Thread: Gold and Agriculture

Sorry to all, I did attempt to post this morning, but Marek did what he had to do...protect this site. here are the answers to my excitable qustions.

Gloribee

Hi all.



To start off I’d like to apologise if my extreme excitement was taken wrong. I am probably my own worst enimie when its comes to wanting proof about issues I am following up on before I post. Everyone needs to read as much Information as they can to be able to make there own decisions based on our Investment. As well thanks for all the PM’s offering article’s and link’s. They helped me a lot.



As most would know, I’m not that great at finding worthy news articles, as most can tell from my postings. By the time I come across a news item, someone has already posted it three days earlier. I find I am much better at e-mailing people, making cold calls to companies and agency’s. Sometime’s people loosen up and tell a little more than they should, or realise what they have told. Thus my “ Read Between the Lines “ comment. These tidbits are what lead me on my searches.



Oil news is very transparent in the news coming out of Iraq, and has been basically flogged to death. It’s the other issues that can sometimes get missed. That is why I’m currently following the “Gold “ trail and the “ Agriculture Industry “. These are another couple of major sources of income for Iraq and receive little exposure in the “ left wing press “. Bastards, sorry, its true.





Gold


As has been bantered about on occasion, some feel that oil alone can not back a large increase in the dinar. I for one believe it can, but wondered if it alone can not in fact back the increase, than what else doe’s Iraq have that can back it. We all believe, and with proof I might add that a large Reval is soon to be.



So how much gold doe’s Iraq have, was one of my questions. The reason I pushed hard on this was I have heard from three different people amounts ranging from 28 to 32 tons. This is a lot more than the current number of 8.5 tons. When I called someone I know who’s has a some what understanding of how this work’s he was kind enough to explain in a language I can understand.



His suspicions are that the 28-32 tons were due to the following:



A- This amount is the known amount being held in Iraq, plus



B- Proven ownership being held by foreign banks, plus



C- Questionable ownership, still requiring Investigation. These are accounts were the trail leads back to Iraq, but must still be proven, but have a reasonable amount of evidence to pursue for the return to the place of origin. ( Iraq )



Another question I had was how do you move this much and not be detected or noticed? The reply was for the most part it will be in the form of precious metals certificates and not the “ Drop it on your foot and go Ouch kind “



Proving ownership is a very involved and long process. This could take years in some cases, but could be used in there accounting of assets.



Another point he mentioned with-out me asking, was cash deposits. This is in the Billions and no solid amount is known. The hard part is decieding who really owns what. Wealthy Iraqi’s moved large sums of money out of the country and are in fact the legal owner’s, but have had their account’s frozen. The ounous is on them to prove they are legally entitled to these account’s. Again a timly process.



In the late stages, before the Invasion, large amounts of money were moved out of country. These were hidden in a sloppy manner, due to the urgency they had in getting out as much as possible and were credited back to Iraq with little time required to prove ownership. The harder issues are the shell companies, off-shore accounts, multiple Identities and such. You have to remember, it was not just Saddam piliging the country, but many individuals. This is what make’s it hard to track.



While Iraq is diligently trying to trace these stolen accounts, they do not want to take fortunes from Legitimate Iraqi’s, who transferred funds abroad, but now have their account’s being questioned.





Agriculture


This was my second question, and here is the reason why. For those who are not familiar with Canada, Saskatchewan is a major farming province, with thousands of farmer’s. This is why Agriculture tweaked my Interest. If you live in Saskatchewan it is hard not to know at least a dozen farmer’s, LOL



As we all know, Iraq has large reserve’s of water. I keep hearing that Iraq want’s to be a major exporter of food stuffs in the ME. What got me to thinking about this was How? I never really gave it much more thought than that until a friend, who also works for a major farming Implement dealer told me the “ buzz “ around his office was that the parent company was in the running for a major contract or at least a part of to sell and ship many, many millions of dollars worth of equipment to the middle east. I said Iraq? He did not know this part.



At first I thought some Iraqi people were here to get bids to supply equipment, but he said, no, usually brokers take care of these types of issues.



As well Iraq has been giving out Agri. Grants and is sending and paying schooling fees to some educated Iraqi’s to better themselves in the area of agriculture. Why do this, if you plan on just living off oil?



Now the part that really got my attention was this, the contract is to begin shipping in the first part of the New Year !! Now how are they going to pay? Not going to send a boat load of oil, definetly not credit, Iraq is not going to pay in US $ or Euro’s, They need these to pay off purchaces of the dinar buyback program that Scota so graciously keeps us up to date on.



So how are they going to pay? With Dinars is my bet. Which tells me it must be Internationally convertible !! Which to me says….Reval.



So there you have it. Gloribee is not all that good at hiding her excitement. Sorry if hard feelings were made, but I just want to provide good Information for you, and not something that needs lots more Investigation.



Please feel free to add any articles or comments to this thread. As more Information comes my way, I will add them here. Again, thanks to all who sent, by PM, articles, links and supportive comments.



Gloribee

Yes, I believe that you are right. Oil is not the only answer. Iraq is unique in the Middle East and we have seen from a Warka employee that they know this and expect a lot from their country in the future. Good sleuthing!

I believe you are on to something that is just more and more supportive to the Country of Iraq. IMHO, Oil can support what ever they need it too. But for how long. Probably for most of our life Times. But for the Future of the next and next Generations. I see what you are discoving in Gold and exspecially Agriculture, is the future of Iraq other than OIL. And Yes they have it. Remember this is Ancient Babylon. It is and will be the Riches and most Valueble Country In the World. Why? Cause it is "Writen", and will be done.

Source of seized gold ingots still a mystery in Iraq
Chicago Tribune

KIRKUK, Iraq - Another battered truck hauling what appears to be a dazzling fortune in gold bars was stopped at a routine U.S. Army checkpoint in Iraq on Wednesday, the third such cache of bullion seized in two weeks.

An officer with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the unit that detained the truck near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, said that 1,183 ingots were recovered in the latest bust.

The seizure fits a pattern established by two similar gold-laden vehicles stopped by U.S. troops in late May. All the trucks appeared to have originated in Baghdad and seemed to be heading for either the Syrian or Iranian border.

"Same modus operandi," the American officer said, on condition of anonymity. "Mercedes truck. Bad registration. Trying to pass (the gold) off as brass."


More than 4,100 gold bars have been confiscated so far from the rusty beds of old trucks trundling down the bomb-cratered roads of Iraq. The combined value of the gold has been calculated at between $718 million and $1 billion - the worst act of plunder in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's younger son, Qusai, swiped $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank.

The source of such vast quantities of gold in war-bruised Iraq remains a tantalizing mystery.

U.S. officials have kept mum about the case. And ordinary Iraqis fascinated by the tale of the "gold trucks" have spawned a host of conflicting rumors. Some say the loot is Kuwaiti gold seized during the 1990 Iraqi invasion, while others insist it is treasure pried from thousands of looted Baath Party safety deposit boxes in Baghdad.

But a source close to the U.S. investigation says that all the truck-borne ingots share the same strange characteristic: The bars aren't pure, like the bullion found at Ft. Knox, but crudely melted bricks of jewelry. And that obscure detail convinces many knowledgeable Iraqis that the gold's journey stretches all the way back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and into Hussein's greedy pockets.

"Iraq has no major gold reserves, and no Iraqi banks ever held this much private jewelry," said Daya al-Khayoun, director general of Iraq's state-run Rafideen Bank, which saw 60 of its 70 Baghdad branch offices gutted by looters immediately after the war.

"What was found in those trucks has to be the gold Saddam asked Iraqis to donate to fight the Iran war," al-Khayoun said. "That gold helped keep him in power."

During the bleakest years of the conflict between Iran and Iraq, Hussein and his ministers appeared often on Iraqi television, exhorting citizens to contribute their jewelry to the war effort. Rich businessmen, many Iraqis recall, were expected to cough up three to five pounds of gold or face a visit by Hussein's goon squads.

Some of that jewelry ended up being hammered into a solid gold carriage for Hussein, which broke under its own weight during a 1996 parade in Baghdad.

But the bulk of the people's patriotic largess ended up unspent in state vaults beneath Iraq's Central Bank or in Hussein's presidential palaces, al-Khayoun says.

How it may have gotten smelted hastily into ingots, loaded onto two-ton Mercedes-Benz trucks and carted out of the city is still a puzzle.

On May 23, stunned U.S. soldiers confiscated the first truck, carrying 2,000 gold bars, at an Army checkpoint near the town of Qaim on the Syrian border. The second truck was stopped outside Kirkuk two days later, apparently while on its way to Iran.

The heavy metal bricks appeared to contain varying grades of gold. Paratroopers in Kirkuk transferred nearly 1,000 ingots into a U.S. Army truck, which promptly blew out its tires under the excess weight. A soldier who was a precious-metals dealer in civilian life gauged the purity of the treasure at 21 carats, the ideal grade for jewelry-making.

Meanwhile, the drivers of the trucks aren't talking.

"This crime was not the work of stupid neighborhood looters," said Fahdil Mohammed, a metallurgist in Baghdad's gold market.

Punching figures into his calculator, Mohammed estimated that the process of turning 70 to 80 tons of bracelets, necklaces and rings into 20-pound ingots would have taken a crew of a dozen skilled metal workers several weeks.

"This job must have been arranged before the war," he said. "It probably was ordered from somebody at the top of the old regime."

Some American officers agree.

While there are many clandestine smelters in Iraq - occupation forces in the southern city of Basra puzzled for weeks over why the power grid kept blowing, until they discovered a network of hidden electric forges for melting down stolen copper wire and brass shell casings - the secrecy required to process as much as $1 billion of gold suggests that the job was done under government supervision, they said.

The trucks' oddly unimpeded journeys across Iraq also have raised suspicions. All three vehicles traveled hundreds of miles through mostly lawless country before being stopped by happenstance at U.S. roadblocks.

"It's almost as if they were being protected," said Maj. Kevin Petit, the executive officer of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Kirkuk. "Like, it was bad news to mess with some powerful guy's booty."

Central Command has yet to link anybody, much less Hussein's old Baath Party officials, to the crime. In fact, the unsolved case of the gold trucks appears to be fading from the coalition agenda - a bleak symbol of both the monumental scale of the pillaging in Iraq and the indifference of the world to a heist that, anywhere else, would be dubbed the crime of the century.

Wednesday's trove will be tested for authenticity. But some of the recovered gold already has been flown to Kuwait for safe-keeping, the U.S. Army said. It took six soldiers four hours to load one shipment onto a cargo plane. The entire pile of ingots, nearly big enough to fill a dump truck, will be returned to the people of Iraq when a new government is established.

"It was overwhelming to see so much gold in one place," said Petit. "But it was sad, too. They found the indentations of wedding rings in some of the bars."

Shaking his head in amazement, he said he wondered how many other trucks may have slipped through his checkpoints.

Copyright © 2003 Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services

Gold bars pique 173rd's interest at checkpoint


By Sandra Jontz, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, May 27, 2003



Michael Abrams / S&S
Maj. Kevin Petit, executive officer of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, explains how soldiers of the brigade stopped a truck loaded with 999 bars of gold, at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kirkuk, Iraq, on Sunday.


Michael Abrams / S&S
Some of the 999 bars of gold that soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade confiscated from a truck stopped at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kirkuk, Iraq, on Sunday.


KIRKUK, Iraq — U.S. soldiers seized $80 million to $100 million worth of crudely made, non-minted gold bars Sunday and detained three Iraqis heading east, possibly for the Iranian border, officials said Monday.

Soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, manning a routine checkpoint set up on the outskirts of Kirkuk, impounded the truck Sunday and detained the three occupants because the driver’s paperwork and identification did not match the vehicle registration, according to Maj. Kevin Petit, executive officer of the brigade based in Vicenza, Italy.

“That was the probable cause,” Petit said.

Inside the bed of the turquoise Mercedes dump truck were 999 bars of gold, each weighing about 22 pounds, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, which oversees military operations in northern Iraq. The military based its estimate of value on the weight of the gold.

The three occupants, two Kurds and one Turkmen, told the arresting soldiers and later intelligence officers they had been paid $300 cash to transport what they thought was melted down copper, Petit said. They still were in U.S. custody Monday afternoon for interrogations, he added.

The truck left Baghdad on Saturday and was on its way to As Sulaymaniya, near the border with Iran, he said. The soldiers stopped it Sunday about 10 a.m. at a checkpoint in the south side of town, which has been the site of previous checkpoints, he said.

For now, military leaders are leaning toward believing the three men’s story because no weapons were found in the truck, the trio did not put up any resistance when the dump truck was stopped or impounded, and the gold bars were not concealed in any way, Petit said.

The gold will be analyzed to determine its purity and exact value, and then sent to the Central Iraqi Treasury, Aberle said.

A reservist assigned to the 173rd who works in a gold and jewelry shop in the civilian world told military officials that the find likely was 21-carat gold, Petit said.

The 173rd soldiers who stopped and seized the booty were on patrol Monday afternoon when officials briefed reporters and were unavailable for interviews.

Two days earlier, soldiers stopped another Mercedes dump truck on its way toward the Syrian border hauling a load of 2,000 gold bars that look very similar to the ones seized Monday, he said.

Officials can’t say yet whether the two incidents are linked. “But they do look similar,” Petit said.

None of the drivers had proper documentation and gold is not a natural resource in Iraq, making the transport of so many bars highly suspicious, Aberle said.

Maybe, but I posted it here with a link from the News source yesterday. It is in the resent History Thread, with several more towards the end. There is lots of Gold, even more that is in other country's just waiting for proof that it belongs to Iraq.

Gloribee: You never cease to amaze me

we have a rumour too within my Corporate Oil state ... Iraq's best friend may well be a one time scud enemy and enemy of most freinds of Iraq.... which is that?


where else would that be with a rich flow of agricultural expertise? - ISRAEL of course but Talabani must hand over the olive branch for a change. Israel can help and change that region overnight, easily!


Pat.

As far as the agriculture issue is concerned, don't forget that at one time (prior to the Sadaam era) Iraq was the WORLD'S largest exporter of dates. So I believe that in time their agricultural areas will be resurrected to their former levels and this will contribute to Iraq's economy in a big way. Foodstuffs grown in their own country and the ability for some exports.

If I remember correctly, I read somewhere that Iraq also has the largest limestone deposits in the Middle East. Limestone is what you grind up to make cement. And cement is another product available to be exploited for export markets. When you see pictures of all the palaces in the Middle East you will have a hard time finding one that is constructed of primarily wood.

IMHO Iraq is a country which has a tremendous economic potential. Now all we have to do is get the Iraqi politicians to quit squabbling with each other about who gets what and who is responsible for what, get off their podiums and DO something about the value of the dinar.

Great Post Gloribee!

By all the articles and importance of the all, we forget sometimes other assets of iraq that are also very imporant!