the U.S.’s biggest allies in Asia to build a united front against a more assertive China.

In a sign of the improving China-Russian relations, the two countries reached a deal yesterday for Russia to supply natural gas to China through a new pipeline between the two countries, paving the way for hundreds of billions of dollars in fuel sales over the next three decades.

Abe also sought energy deals with Russia as he sought new supplies of fuels with Japan’s nuclear reactors offline following the March 2011 tsunami.
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Ending on China today, China’s leadership is clearly enraged, by recent US actions. My guess is that we will not be kept waiting long for China to react with more than just words.

China Voice: Spy charges expose U.S. cyber hegemony mentality

BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) -- The United States has indulged in its cyber hegemony mentality again as it filed ungrounded commercial cyber espionage charges against five Chinese military officers.

It is really amazing to see that the biggest cyber bully, which has virtually no credibility left in the cyber world, could still stand at the moral high ground to accuse others.

The U.S. has repeatedly and arbitrarily made baseless accusations about China's cyber espionage in recent years, reflecting its hypocrisy and hegemony.

U.S. cyber hegemony is aggressive and dangerous in nature.

Even as overall U.S. defense spending witnessed cuts, the Pentagon is still beefing up its cyberspace force at the U.S. Cyber Command, doubling its budget to 447 million U.S. dollars this year, the Washington Post reported earlier this year.

The cyberspace force is also expected to be expanded from about 1,800 people today to more than 6,000 by the end of 2016, according to the plan.

The U.S. president has the power to order preemptive cyber strikes, the New York Times reported last year. And The Times reported that Obama ordered an escalating series of cyber attacks against Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities.

While the U.S. has touted threats to cyber security from abroad, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been one of the most active attackers of computer systems around the world.

China is in fact a major victim of persistent and large-scale cyber attacks from the U.S. targeting China's government institutions, schools, universities, companies and even individuals.

China has always requested that the U.S. give a clear and thorough clarification on why it targeted Chinese institutions and people, but the country has still not received it.

The unfounded charge against Chinese officers amounts to the same hypocrisy as a bandit calling for justice.

The Europeans were alerted to risks by a European Parliament report more than a decade ago that the U.S. uses sophisticated electronic spying techniques to gather economic intelligence.

The report put forward extensive claims that the U.S. NSA routinely tracks telephone, fax, and email transmissions from around the world and passes on useful corporate intelligence to American companies.

Among the allegations, the NSA fed information to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing, enabling the companies to beat out European Airbus for a multi-billion dollar contract.

U.S. intelligence, by virtue of data provided by nine Internet companies, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo, and other major telecom providers, tracked citizens' private contacts and social activities recklessly, according to the Washington Post.

Allegations of rampant U.S. electronic espionage have unfolded on a global scale in the wake of damaging revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

After it was exposed that Brazil's state oil giant Petrobras was also targeted by U.S. surveillance, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said the U.S. spying was out of economic and strategic interests instead of concerns about terrorism as Washington had claimed.

Instead of offering a sincere "sorry," Washington has found that mudslinging at other countries is a way to remedy its image, which has been tarred by its global spy program.

Spy Charges Ratchet Up Fears for Multinationals in China

May 22, 2014 5:27 AM GMT
Google Inc. (GOOG) sends an e-mail to some employees traveling to China warning that it’s a “restricted country” and online access to some internal systems will be limited, according to a person familiar with company policy.

Kyocera Corp. (6971) only makes photovoltaic cells in Japan and is reviewing cybersecurity measures at its solar-panel assembly plant in Tianjin. Infineon Technologies AG, Europe’s second-biggest chipmaker, fends off thousands of attacks from China every day, although most are amateurish, said a person familiar with the situation.

U.S. accusations of corporate spying by a Shanghai-based military unit have raised the stakes on the daily, behind-the-scenes struggle multinational companies face to protect intellectual property rights and confidential business plans in China. Military hackers stole designs for key reactor components from Westinghouse Electric Co., the Justice Department said.

The escalation risks putting companies in the crossfire between the governments of the world’s two biggest economies. China, which has denied any hacking, may retaliate against American companies for their government’s public accusations.
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Hackers raid eBay in historic breach, access 145 million records

Thu May 22, 2014 1:41am EDT
BOSTON (Reuters) - EBay Inc said that hackers raided its network three months ago, accessing some 145 million user records in what is poised to go down as one of the biggest data breaches in history, based on the number of accounts compromised.

It advised customers to change their passwords immediately, saying they were among the pieces of data stolen by cyber criminals who carried out the attack between late February and early March.

EBay spokeswoman Amanda Miller told Reuters late on Wednesday that those passwords were encrypted and that the company had no reason to believe the hackers had broken the code that scrambled them.

"There is no evidence of impact on any eBay customers," Miller said. "We don't know that they decrypted the passwords because it would not be easy to do."

She said the hackers gained access to 145 million records of which they copied "a large part". Those records contained passwords as well as email addresses, birth dates, mailing addresses and other personal information, but not financial data such as credit card numbers.

Miller also said the company has hired FireEye Inc's Mandiant forensics division to help investigate the matter. Mandiant is known for publishing a February 2013 report that described what it said was a Shanghai-based hacking group linked to the Peoples Liberation Army.

EBay earlier said a large number of accounts may have been compromised, but declined to say how many.
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In Europe, it’s voting time in the European elections. Between today and Sunday, Europe’s Bilderberger serfs are allowed a token vote. Nothing will change of course, this is the EU after all. Were there really to be a shock outcome, this being modern dumbed down, immoral modern Europe, the peons would merely be told to keep voting time and again, until they got the outcome right.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

Barroso, Van Rompuy, and EU cast of thousands, with apologies to Joseph Stalin.

U.K. Double Vote Means Twice the Misery for Party Leaders

May 22, 2014 12:00 AM GMT
Britain goes to the polls today in local and European elections that may bring a weekend of misery for the leaders of all three main parties.

As well as a European Parliament poll, the only time the whole country votes outside a general election, much of England is electing local council members. In the European vote, Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives are forecast to come third in a national contest for the first time since women got the vote in 1918. And his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, are polling as low as fifth, behind the Green Party.

Ed Miliband’s Labour Party is meanwhile battling for first place with the U.K. Independence Party. If Labour is overtaken by UKIP, it will be the first time the main party in opposition hasn’t won the European election since 1984.
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Wilders May Suffer Setback in Europe Vote, Polls Indicate

May 21, 2014 11:01 PM GMT
Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party may lose support in today’s European Parliament elections in the Netherlands, polls indicate, bucking a trend that’s seeing support for anti-European Union groups rise elsewhere.

Amid the debt crisis that’s roiled Europe, parties that share Wilders’s anti-EU message are challenging for first place in countries such as the U.K. and France. In the Netherlands, while support has plunged for Mark Rutte’s Liberal-led coalition with the Labor Party, the biggest beneficiary has been the D66 party, which is campaigning for a “strong Netherlands in a strong Europe.”

Polls this week showed the Freedom Party with enough backing for four of the 26 Dutch seats at stake, compared with the five they won in the last elections five years ago. D66 is on course for first place, taking five seats, the polls suggest.

Wilders sought this week to galvanize backing for his party by cutting a star representing the Netherlands out of an EU flag in Brussels. “I’m taking this star back with me to the Netherlands and they’re never getting it back from us in Brussels,” he said in front of photographers and television crews outside the European Parliament.
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We end on Europe today, with Britain’s Royal Family joining in the race to start World War Three, or at least the once Great Britain v Russia part of it. Unfit to be King, perhaps? Time for another King Willie?

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Mark Twain.

Diplomatic row as Russia demands 'clarification' on Prince Charles 'Hitler' comments

Russia demands Foreign Office clarifies 'official position' after Prince Charles likens President Putin to Hitler

9:00PM BST 21 May 2014
A senior Russian ambassador is to meet an official from the Foreign Office on Thursday after the Prince of Wales caused a diplomatic row by comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.

The Prince made his remark, in which he likened Russia’s annexation of Crimea to the actions of Nazi Germany, during a visit to a museum of immigration in Halifax, Canada.

He told a woman whose relations were murdered in the Holocaust: “And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.”

Russian diplomats contacted the Foreign Office on Wednesday night seeking an urgent meeting to clarify whether Prince Charles’s provocative remarks amounted to an “official position”.

As a result, Russia’s deputy ambassador will meet a senior FCO official on Thursday, The Telegraph understands

The comments are regarded as particularly offensive by Moscow as 20 million Russians were killed during the war, including members of Mr Putin’s family.

----The Russian president has sought to revive the memory of the “Great Patriotic War” in order to bolster his reputation as the leader of a resurgent Russia. Prince Charles and Mr Putin are due to appear together at the anniversary of the D-Day landings in France next month.

More

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-charles/10847992/Diplomatic-row-as-Russia-demands-clarification-on-Prince-Charles-Hitler-comments.html 

Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression.

Count Otto von Bismarck.

At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 56.13 Moz, Eligible 119.67 Moz, Total 175.80 Moz.  

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over. 

No crooks or bent politicians again today. Just a real life story from the not too distant past, with a moral for our new lawless age, if anyone would listen. 
 
“I came to believe through my life that what is important is that we live by the common ethics of all religions – kindness, decency, love, respect and honour for others – and not worry about the aspects within religion that divide us.”

Sir Nicholas Winton at 105: the man who gave 669 Czech children the 'greatest gift'

Sir Nicholas Winton, described as Britain's Oskar Schindler after he saved hundreds of children from the Nazis, is to receive the Order of the White Lion from Czech Republic

Reaching the age of 105 would be enough to mark most people out as remarkable. For Sir Nicholas Winton, it is the least of his achievements.

The British hero who saved 669 Jewish children from the Holocaust celebrated his birthday with the news that he is to receive the Czech Republic’s highest honour.

Sir Nicholas will be awarded the Order of the White Lion, the country’s most revered state distinction, for giving Czech children “the greatest possible gift: the chance to live and to be free”.

The Czech president, Milos Zeman, wrote to Sir Nicholas: “Your life is an example of humanity, selflessness, personal courage and modesty.”

In 1939, Sir Nicholas masterminded the transportation of children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to Britain, saving them from the concentration camps.

He rarely spoke of his achievements in the decades that followed, believing his actions to be unremarkable.
He came to public attention only in 1988, when he was reunited with some of those who call themselves 
“Nicky’s Children” on an emotional episode of the BBC programme That’s Life!

He was knighted by the Queen in 2003.

Sir Nicholas has outlived many of those he saved, and looked positively sprightly at the Czech Embassy on Monday night as he was presented with a cake bearing 105 candles.

"As far as I’m concerned, it’s only anno domini that I’m fighting. I’m not ill, I’m just old and doddery – more doddery than old, actually,” he said. Sir Nicholas insisted on standing to deliver his speech.

He attributes his longevity to good genes and staying active. When undergoing a hip replacement at the age of 103, doctors asked him if he would want to be resuscitated in the event that his heart stopped on the operating table. He was incredulous.

“Resuscitate me, of course! I want to live!” he said.

His daughter, Barbara Winton, recalled: “Last year when I half-heartedly suggested that perhaps having a party every year was a bit too much, his reply was that, as he didn’t know when the last one would be, he intended to keep having them.”

Sir Nicholas was a 29-year-old stockbroker about to set off on a skiing holiday in December 1938 when a friend urged him to change his plans and visit Prague. A politically-minded young man, he agreed to go in order to witness what was happening in the country.

The Nazis had invaded the Sudetenland two months earlier and the situation in Prague was becoming increasingly dangerous for Jews.

While agencies were organising the mass evacuation of children from Austria and Germany, there was no such provision in Czechoslovakia.

Sir Nicholas began meeting parents who were desperate for their children to be taken to a place of safety, and began compiling a list of names.

The first train left Prague on March 14, the day before German troops marched into Czechoslovakia. Two fellow volunteers, Trevor Chadwick and Doreen Warriner, organised the Prague end of the operation.

Sir Nicholas returned to Britain and masterminded the rescue mission, finding adoptive homes for the children, pleading for funds and navigating the complex bureaucracy – ensuring each child had the £50 guarantee (£2,500 in today’s money) to pay for their eventual return, and securing exit and entry permits.

On some occasions, he forged Home Office documents which had been too slow to arrive, and without which the children would not have been allowed to leave Czechoslovakia.

Name tags around their necks, the bewildered children arrived at Liverpool Street Station where Sir Nicholas and his mother would greet them. Some had relatives in the UK, but most went to live with strangers.

----His involvement with the victims of the Nazis did not end with the Kindertransport.

In 1947, he began work for the International Refugee Organisation, part of the United Nations. His role was to supervise the disposal of items looted by the Nazis and recovered by the Allies.

----His extraordinary life has been chronicled in a biography, written by his daughter, Barbara. If It’s Not Impossible… The Life of Nicholas Winton takes its title from his motto: “If something is not impossible, then there must be a way to do it.”

----Asked what message he would like the biography to carry, Sir Nicholas told his daughter: “I came to believe through my life that what is important is that we live by the common ethics of all religions – kindness, decency, love, respect and honour for others – and not worry about the aspects within religion that divide us.”
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No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.

Count Otto von Bismarck.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April

DJIA: +189 Down. NASDAQ: +347 Down. SP500: +249 Down.  Sell in May, go away.

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