Oil firms face soaring security bill after attacks

DAVOS - Oil executives are resigned to a rise in security costs which will be steep, even for an industry used to working in dangerous places, as they strengthen defenses against militants and cyber attackers alike. Full Article

The U.S. will deepen its involvement in France’s fight against Islamist militants in Mali by conducting aerial refueling missions, Pentagon spokesman George Little said.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pledged the increased support for France in a phone call with French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Little said in a statement yesterday.

The U.S. has already been providing France with intelligence gathering and an airlift that has delivered hundreds of troops and hundreds of tons of supplies for the Mali operation, Little said.

Panetta’s decision came a day after President Barack Obamareiterated U.S. support for France’s effort to strengthen security in North Africa in a call with French President Francois Hollande.

Panetta also discussed plans by the U.S. to transport troops from African nations, including Chad and Togo, to Mali, Little said. He didn’t say when the additional assistance would begin or offer more details.

France intervened in Mali on Jan. 11 after Islamist fighters overran the town of Konna, sparking concern they might advance toward Bamako, the capital. The French Defense Ministry said that 2,500 soldiers have arrived in the landlocked West African country, which gained independence from France in 1960. African nations are deploying a force that may total as many as 3,300 troops.

Flow of Weapons

Since the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi that unleashed a flow of weapons to militants in the region, the Obama administration has been torn between wanting to avoid entanglements in North Africa while warning of the dangers of advancing Islamist extremism. The U.S. has shown reluctance to provide weapons or U.S. troops to the fight in Mali, just as it has largely sidestepped the civil war in Syria.

U.S. officials say shifting alliances among at least four rebel groups in Mali have made it difficult to get a clear picture of the conflict there.

While the U.S. provided intelligence and some airlift in the initial weeks of the Mali operation, it had stopped short of offering refueling support. Panetta, on a trip to Europe this month, pointed to legal questions in explaining the need for caution....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-27/u-s-to-aid-french-with-aerial-r...

‘Pakistan’s nukes face threat from army insiders’

DARPA putting laser turrets on fighter jets next year

State-owned Banks Cut Profit Expectations for 2013

By staff reporter Wen Xiu

(Beijing) – Four of the five state-owned banks have reduced their expectation for this year's profit growth, as banking reform continues and regulators keep a firm grip on credit supplies.

Only Agricultural Bank of China, the last of the five to list publicly, expects profit to grow at levels comparable with previous years because of a smaller base, executives from the five banks said in a recent industry meeting.

The other three of Big Four banks plus the Bank of Communications all anticipated profit growth to slow to a single-digit rate this year from an estimated level of 10 to 14 percent for 2012.

There is no consensus over how much profit banks should be able to make. Some said the predicted decline is natural under market reforms. But two bank executives said a healthy profit growth rate should be around 15 percent, or roughly the same as the GDP growth rate when inflation and other nominal appreciation of assets are excluded.

Lower profit expectations partly reflect bankers' concern with the central bank's agenda on this year's credit supply. Sources close to the regulator said it would cap bank loans at 9 trillion yuan for the year.

The figure increased by 800 billion yuan from last year, but is still likely to be well short of the scale banks would need to offset the loss from lower profit margins.

Bank executive at the conference said they expect narrowing interest spreads to weigh substantively on their profits.

"Banks would still rely on interest spreads for an extended period of time, but their profitability would inevitably fall," an executive at a large bank's corporate banking department said.

The decline was mainly a result of last year's interest rate changes, which adjusted the floating ranges of deposit and lending interest rates and limited banks' pricing power over capital. The cost of capital rose also because many customers opted for better-paying wealth management products over ordinary savings accounts....

http://english.caixin.com/2013-01-21/100484734.html

Four killed, many hurt at funerals in Egypt port city

By Edmund Blair and Shaimaa Fayed

CAIRO | Sun Jan 27, 2013 1:33pm EST

CAIRO (Reuters) - Four people were shot dead and hundreds were injured in Egypt's Port Said on Sunday during the funerals of 33 protesters killed at the weekend, part of a wave of violence piling pressure on Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

State television said Mursi would address the nation later on Sunday. A total of 46 people have been killed in demonstrations around the country since Thursday and his opponents have called for more protests on Monday.

"Down, down Mursi, down down the regime that killed and tortured us!" people in Port Said chanted as the coffins of those killed on Saturday were carried through the streets.

Port Said's head of hospitals, Abdel Rahman Farag, told Reuters an 18-year-old man and three other people died from gunshot wounds on Sunday. More than 429 people suffered from teargas inhalation, while 38 were wounded by gunshots, he said.

Gunshots had killed many of the 33 who died on Saturday when residents went on the rampage after a court sentenced 21 people, mostly from the Mediterranean port, to death for their role in deadly soccer violence at a stadium there last year.

A military source said many people in Port Said, which lies next to the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula, possess guns. But it was not clear who was behind the deaths and injuries.

In Cairo, police fired teargas at dozens of stone-throwing protesters in a fourth day of clashes over what demonstrators there and in other cities say is a power grab by Islamists two years after Hosni Mubarak was overthrown.

The protesters accuse Mursi, elected in June with the support of his Muslim Brotherhood group, of betraying the democratic goals of the revolution. Most of the deaths since Thursday were in Port Said and Suez, both cities where the army has now been deployed.

The violence adds to the daunting task facing Mursi as he tries to fix a beleaguered economy and cool tempers before a parliamentary election expected in the next few months which is supposed to cement Egypt's transition to democracy.

It has exposed a deep rift in the nation. Liberals and other opponents accuse Mursi of failing to deliver on economic promises and say he has not lived up to pledges to represent all Egyptians. His backers say the opposition is seeking to topple Egypt's first freely elected leader by undemocratic means.

Although Sunday's violence was less severe than the previous two days, Mursi may have little respite. The opposition Popular Current and other groups have called for more protests on Monday to mark what was one of the bloodiest days of the 2011 uprising.

The Popular Current, led by leftist Hamdeen Sabahy, said it "denounces the state of silence of the presidency and the government during the sad events that the country went through the past 48 hours".

"BLOOD BEING SPILT"

On a bridge close to Tahrir Square, youths hurled stones at police in riot gear who fired teargas to push them back towards the square, the cauldron of the uprising that erupted on January 25, 2011 and toppled Mubarak 18 days later.

"None of the revolution's goals have been realized," said Mohamed Sami, a protester in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Sunday.

"Prices are going up. The blood of Egyptians is being spilt in the streets because of neglect and corruption and because the Muslim Brotherhood is ruling Egypt for their own interests.".....

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/27/us-egypt-anniversary-idUSBRE90...

Guest Post: Monetary Malpractice - Dysfunctional Markets

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/27/2013 - 14:55

One of the first axioms of analysis is: "Garbage In, Garbage Out"! If your data is flawed, everything you do with it and the decisions stemming from it are flawed and dangerous to your financial health. Experienced analysts will often be found relentlessly checking, rechecking and validating their inputs and assumptions. If only our economists and the sell side analyst community were this diligent. But then it isn't their money. Only a year-end bonus for the 'extras' in their life is at risk. If economic practitioners were held to higher standards of accountability, they simply wouldn't accept the raft of fundamental data points that are the pillars of most economic assessment. Markets have become so dysfunctional with so much cheap money chasing so few real opportunities, that collateral values within the rehypothecation process are now in jeopardy and exposed to collateral contagion. The question is - what would things look like if the Fed wasn't engaged in Monetary Malpractice?

I am talking specifically about government inflation numbers such as CPI and PPI, the Deflator and GDP growth statistics and true debt levels using sound GAAP accounting principles and reflecting off balance sheet special purpose entities, contingent liabilities and financial guarantees. The list of government reporting irregularities is pervasive and for unknown reasons, simply accepted.

It is incredulous that we can just accept, without challenging, the statistical hyperbole of Hedonics, Substitution, Imputation and Proportional Distribution, justifying inflation numbers that don't even pass the common sense of an unemployed high school dropout. I don't mean to disparage the high school dropout, but I do point the figure at the 'six figure' analysts who accept this tripe as gospel, and from whose analysis fiduciary investment decisions are made with the unsuspecting public's hard earned savings....(cont.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-27/guest-post-monetary-malpractice-dysfunctional-markets

Here Come The Drones, Or The True Reason For The Mali Incursion

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/28/2013 - 18:29

Given our recent discussion (here and here) of the rising importance of Africa in the world's power and money echelons, it is not entirely surprising that the NY Times reports that US military command in Africa is actively preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa to increase "unarmed surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups" that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region. It would appear Niger will be the most likely place for the base - from which officials envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones though, of course, they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Perhaps, actually scratch the "perhaps", what is really happening is the US now has a drone base with which to supervise Chinese expansion in Northweast Africa, anda drone fleet to use defensively and offensively as it sees fit....

From - "The Beijing Conference": See How China Quietly Took Over Africa

And so it would appear we can draw a big red circle over northwest Africa in the map above which is where the US will literally have a bird's eye view of all the resources that China is sequestering, and all the infrastructure that the world's most populous nation is setting up.

Next we need a little dose of the perpetual "Al-Qaeda" bogeyman in Central, Eastern, and finally South Africa and the US will have military control over a continent that China is rapidly doing all it cen to colonize from the ground up.

Via NY Times,

 

The United States military command in Africa is preparing plans to establish a drone base in northwest Africa to increase unarmed surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.

For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.

If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border of Mali, where French and Malian troops are now battling Qaeda-backed fighters who control the northern part of that country...

The immediate impetus for a drone base in the region is to provide surveillance assistance to the French-led operation in Mali. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

A handful of unarmed Predator drones would carry out surveillance missions in the region and fill a desperate need for more detailed information on a range of regional threats, including militants in Mali and the unabated flow of fighters and weapons from Libya. American military commanders and intelligence analysts complain that such information has been sorely lacking.

The United States military has a very limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali. ...

If approved, the base could ultimately have as many as 300 United States military and contractor personnel, but it would probably begin with far fewer people than that, military officials said.

Some Africa specialists expressed concern that setting up a drone base in Niger or in a neighboring country, even if only to fly surveillance missions, could alienate local people who may associate the distinctive aircraft with deadly attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Officials from Niger did not respond to e-mails over the weekend about the plan, but its president, Mahamadou Issoufou, has expressed a willingness to establish what he called in a recent interview “a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S.”

...

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who heads the Intelligence Committee, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday that in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and the turmoil of the Arab Spring, there was “an effort to establish a beachhead for terrorism, a joining together of terrorist organizations.”

...

General Ham said during an interview on his visit to Niger that it had been very difficult for American intelligence agencies to collect consistent, reliable intelligence about what was going on in northern Mali, as well as in other largely ungoverned parts of the sub-Saharan region.

“It’s tough to penetrate,” he said. “It’s tough to get access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries as well.”

The State Department has been extraordinarily wary of allowing drones to operate in the region, fearful of criticism that the United States is trying to militarize parts of Africa...

American drones regularly conduct surveillance flights over Somalia and occasionally launch airstrikes against people suspected of being members of the Shabab, a militant group linked to Al Qaeda.

...

“Without operating locations on the continent, I.S.R. capabilities would be curtailed, potentially endangering U.S. security,” General Ham said in a statement submitted to the House Armed Services Committee last March. “Given the vast geographic space and diversity in threats, the command requires increased ISR assets to adequately address the security challenges on the continent.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/

DPH: You could see this coming a mile away. I'm pretty sure there is already some type of operations base currently being used by this point. They used drones in Libya and those were set-up either inside Libya or in a neighboring country.

A base(s) already exists.