And a very important brick it is.

Lebanon ‘recently’ requested the ‘expansion of bilateral defense cooperation’ with Iran, which would include Iran’s aid in equipping the Lebanese Regular Army… in addition to the aid Iran has constantly provided Lebanese Hezbollah.

‘Recently’ is in quotes because it is unclear when that request occurred from Lebanon, and exactly who made it.

The assumption is that Lebanese President Suleiman made the request, because Iranian official media reported that Suleiman had been awaiting the answer from Iran.

Today the answer came back from Iran. It was ‘yes’. Of course. The Iranians had officially proposed a quantum leap in military cooperation with Lebanon at least as far back as February.

The ostensible reason for the offer and the acceptance is ‘the daily violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli fighter jets’. Which do occur just about as often as stated. Lebanon has officially and repeatedly reported the literally thousands of violations to the United Nations over the years, which never pays any attention to them. So the ostensible reason is reasonable. But the timing is highly suspect.

(more…)

So strange…

Steve Jobs ends his time at Apple, and this new ebook The End of the Computer is published, almost the same day.

Nothing having anything to do with each other. Sheer serendipity.

It turns out, however, that this is the most exciting book I’ve ever read. The cover says it’s the ‘GREEN thriller of 2011′. Exactly right. Much about GMO and the Green Revolution (should be Black Revolution, the book says, and again, exactly right). And the woman on the cover… her eyes say something mysterious… and indeed she is that and more, in the book.

Like the description on Amazon says (I think it is also on Ibooks), after the cadre of friends are introduced, the book takes off at warp speed. It is so exciting in places that you have to rest at the end of the chapter… but you can’t… you have to go on to see what happens next.

It is unique. It is complex. There are deep thoughts that bear much contemplation. There is soaring prose that takes you to a high emotional level. There is a scene with quite frankly the most realistic violence. And others of such love and tenderness you wish you were one of those people. Just amazing.

Most amazing of all, it seems real. Very real. As though whoever wrote it was there. It’s supposed to be a fictionalized story about real events. But it can’t be. I don’t think so, anyway.

But I kind of hope so.

Forty minutes.

That’s how long South Korea’s widely trumpeted ‘largest winter wargame drill ever’ lasted.

It was simply a provocation to war, as the North and the Chinese have been calling it.

The new US sanctions on Iranian banks and shipping are being circumvented by Chinese banks and shipping insurance entities, according to Israeli sources with inside information.

As mentioned before, it looks like interdiction of Iranian shipping is the only effective step up the sanctions ladder open to the US.

Iran sent a Holiday party to Lebanon last week, and the revelers are still there. Not the usual sort, these guests are Special Engineers of the IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, according to Israeli sources with Mossad connections.
(more…)

In the cult classic Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean and his antagonist Buzz race stolen cars toward an abyss. They are supposed to jump out of the car before it goes over the cliff, but the first one to jump out of harms way loses this stupid game of ‘chicken’. Ending in tragedy, Buzz’s sleeve gets caught as he tries to chicken out, and he goes over into oblivion with the car.

In today’s feature, South Korea plays the part of Buzz, challenging the North to a much higher stakes game of chicken.

The South was not satisfied with their display of machismo a couple of days ago when they briefly fired artillery from the same island that was the center of an exchange of fire and death last month between the North and the South. To their chagrin, the North just said the exercise was not large enough to bother retaliating against. Clearly, the North had a word from the Chinese in their ear to ignore the provocation.

The current military exercise going on as I write this is the largest wintertime drill ever by South Korea, and is just 12 miles from North Korea. Frankly, if they wanted to design a provocation to war, this would be a good one.

And that’s the question. Do they want a war with the North? If not, why be so blatant?

And the other question is larger. Does the South’s patron, our very own United States, also want such a war? If not, why are we not jerking on their choke chain instead of letting them bark at the neighbors?
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Some very odd news in the last few hours.

First, from official Iranian news for English speaking people, there was an extremely rare report of naval military movements. It centered on the prima donna of the French fleet, the nuclear powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.

This is the single nuclear seagoing platform of the French, which took part in symbiotic exercises with American aircraft carriers quite some time ago.

Our advanced jets landed on her flight deck. French advanced jets landed on our carriers. Both country’s jets made landings on land airstrips. And then the Charles de Gaulle went back to being as far as possible out of harms way, as the French do not like risking their showcase ship too near a war zone. She has not been on an official mission since May 2007.

Suddenly, the Iranians report that the Charles de Gaulle is on its way to the Persian Gulf, and will arrive by the end of the month, which as you know is Halloween here in America.

This is consistent with world press reports mid- month, (more…)

On May 20, the post on this blog Obama Sends Carriers to Gulf spoke of the Carrier Strike Group headed by the USS Harry S Truman being sent to the Persian Gulf. The first time the Obama administration put two such groups on line in the Middle East. This was not widely reported (to say the least) although I’m certain that any nation opposed to the United States had full knowledge of such a move.

A carrier group consists of 20-30 or more ships and subs. It is a big blip on anyone’s radar or satellite sensors. It is often used as a warning to other nations, simply because it is such a big, visible move. But I have to admit, I wondered if it was true. Apparently it was. Today, Israeli sources report the Truman group, which was on it’s way to the Persian Gulf, to instead support the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.

The reason is, of course, Gaza. Things continue to heat up there. (more…)

In just a few hours, Wednesday Israel time, a new plan to change the Gaza blockade, hammered out between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Tony Blair, the West’s ‘envoy to the Middle East’, should come before the Israeli cabinet of ministers for approval. This is reported in main stream Israeli media and worldwide, so it has a high likelihood of actually happening.

What is not so clear is whether the cabinet will approve the measures set before it, which essentially puts the examination of goods coming into Gaza in international hands. (more…)

A one-line piece of information today from a primary source of breaking news about Israeli and the Middle East:

“Obama unexpectedly joins White House conversation between defense minister Ehud Barak and NSA James Jones Monday.”
— Debka File

That is so very curious. Because Barak was specifically disallowed by Israeli President Netanyahu to negotiate for the Israeli government during his week-long visit to Washington DC… quite an odd thing in itself. Especially since Barak and US Special Envoy George Mitchell met in the El Al visitor’s lounge at Ben Gurion airport in Israel before the two of them flew to Washington together… another sort of rare event. Alone, these things make one wonder what is going on.

So we have these curious elements…. (more…)

Physical Gold

Buying gold for whatever happens in the future?

Might want to think again. Unless you take physical delivery of your gold, you might be in for a surprise.

Interesting post says actual gold held by institutions are a tiny fraction… 1 to 10 percent… of what they have sold to people. Looks like unless you actually have it in hand, you may not get it if you ask for it. I can’t vouch for this information. But it’s something to consider.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/latest-gold-fraud-bombshell-canadas-only-bullion-bank-gold-vault-practically-empty

If you are thinking of having gold around in case of a disaster, rings of ‘junk gold’ - minimum karat, say 8 or 10 - seems to be a reasonable medium for trade. In those circumstances, higher value gold of 18-24 karat can’t get it’s real value, because there are no easy ways to test it, and everyone is suspected of scamming. So everything is assumed to be junk gold, and the exchange is based on the lowest value. And woe be to him who tries to pass off plated gold as solid. That test is easy, and the consequences could be very great.

The stock market isn’t all that’s happening in the world, not by a long shot… but it’s some of the news. Predicting it is a full time job for some. Fortunately, not for me. But I’m interested. And I have a tiny position in the market. A bear position, of course.

I was reading some material yesterday that really hit me. I’m not a technical… a person who believes that the patterns of the Dow Jones repeat in certain ways. They can, yes. But just because the Market moved in a certain way the last time a certain pattern occurred, I do not believe that it will necessarily act the same this time. Not necessarily.

But sometimes it does.

An erudite technical named Al Coryell made a chart of the market just before the Crash of 1929, and a chart of recent movements . You can almost overlay the pattern, point for point. If you want, you can see that here:

http://www.thepanicnews.com/2009/09/18/is-todays-stock-market-doing-a-dead-cat-bounce-similar-to-the-stock-market-crash-of-1929-which-ushered-in-the-great-depression/

He does a more recent, more extensive analysis on this page:

http://www.thepanicnews.com/2010/02/08/is-that-a-dead-cat-bounce-ing-off-that-k-wave/

It seems that we have continued to move along that fault line.

The bit about the dead cat bounce is marketspeak for a short rebound after a sharp decline, which is exactly what has been happening in the market during the past year. The only point of disagreement between anyone is whether the rebound will continue, up, up, up the ziggurat… or falter a little bit… or complete the dead cat bounce, which ends in a sharp decline. Splat.

You can guess which one I think it is.

Al says we’ll know for sure when the market (currently at about 10,300) reaches 3,000.

On its way to 400.