Monday, September 24, 2012
Iran Accuses German Siemens Of Sabotaging Its Nuclear Plant As Turkey Sends Heavy Weapons To Syria Border
It seems you can't turn your back on the Middle East for more than a few minutes without something going bump in the desert. Sure enough, a few shorts hours after we reported that the leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guards is certain war with Israel is coming, here comes Iran again with the stunning admission that none other than German industrial conglomerate, and occasional maker of nuclear power plants, Siemens was reponsible for "implanting tiny explosives inside equipment the Islamic Republic purchased for its disputed nuclear program. Prominent lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Iranian security experts discovered the explosives and removed them before detonation, adding that authorities believe the booby-trapped equipment was sold to derail uranium enrichment efforts. "The equipment was supposed to explode after being put to work, in order to dismantle all our systems," he said. "But the wisdom of our experts thwarted the enemy conspiracy." Expert wisdom aside, what is stunning is not the ongoing attempts by everyone and the kitchen sink to terminally corrupt the Iranian nuclear power plant: after Stuxnet one would expect nothing less than every form of conventional and "new normal" espionage thrown into the pot to cripple the only peaceful argument Iran would have for demanding nuclear power, which by implication would mean that all ongoing nuclear pursuits are geared solely toward aggressive, military goals, of the type that demand immediate military retaliation by the democratic superpowers. No, what is stunning is the implicit admission that Germany's, and Europe's, largest electrical engineering company, has been not only quietly transacting with none other than world peace (as portrayed by the MSM) enemy #1, Iran, but instrumental in its nuclear program.
Obviously it took a Stuxnet second before Siemens denied everything and then some. Via Reuters:
Siemens denied the charge and said its nuclear division has had no business with Iran since the 1979 revolution that led to its current clerical state.
"Siemens rejects the allegations and stresses that we have no business ties to the Iranian nuclear program," spokesman for the Munich-based company Alexander Machowetz said.
Oh well, Iran must have bought all those Siemens nuclear centrifuges, concrete dome and steam plant in near perfect condition on eBay from anonymous sellers (who accept PayPal and even credit cardsas long as the purchase does not have an Indonesian shipping address).
Iran, however, isn't afraid of trowing Siemens into even deeper water, alleging not only breach of international embargos, but also masterful sabotaging of ones own product:
Boroujerdi, who heads the parliamentary security committee, alleged that the explosives were implanted at a Siemens factory and demanded the company take responsibility.
There is of course another possibility: that the shipping address of the mysterious and anonymous ebay seller was somewhere in Langley, VA:
Some Iranian officials have also suggested in the past that specific European companies may have sold faulty equipment to Iran with the knowledge of American intelligence agencies and their own governments, since the sales would have harmed, rather than helped, the country's nuclear program.
According to Iran, the alleged campaign has included the abduction of scientists, the sale of faulty equipment and the planting of a destructive computer worm known as Stuxnet, which briefly brought Iran's uranium enrichment activity to a halt in 2010.
Certifying that there is undoubtedly a Jason Bourne episode in the works over this entire incident is the following:
Abbasi also told the U.N. nuclear agency in Vienna that "terrorists and saboteurs" might have infiltrated the International Atomic Energy Agency, after the watchdog's inspectors arrived at the Fordo underground enrichment facility shortly after power lines were blown up through sabotage on Aug. 17.
Iran has repeatedly accused the IAEA of sending spies in the guise of inspectors to collect information about its nuclear activities, pointing to alleged leaks of information by inspectors to U.S. and other officials.
Five nuclear scientists and researchers have been killed in Iran since 2010. Tehran blames the deaths on Israel's Mossad spy agency as well as the CIA and Britain's MI-6. Washington and London have denied any roles. Israel has not commented.
Boroujerdi said the alleged leaks of nuclear information to its adversaries by the IAEA may finally push Tehran to end all cooperation with the agency.
"Iran has the right to cut its cooperation with the IAEA should such violations continue," he said.
If anyone follows the game theory in this one, and has any idea who has not defected, or where the Nash equilibrium is at this point, please speak up. The rest of us just want the popcorn.
And in far simpler plotlines, Reuters reports that Syria (which for those who have a 15 minutes attention span, was accused three months ago by everyone, and certainly Hillary Clinton, of offensively taking down a Turkish plane before it turned out to be a self-defensive move, at which point the entire false flag story promptly disappeared as it could no longer be pre-spun) is once again being provoked by NATO-member Turkey, which is now deploying heavy armored vehicles and weapons to the border with Syria. The spin this time around:
The deployment is reportedly in an area where earlier this week Turkish civilians were wounded when stray bullets and shelling crossed the border from the Syrian province of al-Raqqa.
CNN Turk television said artillery fire had landed close to the Turkish border overnight, causing panic among local residents.
The Turkish army moved three Howitzers and one anti-aircraft weapon to the border, the channel said.
Turkey, a member of NATO, has conducted a number of troop deployments in recent months along its 911-km (566-mile) border with Syria, where rebels are fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
And on, and on, until the interminable foreplay finally ends, whenever one of the abovementioned democracies decides the quiet period is over, and the time for real GDP building (if only in a hard core Keynesian-cum-Krugman sense) once the ability to generate even one additional dollar in debt is no longer available, is upon us.
Zero Hedge
Silver smashed as 50% of US annual production dumped on market as paper in 5 minutes
Apparently Blythe’s monkey’s are burning the Sunday midnight oil in order to prevent silver clearing $36 and triggering JPM’s rumored silver derivative losses.
A miniature replica of the May 2nd, 2011 drive by shooting was just completed, as silver was knocked down the proverbial mine-shaft moments ago, dropping nearly a dollar in nano-seconds on Monday’s Asian open.
Volume data indicates that 3,297 contracts, or 16.5 million paper ounces of silver were dumped on the market in a mere 5 minutes between 9:00 and 9:05pm EST.
In other words, approximately 1/2 of the entire US annual silver production was dumped on the market by the cartel in a 5 minute period on a Sunday night.
Combined with Friday’s raid which saw the cartel dump 62.5 million ounces or 2x the US annual mine production on the market in 15 minutes, the cartel has now dumped 2.5 years worth of annual US silver mine production on the paper futures market in under 24 trading hours.
Silver was drifting under $34.50 prior to the raid which knocked .80 off the metal nearly instantaneously at precisely 9:00pm EST:
The t 1/2 of cartel raids dumping 6 month total US silver supply can now be measured in minutes, as silver is back above $34.
Gold was also knocked nearly $8 lower to $1761:
Steve Quayle
Textron’s Flying Bomb
Textron Defense Systems has a new flying drone that’s designed to explode on contact with enemy positions.
The compact BattleHawk Squad Level Loitering Munition is armed with a 40mm high-fragmentation charge. It has a video camera built into its nose, so ground troops can remotely pilot it over rooftops or hills to attack hiding enemy forces.
The BattleHawk weighs about five pounds when it’s packed inside its special launching tube. A spring propels the drone into the air and the electric motor starts up the tiny, rear propeller.
“Once it’s launched, it’s armed,” Mick Guthals, director of Business Strategy & Capture at Textron, said while displaying the BattleHawk at the Air Force Association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. Sept. 17–19.
Using a small remote control, ground troops can fly the BattleHawk at speeds up to 60 miles per hour for approximately 30 minutes. The BattleHawk is designed to attack dismounted enemy and light-skinned vehicles, Textron officials said.
So far, the BattleHawk has been an in-house project at Textron, but Guthals said U.S. Special Operations Command units have shown interest in the carbon-fiber, flying explosive. Textron hopes to market it to conventional infantry units as well, he said.
Textron officials would not talk price, but did say the BattleHawk should cost “considerably less” than a similar-sized unmanned aerial vehicle, Guthals said.
Read more: http://defensetech.org/2012/09/19/textrons-remote-controlled-flying-bomb/#ixzz27Ig9IIx2
Defense.org
Gold Counterfeiting Goes Viral: 10 Tungsten-Filled Gold Bars Are Discovered In Manhattan
The Post has learned as many as 10 fake gold bars — made up mostly of relatively worthless tungsten — were sold recently to unsuspecting dealers in Manhattan’s Midtown Diamond District.
The 10-oz. gold bars are hugely popular with Main Street investors, and it is not known how many of the fake gold bars were sold to dealers — or if any fake bars were purchased by the public.
As is to be expected, the Post story is weak on details: after all, any dealer who admits to having allowed Tungsten to enter his or her inventory can kiss their retail business goodbye, as customers will avoid said Tungsten outlet like the plague, for the simple reason that suddenly counterparty risk has migrated from Wall Street to the Diamond District. The one named dealer is the same one who already made an appearance in the previous story on Tungsten in gold's clothing.
One gold dealer discovered that four of the 3-inch-by-1-inch gold bars he bought — worth about $72,000 retail — were counterfeit.
“It has the entire street on edge,” said Ibrahim Fadl, 62, who has been the owner of Express Metal Refining, a Midtown gold-refinery business, for the last 11 years. “I and the others on the street work off of trust; now that trust is strained.”
Fadl, a Columbia University graduate with a master’s degree in chemical engineering, and who has more than 40 years in the industry, purchased the four fake bars from a well-known Russian salesman with whom he has done business.
Ah yes, those pesky Russians: always happy to do the Fed's bidding, because who really gains from the loss of confidence in physical gold?
Fadl became suspicious when he offered the salesman a deep discount for the investment-grade gold bars and he quickly accepted it, a source tells The Post.
Fadl said he did his due diligence “by X-raying the bars to ascertain the purity of the gold and weighing the bars, and the Swiss markings were perfect.”
Tungsten is an industrial metal that weighs nearly the same as gold but costs a little over $1 an ounce. Gold closed Friday at $1,774.80 an ounce.
We wish Fadl all the best in his liquidation sale. Others, for logical reasons, are far less willing to step forward:
A second 47th Street refiner, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was burned recently when he bought six gold bars that turned out to be mostly tungsten, with just a gold veneer. He would not comment, though, on who sold him the bogus bars.
The counterfeiting so far appears to have impacted solely PAMP (Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux ) gold bars, madeby MTB, whose CEO can hardly be too happy that some "Russian" has made it a life mission to destroy the credibility of any gold stamped with the PAMP stamp.
Raymond Nassim, CEO of Manfra, Tordell & Brookes, the American arm of the Swiss firm that created the original gold bars — with their serial number and purity rating stamped clearly into them — said he reported the situation to the US Secret Service, whose jurisdiction covers the counterfeiting of gold bars.
He said his company “is supporting and cooperating with authorities any way we can.”
Nassim thought the culprit must be a professionally trained jeweler to have pulled off the caper.
“The forger had to slice the original bar along the side, hollow out the gold and insert the tungsten ingot, and then reseal and polish the bar, Nassim said.
The case of gold counterfeiting has already taken NYC by storm:
At an industry dinner Thursday night hosted by Comex, the New York-based metals exchange, the room was abuzz with talk about the bogus gold bars, according to Fadl.
Which was also to be expected. What is also to be expected is that as more and more stories of Tungsten making it into broader gold circulation, that retail sales of physical gold will certainly be impaired as end consumers become far more cautious about what they buy.
And while we await more information, especially from the Secret Service, who is "on top" of this case, which we assume implies that gold is after all money, we leave readers with our conclusion from Tuesday: "with false flags rampant these days, we would not be surprised if this is merely yet another attempt to discredit gold, this time physical, as an undilutable medium of warehousing wealth. So buyer beware: in a time when everyone is broke, triple check before exchanging one store of wealth for another."
For those curious what a fake 10oz bar looks like, here it is again:
Zero Hedge
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