'Iran pressures EU not to side with US'

Interview with Arun Gupta, editor of The Indypendent

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So a lot of it (Iran’s oil) is being bought by India, China and other Asian powers and I think what Iran is trying to do is to put some pressure on the Europeans not to side with the US.”

Iran says it will cut oil exports to 6 European states, unless European companies agree to strike long-term agreements and guarantee payment to the country.

Earlier, Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the ambassadors of France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece and Portugal to inform them of the decision. The move comes after a decision by the European Union to stop importing crude from Iran as of July.

Iran called the oil sanctions illegal and promised to respond by cutting oil to the EU. Oil prices have jumped to their highest levels in six months following Wednesday's news. Brent crude is traded at about 120 dollars a barrel - up about two dollars. US crude has risen about 1.3 dollars to more than 100 dollars.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Arun Gupta, editor of The Indypendent from New York, to further talk over the issue. What follows is the transcript of the interview:

Press TV: How significant a step and decision is this by Iran, that of cutting oil exports to these specific European states?

Gupta: I think certainly it is all maneuvering in terms of the US and Israel trying to put pressure on Iran but what we have to understand about the global oil markets is that [for] the buyers, it does not really matter. You know, Iran is selling much of its oil internationally anyway. It goes into one giant pool, so to speak.

So a lot of it is being bought by India, China and other Asian powers and I think what Iran is trying to do is to put some pressure on the Europeans not to side with the US but the Europeans have consistently shown that they essentially act as junior partners in Washington’s wars.

I think it is more symbolic than is somewhat a bluster on Iran’s part, but I think it does get to the deeper issue of how Europe and the United States are illegally trying to pressure Iran over its nuclear energy program.

Press TV: Mr. Gupta, won’t the very real consequence of this decision by Iran be on crude prices?

Gupta: It is more a fear factor because the European nations, the United States, Japan, they have strategic reserves and in these strategic reserves is something like 7 billion barrels.

These are precisely put in place to be able to allow the US to punish countries, oil-producing countries that it does not agree with.

In the case of Iran, these strategic reserves would be able to essentially make up for something like 3 years of keeping Iranian oil off the market. So there already is a pretty high fear factor in the markets.

You know, we have seen some spikes but nothing dramatic that we have seen around other wars like the Persian Gulf War or the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003.

MSK/JR

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Moody's may downgrade UBS and Morgan Stanley

By Ian Chua and Soyoung Kim

(Reuters) - Moody's warned on Thursday it may cut the credit ratings of 17 global and 114 European financial institutions in another sign the impact of the euro zone government debt crisis is spreading throughout the global financial system.
It was reviewing the long-term ratings and standalone credit assessments of a range of banks, Moody's added. Markets were unaffected by the Moody's announcement.
"Capital markets firms are confronting evolving challenges, such as more fragile funding conditions, wider credit spreads, increased regulatory burdens and more difficult operating conditions," the ratings agency said in a statement.
It said among 17 banks and securities firms with global capital markets operations, it might cut the long-term credit rating of UBS, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley by as much as three notches following the review. It said the guidance was indicative.
Among the banks that might be downgraded by two notches are Barclays, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings, and Goldman Sachs.
Bank of America and Nomura were included in those that might be downgraded by one notch.
The U.S. rating agency said in a separate statement its action on 114 financial institutions from 16 European nations reflected the impact of the debt crisis and deteriorating creditworthiness of its governments.
It cited more fragile funding conditions, increased regulatory burdens and a tougher economic environment for its review of banks and securities firms with global reach.
Moody's salvo follows rounds of downgrades in European sovereign ratings as the euro zone's struggle to keep its weakest link Greece afloat has been driving up borrowing costs and straining finances of other nations.
Last Monday, Moody's cut the ratings of six European nations including Italy, Spain and Portugal and warned it could strip France, Britain and Austria of their top-level AAA grade.
Standard & Poor's cut France's and Austria's top ratings and downgraded seven other euro zone nations last month. It also cut the euro zone's bailout fund by one notch.
Moody's on Thursday also downgraded the insurance financial strength ratings (IFSR) by one or two notches of several insurance companies, which it said related to their investment and operating exposures to Spain and Italy.
These included Unipol Assicurazioni SpA, Mapfre Global Risks, Assicurazioni Generali SpA and Allianz SpA. It affirmed the IFSR of Allianz SE, AXA SA, Aviva Plc and their subsidiaries, but cut the outlook on the rating to negative from stable.
VICIOUS CIRCLE
Asian shares and the euro were weaker on Thursday on concerns about another delay in cementing a bailout for Greece. Traders said markets didn't not show any specific reaction to the Moody's announcement.
In its review of European financial institutions, Moody's said that once completed, the ratings would "fully reflect the currently foreseen adverse credit drivers."
European banks' bond holdings of struggling euro zone nations Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy have trapped Europe in a vicious circle.
The falling value of the debt puts pressure on banks, which in turn weighs on lending and economic activity, making it tougher to sustain the growth that governments badly need to shore up their finances.
The biggest single group among the 114 institutions under review were headquartered in Italy, followed by Spain, with more than 20 each. Nine were headquartered in Britain, 10 in France and seven in Germany.
Moody's said nine of the 17 banks with global reach are included in the list of 114 financial institutions in Europe.
European Union leaders have been trying to put a financial "firewall" around the nations most afflicted by the euro zone debt crisis.
But jittery market sentiment suffered a fresh setback on Wednesday when several EU sources told Reuters that the euro zone was considering a delay in parts of a second bailout plan for Greece.
Moody's said that for 99 European financial institutions, the standalone credit assessments have been placed on review for downgrade. For 109 institutions, the long-term debt and deposit ratings have been placed on review for downgrade.
For 66 institutions, the short-term ratings have been placed on review for downgrade.
(Additional reporting by Wayne Cole in Sydney: Writing by Tomasz Janowski and Neil Fullick; Editing by Ramya Venugopal)

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Easter Bunny, Jesus Jerky on a Gone Dead American Train.

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

May your noses always be cold and wet.

Few things sum up American culture and the decline of the west as well as something like this. America isn't really a country. Most people aren't aware of that. It's a time sensitive experiment, having a material experience. There is no real tradition. Everybody came from everywhere else and brought their traditions with them. Of course, there was a tradition already in place, which needed to be destroyed, so that something crass, creepy and crepuscular, could eventually morph into the Twilight series of sexy, sanitized vampires, with a really high fuckability index, in a public humping offer on Dow Jones. Of course, they're not the vampires that sucked the life, love and liberty out of this failed experiment, they only play them on TV. The real vampires slink through the marketplace, with their bendable flavor straws in hand, looking for the necks of opportunity, in a no neck paradise of stunted proles and Easter Bunny, Jesus Jerky for communion wafers.

We're here in the land of the free, on bended knee, in the First Church of the Dual Nationals, where routine mass murder is 100% kosher. Well tan my noahide, pilgrim. It's looks like you are the Thanksgiving turkey.

I can feel the bottled outrage over my telepathic landlines, picking my way through the politically correct landmines, in search of one temporary piece of sane and sober Earth to stand on. Tiny nano-tech gerbils are having a rave in my colon, which leads to that uneasy, wish to be pleasing feeling that Richard Gere probably gets when he's standing in front of the Daily Lama and trying to figure out the punch line to one hand clapping. Yes, I can feel the outrage of all the patriotic, Tweedle Dees and Tweedle Dums, sucking on their thumbs and spanking their monkeys to a red, white and blue, nightmare vagina, violated by mutants with farm implements, that makes Last Exit to Brooklyn read like a child’s bedtime story by comparison. What right do I have to trash this great nation under Zog? Well, I have no right. Actually, lets say I have no rights, left. Bush and Obama have taken care of that; political Siamese twins in a hot oil, mud wrestling match; I can't believe it's not mud! They're wrestling in the flatulent winds of their diseased imaginations. They have no shame and they have no sorrow and karmically speaking they have no tomorrow. They are the conductor and engineer on a gone dead train and Hell follows after. The definition of stupid is anyone who still thinks Obama has anything in common with anything he said, during his hope and change redundancy moments, prior to all the new wars and relentless economic violence he's unleashed on the public at the behest of his Wall Street masters.

Lloyd Blankfein is now the “national corporate spokesman for same-sex marriage”. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then his face is a looping stream of endless invective; a phrenological masterpiece of ad hominem, directed at everyone and everything. He's been granted complete latitude. Actually, the literal definition of Blankfein's idea of gay marriage is, “Go fuck yourself” and I think you're supposed to do it in front of a mirror if you are so inclined and I believe I can confidently declare that an unfortunate number of you are ready, willing and able, I'm going to suggest you blow up that photo of Blankswine, as a romantic enhancement for your private interludes. Think of it as a kind of creative visualization of a literal truth because Blankswine is already doing it to you. According to some forms of math, one might compute that you've got at least a threesome going on already.

There is no country called America, or the United States. There is no such place. There are no laws. There is no constitution and no bill of rights. There is only prostitution and a bill of goods. The organ harvesters own the asylum and the next stage is where you begin to eat each other for the amusement of the ones who led you to this Meek's Cutoff; this Donner's Pass. You followed the loss leader and now you've got bar codes on your ass. You're surrounded by scanners and scumbags. Welcome to your dumpster diving future. Welcome to the time of the tattooed gangs, with chapters in every city. They're just waiting for their moment to storm the gated communities and bazooka the banks. ♫Send in the tanks, don't bother, they're here♫

Oh, am I being negative? Have I missed the whole point of this sea to shining senility diorama? Surely I am a heretic and damned for all time, singing like a canary in a goldmine. I should get a job, probably a hand job would do. Why don't I take a pass and just buy one for you? It's a handjob, blowjob, snowjob world. No job too big or too small and despite the fact that Blankswine has to hire a circus midget or a nine year old boy from Isfahan to do the honors, I'm not going to say that size matters when you're looking for motive to become what he is. Let's just say there's a connection.

You could, I suppose, put the entire country in an orgone box built by Geppetto, cause someone has to sit on Pinocchio's nose and all we need is a little help from Escher and the whole country could groove at the same time. There are all kinds of ways and means, that even now, could turn this figment of a bankrupt imagination, into the country it never was. Were the dead and disorderly to suddenly rise in spirit from their graves and inhabit all of the empty minds, presently wandering like Thorazine queens up and down the corridors of the world's biggest open air mental institution; when they're not just standing around like foreclosed and abandoned houses, then maybe, just maybe, a humming, insect resonance of serendipitous awareness might fortuitously sweep through the collective consciousness and all over the world, these temporary zombies could march on the Central Banks and deliver some what for, right now. I'm dreaming, I know but... ah, a conflagration devoutly to be wished.

Or... suddenly it might occur to enough of 'them' to just step away from the consumer machines and whatever desks and workbenches they're stationed at and just wait, just wait until the whole nasty apparatus comes to a silent halt. Or then again, possibly, all those deluded soldiers, tumescent with guns, could just lay down those guns and walk away and wait. The entire nation needs to turn into a flash mob but that's as likely as people ceasing to eat at The Heart Attack Grill, just cause someone got a little gas. That's all it was, there in the most foreclosed and empty abandoned lot in the entire country and deservedly so. Or, you could just shit in one hand and wish in the other. Or, magically, some electro-magnetic wave of awakening could sweep across the land, leaving no mind unchanged and the people could gather at their polling places and shout out their votes on the way into the booth and shout out their votes, after leaving the booth and wait around, with everyone waiting around, until the voter fraud army has to hightail it into the high, wide and lonesome, where the rattlesnake politicians and Gila Monster bankers would then be having their potluck, rubber chicken dinners for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, there could be all kinds of 'or's, if not for the 'ifs', 'ands' and 'buts'. Coulda, woulda and shoulda also play their parts in this horrific and depraved circle jerk. In a sane and reasonable world, the Blankswines of this world would no longer be in this world, 'or' marooned on a nuclear atoll somewhere that nobody goes. In a sane and reasonable world, none of the things that are happening would be happening and America might even be a country there, instead of a failed laboratory experiment, sitting in the back of Jeffrey Dalmer's icebox in a covered dish, waiting for Dalmer to get the late night munchies after smoking a PCP laden joint made out of lint and human hair. America is a serial killer's wet dream. It's a star spangled torture chamber, where the sane and sensible are hunted for sport.

It's been my pleasure to ring your bell, run off down the sidewalk and leave you with this flaming paper bag, outside your doorstep this afternoon. It is my fond hope that you will stomp on it to put it out and then enjoy the fruits of your efforts at your leisure. I didn't need to write this. I could have just gone down to the Heart Attack Grill and hooked into the pacemaker wireless, for some internet surfing, while I waited for my order to arrive but Las Vegas is a long way from here; though not far enough to suit me.

As the sun sinks into the Fukushima charged waters of the once blue Pacific, we bid you adieu from those lands that sent the first hungry conquistadors and sexually iced up religious nuts to populate the formerly beautiful with the presently ugly. As the ship of state also sinks and the passengers drown in their gins and tonics, let us offer a closing prayer that nothing like this ever happens again but... that would be wishful thinking, wouldn't it?


End Transmission.......