Monty Guild’s Commentary
This is why China will dominate. They behave more intelligently than the politically driven west.
China makes strategic use of commodity collapse
Tue Jan 6, 2009 2:45am EST
By Eadie Chen – Analysis
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s government is using the collapse in commodity prices to further its domestic agenda, with support for stricken sectors tailored to speed up reform plans rather than rescue ailing companies or prop up prices.
To survive plummeting demand for exports — a sharp turnaround after several years of booming global demand — many industries are looking for state help and consolidation.
But China’s policymakers are sticking to their economic blueprints and not letting sympathy for troubled corporates overwhelm longer-term priorities. Instead, they are favoring the strongest in each industry in a drive toward consolidation, and at the same time using low prices as a chance to stock up.
On Monday, it emerged that China was poised to buy up thousands of tonnes of rubber and sugar to create a bigger state buffer of supplies for the future, adding to efforts to enlarge stocks of everything from oil to corn to industrial metals.
At the same time, however, it’s letting small coal mines go to the wall, seizing a chance to make good on years of rhetoric, as well as allowing smaller, less efficient metal producers go under.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Today in Pakistan:
Crowd tries to attack US consulate in Pakistan
Jan 11 11:56 AM US/Eastern
By ASHRAF KHAN
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) – Security forces used tear gas and batons to repel anti-Israel protesters who tried to attack a U.S. consulate in Pakistan on Sunday, as tens of thousands of people demonstrated worldwide against Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza on Dec. 27 to stop rocket fire from the militant Palestinian group Hamas. Gaza health officials say nearly 870 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them civilians. Thirteen Israelis have also died.
Tens of thousands of angry demonstrators protested Sunday across the Arab world, in Europe and Asia.
Some 2,000 protesters in the Pakistani port city of Karachi burned U.S. flags and chanted anti-Israel slogans, and several hundred of them marched on the U.S. Consulate, senior police official Ameer Sheikh said.
"They were in a mood to attack," Sheikh said. "They were carrying bricks, stones and clubs."
A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Islamabad, Lou Fintor, said the protesters did not get close to the consulate, which was closed Sunday.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Turkey is a victim.
Turkey coup plot arrests now at more than 100
By SELCAN HACAOGLU
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A Turkish court formally arrested 14 more people Sunday for ties to an alleged secularist plot by ultranationalists to bring down the Islamic-rooted government, bringing the total of people involved in the case to more than 100.
The prime minister said the crackdown will shed light on a network of renegade agents within the state and make Turkey transparent. Critics say it is designed to silence the government’s opponents.
The case highlights a difficult question about who holds the levers of power in a nation where tensions between secularists and Islamists, and liberals and rightists, have created deep fault lines in the country.
The problem is aggravated by key demands from the European Union — which Turkey hopes to join — to reduce the military’s influence in politics, make security officials accountable for torture and grant more rights to the country’s Kurds.
Over the weekend, an Istanbul anti-terror court formally arrested and jailed 18 coup plot suspects, including a former police chief and four active duty military officers. Fourteen of the 18 were arrested Sunday.
Police detained another 33 suspects in the case Sunday and displayed confiscated weapons. Prosecutors say the plot aimed to destabilize Turkey through a series of attacks and trigger a coup in 2009.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Plausible Denial?
U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: January 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.
The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
This is the problem. It is as much internal politics, the emergence once again of the feared (by present political parties in power) BJP that demands strong secular actions as it is terrorism sponsors, not the Pakistan government at the top but at almost every level below that.
Either "UPA" acts or "BHP" governs is the political challenge being laid down now.
Time for action against Pakistan: BJP
11 Jan 2009, 0448 hrs IST, TNN
BHOPAL: Time has come for India to move away from waging a war of words with Islamabad to taking action, BJP president Rajnath Singh said in Bhopal on Saturday supporting military action against terrorist outfits based in Pakistan.
"India has no other option but to take military action against Pakistan,” he said.
"The Prime Minister and his council of ministers have only been giving statements, which is not enough. The Union government should stop this ineffective verbal war with Pakistan. There is no need to just create a war hype in the country without real action. Since Pakistan is not taking any initiative to stop terrorist organisations within its territory, the time has come for us to take the world community into confidence and go for military action against the country which will not stop terror organisations from killing our innocent citizens,” Rajnath said.
The BJP president said, "Our country needs to show some diplomatic skill and urge the international community to support India against Pakistan. There is more than enough evidence that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, is directly linked to terror organisations and has been helping terrorist groups to carry out attacks in India and other parts of the world. Indian diplomacy should concentrate on bringing ISI on the international radar as an intelligence agency with questionable credentials.”
The UPA-led government should have snapped its diplomatic ties with Pakistan immediately after the Mumbai serial train blasts which killed 200 people, he said. "India has blundered, our assessment of Pakistan has been wrong. We should have taken strong steps against Pakistan after the Mumbai train blasts. Instead, our Prime Minister justified that Pakistan too is a victim of terror attacks. It was a mistake on our behalf to sign an agreement for a joint terror mechanism with Pakistan.”
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Turkey comes on the heels of Pakistan, even if intelligence agencies are snoozing.
Turkey imprisons four army officers in Ergenekon case
ANKARA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) — A Turkish court early on Saturday sentenced to prison four army officers in the ongoing "Ergenekon" investigation, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
Five prosecutors, including Zekeriya Oz, the top prosecutor of the ongoing Ergenekon case, demanded a criminal court in the Turkish largest city of Istanbul to imprison four army officers on charges of being members of the "Ergenekon terrorist organization," according to the report.
The court decided to send the four officers to prison, and release two others, said the report.
An alleged criminal network known as "Ergenekon" was uncovered after police seized 27 grenades, TNT explosives and fuses in a shanty house in Istanbul on June 12, 2007.
Police waged operations in several provinces and detained a number of people, including retired senior army officers, journalists and businessmen, for their alleged involvement in the network.
Police discover weapons, hand grenades in Turkey coup probe: report
Posted Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:49pm AEDT
Turkish police have unearthed weapons and hand grenades near the capital of Ankara in a probe into an alleged plot to topple the Islamist-rooted government that has fuelled political tensions, Anatolia news agency reports.
The dig at a forest in the suburb of Golbasi resulted in the discovery of two light anti-tank weapons, 10 hand grenades, bullets and explosives, Anatolia said.
Using metal detectors and sniffer dogs, anti-terror police dug the area on the basis of documents seized from former police chief Ibrahim Sahin, one of some 40 suspects detained Wednesday, it said.
Sahin was one of the most prominent figures involved in a major scandal in 1996 which unveiled collaboration between members of the security forces, politicians and gangsters in acts outside the law, including murders of Kurdish dissidents.
Some media reports suggested the dig could shed light on the fate of weapons procured from Israel, which went missing during Sahin’s term and are believed to have been used in illicit operations.
