Now we have gone from February, to March, and now May for having HCL done? I tell you, there is just no belief in the parliament anymore on what they say.
Printable View
Egypt removes Iraq pro-insurgency channel from air
26 Feb 2007 18:42:39 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Cynthia Johnston
CAIRO, Feb 26 (Reuters) - An Egyptian state-run satellite firm has stopped transmitting an Iraqi channel whose footage of U.S. soldiers being blown up by Sunni insurgents infuriated Washington, an Egyptian broadcasting official said on Monday.
Analysts pointed to U.S. and Arab diplomatic pressure as a likely reason, although satellite service provider Nilesat said the anti-U.S. al-Zawraa channel was removed from the air because it created a "buzz" that interfered with other channels.
"We discovered lately that there is a buzz on the whole transponder which al-Zawraa transmits through," Amin Bassiouni, chairman of Egypt's Nilesat, told Reuters.
"So we began to feel this is dangerous for the satellite itself ... We stopped it at once. And when we stopped Zawraa, the buzz stopped," he added. He said the broadcasts were stopped on Saturday.
Al-Zawraa, which had been broadcast by Nilesat for more than a year, angered Washington and Iraq by showing bloody images of attacks by Sunni insurgents, including some in which U.S. soldiers were killed.
Washington and Iraq had voiced concerns over the channel with the Egyptian government. But Arab media said Egypt initially resisted pleas to stop transmissions.
U.S. embassy officials declined to comment, and Egyptian officials could not be immediately reached.
Arab media have reported that Egypt had said it could not interfere with a purely business deal between al-Zawraa and Nilesat, and that Egypt was not responsible for the content of the channel.
But Egypt, a key ally of Washington in the Middle East, has not shied away from attempting to silence Egyptian and Arab media whose message either criticises the Egyptian government or offends sensibilities.
An Al-Jazeera producer is currently facing trial over a planned documentary on torture in Egyptian police stations, and an opposition blogger was sentenced to four years in jail last week for insulting both Islam and President Hosni Mubarak.
Independent Cairo-based analyst Josh Stacher said of the al-Zawraa move: "This thing has all the hallmarks of having some sort of quiet diplomatic resolution."
"Maybe it was the United States or maybe it was other Arab governments like Saudi Arabia and Jordan telling them to turn it off because it's really sort of hurting the Sunni-Shi'ite divide," he added. Al-Zawraa has also been widely seen as anti-Shi'ite.
Egypt was friendly with former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1980s but fell out with him over Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Cairo opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, but has since said U.S. troops should stay in Iraq until law and order is restored.
Last month, Egypt's foreign minister expressed support for a U.S. plan to send more troops to Iraq to help the government improve security, especially in the capital. Egypt has also expressed concerns that rival Iran was trying to spread Shi'ite Islam in Arab countries, including Iraq..
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26717493.htm
the post by dave titled ' THE PLAN ' # 400 is absolutely fantastic.
Is there any info on the author ?
thanks
Iraq VP survives bomb, cabinet backs oil law
26 Feb 2007 18:49:38 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds Maliki's comments)
By Ahmed Rasheed and Ibon Villelabeitia
BAGHDAD, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite vice president and a cabinet minister were wounded in an apparent assassination attempt on Monday when a bomb killed six people at a ministry in Baghdad where they were attending a ceremony.
While militants defied a security crackdown in Baghdad, the cabinet endorsed a draft oil law crucial to regulating how wealth from Iraq's vast reserves would be shared by its ethnic and sectarian groups, a move hailed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as a "pillar for the unity of Iraqis".
Settling potentially explosive disputes over the world's third largest oil reserves has been a top demand of Washington to maintain its support for Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist who leads a unity government of Shi'ites, ethnic Kurds and Sunni Arabs.
Police said Public Works Minister Riad Ghareeb, a Shi'ite, was seriously wounded when the bomb exploded in a meeting hall. Aides to Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said he escaped with light shrapnel wounds. One police source said the death toll could be as high as 12. The bomb wounded 31 people.
Maliki, under pressure to quell violence threatening to plunge the country into all-out civil war, vowed to hunt down those responsible for the attack.
Iraqi leaders are often targeted by militants on either side of the sectarian divide. The bomb attack came despite a major new U.S.-backed crackdown aimed at ridding Baghdad's lawless streets of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shi'ite militias.
One witness told Reuters the force of the blast had thrown Abdul-Mahdi against a wall at the ministry, in the Sunni Arab neighbourhood of Mansour in western Baghdad.
"All his guards threw themselves on top of him," he said.
His aides said he was later discharged from hospital.
"He has light shrapnel wounds in different parts of his body but it is not serious," a political source from the ruling Shi'ite Alliance said, referring to the vice president.
Abdul-Mahdi is one of Iraq's two vice presidents. The other is Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab.
The cause of the blast was under investigation. Militants are increasingly using suicide vests to launch attacks because of tighter checks on roads aimed at reducing car bombs.
Ghareeb's deputy had also been taken to hospital. Several senior ministry officials were among those killed, police said.
Around 100,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops have been deployed in Baghdad, the epicentre of Iraq's violence, over the past two weeks to implement the security plan. But car bombings and suicide attacks have continued, piling pressure on Maliki.
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS
Iraq's vast oil reserves are concentrated in the Kurdish north and the Shi'ite south, so sharing its oil revenues is one of the country's most sensitive issues.
Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein but now the backbone of the insurgency, fear a bad deal will seal their political doom in oil-deprived central and western Iraq.
The draft oil law, which now goes for a vote in parliament, could unlock billions of dollars in foreign investment Iraq badly needs to revive its shattered economy.
It was endorsed with the backing of the Kurds, who had been haggling over the terms of some articles.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, head of the committee that drafted the law, told Reuters that Iraq's leaders had pledged to have the law enacted by the end of May after it is approved by parliament.
Speaking later to reporters, Maliki said: "The benefits of this wealth will form a firm pillar for the unity of Iraqis and consolidate their social structure."
The attack on the vice president came when President Jalal Talabani was in Jordan undergoing medical tests after suffering extreme exhaustion and dehydration.
His office said Talabani's life was not in danger, and denied media reports that he had undergone heart surgery. (Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Claudia Parsons, Mussab Al-Khairalla and Dean Yates in Baghdad)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO661076.htm
Of course they arn't going to tell you what they are doing step by step that would make it to easy for speculation we have seen before where they give a date miss it keep us in the dark give another date push it back then turn around and make it happen before the date all part of the game I will bet its done and dusted and enacted before the April Oil summit
Well, if that ends up being the case, i hope the boys from Exxon sitting on the border brought some extra cases of SPF150, and extra beer too for that matter, or its gonna be a miserable wait!:wigged:
On the real, i wonder if they would be allowed to set up their equipment at the site, with the drill bit poised one inch above the sand, waiting for the word in the Gazette that the HCL is live and online, or if they have to keep waiting at the border...
End of May ?.........This has got to be another smoke screen. Iraqi govt, has got to reval their currency and set a final rate for their country.
Interest rates are getting higher
Sectarian killings are everywhere
Foreign investors and investment projects can go down the drain
Iraqi people are loosing trust in their govt, or already lost trust
and then some.....
Also why would the Iraq Govt work overtime to get this Oil Law passed ????
I smell a big smoke screen do you ?
John B. Taylor Published: February 26, 2007
STANFORD, California: Earlier this month, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing that criticized the decision to ship American currency into Iraq just after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
As the committee's chairman, Henry Waxman of California, put it in his opening statement, "Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" That attracted wide attention, feeding antiwar sentiment and providing material for comedians.
A careful investigation of the facts behind the currency shipment paints a far different picture.
GOOD READ
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02...ylor.php?page=1
lazyasl: the good read does not come up. I have been trying
to find the author it was posted #400.
مؤكداً على ان ميزانية 2007 تفترض سعر صرف عند 1260 دينارا مقابل الدولار مضيفا أن مجلس الوزراء سينا قش مشروع الميزانية على أمل رفعها الى البرلمان ال اسبوع المقبل.He emphasized that the 2007 budget assumes the exchange rate at 1260 Kuwaiti dinars to the dollar, adding that the cabinet Sena straw in the hope of the draft budget submitted to the Parliament next week.
This is my opion after sitting here and reading over this post about the dinar and trying to clear through all the smoke that they keep setting off. We have seen this post and the above comment numerous times and the talk of the 1260 rate and the kuwait dinar which some say was a miss-print which in my mind i dont see how you can make a misprint like that twice. everyone say's that the 1260 rate wont work, but if you convert the dollar to the kuwait rate you come up with 0.2891 and you divide that by the 1260 dinar rate that we keep seeing; you come up with the number of 2.294 which i think is a good number between the kuwait dinar and the iraq dinar. does anyone else have some insight if this maybe possible and is this one more smoke screan they keep putting out to confuse us all. what do you all think??
An expert in the Iraqi Central Bank expected that positive effects, in the long perspective, will result from the monetary policy of the Bank in fighting inflation through raising the exchange rate of the Iraqi dinar. The Director-General of the Statistics and Research Center in the Iraqi Central Bank, Madhar Muhammad Salih, said that the Bank seeks within its reforms to establish a modern and developed infrastructure for the central banking in Iraq through strengthening the payment systems that link the Central Bank to the banks working with automatic systems. He pointed out that this mechanism will enable the Central Bank to lend banks daily, when they are exposed to some of problems in the availability of liquidity, as well as reducing the risk of manipulation and fraud since this mechanism contains a high level of secrecy and confidentiality.
Salih revealed that there are procedures related to the development of bonds auction and remittances of the Central Bank, as well as encouraging open market operations; stressing its deep impact on liquidity ratios and growth of cash blocs. He explained that the sales rates in an auction increased from 200 billion dinars, after being 100 billion dinars each auction previously.
Salih called on following a coordinated financial policy with the Central Bank monetary policy to reach an economic stability based on the promotion of investment expenditure and reduce consumer spending in a way that helps in operating unemployed energies in economy, whether materialistic or human, as well as fighting against poverty and achieve the welfare of the poor within the social protection systems, stressing the need to focus the consumer expenditure upon these sectors, which requires reconsidering the support activities that must be given to the production sector as a priority, but not at the expense of the health, service and educational sectors.
http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=3260
If the Cabinet has approved the oil law, reading from yahoo,--
Iraqi Cabinet approves draft oil law - Yahoo! News
my question is when does parliament reconvene early next month?
Does anyone know the exact date they start back up???
Okay, Ladies and Gents............a quick question. International currency rates float according what is called a "SDR" controlled by the IMF right? If this is in fact the case, if we find out what the SDR rate is it will allow us to better understand and support the Dinar Devil Dog theory. When purchasing foriegn currency, your conversion is done through a decimal rating for that day/hr? If Kuwait is 3.45 to 1 US but is coverted by .2891 there has to be a mathematical way to convert the dollar rate as a decimal, other then 1. I say this because what I have read makes me believe that the SDR is based upon an average of a couple currencies vice one (EURO,YEN, DOLLAR). Any thoghts are very encouraged. Both Dinar Devil Dog and I work together and are trying to make sense of this information.
Taking it just a small step further, I was checking out the currency rates this morning in the Wall Street Journal. In the ME currency section there is no currency listed which has a zero as the first digit to the right side of the decimal point except Lebanon. Iran is not listed. We all know what a CF Lebanon is and Iraq is currently in and Iraq is in a similar situation, but I would submit, not as bad.
Iraqi's say they want to return to the former rate. They have the resources to back it up. Barring a total societal meltdown they are going to get there.
The moral of the story, Paulie, dont give up!
Dollars to dinars: We did get the money to Iraq
John B. Taylor
Monday, February 26, 2007
STANFORD, California: Earlier this month, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing that criticized the decision to ship American currency into Iraq just after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
As the committee's chairman, Henry Waxman of California, put it in his opening statement, "Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" That attracted wide attention, feeding antiwar sentiment and providing material for comedians.
A careful investigation of the facts behind the currency shipment paints a far different picture.
The currency that was shipped into Iraq in the days after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government was part of a successful financial operation that had been carefully planned months before the invasion.
Its aims were to prevent a financial collapse in Iraq, put the financial system on a firm footing and pave the way for a new Iraqi currency.
Contrary to the criticism that such currency shipments were ill-advised or poorly-monitored , this financial plan was carried out with precision and was a complete success.
The plan, which had two stages, was designed to work for Iraq's cash economy, in which checks or electronic funds transfers were virtually unknown and shipments of tons of cash were commonplace.
In the first stage, the United States would pay Iraqi government employees and pensioners in U.S. dollars. These were obtained from Saddam's accounts in American banks, which were frozen after he attacked Kuwait in 1990 and amounted to about $1.7 billion. The second stage was to print a new Iraqi currency for which Iraqis could exchange their old dinars.
The final details of the plan were reviewed President George W. Bush and the National Security Council on March 12, 2003. I attended that meeting.
President Bush approved the plan with the understanding that we would review the options for a new Iraqi currency later, when we knew the situation on the ground.
To carry out the first stage of the plan, President Bush issued an executive order on March 20, 2003, instructing United States banks to relinquish Saddam's frozen dollars. From that money, 237.3 tons in $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills were sent to Iraq.
During April, U.S. Treasury officials in Baghdad worked with the military and the Iraqi Finance Ministry officials who had painstakingly kept the payroll records despite the looting of the ministry to make sure the right people were paid.
The Iraqis supplied extensive documentation of each recipient of a pension or paycheck. Treasury officials who watched over the payment process in Baghdad in those first few weeks reported a culture of good record keeping.
On April 29, Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who headed the reconstruction effort in Iraq at the time, reported to Washington that the payments had lifted the mood of people in Baghdad during those first few confusing days. Even more important, a collapse of the financial system was avoided.
This success paved the way for the second stage of the plan. In only a few months, 27 planeloads (747 jumbo jets) of new Iraqi currency were flown into Iraq from seven printing plants around the world. Armed convoys delivered the currency to 240 sites around the country, from where it was distributed to 25 million Iraqis in exchange for their old dinars, which were then dyed, collected into trucks, shipped to incinerators and burned or simply buried.
The new currency proved to be very popular. It provided a sound underpinning for the financial system and remains strong, appreciating against the dollar even in the past few months. Hence, the second part of the currency plan was also a success.
The story of the currency plan is one of several that involved large sums of cash. For example, just before the war, Saddam Hussein stole $1 billion from the Iraqi central bank. American soldiers found that money in his palaces and shipped it to a base in Kuwait, where the U.S. Army's 336th Finance Command kept it safe. To avoid any appearance of wrongdoing, American soldiers in Kuwait wore pocket-less shorts and T-shirts whenever they counted the money.
Later, American forces used the found cash to build schools and hospitals, and to repair roads and bridges. General David Petraeus has described these projects as more successful than the broader reconstruction effort.
But that wasn't the only source of dollars. Because the new Iraqi dinar was so popular, the central bank bought billions of U.S. dollars to keep it from appreciating too much. As a result, billions in cash accumulated in the vaults of the central bank. Later, with American help, the Iraqi central bank deposited these billions at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, where they could earn interest.
Finally, when Iraq started to earn dollars selling oil, the United States transferred the cash revenue to the Finance Ministry, where it was used to finance government operations, including salaries and reconstruction.
Many of these transfers occurred in 2004, long after the financial stabilization operation had concluded. Iraqi Finance Ministry officials had already demonstrated that they were serious about keeping the controls they had in place. The 360 tons mentioned by Henry Waxman includes these transfers as well as the 237.2 tons shipped in 2003 in the stabilization.
One of the most successful and carefully planned operations of the war has been held up in this hearing for criticism and even ridicule.
As these facts show, praise rather than ridicule is appropriate: praise for the brave experts in the U.S. Treasury who went to Iraq in April 2003 and established a working Finance Ministry and central bank, praise for the Iraqis in the Finance Ministry who carefully preserved payment records in the face of looting, praise for the American soldiers in the 336th Finance Command who safely kept found money, and yes, even praise for planning and follow-through back in the United States.
Sorry for my english writing but im from Norway!!!!!! Its al over the news in norway to night ....the iraq parliment has finaly agread of the oil law told the iraq vise prim minister Barham Sahli Reuters he says they wil implement it whitin may and in Norway they says it will mean a lot for DNO the Norwegian oil company that has gambeld and drilling foe oil in iraq
WOOT WOOT WOOT
JIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIII
I love this article. So the first and second stages were major successes...now for the third part. With the HCL going to parliment (god willing) we shall see what the real reason for all of this was and is...
Keep those fingers crossed and the dinar safe....we are in for a rollercoaster ride over the next few months (leading up to the oil summit).
Ok. They say that the Iraq currency during Sadams era is incorrect and that it was an artificial rate set by Sadam himself.
But I have been seing this statement for over 3 years now.
it is the hope of many Iraqis in restoring currency was Mya Yugoslavia and strength they were during Alsafi intents and 1980s, as the official exchange rate of the dinar is more than three de lari one of the dinar
Now looking at this chart PTG provided as:
To me, it is just another way of the Iraqis saying that they want a high exchange rate and they are referencing the 80's, which is between $3.22 and $3.39, so that there will be no arguement from anyone regarding artificial rate set by Sadam.
Whether they plan to get there from the time they RV or after number of years, it looks to me like they want a final rate to be that high because that chart shows that they have been there before and that know they can be there again!
Just thought of sharing my observation and gut feeling.
Remember, Iraqis are very rpoud people and their exchange rate do really matter to them!
Mtgrown
Iraqi Cabinet Approves Draft of Oil Law
New York Times
By EDWARD WONG
Published: February 26, 2007
BAGHDAD, Feb. 26 — The Iraqi cabinet approved a draft of a law today that would set guidelines for countrywide distribution of oil revenues and foreign investment in the immense oil industry.
The endorsement marked a major agreement among the country’s ethnic and sectarian political blocs on one of Iraq’s most divisive issues.
The draft law approved by the cabinet allows the central government to distribute oil revenues to the provinces or regions by population, which could lessen the economic concerns of the rebellious Sunni Arabs, who fear being cut out of Iraq’s vast potential oil wealth by the dominant Shiites and Kurds.
The law also grants regional oil companies the power to sign contracts with foreign companies for exploration and development of fields, opening the door for investment by foreign oil companies in a country whose oil reserves rank among the world’s top three in size.
Iraq has 80 known fields, 65 of which will be offered up for bids for development contracts once the draft law is approved by the Iraqi Parliament, said Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister. The 275-member Parliament is in recess but is expected to look at the draft once it reconvenes next month, Mr. Shahristani said. Ahead of today’s cabinet vote, the main Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish political blocs had agreed to work together to ensure that the law passes Parliament in an expeditious manner, he added.
Since last year, senior Bush administration officials and top American commanders here have said a new oil law is crucial to the country’s political and economic development, and they have been pressuring Iraqi leaders to make passage of the law a priority. In recent weeks, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the senior American envoy here, has been in intense talks with Kurdish leaders in the north to overcome their objections to the draft. Iraqi officials say Mr. Khalilzad’s negotiations were crucial to winning unanimous cabinet approval today.
Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraqi politics has often been split bitterly along ethnic and sectarian lines, and that kind of conflict could still stall passage of the oil law in Parliament. Drafts have been debated for months by a committee overseeing the writing of the law before the cabinet finally approved it.
“At the end of the day, we all supported this thing because it’s workable for all the parties and is all-inclusive,” said Barham Salih, a deputy prime minister and the head of the committee.
Several members of the committee said in interviews that they were confident that Parliament would ultimately endorse the law, but perhaps only after heated arguments.
“It will be tough,” Mr. Salih said. “I want to admit it and I want to recognize that. It will be an interesting roller coaster, my friends.”
The writers of the draft law tried to balance regional control of oil versus oversight by the central government, an issue directly tied to the widening violence in Iraq.
The minority Sunni Arabs, who ruled Iraq for decades before the toppling of Saddam Hussein and are now leading the insurgency, have chafed at rule by the Shiites and Kurds partly because they fear those two groups might hoard oil wealth for themselves. Most of Iraq’s crude oil reserves lie in the Shiite south and Kurdish north. Sunni Arab leaders have resisted attempts by the Kurds and some Shiite politicians to create laws allowing for greater regional autonomy.
The draft oil law says that all revenues from current and future oil fields will be collected by the central government and redistributed to regional or provincial governments by population, in theory ensuring an equitable distribution of oil. This could help calm Sunni Arabs hostile to Kurdish and Shiite autonomy.
The attitudes of Sunni Arabs could also soften if more oil exploration is done on their lands. Iraqi officials recently increased their estimates of the amount of oil and natural gas deposits on Sunni Arab territory after paying tens of millions to foreign oil companies to re-examine old seismic data across the country and retrain Iraqi petroleum engineers.
The drafters of the law reached agreement on the principle of revenue-sharing fairly early in the process. Much more contentious was the issue of signing oil contracts. The Kurds, who have enjoyed de facto independence in the mountainous north since the Persian Gulf war ended in 1991, argued strongly for regional governments to have full power in signing contracts with companies to develop oil fields. Sunni Arab leaders insisted on keeping this power in the hands of the Oil Ministry, and the Shiites fell somewhere in the middle.
The draft law has a compromise: regions can enter into contracts, but a powerful new central body called the Federal Oil and Gas Council would have the power to “prevent” the contracts from going forward if they do not meet certain prescribed standards, Mr. Salih said. A panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq would advise the federal council on the contracts.
Much of the wrangling over the draft law stemmed from the minutiae of language. Kurdish leaders insisted that the law not give the federal council the power to “approve” contracts signed by the regional governments. The council should only be able to “reject” contracts, the leaders said. In the end, Kurdish and Arab leaders compromised by agreeing to give the federal council the power to “prevent” contracts, Mr. Salih said.
This is the greatest news i've heard. This is all over the major news media. ITs almost as if the cabinet approval outwieghs the actual vote in parliament. I believe that the cabinet approval WAS the big hurdle for a R/V. The oil minster himself says that passage will not only hapen but it will happen quickly. Here i my first woot. WOOOOOTTTTT:party: :party: :beer: :beer:
If they peg the dinar does this mean we can't cash in here we have to go over there Iraq to exchange?