Turkish Forum English

Category: America

  • Poor Richards Report

    Poor Richards Report

    Chapter 21 Ted Butler Research LLC.
    This is a research report is from Ted Butler who is often quoted in various internet articles and has been quoted in the Financial Times.

    The Congressional solution to this problem is for Congress to enact a law where the fines go to reduce Social Security debt and the division fined is spun off to a competing financial institution. The former employees and supervisors and banned from the industry.

    With both houses of the same party in the United States, I foresee in the near future(3-6 months) a Congressional investigation.

    Please read Ted Butler’s letter with interest.- ed

    It has now been 14 years since I first started writing articles on silver for Investment Rarities, a precious metals dealer in business for more than 40 years. It was an association I originally assumed would last a couple of months. In mid-2000, I received a call from James Cook, the president of IRI. There had been a surge in precious metals sales for a number of years preceding Y2K and when no great disaster befell the world’s computers at the start of the millennium, sales fell dramatically. Cook had gotten my name from a friend of his who told him that I had been writing on the Internet about reasons to buy silver different than what others were writing.

    After discussing silver from how I viewed its supply/demand fundamentals to how I had tried to end its price manipulation for the past 15 years (up until then) and seeing how bullish I was for the future price, Cook asked me if I would write something that he could send his clients. I told him that my prime purpose was to end the manipulation, but since I didn’t see how getting people to buy silver (then under $5) would be counterproductive to my main objective, I agreed to write an article or two. The first articles did persuade enough folks to buy silver and 14 years then went by in a flash. The amazing thing is that the issues I wrote about on the Internet before my association with Cook’s company are essentially the same as the issues I’ve written about up until today.

    Over the years, since I wrote so many articles for IRI, Cook took it on himself (but certainly with my approval) to produce booklets from time to time which were compiled of various previous articles of mine and he offered them to his prospective clients. A year ago, Cook compiled a new booklet, the title of which is “How JPMorgan Manipulates and Controls the Gold and Silver Market.” Having run out of published copies, he’s contemplating publishing another batch and asked me if I thought an update would be appropriate. Considering the momentous changes in the silver market over the past year, particularly concerning JPMorgan’s role, I told him a postscript was certainly in order.

    What follows is my proposed postscript for the booklet. Afterwards, I’ll comment on recent market activity.

    Postscript – December 2014

    This book has been a compilation of previously published articles, some dating back more than a decade. My discovery of the silver price manipulation goes back much further than that – almost 30 years. All market manipulations must have a kingpin or main player. While the title of this book is centered on JPMorgan, it was not until late 2008, that I discovered that this bank was the prime silver manipulator, by virtue of the Bear Stearns takeover. Since that discovery, I have focused extensively on the actions of JPMorgan in the silver market.

    JPMorgan has dominated and controlled the silver market to an extent that I may have actually underestimated. Recent actions by the bank indicate the long expected end to the silver manipulation may be at hand. Not only is it consistent that the prime manipulator would be most responsible for prolonging a market manipulation that has lasted longer than any other in history, no such manipulation could end absent the role of the central player.

    As much as I would have preferred a different outcome, the flow of data suggests that JPMorgan not only profited mightily on the historic silver price decline from nearly $50 in 2011 to under $15 recently; the bank is now positioned to reap the rewards of a soaring silver price. Simply put, over the last three and a half years, JPMorgan has completely reversed its previous position of being the world’s largest silver short holder to now being, in my opinion, the largest silver long in history.

    I would have preferred, in a fair or just world, JPMorgan being punished either by the market or by the market regulators for manipulating the price of silver to such depressed levels, but instead it appears that the bank has avoided any reprisals for pushing prices first lower and will profit immensely on any upside move. What flow of data can I point to that would back up my assertions?

    My primary data source is the government published Commitments of Traders Report (COT) which is released weekly. Along with the companion monthly Bank Participation Report, what the data show is that JPMorgan over the past nearly seven years, increased its massive concentrated short position in COMEX silver futures whenever silver prices advanced and closed out much of its short position on silver price declines. That may sound like plain old-fashioned good trading, but that description doesn’t apply when you hold such a large and controlling short position in a market so as to manipulate prices. Manipulation, after all, is nothing more than dominating and controlling prices.

    Since JPMorgan never bought back its COMEX silver short positions as prices rose, but only when prices fell, its control of the market was complete and it always and only bought back shorts at a profit. At the extreme, on a number of occasions JPMorgan held more than 40,000 contracts of COMEX silver futures net short, the equivalent of 200 million ounces of silver. As a result of what only can be called market control, JPMorgan has closed out enough shorts to whittle down its silver short position to less than 7500 contracts. Clearly, even though JPMorgan has reduced its COMEX silver short position by more than 80%, that’s a far cry from the bank being long silver, to say nothing of being the world’s largest silver long.

    One must look away from the COMEX to understand how JPMorgan could be the world’s largest silver long (owner) since the data indicate that the bank still holds a short position on the exchange, albeit the smallest such short position in 7 years. The evidence suggests that JPMorgan used its control of silver prices by virtue of its dominant COMEX market share to depress prices, not only to accrue profits on its short position, but even more for the express purpose of accumulating physical silver on the cheap. What evidence?

    The evidence lies in the intentionally poor price performance of silver over the past nearly 4 years and the fact that the world has produced as many as 300 million ounces of new silver that has been excess to total fabrication demand. This extra silver had to be bought by the world’s investors and those investors did not appear to be aggressive buyers. In other words, someone had to buy the silver and since the world’s investors did not appear to be ready buyers, the metal was most likely bought by a non-traditional buyer. JPMorgan most closely fits that description for two reasons. One, buying physical silver was the most practical and efficient manner of closing out JPM’s documented COMEX short position and two, the silver purchases would be kept confidential since no reporting requirements attach to physical ownership. By buying physical silver, JPMorgan could cover its massive COMEX short position absent prying eyes.

    Based upon deposit/withdrawal patterns in the world’s largest silver ETF, SLV, a pattern of physical silver accumulation emerges. In the big silver price takedown beginning in May 2011, some 60 million ounces of silver were redeemed from the trust as investors reacted to sharply falling prices by selling shares. The silver sold at this time was, obviously, bought by someone else; as there must be a buyer for every ounce sold. Who better a buyer than the world’s largest short holder at that time, JPMorgan? And over the past three and a half years, JPMorgan, by continuing to hold, albeit at a declining rate, the largest short silver holder becomes the de facto logical buying candidate.

    Additionally, over the past 4 years, an unusually large amount of Silver Eagles have been produced and sold by the US Mint, some 160 million ounces, in a steadily declining price environment. Nearly as many Silver Eagles were sold by the US Mint over the past 5 years as were sold in the previous 23 years of the program. For the past four years, the Mint struggled to keep up with demand for Silver Eagles and frequently resorted to rationing coins. However, consistent reports from the retail dealer community indicated a falloff in broad retail demand for Silver Eagles.

    The only plausible answer to this conundrum of record Silver Eagle sales and tepid retail demand was that a large entity or entities were behind the buying demand. Based upon the above, JPMorgan appears to me to the big buyer, accounting for 60-75 million coins over the past four years. All told, based upon SLV transaction, Silver Eagles and other forms of silver that could have been purchased, it is my guesstimate that JPMorgan could have accumulated 300 million oz of physical silver over the past four years; or three times what the Hunt Brothers were said to have bought by 1980. And please remember – there was a heck of a lot more silver in the world in 1980 than exists today; approximately 3 billion oz back then versus close to a billion oz today.

    What this means is that the Hunt Brothers were found to have manipulated the price of silver by holding roughly 3% of the world’s silver bullion inventory, while JPMorgan has accumulated close to 25% of the world’s visible silver bullion inventory (adjusting for the 400 million Silver Eagles in existence). The Hunt Brothers buying caused silver prices to rise nearly ten-fold, while JPMorgan’s buying has been on steadily declining prices as much as 70% off the price peak of 2011. In my opinion, this could only be accomplished through an intentional downward price manipulation and by having the power and political connections of an organization like JPMorgan.

    The intent of this postscript is to describe how JPMorgan has now gone full circle, by manipulating the price of silver lower for nearly 4 years for the designed purpose of profitably closing out its massive short position and of accumulating the largest physical silver position in history. As and when the bank has purchased what it feels is all silver it can accumulate, it follows the price should rise mightily. Certainly, if I am close to being correct about the amount of silver accumulated by JPMorgan, the potential profit to the bank is potentially epic. At $50, JPMorgan would be ahead by $10 billion compared to current prices; at $100, the bank would gain another $15 billion on top of that.

    I confess to having some mixed feelings about JPMorgan owning as much physical silver as I suspect because there is a possibility that I may have (inadvertently) influenced them in their accumulation. After all, I have sent them more than 500 of my articles over the past six years in which I openly alleged that JPMorgan was the big silver manipulator. Of course, I did this to be upfront and give the bank every opportunity to object to or disagree with anything I had written. I’ve never heard back from JPMorgan.

    As is always the case, the timing of the coming liftoff in silver prices is unknowable. But the odds of a big silver move up in time are overwhelming. And to all the favorable supply/demand realities that make up the odds, if my speculation about JPMorgan is correct, the most bullish factor of all has just been added to the mix.

    End of postscript.

    There have been a number of developments over the past few days that I’d like to comment on. First, sales of Silver Eagles from the US Mint continued to surge and yesterday it was reported that more than 43 million of the one ounce coins were sold this year, the most in the program’s 28 year history. The daily run rate increased (despite my observations on Saturday) and the Mint announced it will be ending sales for this year, probably by next week. As I indicated above, I still think JPMorgan has been the big buyer this year and for the past few years.

    The new short interest report for stocks indicated a reduction of 2 million shares in the short positions of both SLV, the big silver ETF and in GLD, the big gold ETF. The cut-off date for the short report was Friday, Nov 28, when silver and gold prices fell sharply on high trading volume. I won’t call it a prediction, but in the weekly review of Nov 29, I wondered aloud if the sell-off that day might be related to short covering and the new report would seem to conform to that thought. In any event, it’s always good, as far as I’m concerned when the short positions in the hard metal ETFs goes down. https://shortsqueeze.com/?symbol=slv&submit=Short+Quote%99

    I’m pretty sure that those of you who tuned into the CFTC’s public hearings yesterday on position limits came away fairly underwhelmed. The meeting wasn’t so much about position limits but more about specific agricultural issues related to position limits. As I remarked on Saturday, this is somewhat odd, seeing as position limits have been firmly in place in agricultural futures contracts, in some cases for more than 80 years. The main concern with Dodd Frank was getting position limits in place for the 28 physical commodity futures currently not subject to position limits, but nothing was covered in the meeting pertaining to that. However, this was a meeting of the agricultural committee (in which the US Secretary of Agriculture put in an appearance) and was advertised as such.

    A number of readers have asked for direction in how to respond to the CFTC’s solicitation for public comments, seeing how we’ve been down this road before. My reading of the situation is that the CFTC is only interested in comments related to agricultural position limits and would most likely disregard comments on silver. I may change my mind, but I’m not inclined to submit a comment at this time and I’d like to explain why. It has nothing to do with the issue not being as important as I’ve represented in the past and everything to do with the signals the Commission has been sending on position limits.

    Five years ago, I could hardly contain myself on the issue because it seemed that every time I turned around there was Gary Gensler, the former CFTC chairman, giving a speech or holding town hall meetings on the matter of position limits on the 28 markets lacking such limits. In contrast, today it seems the agency is just going through the motions. Whereas Gensler (correctly) hammered the issue to death, the current chairman seems to only include position limits as one issue among many more important issues. Judge for yourself with the prepared testimony of Chairman Massad today before a Senate committee.

    I continue to believe that the issue of position limits in the 28 physical commodities will be resolved, but that it will have nothing to do with public comments. As I said, let me think it over as I may change my mind.

    The price of gold and silver surged yesterday and held those gains through today’s trading. In silver, it was the first upside penetration of the important 50 day moving average in six months. I would imagine there was further technical fund buying, including both additional short covering and most likely new buying as well. The key question, of course, is who were the sellers and more specifically, how much additional short selling occurred by the 4 and 8 largest commercial shorts in both silver and gold. Because yesterday was the cutoff for the reporting week, this Friday’s COT should go a long way to answering the question.

    While I’m resigned to some disappointment in increased concentrated short selling by the big commercials, I am still more interested in what has occurred over the past five reporting weeks, namely, the unprecedented outcome of the technical funds cashing in massive profit chips on the short side of silver and a good number of commercial longs (raptors) tapping out. Nothing close to this has occurred previously and I’m still convinced that this shocking turnabout portends important changes ahead, including a potential loss of trading liquidity. A loss of liquidity generally translates into bigger price moves and yesterday’s large price moves in gold and silver would tend to support my conclusion.

    Even if the big gold and silver commercial shorts added aggressively to short positions yesterday that doesn’t mean they will be as successful as they have been in the past in capping prices, if as much commercial liquidity has been lost as I believe. Despite the rally, silver prices are still stupid cheap and destined to move sharply higher. Concentrated and manipulative additional short selling may create some serious price bumps (up and down) ahead, but at current depressed price levels for silver, there is a much greater risk of worrying about minor selloffs from here and missing the big move to come. If ever there was a time to hold a full load of silver and damn the torpedoes, that time would appear to be at hand. In any event, COMEX futures positioning remains the prime price determinant.

    Ted Butler
    December 10, 2014
    Silver – $17.15
    Gold – $1229
    http://www.butlerresearch.com

  • THE MAN WHO SNIFFED PARADISE

    THE MAN WHO SNIFFED PARADISE

    la-fg-turkey-erdogan-gender-equality-20141124-001

     

    Some like the perfume from Spain

    I’m sure that if,

    I took even one sniff,

    It would bore me terrifically, too,

    Yet I get a kick out of you.

    Cole Porter, I Get A Kick Out Of You

    As a boy, he used to kiss his mother’s feet and it made her nervous.

    No, no, Mama, the book says so.

    Huh? What book? You shouldn’t read such things.

    Yeah, it says heaven is under your feet.

    My feet? Stop…this tickles. Stop! It’s like what the dog does.

    Aw come on Mama, don’t be shy. I’m seeing Paradise.

    Paradise? What Paradise? You’re seeing calluses and split toenails and a hole in my stockings.

    Please, please, stop wiggling your toes, Mama. I’m having a spiritual experience. They smell like heaven.

    Not with the feet! Not with the feet! Wait until I tell your father! You’ll be seeing the back of his hand!

    Aw pleeeeze….Mamaaaaaa…..now I’m seeing a mosque in Havana. And Fidel abluting his cigar.

    Allah! Allah! Why don’t you go out and play football like the rest of the boys, my son.

    No, no, please Mama, those boys are different…

    Many are criticizing the Turkish president for his remarks at a meeting of a group called, with great irony, the Women and Democracy Association. The name is like something they made up in the lobby. At the meeting the president again shared his wide-ranging, penetrating insights from his lifelong study of Anti-Feminology, namely that women are in no way, no how, equal to men. It’s “against nature,’ he said. Although he did offer the fascinating concept that women, if they tried real hard, could be “equivalent” to men. He also declared that feminists reject motherhood, adding something about breast-feeding women should not work in communist factories. Predictably, feminists and communists, and particularly feminist-communists, were unified in an outrage equivalent to the firestorm bombing of Dresden. As a male feminist, uncertain about motherhood issues, I find the president’s ideas inspirational, perplexing and perfectly suitable to his adoring audience. And his charm and sunny disposition have won my heart, perhaps forever.

    Some people think that the Turkish president is a strident troublemaker. Not me!

    Some say he is spiteful, hateful and full of anger, particularly towards breast-feeding mothers and their communist significant others. Not me!

    Some even say that he is a complete……well……I can’t even think about this one, no less say it, no less write it.

    I stridently, but respectfully, disagree with all of his critics.

    The president of Turkey deserves our gushing respect and undivided attention.

    Here’s why.

    He said that the characters, habits and physiques of women are different from those of men. This is a brilliant insight! This is true! I hope his audience rose as one to render a standing ovation of loving applause. I immediately thought of Marilyn Monroe and Woody Allen. It would indeed be “against nature” to put these two on an “equal footing.” The president is correct in his assertion about character and habit, but especially about physique. I mean, whose feet would you rather kiss?

    And as far as breastfeeding women and non-breastfeeding communists working together in some Soviet-era tractor factory, well, again the Turkish president is perfectly correct. Breastfeeding women couldn’t even hold the wrenches properly. Think about it and you will instantly grasp the president’s wisdom. Holding a baby to one’s breast is a completely different motion and habit than the complicated, manly habit of turning a wrench. And even if men could lactate, could they handle having a baby sucking at their breasts every few hours while those tractor axles kept on coming? No, of course not. And where would they stash the babies in between feeding time? It would be so unnaturally confusing, wouldn’t it? The commissar would send them all to Siberia. Besides, if I understand the Turkish president’s deeper meaning, communist men are always looking to start revolutions. It’s their nature. Just look at history! And to make revolutions they need free hands, that is, no screaming, hungry babies interfering with their secret meetings. This is what the clever Turkish president meant. And he is absolutely correct. And that’s why he buys more and more tear gas and more and more TOMA monsters. It all makes sense, doesn’t it? Thank you Mr. President! Your applauding audience is proud of you.

    He also said that women being equal to men is “against nature.” Bravo! Brava! This is true too. I mean, what women would cultivate nature like the Turkish president, a man, does? He has leveled millions and millions of trees so that nature can breathe freely. No woman would dream of doing that. He has leveled mountains to free marble from its lifelong imprisonment so that villas and hotels and palaces can have shiny walls and slippery floors. And the president knows how women, by nature and habit, like to clean things. So women now have something to do. And marble also now has something to do, rather than just stay inside some dumb mountain. And women can clean and polish all of it, doing what comes naturally to them. No woman could even come close to thinking of such a perfectly complex idea. Only men can do that. The president of Turkey is very smart and deserves loud acclaim until the end of recorded time.

    And I completely agree with the Turkish president that women should be equal among women and men should be equal among men. Such a great social philosophy, though it seems to border on that nasty communism thing. Nevertheless, I agree with the president. For example, when we are alone, my wife and I never argue unnaturally about whether we are equal to each other, she being a woman and I a man. I am perfectly content to be a man equal to myself and, so far, she is happy to be a woman equal to herself. It proves the president’s intelligently argued point regarding the natural law that men are men and women are women. On this issue, peace prevails. The argument as applied to gay couples has yet to be addressed. Perhaps at the next meeting of the Women and Democracy Association the brilliance of the Turkish president can enlighten us further.

    The natures of men and women are different, too. Right again, Mr. President! And the following shows how true that is and how correct you are.

    Who brought us religion? Men.

    Who invented prostitution? Men.

    Who spent millennia hunting and killing animals? Men.

    Who spent millennia hunting and killing each other? Men.

    Who invented armies? Men.

    Who created historical catastrophes such as genocides? Men.

    Who invented, and continue to invent, weapons of mass destruction? Men.

    Who dropped the atomic bomb on innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Men.

    Who destroyed native populations in Africa and the Americas for profit and power? Men.

    Who finance and organize bestial mercenary hordes to murder, rape and plunder? Men.

    Who cannot produce children? Men.

    Who are condemned to extinction because of their characters, habits, physiques and natures? Men.

    Indeed, there is nothing like a man.

    James C. Ryan

    Istanbul

    November 26, 2014

  • Former Mossad chief: For the first time, I fear for the future of Zionism

    Former Mossad chief: For the first time, I fear for the future of Zionism

    The nation of Israel is galloping blindly toward Bar Kochba’s war on the Roman Empire. The result of that conflict was 2,000 years of exile.

    By Shabtai Shavit

    Menachem Begin before an image of David Ben-Gurion
    Menachem Begin before an image of David Ben-Gurion

    From the beginning of Zionism in the late 19th century, the Jewish nation in the Land of Israel has been growing stronger in terms of demography and territory, despite the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. We have succeeded in doing so because we have acted with wisdom and stratagem rather than engaging in a foolish attempt to convince our foes that we were in the right.

    Today, for the first time since I began forming my own opinions, I am truly concerned about the future of the Zionist project. I am concerned about the critical mass of the threats against us on the one hand, and the government’s blindness and political and strategic paralysis on the other. Although the State of Israel is dependent upon the United States, the relationship between the two countries has reached an unprecedented low point. Europe, our biggest market, has grown tired of us and is heading toward imposing sanctions on us. For China, Israel is an attractive high-tech project, and we are selling them our national assets for the sake of profit. Russia is gradually turning against us and supporting and assisting our enemies.

    Anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel have reached dimensions unknown since before World War II. Our public diplomacy and public relations have failed dismally, while those of the Palestinians have garnered many important accomplishments in the world. University campuses in the West, particularly in the U.S., are hothouses for the future leadership of their countries. We are losing the fight for support for Israel in the academic world. An increasing number of Jewish students are turning away from Israel. The global BDS movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions) against Israel, which works for Israel’s delegitimization, has grown, and quite a few Jews are members.

    In this age of asymmetrical warfare we are not using all our force, and this has a detrimental effect on our deterrent power. The debate over the price of Milky pudding snacks and its centrality in public discourse demonstrate an erosion of the solidarity that is a necessary condition for our continued existence here. Israelis’ rush to acquire a foreign passport, based as it is on the yearning for foreign citizenship, indicates that people’s feeling of security has begun to crack.

    I am concerned that for the first time, I am seeing haughtiness and arrogance, together with more than a bit of the messianic thinking that rushes to turn the conflict into a holy war. If this has been, so far, a local political conflict that two small nations have been waging over a small and defined piece of territory, major forces in the religious Zionist movement are foolishly doing everything they can to turn it into the most horrific of wars, in which the entire Muslim world will stand against us.

    I also see, to the same extent, detachment and lack of understanding of international processes and their significance for us. This right wing, in its blindness and stupidity, is pushing the nation of Israel into the dishonorable position of “the nation shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:9).

    I am concerned because I see history repeating itself. The nation of Israel is galloping blindly in a time tunnel to the age of Bar Kochba and his war on the Roman Empire. The result of that conflict was several centuries of national existence in the Land of Israel followed by 2,000 years of exile.

    I am concerned because as I understand matters, exile is truly frightening only to the state’s secular sector, whose world view is located on the political center and left. That is the sane and liberal sector that knows that for it, exile symbolizes the destruction of the Jewish people. The Haredi sector lives in Israel only for reasons of convenience. In terms of territory, Israel and Brooklyn are the same to them; they will continue living as Jews in exile, and wait patiently for the arrival of the Messiah.

    The religious Zionist movement, by comparison, believes the Jews are “God’s chosen.” This movement, which sanctifies territory beyond any other value, is prepared to sacrifice everything, even at the price of failure and danger to the Third Commonwealth. If destruction should take place, they will explain it in terms of faith, saying that we failed because “We sinned against God.” Therefore, they will say, it is not the end of the world. We will go into exile, preserve our Judaism and wait patiently for the next opportunity.

    I recall Menachem Begin, one of the fathers of the vision of Greater Israel. He fought all his life for the fulfillment of that dream. And then, when the gate opened for peace with Egypt, the greatest of our enemies, he gave up Sinai – Egyptian territory three times larger than Israel’s territory inside the Green Line – for the sake of peace. In other words, some values are more sacred than land. Peace, which is the life and soul of true democracy, is more important than land.

    I am concerned that large segments of the nation of Israel have forgotten, or put aside, the original vision of Zionism: to establish a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. No borders were defined in that vision, and the current defiant policy is working against it.

    What can and ought to be done? We need to create an Archimedean lever that will stop the current deterioration and reverse today’s reality at once. I propose creating that lever by using the Arab League’s proposal from 2002, which was partly created by Saudi Arabia. The government must make a decision that the proposal will be the basis of talks with the moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

    The government should do three things as preparation for this announcement:

    1) It should define a future negotiating strategy for itself, together with its position on each of the topics included in the Arab League’s proposal.

    2) It should open a secret channel of dialogue with the United States to examine the idea, and agree in advance concerning our red lines and about the input that the U.S. will be willing to invest in such a process.

    3) It should open a secret American-Israeli channel of dialogue with Saudi Arabia in order to reach agreements with it in advance on the boundaries of the topics that will be raised in the talks and coordinate expectations. Once the secret processes are completed, Israel will announce publicly that it is willing to begin talks on the basis of the Arab League’s document.

    I have no doubt that the United States and Saudi Arabia, each for its own reasons, will respond positively to the Israeli initiative, and the initiative will be the lever that leads to a dramatic change in the situation. With all the criticism I have for the Oslo process, it cannot be denied that for the first time in the conflict’s history, immediately after the Oslo Accords were signed, almost every Arab country started talking with us, opened its gates to us and began engaging in unprecedented cooperative ventures in economic and other fields.

    Although I am not so naïve as to think that such a process will bring the longed-for peace, I am certain that this kind of process, long and fatiguing as it will be, could yield confidence-building measures at first and, later on, security agreements that both sides in the conflict will be willing to live with. The progress of the talks will, of course, be conditional upon calm in the security sphere, which both sides will be committed to maintaining. It may happen that as things progress, both sides will agree to look into mutual compromises that will promote the idea of coexisting alongside one another. If mutual trust should develop – and the chances of that happening under American and Saudi Arabian auspices are fairly high – it will be possible to begin talks for the conflict’s full resolution as well.

    An initiative of this kind requires true and courageous leadership, which is hard to identify at the moment. But if the prime minister should internalize the severity of the mass of threats against us at this time, the folly of the current policy, the fact that this policy’s creators are significant elements in the religious Zionist movement and on the far right, and its devastating results – up to the destruction of the Zionist vision – then perhaps he will find the courage and determination to carry out the proposed action.

    I wrote the above statements because I feel that I owe them to my parents, who devoted their lives to the fulfillment of Zionism; to my children, my grandchildren and to the nation of Israel, which I served for decades.

    Haaretz, 24.11.14

  • AMERICAN BOYZ N THE HOOD

    AMERICAN BOYZ N THE HOOD

    Turkish Soldiers Hooded by America Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. 4 July 2003
    Turkish Soldiers Hooded by America
    Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. 4 July 2003

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Istanbul: 13 November 2014

    Yesterday, three sailors from the uncontrollably violent neighborhood called America met the true face of Turkey. Poor boys, they don’t even know what they represent. They don’t even know that their so-called leaders have made them punching bags for its criminal enterprise called American imperialism. They don’t even know how America and its treasonous internal agents, in particular the Turkish government, are attempting to destroy the future of the Turkish youth.

    Perhaps these American boys got a quick lesson in the true nature of Turkish-American relations yesterday? But, sadly, probably not. The American boys ran back to the false safety of their warship, re-entering their “safe” world of imperialist propaganda, economic excess and hypocrisy. But there is no safety anywhere any longer. That is the gift of America to Turkey, and to the world. As usual, America authorities and its treacherous collaborating Turkish puppets screamed in outrage. And, as usual, the youth of Turkey, the true defenders of the Republic of Turkey, went to jail for exercising their patriotic duty. Nothing has changed, except one thing. Turkish young people, the nation’s true patriotic voice, will not take American crap anymore. And America should understand that. Listen and learn, America. You owe it to your own youth. Think of it this way, think of it as a symbol.

    That’s the way the resident American-imposed agent of destruction, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thought about his hooding of Turkish women into a grotesque series of Middle Age costumes that squeeze feminine brains into numb submission. So what, declared the then prime minister, if the head scarf is a political symbol? So what, indeed! Erdoğan used his compliant covered women to destroy democracy in his own country. He and his collaborators hid behind their women’s headscarves to do America’s dirty work. And now they cannot safely visit any neighborhood in their own land. No “hood” is safe for the hoodlums. And now the new president hides in a billion-dollar illegal palace, his inadvertent monument to treason. So what if he and his ilk cannot appear in public! So what!

    So what if in 1980 the American president celebrated the success of his CIA-engineered military coup by proclaiming “Our boys did it!” Yes, then his gangster BOYZ did it. And yesterday, today’s Turkish youth remembered. And yesterday, our Turkish boys did it to America, symbolically, of course, because Turkish youth is civilized. They can be no other way; they are the current-day “soldiers of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.” This is something that the treacherous opposition political polities can neither say nor understand. Yes, Turkish young people are civilized and enlightened by the patriotic principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. That’s why, yesterday, no one, neither American boy nor Turkish boy was hurt. No one was tortured. No one was hung. No one was shot, exploded, beaten, gassed, or otherwise maimed. And that’s a lot more than America can ever say about their overt and covert interventions in Turkey’s affairs.

    So what if America and its craven ambassador, Francis Ricciardone, aided and abetted the Turkish government in its beating, gassing, maiming and murdering of democratically assembled Gezi Park protestors. “The Turkish government is having a conversation with its people,” said the deceitful ambassador, as he arranged to have more poisonous gas sold to Erdoğan and his hoodlum police. A “conversation?” So what!

    So what if the same ambassador conspired with the main opposition party leader to assure the election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the presidency!

    So what if yesterday the American boys’ heads momentarily felt the experience of being symbolically hooded! Symbolically hooded, not actually hung like so many patriotic Turkish young people have been. And by their own government! The Turkish people have been strangled and hooded by America, by its CIA meddlers and by its corrupt politicians for decades. And in the past decade of Erdoğan’s treacherous rule, America’s CIA “boys” have done it again. Or tried to.

    So what if America has used its youth to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in its deceitful, illegal war of aggression!

    So what if America has humiliated the Turkish military by hooding its soldiers in Iraq in July 2003!

    So what if America has conspired with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan to kill hundreds of thousands of Syrians in its deceitful pretext of bringing democracy!

    So what if America has supported the treasonous, under-educated, Islamic zealot, CIA-asset, Fethullah Gulen for decades in the Pennsylvania countryside!

    So what if Gulen and Erdoğan have collaborated for decades in treacherous union to do America’s bidding in the subversion of the Turkish Republic! So what if the Turkish Army has been destroyed! So what if the independence of the Turkish judiciary has collapsed! So what if rivers have been stopped, farmers’ fields uprooted, forests felled, eternal olive trees murdered, lakes polluted, mountains plundered, the air made poisonous, all in pursuit of private profit, all indicative of massive governmental corruption! So what if the government has looted public funds! So what if the Turkish mass media slithers like a reptile on its overstuffed belly doing the bidding of its governmental master! So what if Turkey stinks from America’s subversion like a rotting corpse in the noonday sun!

    Yes, SO WHAT?

    Yesterday, clearly, directly, in a street-theater performance, Turkish “boyz” encountered American “boyz” in the Turkish “hood.” The US embassy in Turkey called the incident “appalling.” What is appalling is the embassy’s ignorance and arrogance. What is appalling is the criminal behavior of its criminal boss, the president of the United States. It is he and Erdoğan and all their co-conspirators, all the ones who need protection by regiments of armed-to-the-teeth goons, who deserve to be hooded. And now they can never step foot in our hood, ever again. Not ever! That’s the message from yesterday. Take your warships and your political puppets and go!

    James C. Ryan

    Istanbul

    13 November 2014

  • Takeaways from the GOP romp

    Takeaways from the GOP romp

    The Democratic field program did not live up to the hype. | AP Photo

    By JAMES HOHMANN | 11/5/14 4:21 AM EST

    Even optimistic Republican operatives didn’t anticipate this.

    The GOP seized control of the Senate, won House seats no one saw coming and expanded its footprint in governors’ mansions.

     

    GUNEY ABD EYALETLERINDE REPUBLICANS (CUMHURIYETCI PARTY) TAM KONTROLU ELE ALDI BUTUN SENATO VE MILLET MECLISI UYELERI HALK TARAFINDAN OBAMANIN PARTISI OLAN DEMOKRATLARDAN ALINDI VE CUMHURIYETCI PARTIYE VERILDI.. AMERIKAN HALKI OBAMADAN MEMNUN DEGIL.. BU ARADA TURKIYENIN BUYUK DOSTU ARKANSASDAN SENATOR ADAYI ESKI BELEDIYE BASKANI PAT HAYES DE DEMOKRAT SAFINDA YER ALDIGI ICIN KAYBETTI.. BUNA UZULMEKLE BERABER CUMHURIYETCILERIN TURKIYE DOSTU (TAYYIP ONCESI TURKIYE) OLARAK UNVANLARI VAR.. BAKALIM TAYYIB IN YANLIS POLITIKALARINIn SONUCU NE OLACAK.

    Here are our takeaways from the night:

    The Republican takeover of the South is finally complete.

    Arkansas was a last Democratic stronghold in the South. Native son Bill Clinton went several times for days at a time to try holding the governorship and a Senate seat. Democrats hoped the enduring popularity of Sen. Mark Pryor’s father, David, a former governor and senator, would generate goodwill and insulate him from anti-Barack Obama sentiment.

    (PHOTOS: Election Day 2014)

    Not only did Republican Tom Cotton trounce Pryor by 16 points, but the outgoing Democratic governor, Mike Beebe, will be replaced by former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, a member of the House team that led impeachment proceedings against Clinton in 1998. National Democrats believed that the moderate former mayor of North Little Rock, Patrick Henry Hays, would pick up an open House seat — but he fell to a banker named French Hill.

    “Battleground Texas,” the much ballyhooed effort to turn the state blue, was a bust. Democratic star recruit Wendy Davis was crushed by 21 points, and even lost among female voters.

    Hundreds of stories were written about how Georgia is trending purple because of a growing minority population, and nonprofit executive Michelle Nunn was a top Democratic recruit. But Republican David Perdue easily topped the 50 percent threshold to win outright. So did Gov. Nathan Deal, who beat Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason by 8 points.

    Democrats failed at distancing themselves from the president.

    Democrats knew Barack Obama was unpopular, and he avoided campaigning anywhere but solidly blue states. It didn’t work.

    (Also on POLITICO: Tom Cotton defeats Mark Pryor in Arkansas)

    More than 300,000 advertisements aired across 28 Senate races linking the Democrat with Obama, according to Kantar Media. The races where he came up most often were Kentucky, Louisiana and North Carolina.

    In Kentucky, Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes was mocked for refusing to say whether she had voted for Obama — even though she was a delegate at her party’s national convention. McConnell wound up winning by just under 16 points — a much bigger margin than even GOP internal polls showed.

    Everywhere else, incumbent Democrats tried to localize the races. In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan tried to make her race about larger class sizes and education spending cuts by the GOP state Legislature. That frame didn’t stick.

    (Senate results by state)

    The national exit polling put Obama’s overall approval rating at 41 percent. But the bigger story is that voters are really down about the status quo: two-thirds said the country is on the wrong track, just 22 percent believe their children will be better off than them and 72 percent worry about a terrorist attack on American soil.

    Voters crave authenticity and hate phonies.

    Scott Brown was one of the few dark spots for Senate Republicans on Tuesday, losing his challenge to New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen by about 4 points — even though Obama’s popularity in the state is in the 30s.

    The fact that Brown just became a New Hampshire resident last December was never a centerpiece of the campaign, but it was always the undertone of Democratic ads. And it helped explain why Brown was viewed more unfavorably than favorably.

    (Also on POLITICO: Jeanne Shaheen vanquishes Scott Brown in New Hampshire)

    Network exit polls asked voters whether they thought Brown had lived in the state long enough to effectively represent it. Among the 45 percent who said yes, Brown won 93 percent. Among the 52 percent who said no, Brown won just 10 percent.

    Likewise, in Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott has never been popular but he spent tens of millions successfully hitting Charlie Crist as a political opportunist. Many of his ads showed Crist flip-flopping: calling for Clinton to resign in the 1990s then calling him one of the greatest Americans to ever live.

    And in New York, Sean Eldridge — the husband of Facebook early employee Chris Hughes — lost by 30 points. Eldridge, a Canadian native who has worn his political ambitions on his sleeve, bought a house in the district so that he could challenge Republican Chris Gibson.

    Republican governors thrived in blue states.

    Only one of the nine GOP governors up for reelection in states Obama carried twice went down: Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett, which has been expected for years.

    (Also on POLITICO: Tom Wolf ousts Gov. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania)

    Against the odds, not only did Maine Gov. Paul LePage survive despite being somewhat polarizing in a blue state, he got 10 percent more of the vote than he did four years ago during the 2010 GOP wave.

    Despite spirited, well-funded challenges, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder both won with a couple points to spare.

    Ohio Gov. John Kasich won reelection by 31 points after his opponent imploded. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval coasted to a second term with 70 percent. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez beat a former state attorney general by 16 points.

    Several of those will take a serious look at 2016 presidential campaigns.

    Mary Landrieu is vulnerable, but her chances of winning might have just gone up.

    The Louisiana Senate race, as expected, will be decided by a Dec. 6 runoff since no one got to 50 percent. The third-term Democratic senator pulled only 42 percent of the vote, a very dangerous place for an incumbent. Republican Bill Cassidy, who had to fend off tea party challenger Rob Maness, got 41 percent.

    The centerpiece of Landrieu’s campaign was that she has clout for the state as chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The senator has now lost her chairmanship.

    But Landrieu would have almost certainly been toast if control of the Senate came down to Louisiana. Tens of millions in national money would have poured in, and she wouldn’t have been able to distance herself from Harry Reid.

    The fact that the race won’t determine Senate control could allow Landrieu to frame the runoff as a personality contest about who is more likeable. She can also promise to be a check on the GOP Senate. Landrieu did this successfully in 2002, unexpectedly winning a runoff after Republicans took control of the Senate a month before.

  • Israel’s Netanyahu Fumes At Reportedly Being Called ‘Chickensh*t’ By U.S. Official

    Israel’s Netanyahu Fumes At Reportedly Being Called ‘Chickensh*t’ By U.S. Official

    Posted: Updated:

    By Jeffrey Heller

    JERUSALEM, Oct 29 (Reuters) – An anonymous U.S. official’s reported description of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “chickenshit,” or worthless coward, drew a sharp response on Wednesday from the Israeli leader – no stranger to acrimony with the Obama administration.

    The American broadside, in an interview in The Atlantic magazine, followed a month of heated exchanges between the Netanyahu government and Washington over settlement building in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, which Palestinians seek as the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

    “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” the unidentified official was quoted as saying, using Netanyahu’s nickname and a slang insult certain to redden the ears of the U.S.-educated former commando.

    “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, in apparent reference to past hints of possible Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear program. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states.”

    Netanyahu, the official was reported to have said, is interested only in “protecting himself from political defeat … He’s got no guts.”

    Israeli leaders usually do not respond to comments by unidentified officials. But Netanyahu addressed those remarks directly in opening a memorial ceremony in parliament for an Israeli cabinet minister assassinated by a Palestinian in 2001.

    “Our supreme interests, chiefly the security and unity of Jerusalem, are not the main concern of those anonymous officials who attack us and me personally, as the assault on me comes only because I defend the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

    “…Despite all of the attacks I suffer, I will continue to defend our country. I will continue to defend the citizens of Israel,” he said.

    Such pledges by Netanyahu have resonated among Israeli voters, even amid fears his strained relations with U.S. President Barack Obama could ultimately weaken support from Israel’s main diplomatic ally and arms provider.

    Some pundits predict an Israeli election in 2015, two years early, speculation seemingly supported by the absence of any strong challenger to the Likud party leader and increasingly vocal challenges to his policies from senior ministers to the left and right of him within the coalition government.

    Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, whose ultranationalist Jewish Home party belongs to the coalition but who has had testy relations with Netanyahu, defended him on Facebook.

    “The prime minister of Israel is not a private person. He is the leader of the Jewish state and the entire Jewish people. Cursing the prime minister and calling him names is an insult not just to him but to the millions of Israeli citizens and Jews across the globe,” he wrote.

    Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog sounded a more critical note, telling Channel Two television: “Netanyahu is acting like a political pyromaniac, and he has brought our relations with the United States to an unprecedented low.”

    FRICTION

    In a series of recent speeches widely seen in Israel as setting the stage for a possible poll, Netanyahu has highlighted growing security concerns in the wake of the July-August war with Hamas in Gaza and regional unrest that has brought Islamist militants to Israel’s northern border with Syria.

    Israel also worries that U.S.-led world powers will agree to what it deems insufficient curbs on the nuclear program of its arch-foe, Iran, in talks with a looming Nov 24 deadline.

    Fears of a possible new Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, have been stoked in Israel by now-daily rock-throwing by Palestinians in Jerusalem amid Muslim fears of an end to an Israeli de facto ban on Jewish worship at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in the holy city where Biblical temples once stood.

    Netanyahu has pledged to preserve the “status quo” at the site, a commitment Palestinian leaders view with suspicion.

    But drawing Palestinian outrage and a State Department accusation that Israel was distancing peace, Netanyahu pledged on Monday to fast-track plans for 1,000 new settler homes in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

    Netanyahu described such criticism as being “detached from reality,” saying Jews had a right to live anywhere in Jerusalem, regarded by Israel as its united capital – a claim not internationally recognized.

    Most countries and the World Court deem the settlements Israel has built in areas captured in a 1967 war to be illegal. Israel disputes this, and has settled 500,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, among 2.4 million Palestinians. (Editing by Dan Williams and Dominic Evans)