30 de junio de 2007
Recapture of the Philadelphi Route Is Proposed to stop the Hamas Horror Show from Moving forward
June 17, 2007, 1:04 PM (GMT+02:00)
Will Israeli tanks roll into Gaza and cut off the spreading Hamas threat?
Will Israeli tanks roll into Gaza and cut off the spreading Hamas threat?
More and more Israeli commentators are frankly admitting that Israel’s pull-out from Gaza in the summer of 2005 was an open invitation to the forces of radical Islam to set up house in the defenseless territory. Now, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and the rest of their Kadima party who presided over that withdrawal are building new castles in the sky to vindicate that error.
Hamas has not triumphed, they say, but offered Israel the chance of a fresh start to separate Gaza, a mere “terrorist entity,” from the West Bank. There, a Hamas-free regime led by Abbas is a fit partner for peace diplomacy.
With this fallacious thesis, Olmert is on his way to a three-day visit to the United States including talks with President George W. Bush as the White House Tuesday, June 17.
It was this thinking that led him to heed the advice, which DEBKAfile’s military sources report came from chief of staff Lt. Gen Gaby Ashkenazi - and was opposed by the OC Southern Command Brig. Gen Yoav Galant - to refrain from interfering in the Hamas takeover. His predecessor, Dan Halutz, likewise played down the Hizballah threat from Lebanon until it was too late.
Rather than getting to grips with the Gaza crisis, Olmert shored up his cabinet and political strength by designating the newly-elected Labor leader Ehud Barak defense minister to mind the store in his absence. The onus is now on the new minister, a former prime minister, to come up with an ingenious remedy for restoring Israel’s security initiative and deterrence, however belatedly.
A former Israeli national security adviser Gen (ret.) Giora Eiland argues now that the influx of tons of smuggled weapons and explosives into Gaza Strip must be halted at any price. There is a real danger of Hamas importing reinforcements from Syria and Lebanon for its next offensive. Egypt will, as usual, stand aside.
Eiland was the only defense official at the time to oppose disengagement as a recipe for bringing Iran and al Qaeda to Israel’s borders. Having been proved correct, he now proposes to limit the damage by recapturing the Philadelphi route and the southern outskirts of Palestinian Rafah, flatten the houses there and evict 15,000-20,000 people.
Gaza must be cut off from Israel to block Hamas and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors’ path to a second victory on the West Bank.
The cutoff would apply to humanitarian aid. Let the Arab world deal this time with Gaza’s distress and pump aid to the Rafah crossing via Egypt.
Eiland allows for an international outcry, argues Israel is left with no choice at this late date but to break some eggs. This option would give Israel the chance to start combating Hamas at a point from which the IDF enjoys a position of strength. The Philadelphi route offers that point.
Olmert is meanwhile pursuing other plans.
One is for an international force to police Gaza’s Philadelphi border route with. Egypt must play its part by halting arms smuggling. This is a non-starter. No sane government would expose its soldiers to the unbridled violence in the Gaza Strip, even if Hamas agreed. And Egypt has never lifted a finger to stop arms smuggling through Sinai and is not about to change its spots.
Still, Olmert will discuss this and other knee-jerk remedies with President Bush, including the tightening of the financial squeeze by Western powers and Arab governments on Hamas and placing Gaza under siege. Olmert can expect a sympathetic hearing from a president who is grappling with his own reverses in Iraq and now in Lebanon. He will no doubt follow Washington’s lead in releasing frozen funds withheld from the Hamas-led Palestinian government in the past to Abbas and his No. 2, Mohammed Dahlan, who made sure of arriving in Ramallah only after the Gaza debacle was over.
But that does not mean the makeshift strategy Olmert & Co. have cooked up can be made to work any better than their previous, largely passive, policies.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East analysts point to six fallacies in their thinking:
1. Hamas is not short of cash. The people of Gaza are in deep distress because that cash is not spent on feeding them or creating jobs but on the tools of war for Hamas’ Executive Force. The Islamist group is subsidized by Iran, Damascus and other Arab and Muslim states. Suitcases full of banknotes pass through the Rafah crossing. The Islamist lords of Gaza will no more be starved into submission than Iran is cowed by sanctions to give up its nuclear ambitions (another item on Olmert’s White House agenda).
Hamas’ masked gunmen can be seen every day smartly outfitted in clean black uniforms, brandishing new weapons with no shortage of ammunition and carrying personal gear in top condition. These sinister fighters are professional and disciplined. None look underfed.
2. Pouring US and Israeli hopes and investments into the Abbas-Dahlan outfit ended in disaster in Gaza. The Fatah-forces built and trained under the supervision of an American general were utterly humiliated in Gaza. Any hope of their coming up to scratch in a second round on the West Bank, which is bound to follow, is a pipe dream.
3. Not only Iran and Syria, but six Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, refuse to cut their ties with the Hamas regime or hold back funds. So forget about an Arab boycott of Hamas. Forget also about a siege; it never works.
For Abbas, the unkindest cut of all was Qatar’s announcement at the Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo Friday, that it would not recognize the emergency government Mahmoud Abbas is installing in Ramallah with Salim Fayyad at its head. Abbas’ main base of residence and personal business is located in Doha.
The Arab League’s resolution carried Friday contained another painful barb: The Palestinians were called on to respect the legitimacy of Abbas’ leadership but also of the Legislative Council where Hamas holds a majority. This cut the ground from under Abbas’ emergency administration. To gain legitimacy and Arab recognition, Ismail Haniyeh’s Gaza government needs only to wield its majority in the Legislative Council.
4. The premise that Fatah forces are strong on the West Bank compared with their weakness in Gaza is another illusion floated to corroborate Olmert’s reading of the Palestinian crisis. After losing the Gaza Strip, masked Fatah gunmen seized several hundred Hamas officials and stormed Hamas-controlled parliament, government and local council premises across the West Bank. But they do not have the popular leverage for purging Hamas’ influence in the key West Bank towns of Greater Nablus, Tulkarm, Qaiqilya, Ramallah, Hebron and East Jerusalem. There, Hamas is not only popular, but works hand in glove with radical factions of Abbas’ own Fatah al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, who like Hamas are in the pay of Iran, Syria and Hizballah.
One Israeli parliamentarian said Abbas had been reduced to being “mayor of Ramallah.”
5. Neither Hamas nor its generous sponsors in Tehran and Damascus intend to stop at the Gazan border. When the moment is opportune, they will go for the West Bank too and unite both under fundamentalist Islamic rule which will then be armed for its next target, Israel.
6. Mahmoud Abbas faces criticism in his own party for spurning hardline Hamas politburo leader Khaled Meshaal’s overtures. The influential terrorist lifer, Marwan Barghouti, and the former Preventive Intelligence chief, Jibril Rajoub, urge him to reach an understanding with Hamas leaders in Gaza and Damascus.
Abbas was never one for a clear course of action and is therefore unpredictable. But both he and his Hamas rival Meshaal seem to be saying in the last 24 hours that a straight divorce of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is undesirable. Therefore some give and take is on the cards.
By the time the Israeli prime minister reaches the White House, therefore, he may have been overtaken by events and the separation of Palestinian territories he hailed as a fresh start may have evaporated as a working hypothesis.
28 de junio de 2007
27 de junio de 2007
24 de junio de 2007
23 de junio de 2007
21 de junio de 2007
Fortune 40: Stocks to Retire On
Company
(Ticker symbol) Current
price 52-wk
high 52-wk
low Market
Cap (mill) Div
Yield P/E
Ratio Earnings
growth
Abbott Labs (ABT) $54.53 $59.50 $41.44 $83,995.83 2.4% 21.8 11%
Altria (MO) $70.32 $72.20 $52.64 $147,900.26 3.9% 13.8 8%
Coca-Cola (KO) $51.81 $53.65 $42.27 $119,674.36 2.6% 21.2 9%
Colgate-Palmolive (CL) $66.37 $69.00 $58.01 $33,947.72 2.2% 22.4 11%
General Mills (GIS) $59.99 $61.52 $49.27 $20,778.32 2.5% 18.8 8%
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) $62.33 $69.41 $58.97 $180,542.46 2.7% 15.8 9%
Procter & Gamble (PG) $61.82 $66.30 $54.70 $194,666.48 2.3% 21.6 11%
Wyeth (WYE) $58.20 $59.00 $41.91 $78,288.31 1.8% 17.6 8%
Current price, 52-week high/low and market cap as of Jun 18 16:00
P/E based on earnings for the last 12 months.
Earnings growth based on analyst projections for the next five years, according to Baseline.
Bargain Growth
Company
(Ticker symbol) Current
price 52-wk
high 52-wk
low Market
Cap (mill) P/E PEG
Ratio Earnings
growth Debt/
Equity
Ratio
3M (MMM) $87.67 $89.03 $67.05 $63,140.37 18.5 1.6 11% 0.18
AIG (AIG) $72.47 $72.97 $57.52 $188,004.36 11.4 1.0 11% 0.2
Accenture (ACN) $41.34 $41.84 $25.68 $32,182.98 21.7 1.4 14% 0
Chubb (CB) $54.05 $55.99 $46.94 $21,699.99 9.5 1.0 10% 0.24
Conoco-
Phillips (COP) $80.80 $80.76 $54.90 $132,057.89 8.4 1.2 8% 0.28
McKesson (MCK) $59.91 $63.90 $44.60 $17,790.57 20.9 1.4 14% 0.29
Microsoft (MSFT) $30.54 $31.48 $21.79 $292,122.48 21.3 1.6 13% 0
United Health (UNH) $52.96 $57.10 $42.90 $70,969.00 17.7 1.0 15% 0.26
Current price, 52-week high/low and market cap as of Jun 18 16:00
P/E based on earnings for the last 12 months.
Earnings growth based on analyst projections for the next five years, according to Baseline.
Deep Value
Company
(Ticker symbol) Current
price 52-wk
high 52-wk
low Market
Cap (mill) Div
Yield P/E Current
ratio
Aetna (AET) $50.48 $53.43 $30.94 $25,860.90 0.1% 17.7 2.5
Applied Industrial Tech (AIT) $29.03 $30.00 $20.75 $1,250.32 1.6% 15.6 2.6
Carpenter Technology (CRS) $133.40 $137.99 $90.11 $3,490.14 0.9% 13.4 4.0
Loews (LTR) $52.89 $53.46 $33.50 $28,403.36 0.5% 13 14.4
Lufkin Industries (LUFK) $66.08 $66.88 $49.05 $994.24 1.3% 13.2 4.0
Pfizer (PFE) $26.25 $28.60 $22.16 $184,229.40 4.4% 12.3 2.2
Tidewater (TDW) $70.24 $70.21 $40.06 $4,026.65 0.8% 12.0 4.8
VF Corp. (VFC) $93.50 $95.10 $62.16 $10,413.00 2.4% 18.6 2.5
Current price, 52-week high/low and market cap as of Jun 18 16:00
P/E based on earnings for the last 12 months.
Earnings growth based on analyst projections for the next five years, according to Baseline.
Small Wonders
Company
(Ticker symbol) Current
price 52-wk
high 52-wk
low Market
Cap (mill) P/E
ratio Return
on assets Free
Cash
Flow
CSG Systems International (CSGS) $27.12 $28.45 $23.18 $1,176.57 19.3 9% $82 million
Grey Wolf (GW) $8.37 $8.36 $6.10 $1,547.35 7.8 20% $91 million
Hercules (HPC) $19.11 $21.40 $12.00 $2,228.07 13.6 9% $79 million
K-Swiss (KSWS) $28.01 $37.81 $22.54 $970.47 13.9 19% $62 million
Navigant Consulting (NCI) $20.11 $23.28 $17.27 $1,168.39 20.4 9% $56 million
Park Electrochemical (PKE) $31.59 $33.70 $23.05 $638.05 16.4 9% $6 million
Penn Virginia Resource (PVR) $30.78 $31.65 $23.01 $1,294.64 19.0 10% $31 million
Plexus (PLXS) $22.95 $35.37 $15.78 $1,063.34 13.4 10% $71 million
Current price, 52-week high/low and market cap as of Jun 18 16:00
P/E based on earnings for the last 12 months.
Earnings growth based on analyst projections for the next five years, according to Baseline.
Foreign Value
Company
(Ticker symbol) Current
price 52-wk
high 52-wk
low Market
Cap (mill) P/E
ratio Div
Yield Earnings
growth
Diageo (DEO) $86.86 $86.92 $65.19 $57,648.87 23.4 2.9% 11%
Novartis (NVS) $55.65 $61.60 $51.72 $151,867.24 17.5 1.7% 12%
Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR) $122.25 $121.95 $73.78 $77,527.10 11.2 0.6% 15%
Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) $41.25 $50.05 $41.09 $112,245.38 10.9 1.7% 7%
Total (TOT) $79.17 $78.99 $59.38 $189,435.05 10.7 2.8% 8%
UBS (UBS) $62.52 $66.26 $48.34 $131,612.42 13.3 2.0% 14%
Unilever (UL) $31.29 $33.31 $21.01 $40,994.78 19.7 2.1% 12%
Vodafone Group (VOD) $32.30 $32.60 $20.07 $170,902.08 14.1 4.2% 6%
Current price, 52-week high/low and market cap as of Jun 18 16:00
P/E based on earnings for the last 12 months.
Earnings growth based on analyst projections for the next five years, according to Baseline.
18 de junio de 2007
Our World: Grounded in fantasy - Caroline Glick
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Our World: Grounded in fantasy
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 18, 2007
Iran and its client state Syria have a strategic vision for the Middle East. They wish to take over Lebanon. They wish to destroy Israel. They wish to defeat the US in Iraq. They wish to drive the US and NATO from Afghanistan. They wish to dominate the region by driving the rest of the Arab world to its jihad-supporting knees. Then they wish to apply their vision to the rest of the world.
Today, Syria and Iran are ardently advancing their strategic vision for the world through a deliberate strategy of victory by a thousand cuts. Last week's Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip; Sunday's reopening of the Lebanese front against Israel with the Syrian-ordered rocket attacks on Kiryat Shemona; the now five-week old Syrian ordered low-intensity warfare against Lebanon's pro-Western Siniora government; last week's attack on the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra; the recent intensification of terrorism in Afghanistan and Iran's move to further destabilize the country by violently deporting 100,000 Afghan refugees back to the war-torn country - all of these are moves to advance this clear Iranian-Syrian strategy.
And all these moves have taken place against the backdrop of Syria's refashioning of its military in the image of Hizbullah on steroids and Iran's relentless, unopposed progress in its nuclear weapons program.
For their part, both the US and Israel also have a strategic vision. Unfortunately, it is grounded in fantasy.
WASHINGTON and Jerusalem wish to solve all the problems of the region and the world by establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. While Israel now faces Iranian proxies on two fronts, in their meeting at the White House today US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will gush about their support for Palestinian statehood. Creepily echoing LSD king Timothy Leary, they will tune out this reality as they drone on about the opportunities that Gaza's transformation into a base for global jihad afford to the notion that promoting the Fatah terrorist organization's control over Judea and Samaria can make the world a better, safer, happier place.
Today Bush and Olmert will announce their full support for Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas's new government. The US will intensify General Keith Dayton's training and arming of Fatah forces. Israel will give Fatah $700 million. The Europeans and the rest of the international community will give the "moderate, secular" terror group still more money and guns and love. The US will likely also demand that Olmert order the IDF to give Fatah terrorists free reign in Judea and Samaria.
Olmert and Bush claim that by backing Abbas militarily, financially and politically they will be setting up an "alternative Palestine" which will rival Hamas's jihadist Palestine. As this notion has it, envious of the good fortune of their brethren in Judea and Samaria, Gazans will overthrow Hamas and the course will be set for peace - replete with the ethnic cleansing of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem of all Jewish presence.
FATAH FORCES barely raised a finger to prevent their defeat in Gaza in spite of the massive quantities of US arms they received and the military training they underwent at the hands of US General Keith Dayton. Bush, Olmert and all proponents of the notion of strengthening Fatah in Judea and Samaria refuse to answer one simple question: Why would a handover of Judea and Samaria to Abbas's Fatah produce a better outcome than Israel's 2005 handover of Gaza to Abbas's Fatah?
They refuse to answer this question because they know full well that the answer is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the outcome can be better. They know full well that since replacing Yasser Arafat as head of the PA in 2004, Abbas refused to take any effective action against Hamas. They know that he refused to take action to prevent Hamas's rise to power in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. They know that the guns the US transferred to Fatah in Gaza were surrendered to Hamas without a fight last week. They know that the billions of dollars of international and Israeli assistance to Fatah over the past 14 years never were used to advance the cause of peace.
They know that that money was diverted into the pockets of Fatah strongmen and utilized to build terror militias in which Hamas members were invited to serve. They know that Fatah built a terror superstructure in Judea, Samaria and Gaza which enabled operational cooperation between Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror cells.
SO WHY embrace the fantasy that things can be different now, in Judea and Samaria? Rather than provide rational arguments to defend their view that Hamas's takeover of Gaza is an opportunity for peace, proponents of peace fantasies as strategic wisdom explain vacuously that peace is the best alternative to jihad. They whine that those who point out that Israel now borders Iran in Lebanon and Gaza have nothing positive to say.
To meet the growing threat in Gaza, they argue that Europeans, or maybe Egyptians and Jordanians can be deployed at the international border with Egypt to stem the weapons and terror personnel flow into Gaza. To meet the growing threat in Lebanon, Olmert pleads for more UN troops.
Both views ignore the obvious: Gaza has been transformed into an Iranian-sponsored base for global jihad because Egypt has allowed it to be so transformed. Assisted by its Syrian-sponsored Palestinian allies, Hizbullah has rebuilt its arsenals and reasserted its control in southern Lebanon because UN forces in southern Lebanon have done nothing to prevent it from doing so.
No country on earth will volunteer to fight Hamas and its jihadist allies in Gaza. No government on earth will voluntarily deploy its forces to counter Hizbullah and Iran in south Lebanon. This is why - until they fled - European monitors at the Rafah terminal were a joke. This is why Spanish troops in UNIFIL devote their time in Lebanon to teaching villagers Spanish.
SO WHY are Bush and Olmert set to embrace Fatah and Abbas today? Why are they abjectly refusing to come to terms with the strategic reality of the Iranian-Syrian onslaught? Why are they insisting that the establishment of a Palestinian state is their strategic goal and doing everything they can to pretend that their goal has not been repeatedly proven absurd?
Well, why should they? As far as Bush is concerned, no American politician has ever paid a price for advancing the cause of peace processes that strengthen terrorists and hostile Arab states at Israel's expense. Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton had Arafat over to visit the White House more often than any other foreign leader and ignored global jihad even when its forces bombed US embassies and warships. And today Clinton receives plaudits for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.
By denying that the war against Israel is related to the war in Iraq; by ignoring the strategic links between all the Iranian and Syrian sponsored theaters of war, Bush views gambling with Israel's security as a win-win situation. He will be applauded as a champion of peace and if the chips go down on Israel, well, it won't be Americans being bombed.
OLMERT LOOKS to his left and sees president-elect Shimon Peres. Peres, the architect of the Oslo process which placed Israel's national security in the hands of the PLO, has been rewarded for his role in imperiling his country by his similarly morally challenged political colleagues who just bestowed him with Israel's highest office.
Olmert looks to his left and his sees incoming defense minister Ehud Barak. In 2000, then prime minister Barak withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon, and enabled Iran's assertion of control over southern Lebanon through its Hizbullah proxy. In so doing, Barak set the conditions for last summer's war, and quite likely, for this summer's war.
By offering Arafat Gaza, 95 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem at Camp David, Barak showed such enormous weakness that he all but invited the Palestinian terror war which Arafat began planning the day he rejected Barak's offer.
For his failure, Barak has been rewarded by his Labor Party, which elected him its new chairman on the basis of his vast "experience," and by the media which has embraced him as a "professional" defense minister.
Olmert looks to his right and he sees how the media portrays Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and former IDF Chief of General Staff Moshe Ya'alon as alarmists for claiming that Israel cannot abide by an Iranian-proxy Hamas state on its border. He sees that Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu supported Peres's candidacy as president and have joined their fortunes to Olmert's in a bid to block elections which will bring the Right to power.
ISRAEL HAS arguably never faced a more dangerous strategic environment than it faces today. Yet it is not without good options. It can retake control over the Gaza-Sinai border. It can renew its previously successful tactic of killing Hamas terrorists. It can continue its successful campaign of keeping terrorists down in Judea and Samaria, and it can continue preparing for war in the north. All of these options can be sold to the Left.
But today both Bush and Olmert will reject these options in favor of mindless peace process prattle. They will reject reality as they uphold Abbas as a credible leader and shower him with praise, money and arms. Their political fortunes will be utmost in their minds as they do this. And they will be guaranteeing war that will claim the lives of an unknown number of Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Bush and Olmert should know that when the time for reckoning comes they will not be able to claim, along with Peres and Barak that their hands did not shed this blood. Reality has warned them of their folly. But in their low, dishonest opportunism, they have chosen to ignore reality and amuse themselves with fantasies and photo-ops.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813065538&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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Copyright 1995-2007 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 Debka File
On full alert, Lebanese and UN Interi_
DEBKAfile reports: Mahmoud Abbas exploits Hamas’ Gaza takeover to win Western funds, Israeli concessions and a new power-sharing deal with Hamas
June 18, 2007, 6:50 PM (GMT+02:00)
Palestinian government of nonentities under PM Fayyad
Palestinian government of nonentities under PM Fayyad
His humiliating defeat in Gaza forgotten, the Palestinian leader hears the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert talking of “a new peace opportunity.” Encouraged by his Western backers, Abbas means to go for massive concessions from Israel to repair his damaged credibility. But instead of standing up to Hamas, the Fatah leader means to bargain for a reconciliation which endorses jihadist domination of the Gaza Strip.
More about Abbas’ manipulations and the Israeli leader’s weakness in DEBKAfile’s Exclusive Analysis below
Coalition-Iraqi raids kill 20 Shiite _
DEBKAfile reports: Mahmoud Abbas exploits Hamas’ Gaza takeover to win Western funds, Israeli concessions and a new power-sharing deal with Hamas
June 18, 2007, 6:50 PM (GMT+02:00)
Palestinian government of nonentities under PM Fayyad
Palestinian government of nonentities under PM Fayyad
His humiliating defeat in Gaza forgotten, the Palestinian leader hears the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert talking of “a new peace opportunity.” Encouraged by his Western backers, Abbas means to go for massive concessions from Israel to repair his damaged credibility. But instead of standing up to Hamas, the Fatah leader means to bargain for a reconciliation which endorses jihadist domination of the Gaza Strip.
More about Abbas’ manipulations and the Israeli leader’s weakness in DEBKAfile’s Exclusive Analysis below
Full article
Hamas steps up scale of weapons smuggling into Gaza, including Katyusha rockets
June 18, 2007, 1:18 PM (GMT+02:00)
Israel has sent its first consignment of medical supplies to Gaza through the Red Cross to Gaza. It is blocked at the Erez crossing together with foodstuffs by the absence of authority on the Palestinian side to take delivery.
Hamas has stepped up the scale of its smuggling activities from Egyptian Sinai, importing quantities of Katyusha rockets, guns, explosives and ammunition through the tunnels under the Philadelphi route.
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Damascus ordered Sunday's Katyusha attack on N. Israeli Kiryat Shemona, causing no casualties. But there is more to come
June 17, 2007, 4:13 PM (GMT+02:00)
A Katyusha rocket that did not explode in Wadi Taibeh north of Israeli border
A Katyusha rocket that did not explode in Wadi Taibeh north of Israeli border
The three 107mm rockets fired against Kiryat Shemona from Wadi Taiba Sunday, June 17, by a Palestinian radical group called Ansar Allah based in the Ain Hilwa refugee camp near Sidon was ordered by Syrian military intelligence as the first in a series, DEBKAfile’s military sources report. Hizballah intelligence officers supplied the rockets and pinpointed the launching site to make sure they struck the Israeli town. Residents rushed for bomb shelters for the first time since the Lebanon War ended eleven months ago. A factory and parked vehicles were damaged.
More...
Suicide bombing kills 35 in Kabul, deadliest attack in Afghanistan since 2001
June 17, 2007, 2:21 PM (GMT+02:00)
The bomber hit an Afghan police bus, targeting police instructors. The dozens of injured included foreigners. Taliban claimed the attack, the fifth such bombing in three days.
Lebanese army helicopters fire four guided air-to-ground missiles at radical positions in northern refugee camp
June 17, 2007, 3:08 PM (GMT+02:00)
Lebanese army helicopters fire four guided air-to-ground missiles at radical positions in northern refugee camp Sunday
It was the second time guided missiles had been used against Fatah al-Islam and their pro-Damascus allies in the Nahr al-Bared camp under siege for a month.
The two French-made Gazelle helicopters were provided by the United Arab Emirates.
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Fatah activists are settling scores with Hamas in Lebanon as well as West Bank. Hamas threatens a wave of terror
June 16, 2007, 1:07 PM (GMT+02:00)
Fatah lines up for revenge on West Bank
Fatah lines up for revenge on West Bank
Rampaging Fatah gunmen took revenge for their defeat in Gaza on Hamas activists on the West Bank in a rampage Sat. June 16 through the Hamas-held parliament, government and local council offices on the West Bank. Hundreds of Hamas officials were detained.
Saturday night, Fatah gunmen also hurled themselves against Hamas bases and offices in Lebanese refugee camps. Serious clashes erupted near the southern port of Sidon.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the IDF is quietly allowing Fatah intelligence officers and al Aqsa Brigades activists freedom of movement across the West Bank.
More...
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Moscow supplies Iran’s Bushehr reactor with long-withheld nuclear fuel
June 12, 2007, 1:21 PM (GMT+02:00)
JSC Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant consigns nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr reactor
JSC Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant consigns nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr reactor
The fuel delivery, which could bring forward Tehran’s threat to Israel, arrived in Bushehr 24 hours before Israel successfully launched its new military imaging Ofeq-7 satellite into orbit.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly 304 revealed June 8 that the delivery left the JSC Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant June 203, the week before the G8 summit. Russian president Vladimir Putin released the fuel for Bushehr in reprisal for the US plan to deploy a missile interceptor system in East Europe, which he deems a threat to Russia.
Read more about Putin’s hostile move in DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s article updated by DEBKAfile below.
To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE .
Full article
Islamist Hamas borrows Taliban’s tactics for its brutal conquest of the Gaza Strip
June 17, 2007, 7:48 PM (GMT+02:00)
Pro-Syrian Palestinian forces are using them in Lebanon.
Al Qaeda is watching and waiting as American positions fold along the Eastern Mediterranean.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly drew some implications for the prospective US military withdrawal from Iraq in its latest issue out last Friday.
To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE .
UK Conservative leader David Cameron says: “Yes, I am a Zionist.”
DEBKAfile - We start where the media stop
UK Conservative leader David Cameron says: “Yes, I am a Zionist.”
June 17, 2007, 3:26 PM (GMT+02:00)
In an question-answer session at the Conservative Friends of Israel, Cameron said: “If what you mean by Zionist, someone who believes that the Jews have a right to a homeland in Israel and a right to their country then yes, I am a Zionist and I’m proud of the fact that Conservative politicians down the ages have played a huge role in helping to bring this about.”
The Conservative went on to say: There is something deep in our party’s DNA that believes in Israel, the right of Israel to exist, the right of Israel to defend itself and that a deal should only happen if it means that Israel is really allowed to have peace within secure borders and real guarantees about its future.”
Copyright 2000-2007 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved
17 de junio de 2007
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12 de junio de 2007
Syrian and Iranian Generals in Intensive War Consultations
DEBKAfile - We start where the media stop
Syrian and Iranian Generals in Intensive War Consultations
June 9, 2007, 12:07 PM (GMT+02:00)
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DEBKAfile’s intelligence and Middle East sources take a look at the actions behind the words issuing from Damascus officials affirming Syria’s willingness to go into peace talks with Israel.
During most of last week, two high-ranking Iranian delegations spent time in Damascus. One was composed of generals who held talks with Syrian leaders on coordinated preparations for a Middle East war in the coming months.
At the Iranian end, a similar high-ranking Syrian military delegation called in at Iranian army and Revolutionary Guards headquarters to tighten operational coordination between them at the command level, as well as inspecting the Iranian arsenal. The Syrian general staff will draw up a list of items it is short of for a possible military confrontation with Israel this summer.
Our sources report that last week, Tehran sent Moscow a check for $327 m to pay for assorted missiles consigned to Damascus. A further $438 m has been pledged by the end of June for more hardware to Syria.
Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki’s three days of talks in Damascus at the end of May further consolidated the strategic partnership between the two governments under the mutual defense pact they signed a year ago.
Their deliberations produced concurrence on the following issues:
1. Expanded economic cooperation, i.e. an enlarged Iranian aid package for Syria including monetary assistance and an extra 5 million tons of oil gratis per annum on top of the one million already guaranteed.
Syrian president Bashar Assad drove a hard bargain: He demanded a larger slice of economic aid as the price for entering into strategic cooperation with Iran for the coming war.
2. The Assad government agreed not to take any military - or other steps with military connotations - without prior notice to Tehran and its assent. This clause applies equally to activating the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas’ Damascus headquarters.
3. Reciprocal visits by Syrian and Iranian generals and political officials will be stepped up.
4. In Iraq, Iran and Syria agreed to jointly intensify their terrorist operations against US and British troops.
The regime heads in Tehran are basing their common front with Damascus on intelligence reports whereby the US and Israel have drawn up plans for coordinated military action against Iran, Syria and Hizballah in the summer.
According to this hypothesis, Iranian leaders foresee the next UN Security Council in New York at the end of June or early July ending with an American announcement that the sanctions against Tehran are inadequate because Russia and China has toned them down. Therefore, the military option is the only one left on the table. The ayatollahs have concluded that US president George W. Bush is determined to bow out of office on the high note of a glittering military success against Iran to eclipse his failures in Iraq.
They believe he will not risk the lives of more Americans by mounting a ground operation, but rather unleash a broad missile assault that will wipe out Iran’s nuclear facilities and seriously cripple its economic infrastructure.
According to the Iranian scenario, the timeline for hostilities has already been fixed between Washington and Jerusalem - and so has the plan of action. The US will strike Iran first, after which Israel will use the opportunity to go for Syria, targeting its air force, missile bases and deployments, as well as Hizballah’s missile and weapons stocks which Iran replenished this year.
Officials in Tehran and Damascus find confirmation of their intelligence evaluations in the visit Israel’s transport minister Shaul Mofaz paid to Washington last week at the head of a large military delegation. They are certain Mofaz, a former defense minister and chief of staff, used the strategic talks to tie the last ends of the planned offensive. They were perturbed in particular by the Israel minister’s reported advice to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice of the importance of setting a deadline, beyond which the US will abandon sanctions as ineffective and turn to its remaining options for dealing with Iran’s advance towards a nuclear weapons capability.
Considering the climate in Damascus and Tehran and their active pursuit of preparations for imminent attack, it is not surprising that Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert received no reply to the note he sent to Assad proposing peace talks and offering the Golan as an incentive. Assad was not inclined to take the Israeli prime minister seriously. According to DEBKAfile’s sources in Jerusalem, Olmert did not really expect him to. The offer was more in the nature of clearing the decks ahead of Olmert’s White House visit later this month.
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Moscow Releases Nuclear Fuel for Iran’s Bushehr Reactor
Moscow Releases Nuclear Fuel for Iran’s Bushehr Reactor
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly Updated by DEBKAfile
June 12, 2007, 1:12 PM (GMT+02:00)
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| Iran's Bushehr atomic reactor can start rolling with Russian fuel | ||
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Russian president Vladimir Putin put teeth in his threats and his cynically helpful alternative suggestions regarding the deployment of US missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly 304 disclosed on June 8 that the week before the G8 opened in Germany, Moscow released the long-withheld nuclear fuel for Iran’s atomic reactor in Bushehr. It was delivered 24 hours before Israel launched its new military imaging satellite Ofeq-7, bringing forward the Iranian threat to Israel, according to DEBKAfile’s military sources. One immediate result has been the stiffening of Tehran’s negative posture, sparking what nuclear watchdog director Mohammed ElBaradei called Monday, June 11, a confrontation that needs to be urgently defused.
As DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported, special nuclear containers were loaded on a train in the yard of the manufacturers JSC Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant on June 2-3. They contained two types of nuclear fuel, WER-440 and WER-1000.
The special train then headed out of Novosibirsk to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, 2,000 km away. There, the containers awaited loading aboard a Russian ship destined for Bandar Anzili, the Iranian military port on the Caspian shore. According to our Iranian sources, a fleet of Iranian trucks was waiting at the other end outside Bandar Anzili port to transport the nuclear fuel and drive it slowly and carefully to Bushehr, a distance of 850km, arriving June 10 or 11.
But DEBKAfile’s sources added the journey was interrupted by holdups ordered by the Kremlin in an episode which also laid bare the interdependence of Iran’s nuclear industry and Tehran’s program for arming Syria for war with Israel with the latest Russian munitions.
Arguments over payments due from Tehran have dogged relations with Moscow before and Putin is far from trusting.
A few days before the nuclear fuel left the Siberian factory, Tehran delivered the sum of $327m for a fresh delivery of Russian missiles to Syria. Iran pledged another $438m for further arms consignments before the fuel cargo was allowed to go forward. Putin then ordered the cargo to be loaded at Astrakhan, but await delivery in port until payment was made.
DEBKAfile picks up the story Tuesday, June 12, and reports that Iran duly deposited the money and the ship was permitted to set sail and cross the Caspian Sea to Iran.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly went on to report that Putin never promised Bush that Russia would deny Iran the nuclear fuel for its Bushehr reactor in perpetuity, as some administration circles in Washington have claimed in the last two years. He did assure Washington, mainly in conversations with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, that he would postpone delivery as long as he could, despite Moscow’s contractual commitments to Tehran.
The Bush administration’s plan to deploy missiles in East Europe made the Russian president mad enough to set this assurance aside.
His move hits the US where it hurts most: The UN Security Council meets at the end of June to approve harsher sanctions against Iran for continuing to enrich uranium in defiance of previous resolutions. The Russian fuel delivery will substantially dilute the effect of such penalties, especially when the Islamic Republic is about to clinch a deal for the acquisition of long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea (as DEBKA-Net-Weekly 300 revealed on May 11).
Putin developed a complex and well thought out retaliation strategy for America’s missile deployment in East Europe.
1. A second consignment of nuclear fuel went out to India from the same Russian factory which supplied Bushehr. This was a swipe by Putin at US-Indian nuclear cooperation which it is also under attack in the US Congress. It was also meant to place Moscow at dead center of the Russian-American-Israeli contest over domination of the Indian arms market. This contest also pertains to the developing military ties between New Delhi and Tehran, which Moscow is working hard to turn to its benefit. The Kremliln has not said the last word on this contest.
2. Monday, June 4, the Russian president sent the director of the Russian Nuclear Energy Commission, Sergei Kirienko, to the Russian Interfax news agency with an announcement: “I have just visited the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant; fuel for Iran and India is ready,” he said. “It will be delivered six months before the physical launch.”
This statement has granted the Russian president six months’ leeway for jumping whichever way he finds expedient.
It is time enough for Moscow and Washington to reach terms on the Iran issue as well as the East Europe missile deployments. If the Bush administration digs its heels in on the missile defense shield, Russian engineers employed at Bushehr will be told to go ahead and activate the reactor even before December 2007. But if Washington relents, Russian personnel can always be told to go back to dragging their feet, as Moscow did on the nuclear fuel.
7 de junio de 2007
4 de junio de 2007
Anatomy of a Chinese Bubble: A Checklist For Spotting Bubble Tops
Anatomy of a Chinese Bubble: A Checklist For Spotting Bubble Tops
Spongebob: Patrick, check it out!
Patrick: Wow!
Sponge & Pat: Hooray! Bubble party!
Thug: Hey! Who blew this bubble? You all know the rules!
Thugs [in unison]: All bubble-blowing babies will be beaten senseless by every able-bodied patron in the bar
It's almost impossible to call the end of a stock bubble but there are several key indicators that investors should monitor when trying to time an exit from a bubble.
Use this handy-dandy check list next time you think you see a price bubble forming and want to call a top. I'm going to look at the most over-exhuberant market, the Shanghai Composite Index [DJSH] to see if the recent 180% run is getting a bit "extended."
It's almost impossible to call the end of a stock bubble but there are several key indicators that investors should monitor when trying to time an exit from a bubble.
Use this handy-dandy check list next time you think you see a price bubble forming and want to call a top. I'm going to look at the most over-exhuberant market, the Shanghai Composite Index [DJSH] to see if the recent 180% run is getting a bit "extended."
1. Parabolic Price Increase
This one's pretty obvious since parabolic price increases are the definition of a bubble. We've had so many examples of bubbles now that it's getting pretty easy to spot the crazy price action that marks the final phases of a stock bubble advance. And all bubbles should be compared to the granddaddy of all bubbles - the NASDAQ from 1998 to 2000. The Shanghai's parabolic advance looks very similar to the Big Nasdaq.
Amazingly, the current advance in Shanghai makes the NASDAQ blow off look tame. Since the beginning of the move in 2005, the Shanghai has advanced 335% vs the 1998 - 2000 advance of the NASDAQ of 277%. The final acceleration higher in the NASDAQ from October 1999 to March 2000 went up 87%. The current blow off in Shanghai from September to today has registered a 180% increase. The current parabolic move in China is truly historic because at the time, the NASDAQ bubble had been the biggest bubble move ever.
Here's the three year chart of the Shanghai composite...
click to enlarge
...versus the NASDAQ composite from 1998 to 2000.
2. Strong Indexes Mask Underlying Weakness
During the final stages of a bubble blow off, most stocks have already peaked out and are beginning to head down. Here's a snapshot of some of the leading Internet stocks from 1999 to 2000. You'll notice that none of them were hitting new highs with the NASDAQ in March 2000.
Here's a snapshot of some leading China stocks right now...
3. Valuations Are Off The Charts
In 2000, Cisco traded at 180x trailing earnings and 40x sales. Amazon traded at 100x sales and had no earnings. Ebay traded at 1000x sales and had no earnings. In the Tokyo real estate bubble in the late 1980s, prime real estate went for as much as $100,000 a square foot. Now that's a bubble valuation.
In comparison, many China stocks look down right cheap. While a couple of outliers like China Life (LFC) and Guangshen Railway (GSH) trade at well above average multiples and are approaching bubble valuations, many China stocks are simply trading at slight premiums to their industries.
China Life and Guangshen Railway look expensive...
...but China Mobile (CHL), China Petroleum (SNP) and others are trading in line with their industry multiples despite the huge stock price advance.
The overall Shanghai market is trading at about 43x earnings, which, while expensive, isn't at the highest level ever.
The price to sales ratio shows a similar pattern.
4. Retail Investors Are All-In
In 1929, retail investors flocked to bucket shops to trade $200 of stock on $1 margin during their lunch hour.
In 1999, lawyers and doctors quit their jobs to trade stocks at day trading firms.
In 2007, Chinese are quitting their jobs to trade stocks. Over 27 million brokerage accounts have been opened in 2006, bringing the total to well over 100 million.
Xiao Feng, a former investment consultant at a futures company in Nanjing, put his three apartments and two vehicles - worth 5 million yuan - up as collateral days ago to get a 10 million yuan loan to invest in the stock market.
But the cost of borrowing is high - with an annual interest rate of 25 percent, he'll have to pay the lender 2.5 million yuan in interest at the end of the year, reported the Nanjing Morning Post on Wednesday.
In addition, the lender will monitor his stock trading account. If the value of Xiao's portfolio drops below 8 million yuan, the lender will liquidate his stock holdings to prevent a further decrease in the principal, spelling a loss of two million for Xiao.
When the 2.5-million interest payment is also taken into account, Xiao Feng will lose what he has worked for in the past 10 years - all his collateral.
Then why take such a risk? "Maybe it is the lure of the stock market. If an investment in a stock triples, or quadruples in a short period, then why not try?" he replied.
No wonder the Chinese government is so concerned. The road to capitalism will get much more bumpy if people actually start getting a sense of risk and lose money. It will be an in vitiation for more, not less, government intervention - if that's even possible in a communist country.
So, three out of four on the Bubble Top Checklist are definitely confirmed, and one is not. That's probably close enough to call for a significant "correction". Soon, I'll take a look at how US investors might be able to make some money off of the China stock bubble "correction".
