i’ll scratch yur’ back, you scratch thine’

The peace dividend. Stability. Develop the real estate and construction industry to put the hordes of uneducated to work dragging material from point a to b. A rebuilding of the pyramids twenty-first century style underlied by the belief that a society that gets hooked on consumption and material acquistition with a generous dose of idolatry throw in, we be accumulative and less likely to encourage, incite or engage in violence. They’ll become pop culture junkies. The entire idea of resistance becomes sublimated to consumption and savings concerns: return on investement, social capital and the general pecking order hierarchy that defines and determines the cycles of fashions and fads. There is no more Sam Huntington and the Clash of Civilizations. Its normative democracy based on the law of private property. Even during the dark hours of Mubarak’s predictable fall, the smart money was buying Egyptian bonds at juicy 14%+ interest rates….

(see link at end)…Prime Minister Hisham Qandil said Egypt plans to sell sukuk, or Islamic bonds, after new legislation on the debt instrument is passed within three months, a step aimed at meeting the budget deficit….

—The turmoil in Syria is convenient for the United States, according to Prof. Zaki Shalom, a specialist on policy, security and international relations.
Prof. Shalom spoke to Arutz Sheva on Monday, and tried to explain why the Americans are remaining relatively silent as President Bashar Al-Assad continues to slaughter his own people.
He said that behind every U.S. move there are varied and complex interests, and that the Syrian issue is no different. He noted the upcoming election and said the White House prefers to keep any international conflicts to a minimum.
“They want to avoid embarrassment which would endanger the President’s position, a position that is not very good as it is,” said Prof. Shalom, adding that this is also the reason why the Americans are silent on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.
“Americans do not shed a tear over the fact that Syria is being weakened,” he added, saying that he believes that the Americans, unlike some of the Israelis, do not believe that the rebels are necessarily the ‘good guys’ in the Syrian turmoil.—Read More:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159844#.UE9N-qNb76M image:http://elderofziyon.blogspot.ca/2012/09/photos-burning-fayyad-in-effigy.html

“This is something we want to do to enlarge the engagement” of investors who “want to use this tool but are currently unable to,” Qandil said. After the legislation is prepared, “I hope they will be ready with one or two issuances,” he said, referring to the Finance Ministry.

Qandil, speaking in an interview in Cairo, said he had no further details on the possible issuance, which would be used along with sales of traditional domestic debt and international aid to meet the fiscal year’s budget deficit of 135 billion Egyptian pounds ($22 billion), or 7.6 percent of economic output. A loan agreement of as much as $4.8 billion with the International Monetary Fund is expected to be completed by the end of November, he said.

The deficit has been widening as economic growth slows. Egypt is targeting 4 percent to 4.5 percent growth in the fiscal year that ends in June, Qandil said. The economy probably grew between 2 percent and 2.5 percent in the past fiscal year, Planning Minister Ashraf Al Arabi said Sept. 3.


Herbert Marcuse:In all these aspects, the establishment of the Jewish State is not essentially different from the origins of practically all states in history: establishment by conquest, occupation, discrimination. (The endorsement by the United Nations does not alter this situation. The endorsement de facto recognized conquest.) “Accepting this accomplished fact, and accepting the basic historical goals the State of Israel has set for itself, the question arises: whether the State of Israel as presently constituted and under its present policies can be expected to achieve its own aim while existing as a progressive society in normally
peaceful relations with its neighbours.” I shall argue this question with reference to Israel’s boundaries as of 1948. Any annexation in whatever form would, in my opinion, already suggest a negative answer.—Read More:http://www.principiadialectica.co.uk/blog/?p=1983

The government is looking to revive an economy that has been hurt by political unrest since former president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February 2011. Since then, borrowing costs have surged by about 50 percent and reserves plunged by more than half.

Still, the country has started to show signs of recovery after IMF loan talks were restarted last month and Qatar pledged $2 billion in the form of a central bank deposit. The finance ministry sold three-month treasury-bills today at an average yield of 13.75 percent, the lowest level since November.

The premium investors demand to hold Egypt’s dollar- denominated debt has plunged 208 basis points, or 2.08 percentage points, to 418 basis points since Mohamed Mursi was declared the country’s first freely elected president on June 24, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s EMBIG Egypt Sovereign Spread Index. That compares with an eight-basis point increase for the Middle East average.

Red Hot Chili Pepper at the Western Wall—Traditionally, buying a home in a community in Judea and Samaria was considered a “political statement,” but in the current atmosphere of astronomical real estate prices throughout the entire country, the only statement Israelis are making today is about how they are searching for reasonably priced housing – something still available in many communities in Judea and Samaria.
Speaking to Arutz Sheva, attorney Neta Cohen-Salman, who has represented many homebuyers in Judea and Samaria, said that an important trend had developed among newly-married couples and young families seeking an affordable, quality of life community, to make their homes in Judea and Samaria for strictly economic reasons. …
One good example, she said, was Ariel, where there were still plenty of four room apartments under NIS 1 million, and as low as NIS 750,000 – while the price for similar homes in nearby Petach Tikvah could be as much as double for the same sized home. In Alfei Menashe, just minutes away from Kfar Sava and Rosh Ha’ayin, has attached cottages available for NIS 1.5 million – barely


what they cost jut a few kilometers away, in Kfar Sava. And in Ma’ale Adumin, just seven minutes away from Jerusalem, four room homes are going for NIS 900,000, far less than the NIS 1.6 million. Many communities in Judea and Samaria have English-speaking neighborhoods, making them perfect for new immigrant families.—Read More:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159838#.UE9R1aNb76M

The government plans to liberalize the power distribution industry, Qandil said, by allowing the private sector to buy natural gas either locally or from abroad, build and operate power plants, and use state grids to sell electricity.
Natural Gas

BP Plc is due to start preliminary work this week on a project to produce natural gas from a deep-water deposit in Egypt’s Mediterranean basin, Chief Executive Officer Robert Dudley said Sept. 3. The company, which estimates Egypt’s gas reserves to be Africa’s third-largest, is committed to investing $10 billion in gas exploration in the country over the next five years, he said….

—Flights from Damascus have been cancelled, at least one crossing into Iraq shut, and shells are landing close to the Jordanian border, but more than 246,000 refugees have already fled Syria and the exodus is growing, humanitarian agencies said on Friday.
Seventeen months after the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad begun, Syria remains convulsed by serious fighting between government troops and lightly-armed rebel fighters with few signs that either side is close to gaining the upper hand.
The violence, which has killed 20,000 people, has uprooted an estimated 1.2 million people within Syria and prompted tens of thousands to flee the country, according to the United Nations.—Read More:http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/07/us-syria-crisis-refugees-idUSBRE8860P620120907 image:http://reason.com/blog/2012/02/10/can-you-pass-the-beverly-hillbillies-tes

Qandil said the company’s investment is an example of his government’s intent on encouraging the participation of the private sector in the energy sector.

Egypt also plans to honor a Mubarak-era agreement for Qualified Industrial Zones, allowing Egyptian textiles producers to export to the U.S. duty-free under the condition they contain Israeli components, he said.

“A lot of people are making good business out of that,” Qandil said. “We want to make sure we do the right thing for them to flourish.”

Egypt doesn’t intend to devalue the local currency and will continue “proper management of the pound,” Qandil said. “For those businessmen that are waiting for the pound to devalue before getting into the market, they can get into the market now.”…

— In mohawks and goatees, ripped jeans and tattooed torsos, the five members of the Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton climbed onto the scarred hulks of the tanks, peered into the shaded trenches and watched a movie about the battle for Jerusalem in June, 1967.
They listened in perfect and respectful silence, craning their heads to see the depiction of the troop movements on the three-dimensional map of the city.
Their wild-man appearance notwithstanding, this should have come as no surprise.
Sabaton, one of the most popular heavy metal bands in Europe, is enamored of soldiers and with Israel. On this, the band’s third visit to Israel — and in the midst of a world tour – Sabaton decided to devote its only full day in the country to a tour of Ammunition Hill, followed by a visit to an IDF forward base on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.—Read More:http://www.timesofisrael.com/june-67-taught-them-respect-hard-rocking-israel-loving-swedes-embrace-the-army-sabaton/

The pound, subject to a managed float, has lost less than 5 percent since January 2011, outperforming the currencies of other emerging markets such as India and South Africa. The currency was little changed at 6.0919 a dollar on Sept. 7 after reaching 6.1084 on Sept. 4, the lowest level since December 2004. Read More:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-09/qandil-says-egypt-to-sell-sukuk-after-new-law-is-approved-1-.html

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