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Exclusive: “And It’s Gone… It’s All Gone” – The One Gold Scandal That Goes To The Very Top

Exclusive: “And It’s Gone… It’s All Gone” – The One Gold Scandal That Goes To The Very Top

Long before Turkey was flagrantly arming and funding the CIA-created “terrorist organization” known as ISIS, there was another, far more elaborate way in which Turkey was flaunting international sanctions against an ostracized state – in this case Iran – which involved an epic gold smuggling triangle of Hollywood-thriller proportions, all made possible thanks to the United Arab Emirate city of Dubai.

Best known known for its luxury shopping, ultramodern architecture including the world’s tallest building, a lively nightlife scene, and a facade of openness and decorum, what Dubai is less known for is its unprecedented seedy underbelly of corruption and untouched criminality among the handful of billionaire oligarchs, princes, sheiks and sultans, who quietly dominate the local (and global) power and financial structure.

But first, a little history.

It may seem like a distant memory now, but just a few short years ago, instead of a close ally of Barack Obama, Iran was a pariah state subject to international financial sanctions due to its nuclear program development, one which Israel had repeatedly (and famously) threatened would attack preemptively to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Iran, of course, had no choice but to find ways to keep its economy going, and in order to circumvent these sanctions, it resorted to the oldest form of trade known to man: gold. 

This, in itself, is not surprising. What is surprising is how and with whom Iran collaborated to breach the international embargo in order to obtain this valuable and much needed gold, which it could then barter with other countries – notably those along the Pacific Rim – in exchange for any and all needed products and services.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Ground Troops In Syria Is “Illegal, Big Mistake”, Russia Warns Obama Of “Unpredictable Consequences”

US Ground Troops In Syria Is “Illegal, Big Mistake”, Russia Warns Obama Of “Unpredictable Consequences”

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US would no longer hesitate to engage in “direct action on the ground” in Iraq and Syria. 

The change in rhetoric (and apparent shift in strategy) comes just days after the US seemingly prepared the public for what might be coming by releasing helmet cam footage of what Washington says was a raid on an ISIS prison by Delta Force (accompanied by the Peshmerga). 70 prisoners were allegedly freed although not before the US suffered its first combat death in Iraq since 2011.

The timing of the video is suspect, to say the least. It came just days after Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford visited Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi in an effort to dissuade Baghdad from requesting Russian airstrikes on ISIS targets. In short, it appears as though Washington is trying to simultaneously,  i) prove to Mid-East governments that the US can still be effective in the fight against terrorism even as questions remain about ulterior motives and even as Russia racks up gains in Syria, ii) prepare the public for the possibility that America is about to put boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Here’s more from WSJ on Washington’s new “strategy”:

The White House is seriously considering deploying a small squadron of Apache attack helicopters to Iraq as part of a package of new assistance programs to counter Islamic State, according to U.S. officials.

The move could ultimately require the deployment of hundreds more U.S. service members to Iraq. Among other proposals, U.S. officials said some in the military recommend openly deploying a small number of forces on the ground in Syria, embedded among moderate rebels or Kurdish forces there, for the first time.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

China Loses All Control: Arrests Journalist, Financial Executive Over Market Crash

China Loses All Control: Arrests Journalist, Financial Executive Over Market Crash

For two months, China has been on a quest to control both the stock market itself and the narrative around the stock market.

After an unwind in the CNY1 trillion back alley margin lending complex sparked a late June selloff, China cobbled together a plunge protection team run by China Securities Finance (an arm of CSRC) and began intervening in the market.

That effort has cost an estimated CNY900 billion so far.

On July 20, Caijing magazine suggested that CSF was setting up to scale back the market interventions which many believed had kept the SHCOMP from collapsing altogether. Here’s what happened next:

That suggestion caused futures to slide in China and in short order, the “rumor” was denied by CSRC. Now, the reporter who penned that story has been arrested for, as Bloomberg put it earlier today, “spreading fake stock and futures trading information.”

This comes on the heels of a move by Beijing earlier this week to suppress discussion of Monday’s market rout, which, along with the selloffs it triggered in bourses across the globe, was dubbed “Black Monday.”

Of course this isn’t the first time – and it probably won’t be the last – that China has cracked down on the media for “subversive” coverage of financial markets. Early last month, Beijing reportedly banned the use of the phrases “equity disaster” and “rescue the market.” That said, throwing reporters in jail marks a new escalation in the war on financial reporters, or, as the managing editor of The South China Morning Post put it, “you already know it’s risky to be political journalists in China – Now financial reporter is risky job too.”

 

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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