Last week I tried to explain to a www.seekingalpha.com reader why I was no longer allowed to post on the site despite having been a contributor since 2008. I wrote on June 20th:

I wanted to fill you in on my being banned by SA. I wrote up a rather high-risk fund listed on the low-ranked AIM market in London called Africa Opportunity Fund, AOF there and AROFF for USA folks. It trades in dollars and invests in Africa, doing a lot of arbitraging and other scary stuff between markets. A nameless source told me the fund was going to be properly listed on the London Stock Exchange fund list and I wrote this in my note on the subject published first of all in www.global-investing.com for the paying readers of my paid blog. Then I wrote it up for the world on Seeking Alpha's website. The editors claimed that I had not given sources for the upgraded listing, which is true. As a journalist I protect my sources. They demanded the name and title of my source on the AOF upgrade. I refused to give it. Then I got banned. Of course since then AOF has relisted and also issued convertible new shares to add to the sums it manages (always important for a closed end fund or the UK equivalent thereof).

Now I will go away and not talk about Chicago Bridge & Iron because one of my Irish ADRs has turned into a 10-bagger and I have to think about what to do about it. Happily it is in a tax-sheltered account.

Today I got the following from the Seeking Alpha “moderation team” which accuses me of “engaging with abusive users” and “debating the author's credibility” in the above note. I don't think I did; I think I was engaging with the editors of the site and debating its credibility!

Dear Global Investing Editor,
We wanted to let you know that we’ve deleted the post [above] and explain why. It was deleted because it contains material that is not directly related to the topic under discussion. Please note that article comments should focus on the analysis in the article, rather than debating the author’s credibility.
As a Seeking Alpha contributor you represent yourself as well as the Seeking Alpha brand. As such, we would appreciate if you exercise extra restraint and hold yourself to a higher standard. Rest assured that cases of abuse by any user are taken seriously, so we ask that you rely on our moderation team to address abusive users instead of engaging them.
Please understand that we do strive to err on the side of facilitating free and open debate. This means that we are never happy about having to remove a comment. That said, in order to ensure that Seeking Alpha continues to be the go-to destination for serious investment discussion, comments must adhere to our guidelines.
Respectfully,
Seeking Alpha Moderation Team

Here are comments from another expert at the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch breakfast press-conference yesterday, from Ethan S. Harris PhD, global economist, about our Fed. He notes of the Federal Reserve System that “it has 19 members, 12 members, 13 research departments, 4 super-hawks, uncoordinated forecasts, and misleading minutes.”

Moreover, Ethan Harris added, “there is no hidden agenda.” Fed-watchers have to focus on the directive and the prepared comments. They have to “beware of noise”, which includes the minutes and occasional “slip-ups in the question and answer period.” Dr Harris wants us to focus on the good news from the Fed, which is that there will be a rate rise only with strong growth. The Fed will lower liquidity only if there is growth.

I think Ethan Harris is no relation to Derek Harris, who also spoke at the conclave, the BoA-ML head of Americas equity research, who sounds British. Relations can be important. Are there links between Warren Buffett and a brilliant Israeli investor is discussed for paid subscribers for whom I am also looking into other news from Israel, Britain, Canada, The Netherlands, Brazil, China, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Ireland.

*Writing an update for Dick Davis Digest on my pick of Delek Group as the best stock for 2014, I tried to figure out if Yitzhak Tshuva, 68, the Libyan-born chairman of the insurance group had any links with Warren Buffett.

DGRLY was bought as the Berkshire Hathaway of Israel, an insurance company which invested its premium income in companies. However, chairman Yitzhak Tshuva has become an oil and gas investor lately concentrating Delek's portfolio on developing the gasfields off the Israel Mediterranean coast. One field, Tamar, is now producing gas and profits supplying electric and water-treatment (desalination) utilities in Israel and Jordan, and it may eventually be linked to existing shuttered gas liquefaction plants in the Nile Delta, by reversing an existing trans-Sinai gas pipeline. And another offtake agreement is pending between the partners and a Spanish company, Union Fenosa Gas SA, to export Tamar gas.

Even more exciting are Delek's holdings in another offshore gasfield, the aptly-named Leviathan. Talks with an Australian oil co, Woodside Pete, which wanted to take a 30% stake in Leviathan failed this spring mainly because of a dispute with the Israeli authorities over how much to tax Woodside for exports of gas from a future floating gas liquefaction plant to be built in the Med.

Now another contender from the Pacific is in sight, CNOOC of China. It is in negotiation with Delek and its partners to take a stake in the Aphrodite gasfield off the coast of Cyprus, but near the Israeli border and put up a floating gas liquefaction plant in Cypriot waters.

Delek holds varying stakes in these offshore fields with its major partner being Houston's Noble Energy, and some smaller Israeli players. With the end of the Woodside plan, Delek Group has been cashing in its chips by selling all or part of its other holdings from when it was less focused on gas: Delek US, operator of gas stations and convenience stores plus a refinery; sale of Republic Insurance Companies, also in the USA; selling its gas stations in France acquired from BP; selling Roadchef (motorway diners in Britain) and divesting some of its financial industry holdings in Israel. This raised $.1.2 bn.

Most recently DGRLY sold Barak Capital (at a huge 10-bagger gain in 7 years.) In addition, Delek has hit the bond market to refinance older higher cost debentures.

The purpose of all this is to allow Tshuva's insurance to go ahead with Leviathan without relying on a partner other than the operator of all the fields, Noble Energy (NBL). Tamar is already producing profits but the demand for investment in Leviathan is, as the name indicates, huge.

Interestingly enough, for all the liquidation of assets, Delek has kept its stakes in desalination (via a jv) and some positions in drug discovery stocks. It is not putting all its chips on gas development.

Yitzhak Tshuva as a baby with his 7 siblings moved away from Tripoli during a pogrom after Israel declared independence. He began his business career in the construction industry and lived in New York in the 1980s and 1990s, helping Saudi billionaire Walid bin Talal bin Abdul-Aziz develop the New York Plaza Hotel. It was from the US too that Tshuva got control of Delek (then a fuel company) from the venerable Recanati Israeli clan. Under Tshuva who moved back to Israel, Delek diversified into insurance, biochem, and, of course, natural gas. Tamar was discovered in 2009 and that of Leviathan the following year. I have not been able to discover if Tshuva ever met or was mentored by Warren Buffett. Prince Waleed, 60, is considered to be the Saudi Warren Buffet and there is definitely a link between him an Tshuva. [This note is based on one to appear later this summer in Dick Davis Digest.]

*It is time to buy the common now that Barclays stock has plummetted? The NY State Attorney General provided chapter and verse about how BCS cheated US mutual and pension funds trading on its “dark pool” by letting letting predator high-speed traders front run their trades. This “fraud and deceit” began in 2011 after Barclays lied to institutional investors who used its Barclays LX dark pool claiming kept out predators. In fact, without telling them, it deliberately slowed executing orders to led the sharks get their slice.

BCS shares fell in London by 6.2% and here fell to $14.38, a 2-yr low before the rescue squad pushed up the shares moderately. But there are good reasons to stay clear. Even before the latest scandal, which will result in more fines, BCS has been lowing money. Its 2.7% dividend is insecure. It is a heavy user of debt (5.4x its equity). It gets the usual “regional bank rating” (37 buys, 103 holds, and 13 sells) which as I have explained in an earlier issue do not reflect any real analysis—just fear of foreign banks.

I fear the new clean management will have a lot to worry about going forward and that we are better off in a fixed-income version of BCS, with its C and D preferred shares. I don't think the bank is in such dire straits that it will suspend payment of pref dividends. It created the first foreign bank preferred stock at $25 nearly 30 years ago for sale to US retail investors.

*It took longer than I expected but Origin Energy is finally up on Wall St. on abnormally high volume today after being tipped in Barron's Mon. The high-speed traders need a new dark pool. OGFGF.

*Both Tencent and Naspers are up nicely today despite NPSNY being downrated to neutral from buy the UBS. NPSNY's poor quarter showed the world how undepriced it is thanks to mail.ru and TCTZF stakes.

*Orocobre is also up today, our secret play on Argentina gaining over the talks with bond hold-outs. OROCF isof Oz is building a lithium mine with Jujuy provincial authorities and Toyota as partners.

*Schlumberger is up over 3.2% again today to a new high. SLB is gaining on ISIS moving nearer Iraq oil.

*The disconnect at Anton Oilfield Services may not be over Rumailia fields in Iraq, but because of China sending jack-up rigs to contested waters off Vietnam. ATONY is not yet in the offshore waters as the rigs have yet to be set up and its reservoir management techniques are not required. ATONY is up modestly today on news that its new waste management system for treating fracking flowback fluid has gone live in Xinjiang. This will help China develop unconventional oil without polluting sites.

*Our third wellhead services play, Computer Modelling, is off marginally in Canada and flat here.

*Dutch Chicago Bridge & Iron is up again despite the www.seekingalpha.com short-seller report on the Excelon news reported yesterday. SHAW was not a total wipeout for CBI, even it was overpriced.

*Brazil is mixed. Vale is up2.5% in local trading while Cosan is down 3.3%. The compete in logistics, but VALE is mainly a producer of iron ore pellets, mostly for China while CZZ grows sugarcane from which it produces sugar and ethylene, and also runs gas stations.

*Canadian Solar is up on its closing on the Kingston Solar LP solar power plant project in Ontario, financed by Samsung Renewable Energy (of Korea). CSIQ will get an unrevealed sum of money for engineering, procurement, and construction of the 173,000 megaWatt/yr of DC power plant, the largest solar farm in Canada to date. The revenue is stated to be about C$300 mn. It will use high performance modules produced at CSIQ Canadian plants from Chinese solar cells.

*Moody's said Bank of Nova Scotia's plan to buy 51% of Cencosud's credit card business in Chile was “credit negative” because it boosts “reliance on earnings from outside of Canada.” BNS rose all the same.

*Bombardier is not bidding for light-rail carriage contracts for Tel Aviv's Red Line, nor is Siemens, according to Globes Israel, mainly because the bid is too focused on price rather than technical competence. However Alsthom (France), CNR (China), and CAF (Spain) are bidding and will each have to post a euros 6 mn bid bond. The Tel Aviv system actually runs underground for most of its distance like very old public transport systems in Brussels and Boston, unlike more modern subways.

*Am I having doubts about buying Alkermes? No. I did publish a critique of its pipeline from a psychiatrist subscriber who obviously knows more about schizophrenia than me. ALKS is presenting phase 3 results with its aripiprazole lauroxil monthly injection at two doses against schizophrenia. The jab it says is “on track” for a “new drug application” (NDA) to our FDA. So I assume it is somehow an advance on existing related drugs like Abilify in controlling schizophrenia symptoms by reducing PANSS (positive and negative syndrome scale scores.) It is also working on depression and anti-psychotic meds. Mainly I bought ALKS because it is Irish and Ireland has a special glow in the drug business for inversion deals.

*Stephen Simpson CFA of Kratisto Investing called Banco Santander "pricey" claiming it was getting too much credit for the Spanish recovery and its shaky UK banking business, and not enough credit for its stakes in banking in Poland and to some extent Mexico. He prefers BBVA. I think he is failing to appreciate the degree to which it is up to the bank to classify loans as non-performing and overstating the SAN risk vs BBVA because of this. SAN NPL risk is 7.6% vs 6.4% for its rival. He also fails to give SAN credit for its tough target of a 9% capital ratio by the end of the year.

Unlike the short sell write-up of CBI this is a serious attempt to look at two Spanish banks. If only Seeking Alpha used more of Mr Simpson's work and less by anonymous writers.