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Friday 10.05.2012

Did Turkey Just Declare War On Syria?
By Michael Snyder - EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
The Turkish Parliament has "authorized military operations" against Syria. So exactly what does that mean? Did Turkey just declare war on Syria? For now, the government of Turkey is making a clear distinction between "military operations" and "declaring war". If Turkey were to "declare war", that would likely involve Turkish troops actually entering Syria, and the war would not be considered "won" until certain objectives are achieved. So by just authorizing "military operations" against Syria, Turkey can sit back and fire off artillery rounds (and potentially call in air strikes if necessary) without being committed to entering Syria or attacking Damascus. Turkey is not too keen on invading Syria by itself anyway. Turkey would want the help of NATO in such an event, and right now Barack Obama has made it abundantly clear to the Turkish government that he is not going to participate in an attack on Syria before the election.

Read more articles on MIddle East situation, below.

Gold Traders More Bullish as Holdings Reach Record:
Commodities
By Nicholas Larkin - Bloomberg.com
Gold traders are the most bullish in three weeks as investors' bullion holdings expanded to a record after central banks pledged to do more to spur economic growth.
Twenty of 32 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect prices to rise next week, nine were bearish and three were neutral. Investors are holding the most metal ever through gold-backedexchange-traded products after buying 85.4 metric tons last month, the most since July 2011.Hedge funds' bets on a rally are the biggest in seven months, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show.

So, Who's Been Bidding Gold Higher?
By: Adrian Ash - GoldSeek.com
GOLD was up, up and away in September. But who was doing the buying?
New data we released today here at BullionVault show that private households across Western Europe and the US continue to join the bull market. But their response to QE3 and the latest phase of the Eurozone crisis is more measured – you might even say complacent – than the recent price action alone suggests.

Gold Hits New High for the Year,
Breaching $1790 "Opens Up All Time Record"
By: Ben Traynor - GoldSeek.com
SPOT MARKET prices to buy gold climbed to $1794 an ounce ahead of Thursday's US session, a new 2012 high, while stock markets were broadly flat and US Treasury bonds fell ahead of the publication of minutes from the latest Federal Reserve policy meeting.
"We are watching for a break to the upside through $1790 resistance, which will then target the all-time nominal high [at around $1920 per ounce]," say technical analysts at Scotiabank.

Nick Barisheff: The Destruction Of Currency And Rise Of Gold
By Nick Barisheff - GoldSilverWorlds.com
Today's discussion is based on the primary trend that started at the beginning of this millennium. The fundamental shift that has been taking place since then was the creation of value through paper assets shifting in a gradual way to hard assets, primarily (but not only) gold and silver. Part of the current ongoing dollar devaluation is caused by this disparity between financial assets and gold. Nick Barisheff gave with these rounded numbers to create a high level picture of the scale of the paper asset market versus gold. The market for financial assets should be worth approximately $250 trillion. It includes mortgage bonds, equities, treasury bills and related financial instruments. It contains pure paper assets and does not include real estate or derivatives. Against that $250 trillion stands a nominal value of the gold market of around $4 trillion

Attention Gold, Silver investors:
Three key data releases for today
Commodity Online
Three data/information releases for today are expected to set the trend in gold and silver markets for the medium term. Here are they:

18.15 IST: ECB interest rate decision
19.00 IST: US initial jobless claims
19.00 IST: ECB press conference

The Only Way Out Is to Devalue
BY RICHARD RUSSELL - FinancialSense.com
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Mao Tse-Tung
The US national debt is now over $16 trillion — and growing at the rate of more than $1.2 trillion a year. This is clearly unsustainable. But how to cut the debt? One way is to cut entitlements, which are growing exponentially. Will they cut Medicare? Cut food stamps? Cut any entitlements at all? No politician would dare make extensive cuts in entitlements.
OK, then raise taxes sky high for everyone, and I mean for everyone. Are you kidding? If we raised everyone's taxes to the hilt, that still wouldn't solve the US's deficit problem. Furthermore, no politician would dare vote to raise taxes sky high!

Monetary Policy Can't Revive Economy
Monetary Mystification
By Joseph Stiglitz - Project-Syndicate.org
NEW YORK – Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic took extraordinary monetary-policy measures in September: the long awaited "QE3" (the third dose of quantitative easing by the United States Federal Reserve), and the European Central Bank's announcement that it will purchase unlimited volumes of troubled eurozone members' government bonds. Markets responded euphorically, with stock prices in the US, for example, reaching post-recession highs.

QE3 was a sign of failure
We dodged Depression, but there's no recovery in sight
By Howard Gold
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced a new round of unconventional monetary stimulus last month, he couched it in the language of grim necessity, saying:
"The employment situation… remains a grave concern…Fewer than half of the eight million jobs lost in the recession have been restored… Five million Americans have been unemployed for more than six months, and millions more have left the labor force—many of them doubtless because they have given up on finding suitable work."

Draghi Says Next Move Not His as Spain Resists Bailout
By Jeff Black and Gabi Thesing - Bloomberg.com
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi signaled European governments can't expect much more help from him until they make the next move.
Draghi said nine times during a 54-minute press conference in Slovenia yesterday that the ECB won't start intervening in bond markets until governments like Spain request a bailout and agree to conditions. He also ruled out allowing the ECB to take losses in any further Greek debt restructuring and damped speculation of another ECB interest-rate cut.

JPMorgan Suit May Worsen Next Crisis
By the Editors - Bloomberg.com
The economic damage wrought by a handful of financial firms has left the American public clamoring for a pound of flesh. This week, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman tried to satisfy that desire. He chose a curious first scalp.
Schneiderman, who is co-chairman of a state-federal mortgage-fraud task force created by President Barack Obama, hit JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) with a lawsuit alleging the kind of deceptive behavior all too common in the run-up to the financial crisis: creating and marketing defective mortgage-backed securities that blew up on investors. The conduct, however, took place not at JPMorgan but at Bear Stearns, the investment bank JPMorgan bought in a government-arranged sale as the financial crisis was unfolding.

Money market fund assets fell to $2.564 trillion
WashingtonExaminer.com
NEW YORK (AP) — Total U.S. money market mutual fund assets fell $11.64 billion to $2.564 trillion for the week that ended Wednesday, according to the Investment Company Institute.
Assets of the nation's retail money market mutual funds rose $2.49 billion to $889.81 billion, the Washington-based mutual fund trade group said Thursday. Assets of taxable money market funds in the retail category rose $660 million to $700.1 billion. Tax-exempt retail fund assets rose $1.83 billion to $189.71 billion.

China to Challenge US Dollar Reserve Currency Status
BY MARK O'BYRNE - FinancialSense.com
Today's AM fix was USD 1,786.50, EUR 1,380.92, and GBP 1,109.01 per ounce. Yesterday's AM fix was USD 1,777.25, EUR 1,374.73and GBP 1,102.38 per ounce.
Gold edged up $3.40 or 0.19% in New York yesterday which saw gold close at $1,778.50. Silver initially climbed to $34.848 then it fell off in afternoon trading and finished with a loss of 0.06%.
Gold inched up on Thursday, continuing its 4th day of gains as investors await more clues from central banks on further stimulus plans.

The Scourge of Central Banking
Dylan Grice on the Money Printers
BY PATER TENEBRARUM - FinancialSense.com
Yesterday Dylan Grice of Societe Generale published a brief piece on the debasement of money that has rightly garnered quite a bit of attention. Readers who have missed it can read a summary of the salient points at Zerohedge.
As we have mentioned in the past, Grice appears to be a 'closet Austrian'. He regularly advocates Austrian ideas and viewpoints, but we have never seen him identify them as such. Be that as it may, it is the ideas that count, not their label. It should perhaps also be pointed out in this context that people like Ludwig von Mises or Murray Rothbard did not see themselves as 'Austrian' economists either – rather they felt they were simply economists advancing the science of economics – albeit economists whose work was certainly firmly rooted in the subjectivist tradition of the Austrian school.

Money, Power and the Rule of Law
By Simon Johnson, New York Times
Economic policy is always torn between helping the broader social interest – lots of ordinary people – and favoring particular special interests. Unfortunately, special interests typically win out in the kind of situation we have in America in 2012, when it's all about spending money to win friends and influence people.
The most effective way to push back against powerful special interests is to have the same rules for everyone – and to enforce those rules fairly, even when they are broken by the richest and most politically connected people in the land. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of New York took a major step toward restoring the rule of law this week, by bringing a case against JPMorgan Chase. But it will be an uphill battle; the forces against him are incredibly strong, including some within the Obama administration.

Jobs Report May Mean More to Presidential Race Than Markets
By: JeeYeon Park - CNBC.com
Traders say Friday's jobs report may have more impact on the presidential race than the markets, though investors will still be watching closely.
Economists expect employers added 113,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate edged up to 8.2 percent from August's 8.1 percent, according to a Reuters survey. Friday's report will be the second-to-last before the November election.

The High Cost of Energy
is Leading the Economy into Recession
By Post Carbon - OilPrice.com
Energy is everything. Without energy literally nothing happens. It's easy to overlook the role of energy in the economy because we often just look at it as how much we spend on energy as a fraction of total GDP. But that really is misleading. Because if you take away energy, the GDP doesn't just contract by that percentage, the GDP disappears.
If suddenly there was no petrol at the pump; if suddenly the lights went out and did not come back on, the economy would go away. Energy is central to all economic activity. Up until the last couple of hundred years, the energy that we used was from renewable sources - it was almost entirely from the sun. But something changed with the Industrial Revolution. We developed the tools, the gears, the metallurgy, the simple heat engine, so that we could access and use the fuels that had been created by nature over tens of millions of years.

Giant Natural Gas Pipeline in Alaska Could Cost $65 Billion
By Joao Peixe - OilPrice.com
Back in January the Governor of Alaska, Sean Parnell, set a deadline for the three energy giants who are developing a project to build a massive pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope of Alaska, after he admitted to being fed up by the seemingly endless delays plaguing the project.
Officials from the three companies, ExxonMobil, BP, and Conoco Philips, recently wrote a letter to Governor Parnell to report that good progress has been made on the project, but that "significant environmental, regulatory, engineering and commercial work still remains to reach upcoming decisions to bring North Slope gas to market."

Classmate of both candidates stumped by debate outcome
By Mara Gay - TheDaily.com
The man who went to school with both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and predicted the president would "smoke" the Republican nominee says he is dumbfounded by Obama's poor showing in the first debate.
"I'm surprised. I was shocked, actually," Sidney Barthwell, a district court magistrate in Michigan who attended Cranbrook with Romney and Harvard Law School with Obama, told The Daily. "That was not the Barack Obama I've seen through the years. I'm thinking the man might have had the flu or something."

Was Obama rattled by developing donor scandal story?
By Paul Bedard - WashingtonExaminer.com
President Obama reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowlegable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.
Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.

16 Critical Economic Issues
That Obama And Romney Avoided During The Debate
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
Did you watch the presidential debate on Wednesday night? It is absolutely amazing how they can have an hour and a half debate about the economy and say so little. It seemed like both candidates were falling all over each other wanting to talk about how much they value education, but will more education really solve our problems? After all, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor's degree under the age of 25were either unemployed or underemployed in 2011. So perhaps they should just both agree that education is a good thing and start talking about how to create more jobs for all of us. If you want to grade the debate from a technical standpoint, clearly Romney was the winner of the debate. Romney was full of energy and was generally sharp with his answers. Obama looked like he had just popped a couple of antidepressants and was ready for nap time. As a result, this might have been the worst blowout in the history of presidential debates. A CNN/ORC International poll that was taken right after the debate found that 67 percent of all Americans that had watched the debate thought that Romney was the winner. Never before had any presidential candidate crossed the 60 percent mark in the history of their post-debate polling. So Romney definitely had a big night. But the reality is that both candidates were telling the American people what they want to hear.

Presidential debate: Obama,
Romney harden partisan battle lines
By ALEXANDER BURNS | Politico.com
DENVER – President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney deepened the ideological battle lines of the 2012 campaign at the first general-election debate, underscoring their stark differences on issues of taxation, job creation, debt reduction and entitlement reform.
The two presidential nominees met face to face for the first time at the University of Denver, where both men quickly embraced the big-picture contrast that has defined the 2012 race.

Nielsen: 67.2 million watched debate
By Dylan Byers - Politico.com
An estimated 67.2 million people watched the presidential debate last night, according to Nielsen.
The total viewership, which includes 12 networks, was a 28 percent increase over the first presidential debate in 2008 between then-Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, which drew 52.4 million viewers. 63.2 million watched Obama and McCain's second debate; 56.5 million watched their third.

The First Presidential Debate: Style vs. Substance
By Robert Reich - Truthdig.com
In Wednesday night's debate, Romney won on style while Obama won on substance. Romney sounded as if he had conviction, which means he's either convinced himself that the lies he tells are true or he's a fabulous actor.
But what struck me most was how much Obama allowed Romney to get away with: Five times Romney accused Obama of raiding Medicare of $716 billion, which is a complete fabrication. Obama never mentioned the regressiveness of Romney's budget plan — awarding the rich and hurting the middle class and the poor. He never mentioned Bain Capital, or Romney's 47 percent talk, or Romney's "carried-interest" tax loophole. Obama allowed Romney to talk about replacing Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act without demanding that Romney be specific about what he'd replace and why. And so on.

Romney's Third Down Conversion
In which his debate performance was so strong that the author resorts to football clichés.
By MATT PURPLE - Spectator.org
After the debate last night, I clicked over to MSNBC where I was treated to an intriguing sight: Chris Matthews having an aneurysm live on the air. Here's a rough transcript from my notes:
"Well this wasn't an MSNBC debate was it! … Obama adored the debate rather than participate in it! … Romney wrote off half the country! … You know where we're having a debate?! Here!! On this network!!!! … What was Romney doing tonight?! HE WAS WINNING!!! … OBAMA SHOULD WATCH MSNBC!! HE WILL LEARN SOMETHING EVERY NIGHT ON THIS SHOW!!!"

Debate was Americans' first glimpse
of Romney the overachiever
By Philip Klein - WashingtonExaminer.com
Throughout his career, Mitt Romney has been an overachiever. Yet that side of Romney has been largely absent throughout the presidential campaign. During the general election especially, Americans have seen a Romney who has looked awkward and overly cautious. He gave a pedestrian convention speech and seemed to lack a clear strategy for winning the campaign. This Romney was difficult to reconcile with the biography of somebody who has been tremendously successful at most things he's tried.

Biden: Obama looked 'presidential,' did 'well' against Romney
By Daniel Strauss - TheHill.com
Vice President Biden on Thursday defended President Obama's debate performance, praising Obama for doing "well" and looking "presidential."
"I think the president did well. He was presidential," Biden said just before he gave a campaign speech in Council Bluffs, Iowa. "You just don't ever know what game, what positions Gov. [Mitt] Romney's going to come with."
The vice president's defense comes as pundits on both sides of the aisle are panning Obama's performance in Wednesday night's first presidential debate, in Denver, saying the president looked subdued and tired.

Mitt Romney: Third Party Candidate
By Bill Boyarsky - Truthdig.com
Massachusetts Mitt is back. The right-winger of the Republican primaries is gone. Forget everything Mitt Romney has said in the past. In Wednesday night's debate, he moved from the right to the center, where he needs to be in order to win the presidency.
Unfortunately, President Barack Obama let him get away with it in their debate at the University of Denver. He did challenge Romney on the heart and soul of the Republican candidate's campaign, a dismantling of the economic and social safety net and a tax plan that would reward the very rich and hurt the middle class, the working poor and the unemployed. But Obama failed to point out the inconsistencies between what Romney was saying in the debate and what he has been saying in his campaign. And the president failed to show outrage at the Romney tax plan. Instead, his manner was annoyingly cool.

Romney Brings 'A' Game to First Presidential Debate
by Tracy Bloom - Truthdig.com
Mitt Romney came prepared, Barack Obama looked like he didn't want to be there and Jim Lehrer probably wishes he hadn't agreed to moderate Wednesday night's presidential debate. That's the succinct summary of the first of three debates between the two men vying for the White House.
The debate, held in Denver, presented a key opportunity for Romney to redeem himself after his campaign experienced a series of gaffes and stumbles that left the Republican nominee down not just in the public's perception, but in the polls as well.

Romney campaign explains fuzzy green energy math
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA | Politico.com
Mitt Romney culled statistics from a small subset of loan guarantee recipients to come up with his claim Wednesday night that "about half" of the renewable energy companies backed by the Obama administration "have gone out of business."
As POLITICO and other fact-checkers quickly pointed out, Romney's numbers from the first presidential debate are not correct. Not even close.

Tough to Build on First Debate Win
Reagan, Bush Both Won Re-Election Despite Poor Showings in Initial Face-Offs, as Their Opponents Failed to Capitalize
By JANET HOOK - WSJ.com
Mitt Romney's widely praised performance in the first presidential debate gave his campaign a boost. History shows these kinds of gains, especially by a challenger, are often fleeting.
That was the experience of 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, who turned in a strong performance in his first debate against President George W. Bush, but couldn't ride it to victory on Election Day. Similarly, President Ronald Reagan stumbled in his first 1984 debate with Democrat Walter Mondale, but recovered in the next debate and went on to win in a landslide.

AARP to Obama: Don't mention us again
By Joel Gehrke - WashingtonExaminer.com
President Obama invoked AARP to defend his health care law last night, prompting the influential group to release a statement telling him not to do that again.
"While we respect the rights of each campaign to make its case to voters, AARP has never consented to the use of its name by any candidate or political campaign," the group posted in a statement. "AARP is a nonpartisan organization and we do not endorse political candidates nor coordinate with any candidate or political party."

Obama, the day after, slams Romney's claims
By Jonathan Easley - TheHill.com
President Obama didn't repeat the mistake of his lackluster debate performance in his first post-debate appearance on Thursday, coming out swinging at Mitt Romney.
"We had our first debate last night," Obama said at an outdoor event at Sloan's Lake Park in Denver on Thursday. "When I got onto the stage I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn't have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country all year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy. The fellow onstage last night said he didn't know anything about that."

BIDEN ADMITS: 'YES WE DO' WANT TO RAISE TAXES $1T
by JOHN NOLTE - Breitbart.com
This is a huge gaffe on Vice President Joe Biden's part. Instead of using the dishonest language of "letting the Bush tax cuts expire," Biden finally comes straight out and tells the truth:
BIDEN: You know the phrase they always use? "Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars." Guess what? Yes we do, in one regard. We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bare the burden of all that money going to the super wealthy.
This is exactly what Mitt Romney was talking about during last night's debate with respect to "trickle-down government" and the promised Obama-tax increase that will will hit our biggest small businesses and cost the economy 700,000 jobs.

Politico Editor: Obama Was Too Busy Being President,
Didn't Have Time to Practice for Debate
By Scott Whitlock - newsBusters.org
Politico editor Jim VandeHei appeared on MSNBC, Thursday, to blame Barack Obama's poor debate performance on the burdens of the office. The journalist spun, "The President had to be the President, and had to be a candidate, and so he didn't have nearly as much prep time." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
VandeHei did not try and sugarcoat the debate performance itself, knocking the President for thinking he could "just walk on there, play it safe, and do well." But the former political reporter for the Washington Post journalist did offer this whopper about how the triumphant Mitt Romney would be treated going forward: "He has a week or two, I think, of probably pretty positive coverage." The liberal media giving Romney two weeks of positive coverage seems stunningly unlikely.

Liberals slam Obama on Social Security
By Alexander Bolton - TheHill.com
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday strongly criticized President Obama for not taking a more forceful stance on Social Security in the presidential campaign.
Sanders, founder of the Senate's Defending Social Security Caucus and a leading voice on the issue in the Senate Democratic caucus, said he was deeply concerned by Obama's effort to minimize differences between himself and Mitt Romney.

Wanna Get Away From Romney or Obama's America?
JetBlue Will Evacuate You
by Peter Z. Scheer - Truthdig.com
The airline is raffling off 1,000 free tickets to foreign destinations for sore losers who can't stand the idea of living under the other guy's rule.
They're calling it "election protection," and the tickets are for round-trip flights in case evacuees want to come back and give Obamacare or Medicare vouchers a try.

Facebook admits millions of accounts are fake
By MYFOX NEW YORK STAFF
Facebook's share price dipped below $20 on Thursday after reporting slowing growth and an admission of an alarming number of fake accounts.
In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the social media company said that as many as 83 million of its accounts are fake.
It also reported that as many as five percent of its active users have duplicate accounts.
Facebook members grew to 955 million this year.
It says 1.5 percent of its accounts are likely spam or accounts set up for other malicious activity. The fake accounts are concentrated in developing markets, according to the filing.
It also blames people who set up accounts for non-human entities, such as pets.
There are "inherent challenges" in measuring usage," the social network said.

William Koch Loses Bid to Reinstate Counterfeit Wine Suit
By Patricia Hurtado - Bloomberg.com
Billionaire collector William Koch lost his bid to reinstate a lawsuit against Christie's International Plc that claimed the auction house "induced" him to buy what he said was counterfeit wine.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan today upheld a 2011 ruling by U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones dismissing Koch's suit after finding that he waited too long to sue. The appeals court agreed that the statute of limitations had expired.

Why Is Germany Collecting Taxes for the Catholic Church?
How easy would it be for Berlin to forcibly tax all Germans and turn over their money to Rome, when it is already involved in tithe collection for state-recognized religions?
BY ANDREW MIILLER - TheTrumpet.com
The German Catholic Bishops Conference issued a decree in September warning that those Germans who opted out of paying the country's "church tax" would no longer be entitled to sacraments, religious burial or any part of parish life.
This "church tax" is a special tax collected in Germany and several other Western European nations that was introduced in the 19th century in compensation for the nationalization of religious property. All Germans who officially register as Catholics, Protestants or Jews on their tax documentation must pay a religious tax of 8 to 9 percent on their annual income tax bill.

National 'virtual ID card' scheme set for launch
(Is there anything that could possibly go wrong?)
Central online identity scheme 'will be a target for criminals'
By IAN BURRELL - The Independent
The Government will announce details this month of a controversial national identity scheme which will allow people to use their mobile phones and social media profiles as official identification documents for accessing public services.
People wishing to apply for services ranging from tax credits to fishing licences and passports will be asked to choose from a list of familiar online log-ins, including those they already use on social media sites, banks, and large retailers such as supermarkets, to prove their identity.

The Positive Power of Crisis
BY CHARLES HUGH SMITH - FinancialSense.com
Only in crisis do human beings actually change anything.
If there is any demarcation with profound implications going forward, it isn't the line between the 1% and the 99% or the line dividing the Status Quo into two safely complicit ideological camps: it is the divide between those who squarely face the burden of knowing the present is unsustainable and those who flee into the comforts of denial. Those who accept the burden of knowing are part of the solution, those who cling to denial are part of the problem.
Those who accept the burden of knowing do not necessarily have answers, but they are alert to alternatives and potential solutions. Those in denial can only hope that reality can be buried for a while longer.

NRA endorses Romney,
calls him 'only hope' for firearms freedom
By Jonathan Easley - TheHill.com
The National Rifle Association (NRA) endorsed Mitt Romney for president late Thursday.
NRA Executive vice president Wayne LaPierre and NRA Political Victory Fund chairman Chris Cox will formally announce the endorsement at a Romney rally in Virginia later Thursday evening. Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan will also be on hand.

Hyperinflation Hits Iran; Monthly 70% Inflation Rate
BY MICHAEL SHEDLOCK - FinancialSense.com
The oil embargo against Iran has worked, assuming one defines "work" as a destruction of the Iranian riall which has fallen 33% in a week, 57% in three months and 75% in a year vs. the US dollar.
On Wednesday, the Tehran bazaar closed in turmoil and police used teargas and batons on demonstrators protesting the currency crisis.
Please consider Iran currency crisis sparks Tehran street clashes
Hundreds of demonstrators in the Iranian capital clashed with riot police on Wednesday, during protests against the crisis over the country's currency. Police used batons and teargas to try to disperse the crowds.

Saudi Arabia May Increase
the Price of Crude Oil Exported to Asia
By Joao Peixe - OilPrice.com
Reuters believes that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter of crude oil, will increase its selling prices to Asia during the month of November.
The seasonal winter demand, as well as the return to operation of several Japanese crude oil refineries that had been shut-down have caused demand in Asia to increase; a point that the Middle East will take note of when it comes to setting their new official selling prices (OSPs).

Ruskies don't want to be at ground zero...
Russia said evacuating its personnel from base in Syria
Moscow pulls military staff and civilians out of Tartus, rebels claim
By ILAN BEN ZION - The Times of Israel
Russia was completing the withdrawal of its citizens and military personnel from its naval base in Syria, Saudi daily Al Watan reported on Sunday.
Free Syrian Army Major Maher al-Naimi told the paper that Russian and Cypriot ships docked at the port in order to evacuate the remaining Russian technicians as well as 52 of the 72 armored vehicles from the military installation.

US says Iran is jamming Western radio broadcasts
Tehran is blocking Voice of America,
Radio Free Europe, BBC, body claims
The Times of Israel
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government-appointed body that oversees Voice of America and other US-sponsored broadcasts is accusing Iran of jamming radio and television programming into the Middle East and eastern Europe amid protests in Iran over the Iranian currency crisis.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors said Thursday that the jamming is coming from inside Iran and violates international telecommunications regulations. It said the interference began on Wednesday and is affecting VOA's Persian service, along with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's and Farsi-language programming from Radio Farda. The jamming is also affecting the BBC, it said in a statement.

Former US defense secretary
lashes out at Israel, warns against military strike on Iran
Israel 'does not have a blank check to harm American interests,' says Robert Gates — who last year called the Jewish state an ungrateful ally
By SAM SER - TimeOfIsrael.com
The United States needs to tell Israel that it does not "have a blank check to take action that could do grave harm to American vital interests," according to former US defense secretary Robert Gates.
Gates, who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from 2006 through 2011, was quoted by the Virginian-Pilot as warning against a military strike on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, saying it could "prove catastrophic."
Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of totally destroying Iran's nuclear program, Gates said, and any strike would ultimately backfire.

Turkish military fires into Syria, raising fears of regional conflagration
NATO, UN Security Council convene emergency meetings following deadly exchange of fire along Syrian-Turkish border
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
and ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY - The Times of Israel
BEIRUT (AP) — Turkish artillery fired on Syrian targets Wednesday after shelling from Syria struck a border village in Turkey, killing five civilians, sharply escalating tensions between the two neighbors and prompting NATO to convene an emergency meeting.
"Our armed forces at the border region responded to this atrocious attack with artillery fire on points in Syria that were detected with radar, in line with the rules of engagement," the Turkish government said in a statement from the prime minister's office.

Syria wanted Israeli help in securing border, report claims
Unconfirmed documents quoted by Al Arabiya purport to show Assad's air force intel chief telling officer to seek cooperation from Jerusalem
By TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF
Damascus reportedly sought Israel's cooperation in securing Syria's borders at the start of the bloody uprising that has rocked the country for the last year and a half, purported secret papers show.
The report by Saudi news outlet Al Arabiya was based on what it said are secret Syrian documents obtained from the Syrian opposition.
According to the papers, Syrian Air Force Intelligence chief Sakr Mennoun asked an officer to secure Syria's border with the Golan Heights "in cooperation with the state of Israel."

FORMER CIA OFFICIAL:
OBAMA 'OCTOBER SURPRISE' AIRSTRIKE IN LIBYA
'WOULD BE CRIMINAL'
by BEN SHAPIRO - Breitbart.com
This morning, Breitbart News spoke with a former senior CIA official with specific knowledge of the ongoing issues in Libya, who spelled out the risks associated with the Obama administration's rumored prospective airstrikes on targets in Libya. Two days ago, the New York Times reported that the administration was preparing an operation inside Libya, including the possibility of drone strikes. Breitbart News reported yesterday that a senior Department of Defense official said that the administration was advance planning for a "substantial air package" that could include manned flights.

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