One hundred riyal notes at a bank in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital. The US has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to US$300 billion to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s daily Al-Seyassah has reported.
(AFP/File/Hassan Ammar)
KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - The United States has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to 300 billion dollars to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s daily Al-Seyassah reported Thursday.
Quoting “highly informed” sources, the daily said Washington has asked Saudi Arabia for 120 billion dollars, the United Arab Emirates for 70 billion dollars, Qatar for 60 billion dollars and was seeking 40 billion dollars from Kuwait.
Al-Seyassah said Washington sought the amount as “financial aid” to face the fallout of the financial crisis and help prevent its economy from sliding into a painful recession.
The daily said the United States plans to use the funds to help the ailing automobile industry , banks and other companies suffering from the global financial turmoil.
Stocks closed a volatile week with the widest intraday swing on record, in a fitting end to one of the most turbulent five-day periods in financial history.
For the first time in its 112-year existence, the Dow Jones Industrial Average swung in a range of more than one thousand points on an intraday basis. The blue-chip gauge had dropped sharply in early trading, falling more than 600 points and dropping through the 8000 level for the first time in five years. But stocks quickly came off their lows, and by the afternoon the industrials jumped more than 300 points.
In the end, the Dow industrials declined 128.00 points, or 1.5%, to 8451.19. It was helped by jumps of 9.1% for Citigroup and 13.5% for J.P. Morgan Chase. Other major market indexes were mixed. The S&P 500 sank by 10.70 points to 899.22 and the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 4.39 points to 1649.51.
Despite the late turnaround, the Dow tumbled 18% this week, worst in its 112-year history. The industrials also shed more points in a week — 1874.19 — than they ever had previously. The Nasdaq dropped 15% and the S&P 500 declined 18% on the week.
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian militants threatened on Wednesday to broaden their “oil war” to offshore oilfields and announced attacks on a crude oil pipeline in the Niger Delta and another Shell-operated facility.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), responsible for attacks that have cut a fifth of OPEC member Nigeria’s oil output, said it would launch attacks outside Rivers state for the first time since clashes began on Saturday.
The plan for an economic takedown, the results of rampant market speculations, insiders picking up assets for pennies on the dollar, the coming hyperinflation, the credit crunch, collapse of the dollar carry trade, suppression of metals prices, American meddling in Georgia
Iran has done nothing wrong. Iran is strictly obeying international law.
An attack on Iran would be illegal, since under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes and that is “perfectly legal”!
- Ron Paul on Iran and Energy June 26, 2008
Are “they” preparing the public, in the article below “IRAN READY TO HIT UK”, for another false flag attack like 9/11?
- Loose Change Final Cut
- 9/11 False Flag Former Governor Jesse Ventura warns that they might use such a false flag attack as an excuse to attack Iran: - Former Governor: “Absolutely” danger of false flag as pretext to attack Iran And this time it is Iran who is “with the terrorists” and has the weapons of mass destruction and all of that.
No, it is not only about oil, it’s about something far worse.
Ask yourself what will happen, if Israel and/or the U.S. attack Iran?
What will such an attack cause?
If your answer would be something like:
“That can’t be!” or “They would not do that intentionally, would they?”
Then you are right on.
And then you have the reason, why they are really doing it.
If I would have told you this straightaway, you would probably have called this a conspiracy theory and you would have dismissed it. More on what is going on under World Situation (2.Politics).
July 16, 2008
By: The Infinite Unknown
IRAN READY TO HIT UK
Sunday July 13,2008
By Jason Groves
Source: Daily Express
IRAN is poised to launch terror attacks in Britain if the West presses ahead with military strikes against its nuclear facilities, intelligence experts warned last night.
As tensions in the Middle East continued to grow, they warned that the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah had already established sleeper cells in Britain and mainland Europe tasked with carrying out bloody reprisals.
Likely UK targets include nuclear power stations, military bases, Government buildings and high-profile politicians and members of the Jewish community.
Richard Kemp, former adviser on terrorism to Tony Blair, said the difficulty of attacking Western and Israeli military targets directly meant Iran was likely to use its terror network to retaliate. Hezbollah, formed in Lebanon in the 1980s, has grown to become a major force in the Middle East.
He said: “In my view Iran’s only realistic method of retaliation is through Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah undoubtedly have the capability to carry out attacks against Western targets outside the region. They have people here in the UK and they would aim to carry out attacks if they saw us as being in any way supportive of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
July 1 (Bloomberg) — Israel is increasingly likely to attack Iranian nuclear facilities this year, a U.S. Defense Department official told ABC News.
Iran’s government dismissed as propaganda the ABC report on the unidentified Pentagon official’s comments. Israeli government officials declined to comment on the report.
In the U.S., Pentagon spokesmen Bryan Whitman declined to address the report. “I don’t comment for Israel,” he said. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said he had “no information that would substantiate” the ABC report and criticized the official for not speaking publicly.
An Israeli strike might be triggered by the production of enough enriched uranium at Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant to make a bomb, ABC cited the official as saying. A second possible trigger would be the delivery of a Russian SA-20 air-defense system, the installation of which would make an Israeli attack more difficult, the U.S. official told ABC.
Oil rose on concern any conflict would cut supplies from OPEC’s second-largest producer. Crude oil for August delivery increased as much as $2.95, or 2.1 percent, to $142.95 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Former Israeli Air Force General Isaac Ben-Israel, now a lawmaker in Israel’s ruling Kadima party, told Germany’s Spiegel that his nation is “prepared” for an attack if diplomacy and United Nations sanctions fail to stop Iran from making a nuclear weapon. Ben-Israel helped plan Israel’s 1981 strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, the magazine said.
Before Bush Leaves
A strike on Natanz would only temporarily damage Iran’s nuclear program and could spark a wave of attacks on U.S. interests, ABC said in yesterday’s report, citing unidentified Pentagon officials. The U.S. and many of its allies have accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists its production of enriched uranium is intended to produce electricity and is legal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Ron Paul also says what Iran does is “perfectly legal”!
The Israeli government may want an attack to take place before President George W. Bush leaves office, Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said today in a telephone interview.
“There is no doubt that such an operation is being considered, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow,” Kam said. “We still have some time. The Bush administration may be more sympathetic to an Israeli operation against Iran than whoever the next president may be, so it could happen before the end of the year.”
Israeli Maneuvers
More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighter planes took part in maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece during the first week of June, the New York Times reported on June 20. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Israel last weekend for meetings with Israeli military leaders, ABC said.
This is a talk given at the Nassau Club in Princeton by Chris Hedges, former New York Times Middle East bureau chief:
Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973 war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suez Canal and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American military transport planes came to the rescue.
They began landing every half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of its heavy armor. By the time the war as over, the United States had given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid. The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system the United States has provided to the Jewish state.
Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. Recognized the new state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly embrace ever since.Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and got Israel’s withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956.
During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS Liberty. The ship, flying the U.S. Flag and stationed 15 miles off the Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. Sailors and wounded 171.
The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington’s enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-financed Israel lobby that set out to merge Israel and American foreign policy in the Middle East.
Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been given more than $140 billion in U.S. Direct economic and military assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. Foreign aid budget. Although most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from accounting for how it spends the aid money.
June 28 (Bloomberg) — OPEC President Chakib Khelil predicted that the price of oil will climb to $170 a barrel before the end of the year, citing the dollar’s decline and political conflicts.
“Oil prices are expected to reach $170 as demand for fuel is growing in the U.S. during the summer period and the dollar continues to weaken against the euro,” Khelil said today in a telephone interview. The leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries also serves as Algeria’s oil minister.
Political pressure on Iran and the depreciation of the U.S. currency have caused a surge in oil prices, Khelil said. New York- traded crude has more than doubled in a year and touched a record $142.99 a barrel yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
OPEC ministers generally say that oil output is sufficient, even as Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer, pledged to pump an extra 200,000 barrels a day next month to calm the market. “The market is completely supplied,” Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said yesterday. Libya announced possible production cuts, calling the market oversupplied.
The rising cost of crude is not linked to supply, Khelil said today. “There is more than enough oil in the market to meet the international demand,” added the OPEC president, who will take part June 30 in an international energy forum in Madrid.
Prices, which are up 38 percent this quarter, are heading for the biggest quarterly gain since the first three months of 1999, when oil traded between $11 and $17.
Declining Dollar
“The decisions made by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank helped the devaluation of the dollar, which pushed up oil prices,” Khelil said.
June 26 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil jumped above $140 a barrel to a record as Libya threatened to cut output, OPEC’s president said prices may reach $170 by the summer and the dollar weakened.
Libya may curb output because of a U.S. law that allows terror victims to seize assets of foreign governments as compensation. OPEC President Chakib Khelil said oil may surge on a European interest rate rise, France 24 reported. Oil, gold and copper climbed today as the dollar dropped because the Federal Reserve gave no signal of higher interest rates yesterday.
“The Libyan comments are helping send us higher,” said Brad Samples, commodity analyst for Summit Energy Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky. “The Libyans are responsible for only about 2 percent of production, but with supplies tight every missing barrel will have an impact.”
Crude oil for August delivery rose $5.09, or 3.8 percent, to $139.64 a barrel at 2:59 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a record settlement price. Futures touched $140.39 today, surpassing the previous intraday record of $139.89 reached on June 16. Continue reading »
Iran urges the OPEC member states again to convert their cash reserves into a basket of currencies rather than the tumbling US dollar.
Speaking at a ceremony to open the 29th ministerial meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his proposal made about six months ago in a rare summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’s heads of states.
“The fall in the value of US dollar is one of the pressing problems of the world today,” warned the Iranian president at the conference in Isfahan on Tuesday.
He further expressed concern over the adverse effect of the dollar depreciation on the international community, especially energy exporting countries through increasing the price of commodities like wheat, rice and oilseeds.(This could have also been said by Ron Paul or Jim Rogers. - The Infinite Unknown)
Ahmadinejad said he warned six months ago in the summit conference in Riyadh that there were many indications pointing to continued fall in the value of the greenback.
“And we see that this continues to happen and the resources and wealth of OPEC member countries have been hugely damaged.
“I again repeat my previous proposal; we should have a basket of different international hard currencies as the basis or the member countries should come up and produce a new hard currency for petroleum contracts,” he stressed.
“They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” Ahmadinejad said earlier after the close of the summit in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. (Which is absolutely correct too.)
The comments by the Iranian president gained backing from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he said at the same event, “The empire of the dollar has to end.” Continue reading »
