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.

One of the most difficult categories of food to stock as emergency supplies is protein. In the past, there was a lot of powdered egg and milk. Today there is a much wider choice of good tasting, protein-rich entries from companies that supply emergency food, most notably the top-rated maker of freeze-dried food, Mountain House.

But I’ve found something else I also like very much: Cytosport™ Pure Protein,Tangerine flavor (none of the other flavors even come close). Pure Protein contains 40 grams of whey protein that somehow manages to taste sort of like the old-time Orange Julius drinks they used to make fresh with orange juice. (more…)

They’re still talking about this in the media from time to time… the thing that happened on so-called Black Friday, where the sales associate was killed by a rampaging mob of shoppers.

The guy was 6-foot-5 and 270 lbs., and yeah, he had no training at crowd control, but that is still quite a large person to be swept under the feet of stampeding consumers.

This was for a sale. No emergency, no life-threatening disaster was happening. Just the chance of saving a few dollars on items that have little or no impact on a person’s survival.

Imagine what it would be like if a situation were to occur where people thought they needed to buy food right now or they would starve.
(more…)