ReVbo

Maliki is caretaker prime minister right now because Parliament has not elected a new one yet. So, I guess my answer is yes and no. He's kinda like Clinton, I suppose, would have been if it had taken the Supreme Court until after Jan 20, 2001, to decide between Bush and Gore. He would have stayed president, just to have someone there, right? Whatever. Whoever would have occupied the office of the president during that time, that's basically what Maliki is right now.

Yeah, there's nothing about it. Believe me, I looked hard, because I was having this argument with Enorrste at DA, and I would love nothing more than to pull one over on ole Steve one of these days. If Maliki did resign, last time, there wouldn't be any news about it, though, because it would have just been a formality, and probably wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes before his 2nd oath of office. My thinking was, they kicked him out of parliament yesterday because he had not yet taken the oath and is a currently sitting member of the government, and according to the constitution, he cannot hold two offices at the same time. What I was missing was, apparently, the prime minister does not have to first be a member of parliament, so theoretically, the same could happen this time, whereby he just takes another oath and never loses his immunity. I still think they're gonna get him out, though. Most of the "source" articles, the last few days, have leaned toward just about everybody wanting him gone with very little response from Maliki's side, and here's only a few days left in Sistani's verbal semi-private ultimatum. If Maliki doesn't go by that deadline, I would assume Sistani will dispense with the pleasantries and go public with it. After that, it should get really interesting because Maliki's base listens to Sistani. They're gonna have to wrestle my five-year-old daughter for it. She tries to put that feathery guru tiara on my head almost every night lately.

That's what I was talking about, dontlop. I think I may have read too much into a couple articles yesterday.

Ha! Thanks, y'all. I'm not so sure, anymore, that's how it is, but it's nice to be appreciated. Thanks for not thinking of me as a guru. Even though I may be wrong, a lot, I don't sell dinars and have never been dishonest with anyone.

Me too, brother. Nice research, btw. +2

OOTW sent me something along those lines, TBomb, and that makes sense. My response to that would be, he may not have charges against him now, but he has to resign from the PM spot to be able to run for PM again, and when and if he does that, he will be exposed. The opposition can delay parliament, by just not showing up, for as long as it takes to draw up charges. In the meantime, if he squats while he is ineligible, they will be forced to just vote for another PM. Maliki, after all, will not have gone through the proper procedures to get himself eligible.

Some of my friends on another site think this is exactly why those British parliamentary advisers were over there a couple weeks ago. I actually posed a similar scenario to yours over there, that Maliki, having written a lot of the Iraqi constitution, thought he could slip in, quietly hand in his resignation, be sworn in, and things would go as he had planned, but the good guys blindsided him by asking him to leave before he could be sworn in, and now, he's in a position where he either has to resign, in which case he loses immunity and the opposition can delay parliament for as long as it takes to have him arrested for his many crimes, or he declares a military dictatorship, in which case we drop a Hellfire on his head while the whole world applauds the death of a nascent dictatorship.

Thanks hi-five! From the Iraqi constitution: Sixth: No member of the Council of Representatives shall be allowed to hold any other official position or work. (Maliki currently holds the office of Prime Minister in the old government, therefor cannot be properly sworn in to the new parliament) Article 48: Each member of the Council of Representatives must take the following constitutional oath before the Council prior to assuming his duties: (Maliki has not taken the oath to be a new Member of Parliament because he currently occupies the Prime Minister position.)

I think y'all are right. Dang, just when I think I'm on to something, you two get up at the crack of dawn and beat me to it. This is one of those things that we would have put into the constitution, specifically to ensure that a sitting prime minister is never able to usurp the office and squat, like Maliki is doing currently. If this is really what's happening, it's a stroke of parliamentary genius. Can't have the past prime minister presiding over a government when the new parliament is already seated and in session, so anything Maliki's GOI sent to parliament would be illegal, and as long as Maliki occupies the PM seat, absolutely nothing can, legally, happen. No budget, no laws, no funding for anything. I can't imagine the parliament is going to tolerate that for very long.

Here's Yota from another thread. Kind of thinking along the same lines. Gotta get up pretty early in the morning to beat Yota to the punch, and I did not. Yota: OMGoodness Mr. M just had the slick willie pull on him...and the gang....by refusing to not show up on the first session and not being sworn in which they claim of being the one with the most vote....made them to be ineligible to participate in the process....OMGoodness....WOW....this is just IMO ... The only thing I would add to that is, Maliki is currently ineligible, but if he resigns and takes a new oath at the next parliamentary session, he can become eligible. The only problem with that is, if he resigns, he loses immunity, and that's the end of the road for him.

Y'all, I'm still trying to figure this out so don't hold me to it, but I think they may have Maliki in a legal jam here that might just bring this to a resolution. The last article posted by Buti in this thread indicated Maliki was asked to leave, and leave he did, in a big hurry, because he currently occupies an executive office and can't be in parliament until he takes a new oath of a parliamentarian. That gives him a big problem, if true, because it means he has to resign from the current prime ministership in order to run for the office again. Between his resignation and the next session of parliament, he would lose his immunity. He can't just stay caretaker forever, so if my interpretation is right, and again, I'm not making any guarantees, parliament just outmaneuvered the dictator, and this may just be the end of the line for this guy. How crazy would it be if Maliki went down over a technicality? If I'm right, this would be tantamount to running Obama off on the birth certificate thing. Here's a contribution from my friend, Schiz, a Brit, and a former member of the British military who served in Iraq: Schiz: I was thinking how can M turn up and be turned away, how can that happen, he is the current pm, head of caretaker government etc etc. It's cos he is just an ACTING pm, he has no rights in parliament, I don't think he has even stepped down and made himself a pm, been voted in so he can even be put up for pm spot again, has he? M has been holding on to what power he can because he knows he will lose it all but he has lost it anyway. He can't do nothing, he cant even go in to parliament and disrupt those sessions now. M is done, I have been waiting for it to hit me as to how it was going to happen. This is it. M has to step down handing power of governance to parliament, he needs to be sworn in as a member of parliament and then and only then he can be the candidate for the next pm. As soon as he does, it's over for him. I'm pretty sure they can just choose someone else for the pm spot can't they? SOL are saying M but he cant even be legally nominated right now can he? he's not even a member of parliament. He's just some lame dead duck pm trying to hold on to power in a care taker government. Man i've gone off on one here and am probably completely wrong but surely this makes sense and is how it works, isn't it? I was just reading, usually a caretaker government in elections is only ever run by the last pm when that pm isn't running again. If the current pm is running again the power goes to the new parliemtn until such a time the pm position is agreed upon and the vote is taken. Sorry for the weird black background. I copied it from another site, and it does that.

Necmettin is a Kurd and I'm pretty sure Jabouri is Sunni.

I can't, but there's another post that had the translation. It's real.

Uncircld, do you trust the source? I've never heard of 76news.

With the CBI rates now at 1187 for remittances, and 1190 for cash, and the official street rate at 1210, we are within the IMF's 2% compliance range, y'all. And just barely, so this is no accident.

Yep, and it moved to 1210 today from 1222. It's the first time it's moved like that all year. And right after CBI approved the money transfer companies to participate.

It's a pdf in Arabic, so no. Buti, this looks like those companies, that they said were going to be approved to participate in the auctions a couple months ago, are now actually approved. If that's true, this will help greatly to improve the street rate vs. the official rate because it cuts out the banks as middle men in the auctions.

It appears the repetitively thankfuls were unimpressed by your plea, Rayzur, as I have noticed a doubling down of repetitive gratitude on the site since you posted this. Nobody, but nobody, tells those guys not to say "Thanks" on every bit of news that comes out of Iraq. IT'S THAT IMPORTANT!

Very nice catch, Zul!

It means really bad things for the dollar, but good things for the dinar.

Awesome! Thanks, k98! Best piece of news I've seen since Ch7. And yeah, the timing is crazy, given those meetings in China next week.

I don't know that this is the same meeting, but it sure looks related, as it's happening right about the same time while Putin is in China. I wonder if Iraq is looking to drop the dollar, too. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-13/russia-holds-de-dollarization-meeting-china-iran-willing-drop-usd-bilateral-trade Russia Holds "De-Dollarization Meeting": China, Iran Willing To Drop USD From Bilateral Trade That Russia has been pushing for trade arrangements that minimize the participation (and influence) of the US dollar ever since the onset of the Ukraine crisis (and before) is no secret: this has been covered extensively on these pages before (see Gazprom Prepares "Symbolic" Bond Issue In Chinese Yuan; Petrodollar Alert: Putin Prepares To Announce "Holy Grail" Gas Deal With China; Russia And China About To Sign "Holy Grail" Gas Deal; 40 Central Banks Are Betting This Will Be The Next Reserve Currency; From the Petrodollar to the Gas-o-yuan and so on). But until now much of this was in the realm of hearsay and general wishful thinking. After all, surely it is "ridiculous" that a country can seriously contemplate to exist outside the ideological and religious confines of the Petrodollar... because if one can do it, all can do it, and next thing you know the US has hyperinflation, social collapse, civil war and all those other features prominently featured in other socialist banana republics like Venezuela which alas do not have a global reserve currency to kick around. Or so the Keynesian economists, aka tenured priests of said Petrodollar religion, would demand that the world believe. However, as much as it may trouble the statists to read, Russia is actively pushing on with plans to put the US dollar in the rearview mirror and replace it with a dollar-free system. Or, as it is called in Russia, a "de-dollarized" world. Voice of Russia reports citing Russian press sources that the country's Ministry of Finance is ready to greenlight a plan to radically increase the role of the Russian ruble in export operations while reducing the share of dollar-denominated transactions. Governmental sources believe that the Russian banking sector is "ready to handle the increased number of ruble-denominated transactions". According to the Prime news agency, on April 24th the government organized a special meeting dedicated to finding a solution for getting rid of the US dollar in Russian export operations. Top level experts from the energy sector, banks and governmental agencies were summoned and a number of measures were proposed as a response for American sanctions against Russia. Well, if the west wanted Russia's response to ever escalating sanctions against the country, it is about to get it. The "de-dollarization meeting” was chaired by First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov, proving that Moscow is very serious in its intention to stop using the dollar. A subsequent meeting was chaired by Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev who later told the Rossia 24 channel that "the amount of ruble-denominated contracts will be increased”, adding that none of the polled experts and bank representatives found any problems with the government's plan to increase the share of ruble payments. Further, if you thought that only Obama can reign supreme by executive order alone, you were wrong - the Russians can do it just as effectively. Enter the "currency switch executive order": It is interesting that in his interview, Moiseev mentioned a legal mechanism that can be described as "currency switch executive order”, telling that the government has the legal power to force Russian companies to trade a percentage of certain goods in rubles. Referring to the case when this level may be set to 100%, the Russian official said that "it's an extreme option and it is hard for me to tell right now how the government will use these powers". Well, as long as the options exists. But more importantly, none of what Russia is contemplating would have any practical chance of implementation if it weren't for other nations who would engage in USD-free bilateral trade relations. Such countries, however, do exist and it should come as a surprise to nobody that the two which have already stepped up are none other than China and Iran. Of course, the success of Moscow's campaign to switch its trading to rubles or other regional currencies will depend on the willingness of its trading partners to get rid of the dollar. Sources cited by Politonline.ru mentioned two countries who would be willing to support Russia: Iran and China. Given that Vladimir Putin will visit Beijing on May 20, it can be speculated that the gas and oil contracts that are going to be signed between Russia and China will be denominated in rubles and yuan, not dollars. In other words, in one week's time look for not only the announcement of the Russia-China "holy grail" gas agreement described previously here, but its financial terms, which now appears virtually certain will be settled exclusively in RUB and CNY. Not USD. And as we have explained repeatedly in the past, the further the west antagonizes Russia, and the more economic sanctions it lobs at it, the more Russia will be forced away from a USD-denominated trading system and into one which faces China and India. Which is why next week's announcement, as groundbreaking as it most certainly will be, is just the beginning.

Our embassy is crawling with CIA. No way he got $300 billion out of that country without us knowing where it is. Heck, we may have even set up the bank accounts for him. If this article is true, he will flee to Venezuela and never live another day of his life not worried that a bullet will find him, but it's a better deal than the certain death that would await him in Iraq.

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If I remember correctly, he's a retired coin dealer.