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Protesters storm Hungarian state TV
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060919/ap_on_re_eu/hungary_politics
If this was happening in a vacuum it would be one thing but Slovakia's Nationalistic Anti Hungarian party Slota won seats in the last election and are calling for a ban on all Hungarian parties and politics in Slovakia. Right after the election of Slota a Hungarian High school teacher was arrested for taking his history class to a Slovak Church in the Capital city. The Slovak government refuses to make any apology at any level of government last time I checked. This is not an isolated event.
By PABLO GORONDI, Associated Press Writer
51 minutes ago
BUDAPEST, Hungary - Protesters stormed the headquarters of Hungarian state television Tuesday and forced it off the air briefly in an explosion of anger after the prime minister admitted lying about the economy during an election campaign in April.
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Officials said about 150 people were injured in the violence, including 102 police officers, one of whom suffered a serious head injury.
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany vowed to stay in office and carry out economic reforms, despite the riots he described as the worst since the end of communism in 1989.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Gyurcsany condemned the "vandalism" of 2,000 to 3,000 protesters who fought police and invaded Hungarian television headquarters, but said he had complete confidence in the police's ability to restore order.
"I'm staying and I'm doing my job. I'm extremely committed to fulfilling my program, fiscal adjustments and reforms," he said. "I know it's very difficult for the people, but it's the only direction for Hungary."
Several thousand police reinforcements retook the headquarters of Hungarian state television early Tuesday after hours of violent clashes with protesters demanding that Gyurcsany resign for lying about the economy to win April elections.
"We had to cancel all programming and go off the air at about 1:20 Central European Time because the protesters — well, I should call them troublemakers, because they were not representing anyone here — they stormed the building," Balazs Bende, an editor at Magyar Televizio, the state broadcaster, said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
"They broke through the barricade and started to go in and break everything that they could find. They started looting and taking everything they could," Bende said.
"So at that moment the management of MTV Hungary and security service of MTV Hungary ordered everyone, every worker of the television, to leave, and we have been escorted on a sideway door to relative safety," he said.
By daylight Tuesday, police controlled the area around the TV building, which also includes the National Bank of Hungary and the U.S. Embassy, and broadcasting resumed.
Gyurcsany called it "the longest and darkest night" for Hungary since the fall of communism.
The protests were triggered by a recording that surfaced Sunday on which Gyurcsany admitted lying "morning, evening and night" about the economy during the campaign.
Gyurcsany, who has not denied making the statements, has called an emergency session of the National Security Cabinet for Tuesday.
In an effort to rein in a soaring budget deficit, his Socialist-led coalition has raised taxes and announced plans to lay off scores of state employees, introduce direct fees in the health sector and tuition for most university students.
"The parties behind the government have given (my program) full support ... and we have to go ahead," said Gyurcsany, whose coalition with the Alliance of Free Democrats in April became the first Hungarian government to win re-election since the return to democracy in 1990.
"In Hungary, we have not witnessed these kinds of protests in the last 15-20 years, but just because 2,000 or 3,000 people don't understand what they can and cannot do, it's not a right to disturb the peace of the country," he said.
"I'm absolutely sure that the Hungarian police will be able to handle the situation and ensure security and restore calm."
Justice Minister Jozsef Petretei, who also oversees the police force, submitted his resignation because of the outbreak of violence, but his offer was rejected by Gyurcsany.
The protesters began gathering outside the parliament building Monday night to demand Gyurcsany's resignation. As the crowd grew to more than 10,000, according to an estimate by MTI, the state news service, several hundred broke away and marched over to the nearby TV building, demanding to deliver a statement in a live broadcast.
While most of demonstrators watched, a few dozen broke through police lines and into the building. Police tried to disperse them with water cannon sprays but the truck was quickly disabled by the rioters, some of whom escorted the police officers operating the vehicle to safety.
Several cars near the TV building were set on fire, their flames scorching the building.
Rioters also vandalized a large obelisk commemorating Soviet soldiers who were killed driving Nazi forces from Hungary at the end of World War II.
In the recording leaked Sunday to local media, Gyurcsany could be heard admitting that his government coalition, the first in post-communist Hungary to win re-election, had lied about the economy — keeping it afloat through "hundreds of tricks" and thanks to "divine providence."
Gyurcsany's comments — made in May to the Socialists' group of parliamentary deputies — were full of crude remarks.
"We screwed up. Not a little, a lot," Gyurcsany was heard saying. "No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have."
"I almost died when for a year and a half we had to pretend we were governing. Instead, we lied morning, evening and night," he told his fellow Socialists.
President Laszlo Solyom asked Gyurcsany to publicly recognize his error, saying the news of the remarks had thrown the country into a "moral crisis." He also chastised the prime minister for "knowingly" jeopardizing people's faith in democracy.
Gyurcsany defended himself by saying that was he trying to convince his party about the urgent and inevitable need for comprehensive reforms and to change the political culture.
I love the lengthy discussion the Canadian media gives about the nuclear fallout this would create. If the fallout floats north it would hit Russia, west Israel, Turkey, Greece etc. East, CHina India etc.
Amateurs...
Let me tell you, if I wanted to blow up ANY oil location I would use rockets fired over the fence from a distance. Sooner or later these guys will figure that out.
Friday, September 15, 2006 · Last updated 1:21 a.m. PT
Attacks on Yemen oil plants kill 5
By DONNA ABU-NASR
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SAN`A, Yemen -- Suicide bombers tried to strike two oil facilities in Yemen with explosives-packed cars, but authorities foiled the attacks and four bombers and a security guard were killed, the government said Friday.
The attempts came ahead of this week's presidential elections, in which President Ali Abdullah Saleh faces a serious challenge for the first time since he became head of state in 1978.
They also came days after al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, issued a videotaped threat of attacks on the Persian Gulf and on facilities he blamed for stealing Muslim oil.
Friday's attacks happened 35 minutes apart, targeting a Yemeni oil refinery in the northeast province of Mareb and a Canadian-Yemeni oil storage facility at the Dubba Port in Haramut province - scene of a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg, an Interior Ministry statement said.
The statement said an investigation was under way to determine the identity of the "terrorist elements" behind the attacks.
Fourteen of 23 al-Qaida prisoners who escaped from jail in February remain still at large.
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In the first attack, two suicide bombers drove "at great speed" toward the Dubba Port at 5:15 a.m. in an attempt to blow up storage tanks containing a "huge amount" of oil, the ministry said.
The driver of the first car was wearing a uniform similar to those worn by staff at the facility, and the second driver was dressed in a military uniform, the statement said.
It said guards at the port "managed to blow up the rigged cars before they reached their targets."
A security guard was killed while "remains of the two terrorist attackers were strewn all over the place," the statement said. Shrapnel from the exploding cars sparked a small fire in one of the storage tanks, but it was quickly put out, it added.
At 5:50 a.m., security guards at a refinery in Mareb blew up two white cars loaded with explosives. The vehicles were similar to those driven by staff at the facility.
"They were driven by other suicide bomber terrorists who tried to break into (the facility)," the statement said.
The two attackers were killed and no one else was hurt in that attack, it said.
Saleh faces four opponents in Wednesday's elections. The most serious challenger is Faisal bin Shamlan, who was chosen by five opposition parties as their candidate.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and was the scene of the 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Yemen_Attack.html?source=rss
The Coming Collapse of Zionism
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former CIA Analyst
Is it only observers outside the conventional mainstream who have noticed that by its murderous assault on Lebanon and simultaneously on Gaza, Israel finally exposed, for even the most deluded to see, the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea?
Can it be that the deluded are still deluded? Can it truly still be that Israel's bankruptcy is evident only to those who already knew it, those who already recognized Zionism as illegitimate for the racist principle that underlies it?
Can it be therefore that only the already converted can see coming the ultimate collapse of Zionism and, with it, of Israel itself as the exclusivist state of Jews?
Racism has always been the lifeblood of Israel. Zionism rests on the fundamental belief that Jews have superior national, human, and natural rights in the land, an inherently racist foundation that excludes any possibility of true democracy or equality of peoples. Israel's destructive rampage in Lebanon and Gaza is merely the natural next step in the evolution of such a founding ideology. Precisely because that ideology posits the exclusivity and superiority of one people's rights, it can accept no legal or moral restraints on its behavior and no territorial limits, for it needs an ever-expanding geography to accommodate those unlimited rights.
Zionism cannot abide encroachment or even the slightest challenge to its total domination over its own space -- not merely of the space within Israel's 1967 borders, but of the surrounding space as well, extending outward to geographical limits that Zionism has not yet seen fit to set for itself. Total domination means no physical threat and no demographic threat: Jews reign, Jews are totally secure, Jews always outnumber, Jews hold all military power, Jews control all natural resources, all neighbors are powerless and totally subservient. This was the message Israel tried to send with its attack on Lebanon: that neither Hizbullah nor anything in Lebanon that nurtures Hizbullah should continue to exist, for the sole reason that Hizbullah challenges Israel's supreme authority in the region and Israel cannot abide this effrontery. Zionism cannot coexist with any other ideology or ethnicity except in the preeminent position, for everyone and every ideology that is not Zionist is a potential threat.
In Lebanon, Israel attempted by its wildly reckless violence to destroy the nation, to make of it a killing zone where only Zionism would reign, where non-Jews would die or flee or prostrate themselves, as they had during the nearly quarter-century of Israel's last occupation, from 1978 to 2000. Observing the war in Beirut after the first week of bombing, describing the murder in an Israeli bombing raid of four Lebanese army logistics techs who had been mending power and water lines "to keep Beirut alive," British correspondent Robert Fisk wrote that it dawned on him that what Israel intended was that "Beirut is to die . . . . No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive." Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz (the man who four years ago when he headed the Israeli Air Force said he felt no psychological discomfort after one of his F-16s had dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza in the middle of the night, killing 14 civilians, mostly children) pledged at the start of the Lebanon assault to take Lebanon back 20 years; 20 years ago Lebanon was not alive, its southern third occupied by Israel, the remainder a decade into a hopelessly destructive civil war.
The cluster bombs are a certain sign of Israel's intent to remake Lebanon, at least southern Lebanon, into a region cleansed of its Arab population and unable to function except at Israel's mercy. Cluster bombs, of which Israel's U.S. provider is the world's leading manufacturer (and user, in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq), explode in mid-flight and scatter hundreds of small bombs over a several-acre area. Up to one-quarter of the bomblets fail to explode on impact and are left to be found by unsuspecting civilians returning to their homes. UN surveyors estimate that there are as many as 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets strewn around in 400 bomb-strike sites in southern Lebanon. Scores of Lebanese children and adults have been killed and injured by this unexploded ordnance since the cease-fire last month.
Laying anti-personnel munitions in heavily populated civilian areas is not the surgical targeting of a military force in pursuit of military objectives; it is ethnic cleansing. Fully 90 percent of Israel's cluster-bomb strikes were conducted, according to UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egelund, in the last 72 hours before the cease-fire took effect, when it was apparent that a UN cease-fire resolution was in the works. This can only have been a further effort, no doubt intended to be more or less a coup de grace, to depopulate the area. Added to the preceding month of bombing attacks that destroyed as much as 50 or in some cases 80 percent of the homes in many villages, that did vast damage to the nation's entire civilian infrastructure, that crippled a coastal power plant that continues to spill tons of oil and benzene-laden toxins along the Lebanese and part of the Syrian coastlines, and that killed over 1,000 civilians in residential apartment blocks, being transported in ambulances, and fleeing in cars flying white flags, Israel's war can only be interpreted as a massiv act of ethnic cleansing, to keep the region safe for Jewish dominion.
In fact, approximately 250,000 people, by UN estimate, are unable to return to their homes because either the homes have been leveled or unexploded cluster bomblets and other ordnance have not yet been cleared by demining teams. This was not a war against Hizbullah, except incidentally. It was not a war against terror, as Israel and its U.S. acolytes would have us believe (indeed, Hizbullah was not conducting terrorist acts, but had been engaged in a sporadic series of military exchanges with Israeli forces along the border, usually initiated by Israel). This was a war for Israeli breathing space, for the absolute certainty that Israel would dominate the neighborhood. It was a war against a population that was not totally subservient, that had the audacity to harbor a force like Hizbullah that does not bow to Israel's will. It was a war on people and their way of thinking, people who are not Jewish and who do not act to promote Zionism and Jewish hegemony.
Israel has been doing this to its neighbors in one form or another since its creation. Palestinians have obviously been Zionism's longest suffering victims, and its most persistent opponents. The Zionists thought they had rid themselves of their most immediate problem, the problem at the very core of Zionism, in 1948 when they forced the flight of nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian population that stood in the way of a establishing Israel as an exclusive Jewish-majority state. You can't have a Jewish state if most of your population is not Jewish. Nineteen years later, when Israel began to expand its borders with the capture of the West Bank and Gaza, those Palestinians who it thought had disappeared turned out to be still around after all, threatening the Zionists' Jewish hegemony.
In the nearly 40 years since then, Israeli policy has been largely directed -- with periodic time-outs for attacks on Lebanon -- toward making the Palestinians disappear for certain. The methods of ethnic cleansing are myriad: land theft, destruction of agricultural land and resources, economic strangulation, crippling restrictions on commerce, home demolition, residency permit revocation, outright deportation, arrest, assassination, family separation, movement restriction, destruction of census and land ownership records, theft of tax monies, starvation. Israel wants all of the land of Palestine, including all of the West Bank and Gaza, but it cannot have a majority Jewish state in all of this land as long as the Palestinians are there. Hence the slow strangulation. In Gaza, where almost a million and a half people are crammed into an area less than one-tenth the size of Rhode Island, Israel is doing on a continuing basis what it did in Lebanon in a month's time -- killing civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, making the place uninhabitable. Palestinians in Gaza are being murdered at the rate of eight a day. Maimings come at a higher rate. Such is the value of non-Jewish life in the Zionist scheme of things.
Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe calls it a slow genocide (ElectronicIntifada, September 2, 2006). Since 1948, every Palestinian act of resistance to Israeli oppression has been a further excuse for Israel to implement an ethnic cleansing policy, a phenomenon so inevitable and accepted in Israel that Pappe says "the daily business of slaying Palestinians, mainly children, is now reported in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts." His prediction is that continued killing at this level either will produce a mass eviction or, if the Palestinians remain steadfast and continue to resist, as is far more likely, will result in an increasing level of killing. Pappe recalls that the world absolved Israel of responsibility and any accountability for its 1948 act of ethnic cleansing, allowing Israel to turn this policy "into a legitimate tool for its national security agenda." If the world remains silent again in response to the current round of ethnic cleansing, the policy will only escalate, "even more drastically."
And here is the crux of the situation today. Will anyone notice this horror? Has Israel, as proposed at the beginning, truly exposed by its wild summer campaign of ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and Gaza the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea, the essential illegitimacy of the Zionist principle of Jewish exclusivity? Can even the most deluded see this, or will they continue to be deluded and the world continue to turn away, excusing atrocity because it is committed by Israel in the name of keeping the neighborhood safe for Jews?
Since Israel's crazed run through Lebanon began, numerous clear-eyed observers in the alternative and the European and Arab media have noted the new moral nudity of Israel, and of its U.S. backer, with an unusual degree of bluntness. Also on many tongues is a new awareness of growing Arab and Muslim resistance to the staggering viciousness of Israeli-U.S. actions. Palestinian-British scholar Karma Nabulsi, writing in the Guardian in early August, laments the "indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that cannot be assuaged, only stopped." American scholar Virginia Tilley (Counterpunch, August 5, 2006) observes that any kind of normal, peaceful existence is anathema to Israel, for it "must see and treat its neighbors as an existential threat in order to justify . . . its ethnic/racial character." Even before the Lebanon war, but after Gaza had begun to be starved, political economist Edward Herman (Z Magazine, March 2006)condemned Israel's "long-term ethnic cleansing and institutionalized racism" and the hypocritical way in which the West and the western media accept and underwrite these policies "in violation of all purported enlightenment values."
Racism underlies the Israeli-U.S. neocon axis that is currently running amok in the Middle East. The inherent racism of Zionism has found a natural ally in the racist imperial philosophy espoused by the neoconservatives of the Bush administration. The ultimate logic of the Israeli-U.S. global war, writes Israeli activist Michel Warschawski of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem (July 30, 2006) is the "full ethnicization" of all conflicts, "in which one is not fighting a policy, a government or specific targets, but a 'threat' identified with a community" -- or, in Israel's case, with all non-Jewish communities.
The basically racist notion of a clash of civilizations, being promoted both by the Bush administration and by Israel, provides the rationale for the assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. As Azmi Bishara, a leading Palestinian member of Israel's Knesset, has observed (al-Ahram, August 10-16, 2006), if the Israeli-U.S. argument that the world is divided into two distinct and incompatible cultures, us vs. them, is accurate, then the notion that "we" operate by a double standard loses all moral opprobrium, for it becomes the natural order of things. This has always been Israel's natural order of things: in Israel's world and that of its U.S. supporters, the idea that Jews and the Jewish culture are superior to and incompatible with surrounding peoples and cultures is the very basis of the state.
In the wake of Israel's failure in Lebanon, Arabs and Muslims have a sense, for the first time since Israel's implantation in the heart of the Arab Middle East almost 60 years ago, that Israel in its arrogance has badly overreached and that its power and its reach can be limited. The "ethnicization" of the global conflict that Michel Warschawski speaks of -- the arrogant colonial approach of old, now in a new high-tech guise backed by F-16s and nuclear weapons, that assumes Western and Israeli superiority and posits a kind of apocalyptic clash between the "civilized" West and a backward, enraged East -- has been seen for what it is because of Israel's mad assault on Lebanon. What it is is a crude racist assertion of power by a Zionist regime pursuing absolute, unchallenged regional hegemony and a neoconservative regime in the United States pursuing absolute, unchallenged global hegemony. As Palestinian commentator Rami Khouri observed in an interview with Charlie Rose a week into the Lebanon war, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, having both grown out of earlier Israeli wars of hegemony, are the political response of populations "that have been degraded and occupied and bombed and killed and humiliated repeatedly by the Israelis, and often with the direct or indirect acquiescence, or, as we see now, the direct support of the United States."
Those oppressed populations are now fighting back. No matter how much Arab leaders in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia may bow to the U.S. and Israel, the Arab people now recognize the fundamental weakness of Israel's race-based culture and polity and have a growing confidence that they can ultimately defeat it. The Palestinians in particular have been at this for 60 years, never disappearing despite Israel's best designs, never failing to remind Israel and the world of their existence. They will not succumb now, and the rest of the Arab world is taking heart from their endurance and Hizbullah's.
Something in the way Israel operates, and in the way the United States supports Israel's method of operating, must change. More and more commentators, inside the Arab world and outside, have begun to notice this, and a striking number are audacious enough to predict some sort of end to Zionism in the racist, exclusivist form in which it now exists and functions. This does not mean throwing the Jews into the sea. Israel will not be defeated militarily. But it can be defeated psychologically, which means putting limits on its hegemony, stopping its marauding advance through its neighborhood, ending Jewish racial/religious domination over other peoples.
Rami Khouri contends that the much greater public support throughout the Arab world for Hizbullah and Hamas is "a catastrophe" both for Israel and for the United States because it means resistance to their imperial designs. Khouri does not go further in his predictions, but others do, seeing at least in vague outline the vision of a future in which Israel no longer enjoys ultimate dominion. Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli living in Britain, a jazz musician and thinker, sees Hizbullah's victory in Lebanon as signaling the defeat of what he calls global Zionism, by which he means the Israeli/U.S. neocon axis. It is the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani, and Iranian people, he says, who are "at the vanguard of the war for humanity and humanism," while Israel and the U.S. spread destruction and death, and more and more Europeans and Americans, recognizing this, are falling off the Zionist/neocon bandwagon. Atzmon talks about Israel as, ultimately, "an historic event" and a "dead entity."
Many others see similar visions. Commentators increasingly discuss the possibility of Israel, its myth of invincibility having been deflated, going through a South Africa-like epiphany, in which its leadership somehow recognizes the error of its racist ways and in a surge of humanitarian feeling renounces Zionism's inequities and agrees that Jews and Palestinians should live in equality in a unitary state. British MP George Galloway (Guardian, August 31, 2006) foresees the possibility of "an FW de Klerk moment" emerging in Israel and among its international backers when, as occurred in South Africa, a "critical mass of opposition" overwhelms the position of the previously invincible minority and the leadership is able to justify transferring power on the basis that doing so later under duress will be far less favorable. Short of such peaceful transition, along with a move to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Galloway along with many others -- sees only "war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state down on their heads."
This increasingly appears to be the shape of the future: either Israel and its neocon supporters in the United States can dismantle Zionism's most egregious aspects by agreeing to establish a unitary state in Palestine inhabited by the Palestinians and Jews whose land this is, or the world will face a conflagration of a scale not fully imaginable now.
Just as Hizbullah is an integral part of Lebanon, not to be destroyed by the bombing of bridges and power plants, the Palestinians before their expulsion in 1948 were Palestine and still are Palestine. By hitting the Palestinians where they lived, in the literal and the colloquial sense, Israel left them with only a goal and a vision. That vision is justice and redress in some form, whether redress means ultimately defeating Zionism and taking back Palestine, or reconciling with Israel on the condition that it act like a decent neighbor and not a conqueror, or finally joining with Israeli Jews to form a single state in which no people has superior rights . In Lebanon, Israel again seemed bent on imposing its will, its dominion, its culture and ethnicity on another Arab country. It never worked in Palestine, it has not worked in Lebanon, and it will not work anywhere in the Arab world.
We have reached a moral crossroads. In the "new Middle East" defined by Israel, Bush, and the neocons, only Israel and the U.S. may dominate, only they may be strong, only they may be secure. But in the just world that lies on the other side of that crossroads, this is unacceptable. Justice can ultimately prevail.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.
probably never in this world, that's why we believe in a supreme being and the promise of a wonderful afterlife. i do hope you "unban" yourself and stick around...come back soon max!
Max, I'm confused. I thought you created this message board to post your own views and not to be 'provocative' on other message boards. And now you ban yourself from your own board?
i am now officially BANNING myself from this thread
Kin I have yer stuff?
My guess still is that we go down fairly hard (but no disaster) after making a marginal new high in the spoos.
Action today especially impressive since bond yields are up sharply.
Picked up a LITTLE GLD today. I doubt we have seen the low, but it has dropped enough for a modest bounce IMHO.
My response. i am now officially BANNING myself from this thread and hope it will signal i now declare this thread as dead.
i need say no more.
i often doestruthwin against manipulation?:( Rarely/eom
Regards this awesome jam, my last post explains what i think on the present situation.
maipulation will give way to truth, and we will go down..i doubt iran will back down as they have th echance of being the center of the new islamic state and possibly a unification of islamic states, right there in ole babylon
i will remain very cautious on bearness as long as i see control of the ticker.
Today DELL news, in a truly bear controlled market would have slaughtered the NDX, instead NDX is at just 1565 now(and in view of dell news, bears have got to be disappointed---well this bear is anyway, i am quite displeased with MMs ability to control this, as this means there is no major selling presssure they can't combat).
A close above 1569 would be bullish, a close above 1157 neutral, and close below 1557, mildly bearish, a close below 1545, would be bearish.
i am falling back on my computerizd generated Daily critical support and resistance readouts, and they are 1521 and 1581.
** We have a timeline here such that the longer MMs keep NDX between 1521 and 1581, the worse it is for major sell-off to occur.
Another break above 1581, greatly reduce the chance of a significant fall sell-off.
The sooner a break down at 1521, the greater the chance of a major sell-off for this fall happening.**
As i have said, in the end all TA depends on the Critical supports and resistances as they are what CONFIRM or RULE_OUT what one is hoping for.
i proceed on the basis of never go on basis of "inner conceit you are surely right" that this or the will happen.
i have a humble, cautious bear call in place.
A prolongeg failure to take out 1521 will kill my call.
Crude Oil and the rumour circulating that Iran will agree to temporarily cease uranium enrichment( in spite relentess statements they NEVER would do that) is weakening crude.
What do i feel is happening, i feel there is a tremendous power struggle in Iran between President Admadinejad and Ex-President Mohammed Khatami.
The news release from a secret source that came out Sunday that stated Iran would capitulate to U.S. demand to cease uranium enrichment remains highly questionable and the motives for this speculation will remain extremely questionable if NOT confirmed.
But point blank, know BS, IF the Iranians were to agree to a temporary stop to uranium enrichment would be a COLOSSAL VICTORY for the U.S., as it would signal a major defeat within Iran of Ahmadinejad.
Also that toad Blair, that fanatically refuses to resign as Brit PM, is out working like hell for Bush, and he says he has made a tentative deal with the Palestinian Quisling Abbas that would PLEASE Israel and now is off to Beirut to fight for U.N. resolution 1701 and argue that Hezbollah be disarmed, as the "I AM AFRAID OF ISRAEL!" awaits Blair, this being Saniora who is doing his best to PLEASE and Appease Israel.
CHAPMAN: Train Wreck Of The Week
Robert Chapman
September 9, 2006
(heres some more reasons why there will not be funds flowing back into the markets. nlightn)
As we mentioned recently, since recent new legislation, Dupont has been the first major corporation to walk away from its pensions. This portends major problems for 20% of retirees. The pension kept the employee with the employer. The plan costs were borne by the employer and that cut profits. In as much as most stock is owned by the rich they were much more interested in the corporate bottom line and share price than they are in employee benefits and longevity. Most plans will be discarded and the worker using defined contribution plans will have to manage his or her retirement, which will be disastrous for the worker who has no financial training. He might just as well go to Las Vegas for results. This is just another way of taking America financially to its knees. The elitists have more control this way and proves to you exactly where they are headed.
We believe the US and Israel are going to use ground troops in Iran that is why there is the present buildup of troops by the US and UK in Iraq. The Brits have their troops on the Syrian border already. That is why Iran will have training exercises through October. We might mention again, military exercises were just held by Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Azerbaijan and Georgia have military agreements with the US, as does Turkey. Israeli Special Forces have been operating in Turkey in the mountains bordering Iran since last year.
Shortly the US will have 157,000 troops in Iraq plus 20,000 mercenaries. Australia and Canada say they will be committing troops. Britain is sending more troops as well. The US and Israel expect US troops will be moved from Iraq into Iran probably during the fist six months of next year. This coming war is based on the falsehood that Iran has or will have nuclear weapons, which is a lie. Just ask the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Commission. The disinformation machine is running in high gear. The bogus terrorist plot in England to blow up 10 planes is ludicrous. It’s to make the West believe they are under attack and give Tony Blair and George Bush political mileage. Preemptive war and regime change are criminal acts. Israel hasn’t been attacked; they attacked on a bogus basis. Worse yet, as a ceasefire was being arranged they were dropping cluster bombs into civilian areas. The main targets in that environment are little children – what great humanitarians. This is nothing but fear and intimidation. NATO, which will supply the UN Forces has a military cooperation agreement with Israel. How objective will they be? They won’t of course. They are in bed with the US and Israel. The US and Israel will use nuclear weapons, you can count on it. You can count on a worldwide conflict that will kill half the world’s population.
This is a war logistically that neither Israel or the US can supply nor can they supply enough troops. The US would move to take over oil in the Caspian and that could bring Russia and China into the fray.
As we told you in previous issues, George W. Bush thinks he is King of America. He would use this conflict to implement Martial law and anyone who has been a dissenter will be put in an internment camp without charges.
We don’t know that all this will happen, but we are positive that this is what these megalomaniacs have planned. Don’t be deceived – contact Congress and let them know we know what you are doing and had best stop it.
As you all know we have been short the housing stocks and generally speaking they are off 50%. They probably have another 25% to go on the downside. Housing led the economy up and it is leading it down. There won’t be another bubble for some time to come. Anyone who is left on the long side of the general market should have sold or be selling. If you have retirement funds that you can direct or sell, go to a money market fund or something in gold and silver related assets if available. Force yourself to make the changes. The “new era” – the “goldilocks” markets are finished for some time to come.
The economy is in a precarious and perilous situation. Interest rates are rising to combat rampant inflation and to keep their economies from collapsing. Central banks are increasing money and credit by 9% to 10%. In six years $4.6 trillion in equity has been withdrawn from real estate. Most of that money has been spent and savings are -1.7%. That was quite a spree. Consumption went mad and there is nothing left for a rainy day. We can thank the Fed for this performance and we can also thank them for the coming depression. Isn’t it about time we got rid of the Fed and sentenced it to the scrap heap of history? It sure is.
What is the answer? It’s gold and silver related assets, being short the market, long commodities and for those with large amounts of money be long Treasury notes of Switzerland and Canada.
In a sign that the labor market isn’t creating enough of the right kind of jobs, the number of people collecting state unemployment benefits over the past four weeks rose to the highest level since February. Continuing jobless claims rose by 15,000 to 2.49 million in the week ended August 26. New filings fell 9,000 to 310,000. The 4-week average of initial claims fell 3,000 to 315,250.
Falling house prices have created a new twist in the suburban Boston real estate market. More homes are selling for less than their assessed values. Boston was one of the first hot markets to break, so developments there could indicate what might happen in other markets as the decent of prices takes hold.
Massachusetts house prices slumped 3.5% in July, the biggest monthly drop since 1993. Due to the gut of homes for sale on the market, prices are falling below assessments. Now, no one is paying any attention to assessed value. In the stable community of Newton 16.5% of homes sold below assessment between January and June, up from 10% the prior two years. Assessments lag the actual market by 1-1/2 years, which means assessments will continue to rise over the next year or so. Over that period assessments will be further apart from actual prices, so do not be surprised.
In the $1 million-plus house market in greater Boston, sales plunged 62% this year.
This week our President referred to a strategy that the administration had been following since 9/11. He said terrorism springs from subcultures. We are part of that subculture.
The confidence levels of CEO’s of small and medium sized companies have fallen to a 3-year low, a sign that the backbone of the nation’s economy is feeling the strain of the feared economic slowdown.
Our President has acknowledged for the first time that the CIA runs secret prisons at undisclosed locations around the world. He said two of the alleged architects of 9/11 have been transferred from these jails outside the US to Guantanamo Bay to face trials by proposed new military commissions. Some 14, our President tells us, have given CIA interrogators (torturers) information that foiled terrorist attacks in the US and around the world. Our President is a liar. He says, “But the US does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it.” This man believes his own lies, he’s a sociopath.
Our President admits the CIA practiced illegal kidnapping and detention. He has exposed not only his own previous lies, but he also exposes to ridicule those arrogant government leaders in Europe who dismissed as unfounded the world’s fears about extraordinary rendition. Now supposedly there are new standards that forbids US troops and uses Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to prevent forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and water boarding, which simulates drowning. After our observations we do not believe a word of it. They will still torture and murder.
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/trainwreck.php?Id=141
Dell delays filing quarterly report due to probe 2 hours, 39 minutes ago
Computer maker Dell Inc. (Nasdaq:DELL - news) said on Monday it has suspended share repurchases and is delaying the filing of its latest quarterly report with regulators amid an expanded government accounting probe.
Shares of Dell fell 4.2 percent to $20.75 in pre-open trading after the company also said in a statement that it will postpone a planned meeting on Wednesday with Wall Street analysts in New York.
Dell said it is unable to file its 10-Q report for the second quarter ended August 4 because of questions raised in connection with the previously announced informal probe of the Round Rock, Texas-based company's accounting by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Requests by the SEC for information have been joined by a similar request from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who has subpoenaed documents related to the company's financial reporting from 2002 to the present.
Last month, the company disclosed the existence of the SEC request for enough documents to "fill up a truck" but made no mention of the U.S. Attorney's subpoena. The informal probe began in August 2005 but was only revealed by Dell last month.
The investigations have indicated the possibility of misstatements in prior period financial reports, including issues relating to accruals, reserves and other balance sheet items that may affect Dell's previously reported results.
Dell said last month it did not believe the issues have had or will have any "material impact" on its financial position. It did not disclose the matter earlier because "we are under no obligation to disclose it," spokesman Jess Blackburn had said.
"We have not yet reached any conclusion on materiality as to these issues," said Don Carty, chairman of the Dell board of directors' audit committee, which is reviewing the matter. "We are continuing to investigate the matter fully," Carty added.
"We are fully cooperating with the investigations and working to resolve any and all issues raised in connection with those investigations as quickly as possible," Chairman and founder Michael Dell said in a statement.
Dell said it will be holding a scheduled Technology Day on Tuesday, September 12, in New York showcasing its latest products and services.
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Good News! Why the Media Embraced "9-11 Truth"
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
September 08, 2006
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
Last week TIME Magazine and The Washington Post ran almost balanced and sympathetic stories about "the 9-11 Truth Movement."
These publications define reality for millions of unsuspecting Americans. Why would they legitimize a conspiracy view that implicates their owners, the Illuminati central bankers? Why would they publicize discrepancies that they have been covering up for five years?
Imagine you're in a meeting with the central bankers who control the American mass media and government. You're the successor of PR whiz Edward Bernays.
"Edward," they say, "the matrix is starting to unravel. A third of Americans believe their government was responsible for 9-11. Damn the Internet! What are we going to do?"
If I were Bernays, I would reply: "Depends if you're planning another false flag terrorist event, martial law and an attack on Iran. If so, I would continue to ignore and marginalize this movement. You don’t want to give them a huge boost in credibility at this time."
"Eddie," they reply, "it's too late for all that nasty stuff. Nobody that matters believes in the terror threat any more. Israel got a bloody nose in Lebanon and can't attack Iran. The military has its hands full in Iraq. The generals are in revolt. Plus the Internet is full of stories blaming the Mossad and Israel. Anti Semitism is on the rise. "
"Don't panic boys," I tell them. "I have the answer. What we need is a "Time-Out" to restore everybody's faith in the system. We need a return to the Democratic Party, a return to the sanity of the Carter or Clinton eras, a break from those mean ugly corrupt Republicans."
"How do we do that?" the bankers ask.
"Think Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers. Think Michael Moore and "Farhenheit 911" We need to shift responsibility for 9-11 onto Dubya's shoulders and away from Silverstein and the Mossad, the neo-cons and us. We need to reposition the 9-11 Truth-ers in the mold of the 1960's anti-war movement and focus everyone on hating the 'government.' Then we'll elect Democrats in November and [New Mexico Governor]Bill Richardson, or someone like him, in 2008. It will be a time of renewal, a kinder gentler fascism. We'll have time to plan the next step."
"Where do we begin?"
"Why not do a TIME cover story on those kids that made the Internet movie "Loose Change"? They don’t mention the dancing laughing Mossad agents with explosives in their van who were arrested 'documenting the event' , do they? Portray the kids as participating in the "great American tradition of self reliance and non conformist anti authoritarian dissent. They're fighting the power." [exact words TIME uses] Maybe we could bring Bob Dylan in on this."
"Eddie, this is dangerous. That film shows that Larry [Silverstein] ordered the demolition of WTC 7 the same day. Are Americans so stupid as to believe that this 47-storey building was wired for demolition, and WTC–1 and WTC-2 weren't? Surely they'll figure out that all three were demolished and a plane was supposed to hit WTC-7. We'll all be hung for mass murder."
"Guys. Don’t worry. The people believe what they're told not what their own eyes or common sense tells them. We won’t mention WTC-7 in the article. We'll just focus on a couple of points and have our paid flunkies, I mean 'experts' refute them. It'll be our experts and against theirs and the people will be confused. They'll blame Dubya and think the media is objective and doing its job."
"Is one story enough?"
"Put another one in The Washington Post focused on David Ray Griffin. We'll call it something like "The Disbelievers." Mention the Mossad a couple of times in passing but not the German Intelligence (BND) Report that says the Mossad organized the whole event (with Bush's foreknowledge.) The important thing is to emphasize that the 'government' did this. It was an "inside job." Dubya will take the fall in the public's mind."
CONCLUSION
At the risk of sounding optimistic, the mainstream coverage of the 9-11 Truth movement may indicate that we will not have an Iran attack and another false-flag terrorist event soon. I think the bankers are scared they are losing control of the American mind. Dubya has been very useful to them but it's time for him to go.
The only danger is that he and Cheney will do something desperate to hold on to power beyond their second term. But, without the cooperation of the media, they can't succeed. I think they know it and will take their money and exit gracefully.
For once, I am making a prediction that I hope will be correct!
Henry Makow is the author of A Long Way to go for a Date. He received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto. He welcomes your feedback and ideas at henry@savethemales.ca.
worked out well for the eagles and TO <G>
A brutal siege the world must ignore no longer
09.08.2006 | The Independent
Gaza is being slowly strangled. This small strip of land on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean has been under siege by the Israeli military for three months. Its 1.5 million inhabitants have been subject to more than 270 air strikes, numerous ground raids, and a severe artillery bombardment. Since Gaza's sole power plant was bombed in June, its people have been forced to survive by candlelight after dark. Hospitals use electric generators to keep essential services running. The strip's water mains have been destroyed, causing serious supply problems and increasing the risk of disease. Bridges have been bombed and checkpoints closed. No Palestinians are allowed in or out of what has in effect become a prison.
This has brought the Palestinian economy to its knees. The majority of Gazan families have been forced to rely on United Nations food aid. Yet even support from the outside world for these people has been severely cut back. When Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January, the United States and the European Union decided to stop their funding of the governing institutions of the Palestinian Authority until the militant organisation renounced violence and accepted Israel's right to exist. An adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister referred to this jokingly as "putting the Palestinians on a diet". But the result has been the complete breakdown of Palestinian society. The civil service, which supports one-quarter of the population, has been paid no wages in six months.
According to the United Nations, $30m-worth of damage has been inflicted on Gaza since this operation began. But the far graver cost has been in human life. In July and August, some 251 Palestinians were killed by Israeli military action, half of them civilians. The dead have included women, children and the elderly. Hundreds more have been wounded.
And yet while all of this has been going on – the bloodshed, the hunger, the social collapse – the world has turned away. The international community has been preoccupied with the worsening situation in Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel's war with Lebanon. Yet while the people of Lebanon were able to flee Israel's bombardment, Gazans have had no such freedom.
The Israeli government claims the purpose of its blockade is to secure the return of Corporal Gilad Shalit, a soldier kidnapped in June after a raid by a faction of Hamas. Another objective is, we are told, to prevent militants firing Qassam rockets across the border into Israeli towns and villages by militants. Even if we accept this intention, the methods have been grossly disproportionate. Five Israelis have been killed by Qassams in the past six years. Does this justify such a lethal response in Gaza? The operation is also deeply questionable from a practical perspective. Does the Israeli government truly expect degrading all Gazans in this fashion to secure the release of Corporal Shalit?
Ultimately we must accept that the return of the Israeli military to Gaza is less about stopping rocket attacks, winning the release of Corporal Shalit, or even removing Hamas, than it is about imposing a collective punishment on the Palestinian people, in the belief that it is in the interests of the state of Israel to do so. It is not. The long-term interest of Israel lies, as it always has, in progress towards a two-state solution. The great prize is the normalisation of relations between Palestinians and Israelis. Every day that the people of Gaza are denied their dignity – every time more innocent Palestinians are killed by stray Israeli rockets – such a settlement is pu
Can't believe i just got this e-mail from Haaretz.
i was only able to copy the text: Graphic banner is a huge Istraeli Flag flying, and is titele Project Israel for freedom security and peace
*********************************************************
the text of the e-mail
Help Israel: Fight terror television and media manipulation
May 2006 National poll: Which two information sources are most important in shaping your opinions of international affairs and US foreign policy?
Sign Up to Receive Our FREE Newsletter
Help Israel fight terrorist propaganda with truth. Sign up to receive our FREE newsletter to learn how The Israel Project educates the media so they can accurately report on Israel.
Everyday we see terrorist propaganda masquerading as unbiased news on TV, radio, in print and on the Internet. This misinformation is part of a larger plan to eventually destroy Israel by first turning world opinion against it through the media.
The plan can work because research shows that the media are the most important sources of information that shape voters opinions on foreign affairs (see graph at right).
Al-Manar, Hezbollah's Iran-sponsored TV station spends $15 million a year to spread hate and lies worldwide. Both Hezbollah and Hamas have slick PR experts working to manipulate reporters from around the world. In Lebanon, Hezbollah spun fake photos and staged media opportunities that were covered in major international media.
How can you be sure that TV and newspapers aren't filled with lies about Israel? Sign up for our free newsletter to learn how The Israel Project (TIP) educates the media so they can accurately report on Israel.
Understand how we work with 6,000 journalists around the globe - informing them before they write their stories so they can get the Israel story right.
Hezbollah's and Hamas' multi-million dollar terror television and media efforts spin reporters, resulting in Middle East news coverage from the terrorists' anti-Israel viewpoint. Find out with your free newsletter how supporters of Israel are on the front lines in the media war. Learn how to fight terror television and anti-Israel slurs that undermine Israel's security and increase anti-Semitism around the world.
Click to receive your insider newsletter by postal mail. You'll see proactive, behind-the-scenes efforts in action, helping to win the media war for Israel.
Click now to receive your free newsletter. Help Israel fight terrorist propaganda with truth.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
Founder and President
The Israel Project
P.S. As Israel is facing threats from Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, YOU can make a difference. As the President of Iran has said, he wants to "wipe Israel off the map" - request your free TIP newsletter so you can be part of making sure that Israel is here to stay!
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EaglesPost: that play just now when Sean Considine blocked Carr pass, biggest defensive play of the game.
It iced the game. Eagles up 14 with the ball and 6 minutes to go will win this game.
Am i happy--happy we have a win, worried about our linebackers other than Trotter.
They were not tested today as Texans have NO running game.
Trade for Stallworth was a steal--a steal for us.
Buckhalter--is he doing the impossible?? To comeback from 2 years of severe leg injuries?? It would be a great feat for the kid, and a great plus for Eagles.
He looked real good today.
So bottomline: like what i saw EXCEPT for the Linebackers---that is a possible achilles heel.
We will see.
I will after this game be watching Cowboys and will CHEER if they lose:)
EaglesPost: Mady feeling better now, but won't get joyous yet---too much time still.
But i will remark "Terrell who?"
and then shout "Welcome to Philadelphia Donte!!!!!"
Score at time of post 21-10 Eagles, with about 27 minutes to go.
Regards Gideon Levy an his REVEALING the Name "Operation Locked Kintergarten":
******************************************************
Operation Locked Kindergarten!! Shocking to the max, and should be revelatory to the evil of the Israeli leaders; for that is an in your fave hardcore evil phrasing. It reveals the leaders in the IDF think like Nazis and act like Nazis!!
I think they called it Locked Kindergarten, not that they were intending to kill children per se, but they they used the term to reveal the extremity of their racism, the sense of their own racial superiority.
This term carries one meaning in my opinion. The IDF perceive Patestinians , the all of them, as but inferiors, and that is the sense here that they use word 'children' as they compare Palestinians to the strength and superiority of the Israelis, and i will say here, i cut the BS, that term is saying the racial superiority of Jews(they don't mean Israelis, they mean, The Jews are Superior), so it has nothing to do with Israel, as this is a racist statement, a declaration of saying Jews are inherently superrior the Palestinians
This is unadulterated nazism. The term "locked" reveals they even perceive Gaza as like in a surrounded locked in Ghetto.
So the name is saying, 'we are knowingly harassing a trapped people, a people that are INFERIOR to The Jews, and can be dealt with as if subhumans to us, the stronger and the SUPERRACE. Achtung!!!'
That is as evil a name for an "operation" i have ever heard, and is a smokin' gun to the hard cold fact the Israeli Flag should have a Swastika replace the Star of David. As i say, in Washington and tel Aviv, the planners of the bombing of Lebanon has worked, it scared the hell of the Lebanon Government, such the approved the U.N.Resolution 1701, because they had been terrorized by the bombing.
It does NOT matter the the IDF lost to Hezbollah, for they won via terror bombing.
The Saniora government in agreeing to Resolution 1701, was "We Surrender, we are AFRAID of your Planes or Missiles or Bombs!!!"
i do not respect Saniora(or Siniora--it is spelled both ways in the press) or those that side with him.
He would 'eat sh--', if Israel said "Eat Sh--! Saniora or we will bomb Lebanon into the dark ages."
For jews that think this is anti-semitic, you all can go the hell with your cowardlt SMEAR and NOT facing what Israel and Zionism has become---it has become NAZISM, and that is fact.
So those that want to smear me with being anti-semitic, i say you are COWARDS that don't have the GUTS to look in the mirror and see what you have become.Max
NWO conspiracy theory gives people an excuse for not facing the world is a sick chaos where the lust for power by divergent self-interest power groups by random collisions blend into a homogenization of evil that ends up ruling the world . otraque
Regards Gideon Levy an his reveling the Name "Operation Locked Kintergarten":
******************************************************
Operation Locked Kindergarten!! Shocking to the max, and should be revelatory to the evil of the Israeli leaders; for that is an in your fave hardcore evil phrasing. It reveals the leaders in the IDF think like Nazis and act like Nazis!!
I think they called it Locked Kindergarten, not that they were intenging to kill children per se, but they they used the term to reveal the extremity of their racism, the sense of their own racial superiority.
This term carries one meaning in my opinion. The IDF perceive Patestinians , the all of them, as but inferiors, and that is the sense here that they use word 'children' as they compare Palestinians to the strength and superiority of the Israelis, and i will say here, i cut the BS, that term is saying the racial supreriority of Jews(they don't mean Israelis, they mean, The Jews are Superior), so it has nothing to do with Israel, as this is a racist statement, a declaration of saying Jews are inherently superrior the Palestinians
This is unadulterated nazism. The term "locked" reveals they even perceive Gaza as like in a surrounded locked in Ghetto.
So the name is saying, 'we are knowingly harassing a trapped people, a people that are INFERIOR to The Jews, and can be dealt with as if subhumans to us, the stronger and the SUPERRACE. Achtung!!!'
That is as evil a name for an "operation" i have ever heard, and is a smokin' gun to the hard cold fact the Israeli Flag should have a Swastika replace the Star of David .As i say, in washington and tel Aviv, the planners of the bombing of Lebanon has worked, it scared the hell of the Lebanon Government, such the approved the U.N.Resolution 1701, because they had been terrorized by the bombing.
It does NOT matter the the IDF lost to Hezbollah, for they won via terror bombing.
The Saniora government in agreeing to Resolution 1701, was "We Surrender, we are AFRAID of your Planes or Missiles or Bombs!!!"
i do not respect Saniora(or Siniora--it is spelled both ways in the press) or those that side with him.
He would 'eat sh--', if Israel said "Eat Sh--! Saniora or we will bomb Lebanon into the dark ages."
For jews that think this is anti-semitic, you all can go the hell with your cowardlt SMEAR and NOT facing what Israel and Zionism has become---it has become NAZISM, and that is fact.
So those that want to smear me with being anti-semitic, i say you are COWARDS that don't have the GUTS to look in the mirror and see what you have become.
The Twilight Zone / The boy who was buried twice
By Gideon Levy
Abdullah a-Zakh identified his son's body by the belt. The shoes and socks also looked familiar, irrefutable proof that he had lost his son. In the morgue of Shifa Hospital, after hours of searching, he found the bottom part of the boy's body. The next day, when Operation "Gan Na'ul" - "Locked Kindergarten" - ended and the Israel Defense Forces exited the Saja'iya neighborhood of Gaza, leaving behind 22 dead and large-scale destruction, the other body parts were found.
Mohammed was buried twice. He was 14 years old at the time of his death. He was killed last week, three days before the start of the new school year, so he never got to enter ninth grade. Did the planners of the operation give thought to the children who would be killed before giving it the satanic name "Locked Kindergarten"? Did the IDF computer that comes up with the names know that there would be five children and adolescents among the dead? Did they think about the popular song that the operation's name evokes? It was unpleasant, very unpleasant (in the words of the song) this week to see the results of Locked Kindergarten in the Saja'iya neighborhood in the eastern section of Gaza City.
This sprawling, overcrowded residential neighborhood was occupied for almost a week by the IDF. The army wreaked destruction in it. A monstrous bulldozer maliciously potholed a few roads, scarring the asphalt with gaping wounds, for no apparent reason. Houses were hit, street tiling was uprooted, electricity poles were cut down, cars were crushed, dozens of trees were destroyed and 22 residents were killed. For almost a week the tens of thousands of residents lived in terror, some of them unable to leave their homes.
The IDF Spokesperson's Office explained this week: "The IDF operated in Saja'iya as part of the overall activity to create the conditions for the return of Gilad Shalit, damaging the terrorist infrastructures and the firing of Qassam rockets. In the course of the operation, a tunnel was uncovered which was dug from the direction of Saja'iya toward the Karni terminal. This tunnel is only part of the tunnel threat that affects the orderly transit of goods on a daily basis. The IDF does all it can to avoid harming non-involved people and under no circumstances does it intend this."
Now Abdullah a-Zakh is a bereaved father who saw his son's body torn apart. Burdened by suffering and struggle, with long years in Israeli prisons, deported to Lebanon as a member of Hamas and probably an activist in Islamic Jihad, he mourns for his son. On the wall of the mourners' home, which was demolished by the IDF in 1971, Mohammed's photograph hangs next to a photograph of his uncle, who was killed four years ago. And also the photographs of the other children who were killed in Locked Kindergarten, along with Mohammed.
When the children of Saja'iya went to school this week, at the start of the school year, carrying their new schoolbags and also the horrors of the previous week, they found a few empty seats in their classrooms. This week the streets of this neighborhood were more fraught than ever with devastation, mourning and fury.
The zoo of Gaza is locked, too. It's a new zoo, built by France, with a model of the Eiffel Tower at the entrance, but this week it stood empty, the lone lioness downcast in her narrow cell. Two shekels to get in for a child, three for an adult, but the place is locked. No one visits, Gaza can't afford to visit a zoo these days. In the Abed Rabbo neighborhood the residents emerge anxiously from their homes to view the damage inflicted by night, uprooted orchards. This is where the tanks invaded last Saturday night. In Saja'iya the electricity and telephone technicians are laboring to repair the damages of Locked Kindergarten, and farmers are returning to their wrecked plots, trying to salvage what can still be salvaged.
An angry passerby stops us and begins to shout loudly against Israel and Europe, which, he says, is supporting Israel. The bitterness here is great. Next to an apartment building a yellow cab is stuck in the ground, its back pointing skyward, its belly in the earth. Another source of income gone. In the industrial zone at the Karni crossing are containers from Copenhagen that were made in Shanghai, now perforated and savaged from the battles that raged here last week. A Zim shipping lines container is here, too, by the side, as though shy, with Herzl's seven golden stars emblazoned on it. The soldiers did not shoot it.
Half a family was killed here two months ago in a lone house at the edge of the neighborhood: Amana Hajaj, 45, her son Mohammed, 23, and her daughter, Rawan, a girl of six. The family had gathered beneath vine and fig tree in the evening to roast corn on the small barbecue that is still here, when three missiles slammed into the yard. The Hajaj family doesn't live here anymore; only the son, Yasser, a handsome youth of 17, comes every few days to feed the dog that is guarding the house and the chickens in the coop. The family left the house immediately after their tragedy, because of the fear: when you open the iron gate that leads from the house to the street you see an IDF position on the hill at the edge of the horizon to the east, its very presence enough to instill fear in the hearts of those in the exposed house. The grapes of wrath attest to what happened: they still hang, scorched, on the vine in the yard.
On the second day of the school year, children are burning electric cables that they pulled from the houses that were destroyed last week in Saja'iya in order to extract the copper from them. Mourners' tents have been put up in every corner of the neighborhood. A group of grim-faced men sit at the entrance to the home of the boy Hussam a-Sarsawi, too. The bereaved father has gone to the mosque to pray and they are unwilling to talk in his absence. Hussam was 10 years old at the time of his death - one of those who fell in Operation Locked Kindergarten.
The atmosphere on the streets is bleak and tense; the looks of the passersby say it all. In the footsteps of fighters: It's easy to distinguish between the streets the IDF used here and the streets that were not gutted by the tanks. These are the footsteps of devastation. An elegant yellowish villa on a street corner is punctured by bullet holes and half wrecked. This is where the boy Mohammed a-Zakh was killed.
In the courtyard sit the mourning women, in black, among them the bereaved mother, Abir, opposite photographs of the dead and verses from the Koran in the black and gold of Islamic Jihad. Mohammed a-Zakh set up a booth next to his home, to make a little money during the vacation. Every day he sold gum, wafers, biscuits and chips for a pittance to the neighborhood children, and took in about NIS 20 or NIS 30 a day. Last Tuesday, too, he was open for business. There were two days left in the summer vacation. At about 11 A.M. he went up to his mother on the second floor and saw her baking pitas. Afterward he went to the mosque, for the midday prayers, and then went back to his mother to ask for an electric cable - there happened to be power in the neighborhood just then - in order to vacuum the dust from the carpets in the mosque. "You're still making pitas?" he asked.
When he got back from the mosque he noticed that someone had opened the door of his dovecote and that all the doves had flown off. Mohammed ran after one dove and managed to return it to the dovecote, which was in the roof of the house. He then went down to his grandmother's apartment and ate lunch. Afterward he went down to the street and was not seen again alive and well.
Mohammed walked toward Mansura Street, the neighborhood's main thoroughfare, where the tanks were. According to one account, he was asked to go there to see how his uncles, who lived in the line of fire, were doing; another version has it that he went to see the tanks and help the "defenders," as they call themselves in this fighting family. The father of the family, Abdullah, who joined us later for a conversation, has seen his share of struggle. In 1971, when he was 17, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison by Israel for security offenses which he declines to specify. He was released in 1985, after 14 years, in the Jibril deal. A year later he was rearrested and sentenced to four years in prison.
Three years later, in 1992, he was deported to Marj al Zahur, in Lebanon, together with hundreds of Hamas activists, including Ismail Haniyeh, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Mahmoud Zahar and Saeed Seyam, who became leaders of the organization. He was allowed back to Gaza a year later and in 1995 was arrested for brief periods by the Palestinian Authority. He says that everyone claimed he was active in Islamic Jihad, something he denies. Now 54, he works for the Palestinian Authority as a very senior officer, in charge of the veteran fighters. Between one incarceration and another, he fathered eight children, among them Mohammed.
The grandmother closes her eyes. The aunt weeps silently. She relates that in the war of 1956, five members of her family were killed. Abdullah asks the women to move to another part of the courtyard. The marks of mourning and trauma are very apparent on him, as he tells his story: Last Tuesday his sister came to the house and said there was a wounded boy on Mansura Street. Abdullah rushed to Shifa Hospital. "I looked everywhere but couldn't find him. I thought maybe he was in surgery, but no. I had a feeling that Mohammed was a shahid martyr.
"I thought maybe he was transferred to another hospital and I sent relatives to look in Al-Quds Hospital. They didn't find him there. The feeling that he was a shahid grew stronger. I thought that if he was not in the hospital, he must be lying at the place where he was killed. It would be very hard to get there and get him out. We know that if anyone is wounded there, no one can get close enough to get him out. We know that the army shoots at anyone who approaches there, even at rescue parties. There were cases of people who tried to rescue the wounded and were shot.
"Then I thought he must be in the hospital refrigerator. I asked my cousins to go and check. There were a few shahids there, and they saw them, but they came back and said they did not find Mohammed. The feeling that Mohammed was a shahid grew stronger in me. But there was no announcement.
"I decided to go to the morgue and look. I went in but I didn't find Mohammed. Then I saw half a body, the only one that was not identified. I saw that it was Mohammed's half-body. By the belt. It's a belt that I bought him. And the shoes he wore. I looked at the socks and I knew it was Mohammed. I was sure it was Mohammed. The upper half of the body had disappeared.
"Mohammed was killed by two shells fired by a tank, and both shells hit him. Mohammed is fourteen years and four months old. He was not armed and he didn't know what a weapon was. They saw that he was a boy. Maybe he went there to see the defenders, maybe he wanted to take part. Maybe he threw stones at a tank. They fired a shell at him. That is Mohammed's story and that is the end of Mohammed."
Mohammed was buried that day. The next day, last Wednesday, when the IDF left Mansura, they went to the killing place to look for the other half of Mohammed. They found his body parts together with the body parts of Yusri Abu Jabber, a press photographer for the Al-Quds network, who was also killed there. The rest of Mohammed's body was buried on Wednesday. Abdullah, the father: "Mohammed was a schoolboy. That is the whole story of Mohammed. It happens every day, every day. Can a boy like this, like Mohammed, be a danger to them? And if he was a danger to them, they could have wounded him instead of killing him. They could have thrown a teargas grenade at him. Even if he was a danger to them, you don't fire a shell at him."
The IDF Spokesperson's Office, this week: "The IDF is not aware of a 14-year-old boy being hit other than from media reports, and is not familiar with the circumstances in which he was hit. It should be noted that on the day the report was published there were heavy exchanges of fire, which included the firing of antitank missiles, the detonation of explosive devices, and light-arms fire against IDF forces."
His youngest child, Ibrahim, is on his knees, scribbling on himself with a pen. Abdullah gags every so often. Abir is pregnant, and if it's a boy they will name him Mohammed. "Israel must know that we must live together. We are ready to live in one state, not two states, and all the refugees will return and we will all live in a democratic state, call it Israel or Palestine. I am certain that we are ready to live together. We long to live in a good democracy, but I am sure you Israelis will not accept that. Israel will not agree to a two-state solution, either. Israel only wants more and more, and the right wing in Israel wants to destroy us. But Israel, what does it hear?"
This year they didn't buy Mohammed a new schoolbag. He kept putting it off. Photos in the family album: Mohammed as a baby in uniform; Mohammed as a boy in a boat in surging rapids - a studio photomontage; Mohammed with a toy rifle; Mohammed with Yasser Arafat, shaking his hand during a visit Arafat made to the neighborhood; Mohammed against a background of two cardboard Qassam rockets in a photo studio; and the last photograph, taken about a month ago, of the whole family together in the studio, for a group portrait to get a health insurance certificate
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/760138.html
Powers that be probably will make a major efort to rally the market strongly on 9/11 IMHO.
Is the TORONTO SUN changing its spots?
They have for a long time carried a column by Eric Margolies who is very anti-Bush, anti-war, and critical of Israel.
Perhaps they are coming under Zionist pressure for a more "balanced" line up.
They are absolute lunatics(evil ones), Earnie.
i guess you have seen Dr.Stranglove and so i say these blokes think like General Jack T. Ripper(played by Sterling Hayden)
Wonder if that Toronto Sun is one the newspapers in Rupert Murdock's chain.
In that Hersh article he brought up the anger amongst the military people over how damned stupid these neo-con civilians are, that they have no idea what a tactical nuclear weapon does---it sends up a mushroom cloud and with it a cloud a radio-ative material.
That they, the neo-cons, talk about tactical nuclear weapons like they are no big thing, when in fact they are.
The use of tactical nuclear weapons would rip open th worst Pandora's Box; the one that bears the name, The Omega Box, imo. Max
Neo-cons floating trial balloon about using nukes againt Iran.
Canadian Media calls for Nuking Iran
MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY, Global Research
September 9, 2006
A major Canadian newspaper is calling for outright nuclear attacks on Iran. (see below)
The Toronto Sun article proposes the use of tactical nuclear weapons or so-called mini-nukes with an explosive capacity between one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb .
"Put boldly and simply, we have to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.
Not, of course, the unleashing of full-scale thermo-nuclear war on the Persian people, but a limited and tactical use of nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's military facilities and its potential nuclear arsenal. It is, sadly, the only response that this repugnant and acutely dangerous political entity will understand." (Toronto sun, 2 September 2006)
The article goes beyond the usual pattern of media disinformation, which presents Iran is a threat to global security, calling for punitive bombings pursuant to a Security Council Resolution.
While the proposal to nuke Iran may appear outrageous, it nonetheless reflects US foreign policy. It is consistent with US military doctrine and ongoing war plans which contemplate the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.
The nuking of Iran is viewed as a "humanitarian operation" intent upon liberating Iran from oppression.
The objective is to build a consensus that mini nukes are actually safe for civilians and you can use them against rogue states.
"The tragedy is that innocent people will die. But not many. Iran's missiles and rockets of mass destruction are guarded and maintained by men with the highest of security clearance and thus supportive of the Tehran regime. They are dedicated to war and, thus, will die in war.
Frankly, it would be churlish of the civilized world to deny martyrdom to those who seem so intent on its pursuance. Most important, a limited nuclear attack on Iran will save thousands if not millions of lives." (ibid)
According to the Pentagon, tactical nuclear weapons "are safe for the surrounding civilian population." The use of nuclear weapons against Iran is part of a broad "humanitarian mandate" which seeks to prevent Iran from threatening the World with its own nukes, which it does not possess.
In a recent article, Seymour Hersh (New Yorker) has suggested that the plan to nuke Iran has recently been dropped and that instead, the administration is contemplating the use conventional bunker bombs against Iran's nuclear facilities. Hersh points to divisions between Vice President Dick Cheney and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace.
According to Hersh's assessment the use of tactical nuclear weapons directed against the Natanz facilities is considered as "politically unacceptable" because it would "vent fatal radiation for miles." The Air Force now contemplates dropping large "bunker-buster" bombs on Natanz to "generate sufficient concussive force to accomplish what a tactical nuclear warhead would achieve, but without provoking an outcry over what would be the first use of a nuclear weapon in a conflict since Nagasaki,"
It should be understood that even in the case of limited aerial attacks with conventional warheads, the result would be a Chernobyl type nuclear nightmare. The destruction of Iran's civilian nuclear facilities would lead to the spread of nuclear radiation over a vast area.
Michel Chossudovsky, 8 September 2006
We should nuke Iran
FANATICAL, OPPRESSIVE LEADER MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD PROVOKES WARS AND FINANCES TERROR
2 September 2006
By MICHAEL COREN, TORONTO SUN
It is surely obvious now to anybody with even a basic understanding of history, politics and the nature of fascism that something revolutionary has to be done within months -- if not weeks -- if we are to preserve world peace.
Put boldly and simply, we have to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.
Not, of course, the unleashing of full-scale thermo-nuclear war on the Persian people, but a limited and tactical use of nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's military facilities and its potential nuclear arsenal. It is, sadly, the only response that this repugnant and acutely dangerous political entity will understand.
The tragedy is that innocent people will die. But not many. Iran's missiles and rockets of mass destruction are guarded and maintained by men with the highest of security clearance and thus supportive of the Tehran regime. They are dedicated to war and, thus, will die in war.
Frankly, it would be churlish of the civilized world to deny martyrdom to those who seem so intent on its pursuance. Most important, a limited nuclear attack on Iran will save thousands if not millions of lives.
The spasm of reaction from many will be that this is barbaric and unacceptable. Yet a better response would be to ask if there is any sensible alternative. Diplomacy, kindness and compromise have failed and the Iranian leadership is still obsessed with all-out war against anybody it considers an enemy.
Its motives are beyond question, its capability equally so. It is spending billions of dollars on a whole range of anti-ship, anti-aircraft and anti-personnel missiles, rockets and ballistic weapons:
The Shahab 3ER missile, with a range of more than 2,000 km, and the BM25 and accompanying launchers, which are so powerful that they can hit targets in Europe. Raad missiles with a range of 350km. The Misaq anti-aircraft missile, which can be fired from the shoulder. The Fajar 3 radar-evading missile and the Ajdar underwater missile, which travels at an extraordinarily high speed and is almost impossible to intercept. The Zaltal and the Fatah 110 rocket, the Scud B and Scud C and the BM25 with a range of 3,500 kms.
Iran is also developing enormous propellant ballistic missiles and began a space program almost a decade ago that will enable it to bomb the United States. It is also assumed in intelligence circles that Tehran has Russian Kh55 cruise missiles stolen from Ukraine which are now being copied in large numbers by Iranian scientists.
Comparisons to the Nazis in the 1930s are unfair -- to the Nazis. Hitler had the French army, the largest in Europe, on his border and millions of Soviet infantry just a few hours march away. Iran has no aggressive enemies in the region.
Its fanatical leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, controls a brutal police state, finances international terror and provokes bloody wars in foreign countries. It is unimaginably wealthy because of its oil revenues and is committed, in its leader's words, to "rolling back 300 years of Western ascendancy" and wiping another nation, Israel, from the face of the earth.
A conventional attack would be insufficient because Iran and its allies seem only to listen to power and threat. Better limited pain now than universal suffering in five years.
The usual suspects will complain. The post-Christian churches, the Marxists, the fellow travelers and fifth columnists. But then, the same sort of people moaned and condemned in 1938. They were clearly wrong then. They would be just as wrong now.
**************************************************
ISRAEL: Israel no longer plans to pull out from most of the West Bank, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said. The idea of unilateral disengagement "is over," Peres said.
IRAN, IRAQ: There is no proof Iran is supporting armed militants in areas north of Baghdad, Iraq, U.S. Maj. Gen. Thomas Turner said. While caches of weapons have been found along the border, there is no information about where those weapons crossed from Iran into Iraq.
IRAN, ITALY: Iran welcomes continued talks with European countries regarding its nuclear ambitions and is ready for intensive six-party talks on the issue, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said after meeting Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi in Rome. Prodi said Iran has a significant and important role to play in regional security.
BOLIVIA: Protesters bombed the building of a state-sponsored television organization in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The bombing is part of a more concerted effort to shut down the streets of the city in protest of a commission rewriting the Bolivian Constitution.
NIGERIA: A Nigerian oil workers' union said it has planned a "warning strike" to protest the government's poor handling of Nigeria's deteriorating security situation in the Niger Delta region. The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria reiterated an Aug. 31 warning that it and other unions will conduct a three-day strike beginning Sept. 13 unless the security situation in the Niger Delta improves.
CUBA: Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Felipe Perez Roque will open the press center of the 14th Non-Aligned Movement summit Sept. 10, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said. The summit is scheduled to begin Sept. 11.
RUSSIA, IRAN: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected claims that Russia might stop construction on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant if Tehran expelled U.N. inspectors and sanctions were imposed. RIA Novosti had reported the claims earlier in the day, citing a Russian source close to the negotiations.
CHINA, TAIWAN: Chen Yunlin, China's top official for Taiwanese affairs, canceled a planned trip to Taiwan on Sept. 7, Chinese newspaper People's Daily reported. Chen planned to attend the cross-Straits agricultural forum Oct. 22-23, but Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party did not approve his visit.
GEORGIA: Georgian Parliament member David Bakradze accused Russian peacekeepers of using an illegal checkpoint to collect intelligence for separatists in Abkhazia. Peacekeepers say the checkpoint is necessary to prevent illegal arms from reaching the security zone.
CHINA: High investment growth in China is attributable to high foreign money supply and the difficulty of investing Chinese money overseas, National Bureau of Statistics Director Qiu Xiaohua said. Qiu also said the solution to this problem is an acceleration of government reforms.
RUSSIA: Russia will take action against countries that sell its arms to third parties only if it is presented with "clear evidence," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. He added that Russia will not suspend arms supplies to Syria without an investigation of Israeli claims that Damascus armed Hezbollah with Russian equipment, particularly the effective RPG-29 anti-tank platform.
ISRAEL: Israeli officials rejected a Russian initiative aimed at creating an international conference for Middle East conflict resolution. Israel does not support the consideration of a comprehensive settlement, Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.
analysis@strtfor.com.
Israel, Lebanon: Olmert's Loaded Land Offer
Summary
Israel might be willing to hand over the disputed Shebaa Farms to Lebanon should all provisions of the cease-fire that ended Israeli-Hezbollah hostilities be carried out, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sept. 8. Even hinting at giving up the Shebaa Farms to Lebanon, however, further damages Olmert's credibility while providing Hezbollah with another claim to victory against Israel. In spite of this, Israel's symbolic offer is intended to strip the militant group of its legitimacy as a resistance movement and to set Hezbollah up for an Israeli assault in the Bekaa Valley.
Analysis
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sept. 8 that Israel would consider handing over the disputed Shebaa Farms to Lebanon, provided the Lebanese government follows through on its commitment to fully disarm Hezbollah.
The Shebaa Farms is a small area claimed by Lebanon stretching less than 10 square miles between the Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian borders. Israel seized the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War. The area later was declared part of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights of Syria by the United Nations in 1974. In his discussions with Lavrov, Olmert stipulated that the United Nations must officially declare the Shebaa Farms Lebanese territory before Israel will negotiate the land transfer.
The Shebaa Farms is of strategic value to Israel, given its location on Mount Hermon, approximately 5,000 feet above sea level. The territory provides Israel with a vantage point to monitor Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekaa Valley to the north. The Shebaa Farms was also crucial for Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars against Syria. Israel has used the area primarily as an observation post for signals intelligence and electronic warfare. With Hezbollah having solidified its positions in the valley below the Shebaa Farms, Israel would be sacrificing a key outpost that could potentially be turned over to Hezbollah through its aides in the Lebanese army, giving the militant group the high ground.
Such an elevated position would allow artillery and rocket fire to be targeted by line of sight rather than calculated using a magnetic azimuth. It would also allow adjusted fire to bring northern Israeli cities, such as Qiryat Shemona, a major staging ground for the Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, into target range. Hezbollah would, however, use the territory with caution in the event of another conflict. The militant group's true effectiveness in the conflict came from drawing Israel Defense Forces (IDF) into unknown fields of fire and close combat in urban areas. In other words, for Hezbollah, a well-defined fortified position with which Israeli forces are intimately familiar could well bring any Hezbollah forces in the Shebaa Farms under heavy shelling and airstrikes.
Beyond its military value, the issue of retaking the Shebaa Farms is grounded on Hezbollah's purpose as a resistance movement. Hezbollah maintains that it has a right to keep its weapons in order to defend Lebanon against Israeli aggression and to retake the disputed area. By hinting at negotiations over the Shebaa Farms, Olmert is looking to strip the resistance movement of its purpose and expose Hezbollah's true intent to retain its military credentials.
Removing the Shebaa Farms cause will amplify Lebanese government pressure on Hezbollah to completely dismantle its military arm, in an effort to prevent another devastating conflict with Lebanon's southern neighbor. Hezbollah has steadily entrenched itself in the Lebanese political system to prepare for this day of reckoning, and its fighting days are still far from over. The group has already successfully manipulated the cease-fire demand that it remove its military presence in the south.
Meanwhile, Iran is in the middle of an aggressive campaign to assert its influence throughout the arm of the Shiite crescent extending into the Levant, and will be unwilling to sacrifice its potent military asset in Lebanon at this time. Moreover, Hezbollah is fully aware Israel will not allow its military prowess against a guerrilla group to remain in question. Once Israel sorts itself out internally -- in the form of a major government upheaval that likely will see Olmert replaced -- IDF will revisit its objective of crippling Hezbollah by launching an assault against the group's strongholds in the Bekaa Valley. Recent Hezbollah movements indicate the group is already preparing for this eventuality.
The Shebaa Farms offer also allows Israel to destabilize Syria's relationship with its proxies in Lebanon, as the Syrian regime will be sweating over the idea of Israel cementing a separate deal with Lebanon while the Syrian claim to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights is left in the dust.
Given these considerations, Olmert's offer to negotiate over the Shebaa Farms appears to be largely disingenuous. If Hezbollah ignores the offer and retains its arms by sticking to its right to defend Lebanon in future conflicts, as Olmert expects, Israel will be able to brand Hezbollah as an Iranian agent. Olmert can then try to shore up international support for Israeli action to neutralize Hezbollah forces in the Bekaa. In the meantime, however, he will be taking a political hit by discussing a deal regarding the Shebaa Farms; the move will make him look weak on national security by appearing to award the symbolic Hezbollah feat of forcing an Israeli compromise on the disputed territory.
strtfr.com
My only comment on Time analysis, the central players in the Bush Regime are still talking tough and not blinking, ALL "we are blinking" in the U.S. are from those surrounding the Bush Regime.
If the Bush Regime did things on consensus basis, and went with the majority sentiment, they would cease the "no blink" attitude, the confrontational attitude, and say they will talk WITHOUT the nuclear enrichment program being halted as a pre-condition.
We will, in roughly the next two -three weeks, see if those committed to avoiding confrontation(the definite majority sentiment) have cracked the Bush Bunker.
But, in typical WH diplomacy, they are saying to Russia and China, you gave us your promise you would back sanctions so we expect you to live up to what you promised us.
These promises were never written down, so U.S., is going to "you gave of your promise and that is what matters". This reeks of the Bush43 petulance, when things don't go his way--start casting blame and just getting nasty.
i will be interested in how this plays out, this battle of reason against and the bunch of thugs in the inner circle of the WH.
Gold tested major support around $605-608 Friday and held.
So a bounce looks likely
But triple bottoms rarely hold and I supect gold will decisively break support on the next correction.
I am looking for a bottom in the $550-575 area, but will start accumulating when and if we break $600.
in my positioning this short i made one painful mistake, i didn't dump my oldest and worst position when it was briefly profitable.
It is 2k shares at 25.15. My next worst position is 2k shares at 21.17.(Total shares is 12k shares)
Which means it needs about 1430 to be even(i bought it at 1473, and got a rotten price.)
I am ready to take it out if i see 24 and oversold.
That bloody position adds 1 whole point to my Cost/Basis.
i will be thinking of ways to pull it, while still holding the other 10k shares.
i will be obsessing how to get that position out--aaargh:)
QQQQ puts a possibility. We will see.Max
Why Iran Has the Upper Hand in the Nuclear Showdown
Analysis: Despite the U.S. hard line, Tehran's diplomatic strategy is based on the world's desire for an alternative to confrontation
By TONY KARON
( This is TIME magazine's analysis, NOT mine, meaning i could well have different views--max:)
Posted Thursday, Sep. 07, 2006
Iran has defied the U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment by August 31; now it must feel the consequences. That's the demand of the Bush Administration, as the Security Council powers met onThursday to discuss the next steps in the showdown. Washington wants to see a series of sanctions imposed, the scope of which will expand as long as Iran remains defiant -- and the Administration refuses to discount the possibility of military action if sanctions don't force Iran to back down. But even Iran's defiance of a Council ultimatum has not raised the enthusiasm of even key U.S. allies such as Germany -- let alone Russia and China -- to opt for sanctions. In fact, the suggestion by U.S. officials that they may have to rely on sanctions by a "coalition of the willing" outside of the Security Council is a clear indicator that Washington is struggling to prevail on the issue.
Iran's Game
Iran's leaders have displayed an almost insouciant calm in the face of U.S. efforts to isolate and pressure them. They responded to the U.S.-backed incentive package -- which Washington cast as a final, take-it-or-leave-it offer -- more than six weeks after the deadline preferred by Washington, and then only to send it back with a "can do better" grade and a 21-page counterproposal. But Iran's defiance may be based on a sound diplomatic calculation. The international community demands that Iran go the extra mile to satisfy concerns over its atomic energy program, but it also insists that the issue be resolved via diplomacy rather than confrontation. For reasons ranging from the price of oil to the turmoil in neighboring Iraq, much of the world outside of the U.S. fears that a confrontation between America and Iran would have disastrous consequences.
Aware of the danger of isolating itself, the U.S. insists that it, too, favors, a diplomatic solution. But Washington's version of a "diplomatic solution" certainly includes sanctions to bring Iran to heel, while for many of Washington's European allies, and for such key Security Council powers as Russia and China, sanctions represent a slippery slide to confrontation. Iran is unlikely to change its position in response to the limited sanctions that will probably be adopted, and it knows that the international community is unlikely to risk the impact on world oil prices of cutting off Iran's crude exports. Many diplomats fear that moves to isolate Iran will harden the position of its regime, and make military confrontation more likely.
A Counteroffer
Mindful of the need to play to the international consensus, Iran has not rejected suspending uranium enrichment on principle. But any suspension of enrichment, the Iranians say, must be an outcome of negotiations rather than a precondition for talking, as the current offer requires. For Tehran, it's a question of leverage. Iran voluntarily suspended enrichment during three years of negotiations with the European Union that began in 2002, and its leaders believe they received nothing as a result. This time, analysts say, the regime wants to hold onto its cards and press for a more favorable deal.
Iran's top priority in any negotiated solution will be to secure cast-iron security guarantees that would require the U.S. taking "regime-change" off the table. That's an issue on which the Bush administration remains divided. Under pressure from European allies, Washington eventually agreed last spring to join talks with Iran if it first halted uranium enrichment. That shift angered hawks in and around the administration. Yet it was substantially less than the Europeans had hoped for. They have long argued that a diplomatic solution will require direct talks between the U.S. and Tehran on all issues that jeopardize the peace. The premise of much of the thinking in Europe is that global security will be better served by integrating Iran into the international community, rather than isolating it.
What's Next
So, despite Iran's defiance of the Security Council's deadline, the Europeans, Russia and China want to pursue further talks with Tehran in search of an acceptable formula for suspending enrichment. To that end, E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana is to meet with Iran's nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, in Paris on Saturday. But the fact that the demand for an unconditional suspension of uranium enrichment is now set in stone by a Security Council resolution limits their room for maneuver.
Still, while the U.S. in the coming weeks will remind the international community of its commitment to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Tehran will be working just as hard to tempt the Security Council players to restrain Washington by offering a diplomatic path that averts confrontation.
Did Iran dupe neo-cons?
From Juan Cole blog today.
Actually, the US Government released a document showing that Iraqi intelligence became positively alarmed about reports that al-Qaeda might be in Iraq, and put out an APB on them! (The URL for that document set at Ft. Leavenworth no longer works; I'd appreciate it if any reader has an update).
Senator Pat Roberts, chair of the intelligence committee, actually went so far as to say of his own committee's report that there was no evidence that Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress knowingly provided false information to the US government, nor that it was acted on. Roberts' philosophy seems to be that you might as well deny it all, there is no percentage in admitting the truth.
Intriguingly, the report says that the Defense Intelligence Agency warned the Pentagon off the INC on the grounds that it had been penetrated by a foreign intelligence agency, which might be using it to play the US.
The foreign country that had penetrated Chalabi's group? Iran.
What is really delicious is that it suggests that the influential Neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute who ceaselessly promoted Chalabi, like Richard Perle, David Rhode, and Michael Rubin, were duped by Tehran into doing its bidding.
How hi-tech Hezbollah called the shots
By Iason Athanasiadis
BEIRUT - Hezbollah's ability to repel the Israel Defense Forces during the recent conflict was largely due to its use of intelligence techniques gleaned from allies Iran and Syria that allowed it to monitor encoded Israeli communications relating to battlefield actions, according to Israeli officials, whose claims have been independently corroborated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
"Israeli EW [electronic warfare] systems were unable to jam the systems at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, they proved unable to
jam Hezbollah's command and control links from Lebanon to Iranian facilities in Syria, they blocked the Barak ship anti-missile systems, and they hacked into Israeli operations communications in the field," Richard Sale, the longtime intelligence editor for United Press International, who was alerted to this intelligence failure by current and former CIA officials, told Asia Times Online.
The ability to hack into Israel's military communications gave Hezbollah a decisive battlefield advantage, aside from allowing it to dominate the media war by repeatedly intercepting reports of the casualties it had inflicted and announcing them through its television station, Al-Manar. Al-Manar's general director, Abdallah Kassir, would not comment on the information-gathering methods that had allowed it to preempt Israel's casualty announcements, but he admitted he was in constant contact with Hezbollah's military wing.
When Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon, they found themselves bogged down in stronger-than-expected Hezbollah resistance. The story of the handful of Hezbollah militants who single-handedly defended the border village of Aita Shaab has already become legend. Ultimately, Israel decided that the only way to neutralize them was to carpet-bomb the village, reducing it to rubble in the process.
Part of the reason for Hezbollah's decisive battlefield performance was that it was gleaning valuable information by monitoring telephone conversations in Hebrew between Israeli reservists and their families on their personal mobile phones.
"If an enemy sets up a small group of EW people familiar with the terrain and reasonably aware of the current tactical situation, a stream of in-the-clear calls could have been a gold mine of information mentioned inadvertently," said Sale, quoting a CIA official.
A London Sunday Times article titled "Humbling of the super-troops shatters Israeli army morale" reported the story last week. It stated that Hezbollah was "able to crack the codes and follow the fast-changing frequencies of Israeli radio communications, intercepting reports of the casualties they had inflicted again and again".
The development marks a potential turning point in the region's strategic balance. Hezbollah's ability to repel Israel's elite troops marked the first time that an Arab force had frustrated a concerted invasion scenario by Israel. This has led to a concerted rethink on the part of the Israeli leadership, in which it is being assisted by American experts, according to Israeli intelligence website DEBKAfile.
It adds that the American experts are particularly focused on how Iranian EW installed in Lebanese army coastal radar stations blocked the Barak anti-missile missiles aboard Israeli warships, allowing Hezbollah to hit at least one Israeli corvette, the Hanith.
"Assuming that these capabilities came from Syria and Iran, most probably by way of Russia and China, one would have to believe that both the US and Israel have learned from the experience, and that leaning process will be applied in future conflicts," said Robert Freedman, Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone professor of political science at the Baltimore Hebrew University.
The Debka article also claims that Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah was hosted throughout the war in an underground war-room beneath the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. Iranian involvement was suspected throughout the conflict, and a captured Hezbollah guerrilla confessed on Israeli television to have visited Iran for training. The most able and committed Hezbollah guerrillas usually visit Iran for religious indoctrination and training in the firing of non-Katyusha rocketry.
"It [the technological breakthrough] may mean that the US and Israel no longer have the ability to operate at lower levels of violence on a supreme basis," said a Middle East analyst. "The playing field is more leveled. This may mean more diplomacy or it may mean more, and more concentrated, violence."
Iran and Syria advanced their SIGINT (SIGnals INTelligence - intelligence-gathering by interception of signals) cooperation last November, as part of a joint strategic defense cooperation accord aimed at consolidating the strategic aspect of their long-term alliance. Aside from being an invaluable help to Hezbollah, the ability to read Israeli and US codes could aid Iran in monitoring US movements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It goes to the heart of one of the factors ... routinely regarded as one of the clear advantages for all First World versus Third World nations or forces - electronic warfare and secure communications," said Gary Sick, who was national security adviser under US president Jimmy Carter. "We are supposed to be able to read and interfere with their communications, not vice versa. A lot of calculations are based on that premise."
Iason Athanasiadis is an Iran-based correspondent.
I still think we will experience a significant selloff -- perhaps after a sucker's rally to marginal new highs.
But no major bear. A drop back to the May lows is about the worst I can envision barring some low probability left field event.
It ONLY took 4 years for Senate to conclude what ANYBODY who bothered to think, already knew 4 years ago!!!!
Will Media pound this to the public now, pound pound pound?NO!!!!
Is the majority of the public capable of getting this lesson learned if the media does not pound and pound and pound this fact into their heads?? i would be a damned fool if i said yes.
This headline was from The Independent,UK.
<<Saddam had no link with al-Qa'ida, US Senate concludes
By Andrew Gumbel
Published: 09 September 2006
A US Senate report yesterday squashed any lingering concerns that Saddam Hussein might have had a hand in the September 11 attacks, concluding from evidence gathered before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam had no relationship with al-Qa'ida and viewed the organisation as a threat to his regime.
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which produced the bipartisan report, quickly seized on its findings to lambast the Bush administration for its repeated attempts to link the deposed Iraqi dictator with Osama bin Laden's radical Islamic network.
Carl Levin, a Democratic Senator from Michigan, called the report "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to make such a link.
The White House spokesman Tony Snow responded simply by saying the report offered nothing new.
Over the past couple of years President Bush has acknowledged, with varying degrees of forthrightness, that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
In the run-up to the invasion, however, senior administration officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - played up supposed links between Saddam and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qa'ida associate killed earlier this year, and suggested Iraqi intelligence agents had met the 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in Prague shortly before the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centre.
The Senate committee report found no credible evidence of any contact between al-Qa'ida and the Iraqi government other than a 1995 meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Bin Laden in Sudan, at which nothing was offered or promised.
It found evidence of at least two occasions, meanwhile, when Saddam specifically rebuffed overtures from al-Qa'ida.
"Post-war findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qa'ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qa'ida for material or operational support," it concluded.
The report confirmed that Zarqawi was in Baghdad between May and November 2002 - a fact much played up by Mr Cheney in the invasion's immediate aftermath - but said he was very far from welcome there. Instead, Saddam attempted, unsuccessfully, to track him down and capture him. Until the US invasion, Zarqawi was affiliated with Ansar al-Islam, a radical group in Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Iraq and unconnected to Saddam.
The report sifted through much of the pre-war intelligence on Iraq and al-Qa'ida as well as post-war findings, and found scant evidence even there - despite what it called the "forward-leaning" analysis of the CIA and other agencies who were "purposely aggressive" in their efforts to find any links and play them up.
Over and above its significance in tracing the US path to war in Iraq, the report is also likely to become fodder for the mid-term election campaign, now in full swing. The intelligence committee's senior Democrat, John Rockefeller of West Virginia, accused the Bush administration of playing on popular fear in the wake of 9/11 to justify America's invasion of Iraq.
His Republican counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, preferred to characterise the path to war as "a tragic intelligence failure" and said attacks by Democrats were "little more than a vehicle to advance election-year political charges".
The report was the Senate intelligence committee's second look at the run-up to the Iraq war. The first, issued more than two years ago, looked at the CIA's failings in assessing Iraq's - ultimately non-existent - weapons of mass destruction.
Publication of the second report has been held up repeatedly by arguments over how much of it to keep classified and how much to make public.
National security and the so-called war on terror was a big factor in President Bush's re-election in 2004. His loss of credibility in Iraq may sink his Republican Party in the congressional elections on 7 November.
A US Senate report yesterday squashed any lingering concerns that Saddam Hussein might have had a hand in the September 11 attacks, concluding from evidence gathered before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam had no relationship with al-Qa'ida and viewed the organisation as a threat to his regime.
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which produced the bipartisan report, quickly seized on its findings to lambast the Bush administration for its repeated attempts to link the deposed Iraqi dictator with Osama bin Laden's radical Islamic network.
Carl Levin, a Democratic Senator from Michigan, called the report "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to make such a link.
The White House spokesman Tony Snow responded simply by saying the report offered nothing new.
Over the past couple of years President Bush has acknowledged, with varying degrees of forthrightness, that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
In the run-up to the invasion, however, senior administration officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - played up supposed links between Saddam and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qa'ida associate killed earlier this year, and suggested Iraqi intelligence agents had met the 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in Prague shortly before the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centre.
The Senate committee report found no credible evidence of any contact between al-Qa'ida and the Iraqi government other than a 1995 meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Bin Laden in Sudan, at which nothing was offered or promised.
It found evidence of at least two occasions, meanwhile, when Saddam specifically rebuffed overtures from al-Qa'ida.
"Post-war findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qa'ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qa'ida for material or operational support," it concluded.
The report confirmed that Zarqawi was in Baghdad between May and November 2002 - a fact much played up by Mr Cheney in the invasion's immediate aftermath - but said he was very far from welcome there. Instead, Saddam attempted, unsuccessfully, to track him down and capture him. Until the US invasion, Zarqawi was affiliated with Ansar al-Islam, a radical group in Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Iraq and unconnected to Saddam.
The report sifted through much of the pre-war intelligence on Iraq and al-Qa'ida as well as post-war findings, and found scant evidence even there - despite what it called the "forward-leaning" analysis of the CIA and other agencies who were "purposely aggressive" in their efforts to find any links and play them up.
Over and above its significance in tracing the US path to war in Iraq, the report is also likely to become fodder for the mid-term election campaign, now in full swing. The intelligence committee's senior Democrat, John Rockefeller of West Virginia, accused the Bush administration of playing on popular fear in the wake of 9/11 to justify America's invasion of Iraq.
His Republican counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, preferred to characterise the path to war as "a tragic intelligence failure" and said attacks by Democrats were "little more than a vehicle to advance election-year political charges".
The report was the Senate intelligence committee's second look at the run-up to the Iraq war. The first, issued more than two years ago, looked at the CIA's failings in assessing Iraq's - ultimately non-existent - weapons of mass destruction.
Publication of the second report has been held up repeatedly by arguments over how much of it to keep classified and how much to make public.
National security and the so-called war on terror was a big factor in President Bush's re-election in 2004. His loss of credibility in Iraq may sink his Republican Party in the congressional elections on 7 November.>>
NDXDaily fast sto hit 51 and started to flatten.
NDXDaily RSI-14, started to curl upwards.
Also NASI turning stopped, as it was +9 today.
For NDX to fold it is obvious SPX MUST breakdown.
And it is a long way from that---1244 it has EXTREME support, as that the lower uptrend line support of the SPXWeekly chart.
That trendline has not been broken since this rally began nearly 4 years ago.
And its' not breaking down is negating slowly the fact the NDX trendline was broken some time ago.
We lost our down momentum today.
It must arrive back next week.
Market has been doing super job of keeping JQP at ease in view of SPX.
JQP has no panic level until a drop goes beyond 10%, the powers KNOW this--i made a mistake regards 36months.
If we go back to October 2002, SPX has gone an incredible 46 months without a 10% or more correction--that is the POWER of PPT, imo.
i don't see new highs, myself; but agree about Market is protecting SPX and DOW from any 10% turn down. It is no accident that SPX has broken its previous record of not having a 10% correction or more.
Old record is 36 months, which was followed by a MAJOR bigtime sell-off.
We are now 39months, and this is due to PPT rule,imSo.
items via e-mail from Schaeffers at market close:
<<After spending two consecutive sessions in negative territory, the U.S. equity market tacked on some modest gains on Friday, driven by a continued downtrend in energy prices and positive news out of the Bank of Japan. Early this morning, the Bank decided to hold interest rates steady, which helped power stock futures forward in the U.S.. A mid-morning speech from a Federal-Reserve official helped curb some concerns about future interest-rate hikes, keeping stocks solidly in the black for the remainder of the session.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA - 11,392.1) fell short of the 11,400 mark but ended the day with a gain of 61 points, muscling back above its 10-day moving average. All but eight of the 30 Dow components finished in positive territory. Some of the index's strongest members on Friday included IBM (IBM), Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), and 3M (MMM). Among the losing names were Procter & Gamble (PG), Alcoa (AA), and Caterpillar (CAT). The S&P 500 Index (SPX - 1,298.92) closed up nearly five points and the Nasdaq Composite (COMP - 2,165.8) gained 10 points on the day. Both the SPX and the COMP were unable to overtake their respective 10-day trendlines. For the week, the Dow dropped 0.63 percent, the SPX was off 0.92 percent, and the COMP declined 1.25 percent.>>
also from Schaeffers today
<< Economic News
There was a notable lack of economic news on Friday until 3:00 p.m., when consumer credit figures for July were released. The figure rose $5.5 billion in July to $2.350 trillion, following a $14.1-billion increase in June. The latest reading was in line with economists' consensus estimate for a $6.0-billion expansion during the month. Non-revolving credit, such as car and boat loans, rose by $3.1 billion to $1.509 trillion. Revolving debt, which is mostly from credit cards, grew by $2.4 billion to $840.8 billion.
A House Divided
For the second day in a row, the housing sector came under fire. Prior to the open, another pair of earnings warnings hit the newswires. Lennar (LEN) cut its earnings estimate for the third quarter to a range of $1.25 to $1.35 per share, citing continuing deterioration in the U.S. housing market. Analysts were expecting a profit of $1.81 per share for the quarter. LEN stated that increased sales incentives along with certain land adjustments were the main factors behind lowering its estimate.
Thursday evening, St. Joe Company (JOE) reported that it plans to dismantle its homebuilding plans in Florida. The move will result in a reduction in the company's workforce and a charge of about $10.7 million to earnings. The charge consists of about $2.3 million for one-time, cash termination benefits to employees and $8.4 million of non-cash charges related to the write-off of capitalized homebuilding costs at several communities. The majority of these charges will affect JOE's third-quarter earnings figures.
Packard Your Bags?
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) officials confirmed that its Chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, does not plan on tendering her resignation anytime soon, but is prepared to step down if requested by the company's board. Ms. Dunn has been criticized of late for her involvement in the investigation into pretext calls, which were used to obtain the phone records of various HPQ officials and journalists. Dunn, who has said she is "appalled" to learn of this practice, told The Wall Street Journal "I serve entirely at the pleasure of the board … if they determine it no longer is in the interest of shareholders [to serve in this role], I will [step down]." The board has scheduled a special meeting via phone this weekend.
Fed Watch
Friday morning, Sandra Pianalto, president of Cleveland's Federal Reserve Board, told an audience in suburban Chicago that "elevated inflation numbers" remain a concern. She also echoed Janet Yellen's view that the full effect of the central bank's tightening campaign has not yet worked its way through the market. Ms. Pianalto also opined that it will be difficult for the Fed to determine the proper "resting place" for interest rates.
Following these comments (and on the heels of Janet Yellen's moderately hawkish remarks on Thursday), the odds of another rate hike ticked slightly lower. November fed funds futures edged lower and now imply a 12-percent chance that the Fed will raise its target for overnight rates to 5.5 percent from 5.25 percent after one of its next two meetings (September 20 and October 24-25). The December fed funds contract currently reflect a 16-percent chance that the overnight rate will be raised to 5.5 percent after the next three meetings (including the December 12 meeting). Late Thursday, the November contract implied a 14-percent chance and the December contract implied a 20-percent chance that the Fed would hike rates to 5.5 percent.
Commodity Catch-Up
Crude futures stumbled lower on Friday, marking the fifth consecutive losing session for the commodity. The October contract lost $1.07, or 1.6 percent, to settle at $66.25 per barrel. In intraday trading, black gold visited the $66 level, its lowest point since March 24. For the week, crude futures dropped $2.94, or more than four percent. October unleaded gasoline futures slid 3.26 cents lower to $1.6091 per gallon, its lowest level since mid-February. For the week, gasoline futures lost 7.2 percent. Elsewhere, October natural gas futures dropped 4.3 cents to $5.675 per million British Thermal Unites, following an intraday move to its lowest level since August 2004. On the week, natural gas lost 3.4 percent.
December gold futures continued to decline on Friday, settling $7.60 lower at $617.30 an ounce, the lowest close for the yellow metal since late June. For the week, the yellow metal retreated 2.4 percent. December silver finished at $12.295 an ounce, down 40 cents for the day. The metal logged a 5.9-percent loss for the week. December copper lost eight cents to close at $3.568 a pound Friday. However, it closed up 3.1 percent from a week ago.
Dollar Details
The U.S. dollar was upbeat on Friday, rising to six-week highs against the euro, the sterling, and the Swiss franc, as investors enjoyed a renewed hope for the economy. In New York trading, the euro dropped to $1.2667, compared with $1.2732 on Thursday. The greenback changed hands at 116.85 yen, up from 116.44 yen the previous session. The dollar index hit an intraday peak of 86.06, its highest point since July 26.
Treasury Talk
The bond market mustered some gains on Friday, sending yields lower in the wake of Ms. Pianalto's measured remarks. The 10-year Treasury note rose 5/32 to 100-26/3, shifting its yield to 4.77 percent. The 30-year long bond rallied 9/32 to 93-17/32, to yield 4.919 percent. The yield curve remained inverted, as the two-year yield dropped to 4.79 percent while the underlying bond edged 1/32 higher.
Levels to Watch in Trading:
Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA - 11,392.1) - support at 11,000; resistance at 11,670.2
S&P 500 (SPX - 1,298.92) - support at 1,200; resistance at 1,322.63
Nasdaq Composite (COMP - 2,165.8) - support at 2,000; resistance at 2,270>>
Crosscurrrents reflects my own sentiments.
Right now it lools like traditional bear markets as as dead as the dodo -- or at least that will be the case as long as the powers that be can keep interest rates relatively low despite very substantial inflation -- much higher that the grossly distorted CPI.
Modest 5-10% corrections are as bad as it gets under this scenario.
UNTIL THE DAY OF RECKONING ARRIVES.
Yes market did pick up EOD, finally responding to good news on oil and bonds
So a final rally to new highs remains a real possibility.
Mady, my time frame says we must break HARD down after a break of 1525, within the next 7 trading days.
If it doesn't by then, we become "hopers", imo.
Earnie, my reality trip. Fall sell offs are not established by signs of weakness, but the fact of momentum selling, with volume, the market controllers can keep bears in a perpetual state of being tantalized, by signs of weakness, but next thing you know it is the last week in October and the market is in a rally-ho.
This is exactly what happened last year.
i must call off all calls based on good old fashioned TA, i am seeing today, a reassertion of manipulation.
i do not care how many reject these arguments of mine, but via CrossCurrents they have presented powerful arguments and data to prove what i yap about.
This market will NOT sell-off hard this fall UNLESS the powers LET IT.
Or something scares the hell into JQP.
We have a very tight window here, selling must have momentum, this is NOT happening, i needed to see a follow thru, i am NOT seeing it.
Do the math, and you will see a -30 per week average is the MINIMUM must have, to have a solid sell off.
Every week that passes without this, the greater the average must be.
-30 would get us just to the 1400 level.
CrossCurrents that does much deep research on Program Trading and also the impact of ETFs on the market, such as to say, that TA people need realize the market has gone into a Metamorphosis, and it will never be the same again.
BUT they strongly believe that this metamorphisis is leading the market to where at somepoint it WILL have a CATASTROPHIC CRASH.
They say it is inevitable.
By catastrophic crash, i mean catastrophic--world wide.
Financial World will shattered.
They say one can not underestimate the danger the greed based parasitic manipulators and their super computers have placed the world.
Damned Earnie looks like you and i spoke TOO soon--LOOK at that JAM!!!!!!!
If this jams does not sell off, the damned Bulls are STILL alive and kicking.
i remind we have a very tight time frame to get a major sell off.
We need average AT LEAST 30 points loss a week in NDX.
We closed last weel at 1589, we are now, at this moment down ONLY 12 points for this week.
One thing i learned the past few years is never ever underestimate how THE HUGE increase in program trading has changed this market.
As long as Market can keep JQP from fear, they , the programmers absolutely rule.Max
Editing in progress:)The news there is this development will be extremely bad for Afghanistan.
Al Queda real birth place was Saudi Jihadist going to Afghanistan to fight Russia, and there the Al Queda came into being, and with it the Taliban, which is to Islam what The Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada was to Christianity.
Western Pakistan and Afghanistan is the real powr center of Al Queda, if it were to ever have been beaten, it had to be beaten there.
This resurgence was all made possible by what i strongly suspect was the INTENTIONAALY enabled by the WH(and was NOT due to gross incompetence), as over 2,000 Al Queda "miraculously" escaped Tora Bora and thus permitted to the U.S. to PUSH their Iraq agenda.
i remind, that also to this day, no one can figure out how Omar and his close confederates escaped.
i remind at that time, military persons were saying things like ' this is incredible, we had him surrounded, there is no way he could escape'. Ah, so they think, no way.
I will charge that if ever the hard truths were exposed The U.S./WH were guilty not of just incompetence, but of TREASON of the highest order regards the escape of Al Queda.
That the Bush Thugs NEEDED these escapes such that they could maintain their propaganda of FEAR/FEAR and bait and switch to get the invasion of Iraq done.
And the vast majority in americans swallowed hook line and sinker this OBVIOUS bait and switch.
i here charge that the massive suport received by Bush for this rank BS bait and switch will go down in history as one of the GREAT SHAMES of the American Public.
Only a public that has become herd like sheep could have been so EASILY conned.
I do NOT believe what Bush pulled off could have ben possible if he did not have one of the most SHAMEFULLY ignorant american publics in its' history.
And yes, i get disgruntled, when i think pf those of us that were crying out the truth on these boards were being mocked or damned(damned as as anti-american!!!!) by so many.
i am a person that believe the public can not shift the blame so easily as THEY WERE the vast majority, that said YES!! to the the U.S. Government.
America's WHOLE premise was to have a FREE SPRITED and TRUTH COMMITTED populace, and not a bunch of damned sheep.
Bush isn't killing america, it had KILLED ITSELF, already.
i love where i live , people up here are ALIVE, they think, they question, and they have been like this for over 200 years.
And yeh, so they are just fishermen, and loggers, and carpenters and, yes, people, that make bucks off of tourism; but the tourist think are "cute", and how innocent and naive, and are uppity condescending with the "natives".
What rubbish, every other joke up here in the Summer is about the tourists! We find them very funny! And naive and basically cluless about what our world is really like.
If the tourist only knew we feel like we are "slumming" when dealing with tourist--LOL!!!!!
Following two days of selling off, to have bonds and crude acting as you report, and market becoming 100% positive fed will not move in at next FOMC, this very low volume and weak action, thus far is as you say--bad action.
From Spear report today.
<<THE SPEAR REPORT
September 8, 2006
Executive Summary
The extended celebration of the end of the Fed rate hikes appears
to be winding down and the market continues to ponder the unraveling
of the housing boom or bubble. If it is a boom, then the denouement
may be orderly, but if it is a bubble, things are likely to end badly.
A recent study of the matter at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank argues
for the boom thesis, but we interpret their own historical data on home
pricing otherwise. Both demographic and anecdotal evidence supports the
thesis that the boom is essentially speculative(Bubble). **This is not a trivial
issue, because as housing goes, so goes the market.** Even if we are correct,
however, we don't expect the economic impact to be felt until 2007.>>
Market basically ignoring good news -- declining bond yields and oil prices.
Bad action for sure.
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