Baltic Dry Index. 939 -34
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Bush
pledged to find and punish "anybody who wants to harm American
troops," and said the attacks would not weaken his resolve to restore
peace and order in Iraq.
"There
are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us
there. My answer is bring them on," Bush said.
USA
Today 7/2/2003
We have reached the first Friday the 13th
of 2014. What (more) could possibly go wrong? This morning it increasingly looks
like “Mission Accomplished for Iran, as Iran rushes Qud Revolutionary Guard
forces into Iraq, to help prop up Shiite Baghdad from total collapse and
takeover by the local offshoot of al Qaeeda, which looks dangerously close to
establishing a new Caliphate in a large part of Syria and Iraq. Until stopped
by President Putin last year, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry came
within a hairs breadth of providing an air force in Syria to the fanatical Moslem
extremists now seemingly taking over much of the Middle East.
This Friday the thirteenth, our planet stands on
the precipice of another oil shock that will tip much of continental Europe
into a real depression, and most of the rest of the world back into a severe
depression. So far thanks to serial bungling by Washington, London and Paris,
we have knocked out global oil supply from Libya, Iran and Kurdistan, are on
the cusp of losing oil supply from Iraq. We have picked an unnecessary fight with oil and natural gas exporter Russia,
and stand by indifferent to the fate of South Sudan and its oil exports, and
seem to think that the world still owes us a living high on the hog. Get ready
for a critical weekend. Keep the cars filled up as a hedge against further
bungling.
Below, Iraq Friday the thirteenth.
June 12, 2014, 7:12 p.m. EDT
Iraq girds to defend Baghdad, with help from Iran
Iranian forces joined Iraq’s
battle against insurgents taking over a growing swath of the country as the
Baghdad government girded to protect the capital and the U.S. weighed direct
military assistance, including possible airstrikes.
Iraq edged closer to all-out
sectarian conflict as Kurdish forces took control of a provincial capital in
the oil-rich north on Thursday and Sunni militants threatened to march on two
cities revered by Shiite Muslims as well as the capital.
“What we have
seen over the last couple of days indicates the degree to which Iraq is going
to need more help—more help from us and more help from the international
community,” President Barack Obama said from the Oval Office. “My team is
working around the clock to identify how we can provide the most effective
assistance to them,” he added. “I don’t rule out anything.”
Faced
with the threat of Sunni extremists eclipsing the power of Iraq’s
Shiite-dominated rulers, Shiite Iran sprang into action to aid its besieged
Arab ally. It deployed powerful Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, Iranian
security sources said.
At
least three battalions of the Quds Forces, the overseas branch of the Guards,
were dispatched to battle the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of
al Qaeda rapidly gaining territory across Iraq, they
said.
---- One Guards unit
that was already in Iraq fought alongside the Iraqi army, offering
guerrilla-warfare advice and tactics and helping to reclaim most of the city of
Tikrit on Thursday, the security sources said. Two units, dispatched from
Iran’s western border provinces on Wednesday, were tasked with protecting
Baghdad and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, they said.
More
Iraq Fighters Finding Support in Seized Towns Raises Attack Risk
Jun 13, 2014 12:01 AM GMT
When Islamic militants swept into the western Iraq city of Mosul
this week, Ammar al-Tayee was relieved to see soldiers flee for their lives. The 30-year-old medic used to spend hours at army checkpoints and got fed up with the Shiite-dominated military insulting residents of the mostly Sunni city, he said.
“Life is stable now,” al-Tayee said by telephone two days after the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaeda splinter group, took over his city. “The gunmen haven’t hurt anyone and I feel safe away from the grip of the government.”
Such grievances among Iraq’s majority Sunni population against the Shiite-led government have offered the militants, known as ISIL, the opportunity to secure a base inside Iraq as well as the territory they control in Syria. The group’s fighters took over Mosul and other Iraqi towns this week, as violence escalated 11 years after the U.S.-led invasion to depose Saddam Hussein.
The step toward a mini-state will heighten the risk of terrorism in the region and elsewhere, said Evan Kohlmann, senior partner at Flashpoint Partners in New York.
“Every acre of territory that ISIL seizes control of, particularly in its homeland, now gives it added leverage and power to recruit and train individuals to carry out attacks not just inside of Iraq but in foreign countries,” Kohlmann said.
More
Oil Rallies as Extremist Advance in Iraq Threatens Crude Supply
Jun 13, 2014 5:55 AM GMT
West Texas Intermediate crude headed for the biggest weekly advance since
December and Brent gained as escalating violence in Iraq threatened supplies
from OPEC’s second-largest oil producer. Futures rose as much as 1.1 percent in New York, extending a 2 percent rally yesterday, the most in two months. Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi speculated that U.S. planes may bomb his nation’s north as militants linked to al-Qaeda, who captured the city of Mosul this week, moved south toward Baghdad.
The member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries produced 3.3 million barrels a day last month, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“There’s potential for disruption to spread around the Middle East and we’re talking about significant amounts of daily supply,” Michael McCarthy, a chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney who predicts
Brent may climb to $125 a barrel if there’s an attack on Baghdad. “The market got concerned about potential disruption in Libya; Iraq is a much more serious situation.”
More
Evacuations in Iraq as chaos spreads
A sense of crisis is gripping Baghdad as radical jihadists make ground at rapid speed across northern Iraq on the roads towards the capital
A growing sense of panic was
gripping Iraq last night as the al-Qaeda uprising in the country’s north led to
US contractors being evacuated from the region and European countries ordering
their citizens to leave Baghdad.
With militants threatening to
advance on the capital, signs emerged of diplomats making preparations to leave
the country in the event of civil war erupting.
Three planes carrying American
diplomats and contractors stationed at a training mission at an Iraqi airbase
in Balad, north of Baghdad, flew out amid fears that the base could be
surrounded by the militants. Germany ordered all its citizens to leave the
Iraqi capital, as did Turkey, which has already had 80 people kidnapped by the
militants, including the consul to the northern city of Mosul.
British officials said they had
no immediate plans to evacuate staff from Baghdad’s heavily guarded “Green
Zone”. As troops stood guard at the city’s northern flanks, queues formed at
the main airport while banks saw large number of customers attempt to withdraw
money. Last night the internet also went down in
Baghdad for an hour, adding to
the atmosphere of unease.
Meanwhile, the militants, who
operate under the banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS),
issued threats to anybody who defied a harsh code of Sharia they have imposed
in captured territories.
Rule-breakers who ignored edicts banning drinking,
smoking and “immodest” behaviour by women could expect “be killed or crucified,
or have hands or feet cut from opposite sides.”
The mounting sense of crisis came
as Iran seemed poised to steal the military initiative in the conflict,
despatching battalions of elite troops to assist Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri
al-Maliki.
More
Asia stocks down, oil up as Iraq conflict sours mood
By Shinichi Saoshiro TOKYO
(Reuters) - Asian stocks slid and crude oil scaled nine-month highs on Friday as
escalating civil war in Iraq dulled risk appetite which had been buoyant just
days before.Spreadbetters expected the sour mood to linger on in Europe, forecasting Britain's FTSE .FTSE to open as much as 0.4 percent lower, Germany's DAX .GDAXI down 0.25 percent and France's CAC .FCHI 0.26 percent lower.
The yen, however, benefited from its safe-haven status and a decline in U.S. Treasury yields following soft U.S. data that dented economic optimism.
Sunni Islamist militants have extended their advance south towards Baghdad and prompted President Barack Obama to warn of possible U.S. military intervention, while Iraqi Kurdish forces took control of the Kirkuk oil hub amid the chaos.
More
Iraq crisis: the jihadist behind the takeover of Mosul - and how America let him go
The fall of the Iraqi city of Mosul to the al-Qaeda offshoot ISIS has shown the power of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - a former US detainee
The FBI “most wanted” mugshot
shows a tough, swarthy figure, his hair in a jailbird crew-cut. The $10 million
price on his head, meanwhile, suggests that whoever released him from US
custody four years ago may now be regretting it.
Taken during his years as a
detainee at the US-run Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, this is the only known
photograph of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and
Syria. But while he may lack the photogenic qualities of his hero, Osama bin
Laden, he is fast becoming the new poster-boy for the global jihadist movement.
Well-organised and utterly
ruthless, the ex-preacher is the driving force behind al-Qaeda’s resurgence
throughout Syria and Iraq, putting it at the forefront of the war to topple
President Bashar al-Assad and starting a fresh campaign of mayhem against the
Western-backed government in Baghdad
More
In the rush to World War Three news, following
America’s botched coup in Kiev, America’s puppet Kiev regime has resorted to shelling
Slavyansk with white phosphorus munitions, while the “Chocolate King” in Kiev is
accusing Russia of allowing in tanks. My
guess is that the gloves come off next week when the Ukraine misses its final
deadline to pay Russia for natural gas already supplied in 2014. But don’t let
on the banksters and Wall Street Squids, who are all still busy inflating the
Fed’s final stock market bubble.
Ukraine accuses Russia of letting rebels bring in tanks
By Natalia Zinets and Timothy
Heritage KIEV
(Reuters) - Ukraine
accused Russia
on Thursday of allowing separatist rebels to bring three tanks and other
military vehicles across the border into the east of the country to fight the
Ukrainian army.Evidence that Russia is sending in weapons or assisting the rebels militarily would implicate Moscow in the uprising against Kiev's pro-Western leaders, making a mockery of its denials that it has played a role in weeks of fighting.
Interior Minister Arseny Avakov stopped short of directly accusing Russia of sending the tanks but made clear he held President Vladimir Putin responsible for failing to carry out a promise to tighten controls at the border.
In a sign of his concern, President Petro Poroshenko discussed the situation with his defence and security chiefs and then told Putin by phone that the situation was "unacceptable", his spokesman said.
Reuters correspondents saw two tanks in the border town of Snizhnye in east Ukraine but said it was not clear where they had come from or whether they had previously been used by the Russian or Ukrainian army. They had no identifying markings to show whether they were Russian army tanks.
----Confirmation of direct Russian involvement in the rebels' uprising would raise the stakes in Moscow's worst standoff with the West since the Cold war ended more than two decades ago.
The separatists, who rose up
after Poroshenko's predecessor was toppled and fled to Russia in February, deny
receiving anything but medical supplies, food and clothing from Russia.
"Russia is helping, of course, with humanitarian aid, food, things,
medicine, gear. We won't refuse that," a rebel said. Russia has repeatedly
denied providing military support to the rebels who have taken control of
several towns and cities in east
Ukraine and hope that Russia will annexe the
region, as it did the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
had earlier on Thursday repeated Moscow's view that the onus for ending
violence lay with Ukraine because it has launched a military operation against
the rebels.
----"So far,
hope remains that President Poroshenko's statements about the end of violence
will be implemented and the talks start," Russia's Interfax news agency
quoted Lavrov as saying.
----Poroshenko has also been having meetings with a Russian envoy in Kiev and his aides say progress has been made, but talks on a long-running gas-pricing dispute have stalled.
Alexei Miller, the chief
executive of Gazprom, made clear the state-run natural gas exporter would not
extend a deadline for Kiev to pay its huge has debts for a third time to allow
more time to reach a deal at talks.
He said a Monday deadline would
stand, and Gazprom would cut supplies to Ukraine if it did not to pay off $1.95
billion of its gas debts by then. Cutting supplies to Kiev could disrupt
deliveries to the European Union, which gets about a third of its gas imports
from Russia, half of them via Ukraine.
More
'White phosphorus' reports: Ukraine military 'dropped incendiary bombs' on Slavyansk
Published time: June 12, 2014 20:31 Edited
time: June 13, 2014 04:20
Residents of Slavyansk and its
suburbs were awoken overnight on Thursday by what they say were incendiary
bombs that were dropped on their city by Kiev’s military. Witnesses and local
media reports suggested that the bombs might be phosphorous.
Much of the village of
Semyonovka, located in the Slavyansk suburbs, was set ablaze. Local residents
told RT that the ground didn't stop burning for some time.
“We all saw what happened here
yesterday. They used rocket launchers as well as incendiary bombs against us.
The ground was on fire. How can the ground burn by itself. It burned for about
forty minutes,” resident
Roman Litvinov told RT over the phone.
---- The use of incendiary bombs – designed
to start fires using materials such as napalm, white phosphorus or other
dangerous chemicals – is strictly prohibited by the UN.
More + video
In other less violent news this Friday the
thirteenth, why does this story seem familiar? Will it be this time it’s
different in China?
China No-Money-Down Housing Echoes U.S. Subprime Loan Risks
Jun 13, 2014 3:11 AM GMT
China’s home buyers are
being offered no-money-down purchases in an echo of the subprime lending that
triggered a U.S. economic meltdown and the global financial crisis. Deals skirting government requirements for minimum 30 percent down payments have emerged this year from Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south to Beijing in the north as real-estate sales slump, according to state media and statements by government agencies and developers.
Loosening down-payment requirements could erode China’s financial stability by adding to risks for property companies, lenders and an economy already heading for the weakest growth in 24 years. Government warnings to consumers indicate that officials will strive to limit such arrangements, a sign of stress in a property market with a glut of homes.
“The
risk is severe for developers and third parties because there is no commitment
from home buyers,” said Ding Shuang, senior China economist at Citigroup Inc in
Hong Kong.
“Zero down payment has appeared in the U.S. before. It basically enabled
unqualified people to buy houses,” said Ding, who used to work for the International
Monetary Fund.
----The
practice threatens to add to the build-up of risks in China’s $7 trillion
shadow banking industry, with developers or third parties arranging funding to
cover down-payment requirements, according to Shen Jianguang, Hong Kong-based
chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd.
More
"Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state."
William F. Rickenbacker
At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 57.06
Moz, Eligible 119.34 Moz, Total 176.40 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
No crooks or bent
politicians today, just another step on the road to war in East Asia.
Japan PM moves closer to winning support for looser limits on military
By Nobuhiro Kubo and Kiyoshi
Takenaka TOKYO
(Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe moved closer to easing constitutional curbs that have kept Japan's military
from fighting abroad since World War Two after the ruling party's dovish
coalition partner agreed to consider a compromise proposal.
An agreement would be a big step
toward achieving Abe's goal of loosening the limits of the post-war, pacifist
constitution.
The New Komeito, the junior party
in Abe's ruling bloc, is wary of a dropping a ban on sending Japan's military
to aid a friendly nation under attack, but on Friday party officials agreed to
consider a proposal that would allow the change while theoretically limiting
cases in which it could be implemented.
----The United States and some Southeast Asian countries would welcome the change, which would mark a major shift in Japan's post-war security policy. Japan's military has never engaged in combat since its defeat in World War Two.
But rival China, locked in bitter disputes with Japan over territory and wartime history, would almost certainly criticizes it as a sign that Tokyo, rather than Beijing, is ramping up regional tensions.
Pressure has been mounting on New Komeito from Abe, whose drive to loosen the constraints of the U.S.-drafted, post-war constitution is central to his conservative agenda. Conservatives say the charter's war-renouncing Article 9 has hindered Japan's ability to defend itself as a sovereign nation.
Advocates of a new interpretation also argue the change is vital to cope with security threats including from an increasingly assertive China and a volatile North Korea.
New Komeito leaders had ruled out leaving the coalition over the proposed change, which critics say would gut Article 9.
More
As we approach the
100th anniversary of the start the Great War, World War One, our
world it seems from summery peaceful London is all too eager to start another
war. Have a great weekend everyone."Gold bears the confidence of the world's millions, who value it far above the promises of politicians, far above the unbacked paper issued by governments as money substitutes. It has been that way through all recorded history. There is no reason to believe it will lose the confidence of people in the future."
Oakley R. Bramble
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