- Mapping World War In Syria & Iraq
For some time now Syria and Iraq have been a place where interests of many players are clashing. The region is being devastated by civil war or a war by proxy, fought by a number of participants, where the borderline between friend and foe is sharp or vague as the case may be.
The military sorties, airstrikes and other activities are taking place on a day-to-day basis. Conflicting pieces of information that can be gleaned from a variety of sources may reflect both the factual status or the propaganda of the powers that be, hidden behind the media outlets. It is not easy to see the forest for the trees, to filter valuable data in this informational noise. Still, our readers deserve to be informed. With all this in mind, the Gefira team has made an effort to present the current situation in Syria and Iraq in an accessible graphic and textual way according to the best of our ability.
Australia
The Australian Defence Forces have an estimated 780 personnel in Iraq. At Camp Taji and other bases they have trained more than 20 000 of the Iraqi Security Forces and 3 000 federal policemen. Australia has 3 kinds of Task Groups in Iraq:1) Task Group Taji – which is a training mission – 300 personnel;
2) Australian Air Task Group (ATG), operating within a US-led international coalition assembled to disrupt and destroy ISIL. The ATG consists of six Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18F Super Hornets, an E-7A Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft and a KC-30A Multi Role Tanker Transport (MRTT);
3) Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) – about 80 personnel.Belgium
The Belgian mission in Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State was planned to end in June 2017, but Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel decided to extend it, and sent four F-16 fighter jets along with 100 troops to a base in Jordan to take part in the war against IS in Iraq and Syria.Great Britain
The Royal Air Force (RAF Typhoon and Tornado jets and Reaper drones) has flown more than 3000 missions and launched over 1 600 airstrikes across Iraq and Syria. The British Army has already trained almost 60 000 Iraqi and Kurdish troops in bases at Besmaya, Taji and al-Asad. The UK has about 600 troops in Iraq, almost all involved in training Iraqi forces, and 80 soldiers in Camp Taji.Denmark
Denmark currently has around 120 troops stationed at the Al-Asad air base. Danish contribution in Iraq primarily consists of training Iraqi and Kurdish military units. At the end of 2016 it launched airstrikes against ISIS.France
Operation Chammal, the French contribution to US-led military operations against Islamic State (IS), has been under way for 3 years. French aircraft have performed a total of 7 349 flights in Iraq and Syria with 1 413 strikes on Daesh and destroyed 2 197 objectives. France has supplied weapons and training to local forces in Syria and Iraq, has special forces operating in the region and has been one of the main countries bombing militants. In total, it has some 1 200 troops in its Levant operation.Germany
The German contribution includes: a type 122 Augsburg frigate, six Tornado aircraft for surveillance operations in Syria, an Airbus 310 MRTT aircraft for aerial refuelling and participation of staff officers. The German government declared sending 1 200 soldiers to take part in the military operations. In fact the Bundeswehr sent between 500 and 700 soldiers. German troops have been helping train security forces in the area around Erbil in northern Iraq.Iran
Iran currently has 70 000 combatants in Syria (counting both regular Iranian troops and militias under Iranian control: around 7 000 Hezbollah fighters, thousands of Afghan recruits in the Al Fatemiyoun militia, and volunteers from Iraq and Pakistan).Iraq
The Iraqi army numbers 168 000 active military personnel and 150 000 reserve personnel.Israel
Israel has carried out dozens of airstrikes on alleged weapons convoys bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s real security interests in Syria lie in countering Hezbollah and monitoring the rise of Iranian influence.Italy
The Italian contingent in Iraq is made up of approximately 1 400 military from all services of which 400 are currently engaged in Erbil, including 120 instructors. 70 military are deployed in Mosul to protect the dam and its personnel. The Carabinieri Task Force has been operating there since June 2015. The 90 members of the Task Force have been training Iraqi federal Police Forces tasked with operations to be conducted in areas conquered back from Daesh.Jordan
After the downed Jordanian pilot was executed by ISIL by being burned to death, King Abdullah II vowed revenge and temporarily took the lead in the bombing raids on ISIL. Current activities include airstrikes and protection of the Jordanian border.The Netherlands
The Dutch military personnel are training Iraqi and Kurdish forces to fight the ISIS terrorist organization on the ground (150 trainers, advisers and security and logistic personnel, 35-man force protection for Belgian F-16).Russia
Russia has deployed an S-400 air defense system, and stations Su-24 bombers at the Russian military base in Latakia.24)Russians have three bases in Syria: Latakia (also listening station), Tartus naval base and Khemeimim air base. Due to Russian military activities, Syrian government forces have an advantage.25)The Russian military intervention started on 30.09.2015 with 4 000 military personnel.26) Moscow has used the Russian Navy a few times like the Admiral Grigorovich. 27)According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Russian fighters carried out 672 sorties and bombed over 1 450 targets to support the “offensive by the militias of eastern Euphrates tribes and Kurdish militias”.28)Independent experts said up to 10,000 Russian troops and private contractors could have been deployed to Syria. He suggested that Russia had between 4,000 and 5,000 Russian military servicemen in Syria including personnel at Russia’s airbase in Khmeimim, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad in northwest Syria, and the Tartus naval facility. On top of that, independent Russian military expert Pavel Felgenhauer said, some 2 000 to 3 000 military advisors helped the Syrian army gain an upper hand over rebels and jihadists on the ground. 29)Vladimir Putin announced 11.12.2017 that his forces will start withdrawing from Syria after a two-year military campaign against ISIS.Spain
The Gran Capitán military base in Bismayah, which is under Spanish command and where some 450 soldiers and members of Spain’s Civil Guard are stationed, along with US, British and Portuguese personnel have helped train 6 000 Iraqi troops.31)The continued presence of the Spanish Patriot missile battery on the border between Turkey and Syria was a decision taken at the request of the Turkish Government, within the framework of the NATO.Syria
Al Assad’s army is made up of 154 000 active and 150 000 reserved military personnel.Turkey
Turkey has a military base in Iraq: in Bashiqa near Mosul, Northern Iraq and in the Shaqlawa region (near Erbil). Roughly 2 000 Turkish troops are currently in northern Iraq.34)35)In northern Syria after conducting Operation Euphrates Shield against ISIS and Kurdish militias, Turkey controls the region stretching from the city of Jarabulus on the Syria-Turkey border to Manbij, Al-Bab and northern Aleppo. Turkey is strengthening its position in the Middle East, also prevents the Kurdish state from coming into being.36)The Turkish military contingent in Syria was reduced from 8,000 to 1,500 people (also commandos, like 180 commandos in Syrian city Al-Bab).USA
The United States has about 5 200 troops in Iraq (primarily in an advisory capacity) and about 2 000 in Syria. Unofficial military sources announced that there are also 4 000 American troops in Syria. - The Deep State's Christmas Present To America: Surveillance That Never Ends
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
Just in time for Christmas, the Deep State wants to give America the gift that keeps on giving: never-ending mass surveillance.
I’m not referring to the kind of surveillance carried out by that all-knowing and all-seeing Jolly Old St. Nick and his informant the Elf on the Shelf (although, to be fair, they have helped to acclimate us to a world in which we’re always being watched and judged by higher authorities).
No, this particular bit of Yuletide gift-giving comes courtesy of the Deep State (a.k.a. the Surveillance State, Police State, Shadow Government and black-ops spy agencies).
If this power-hungry cabal gets its way, the government’s power to spy on its citizens will soon be all-encompassing and permanent.
As it now stands, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—the legal basis for two of the National Security Agency’s largest mass surveillance programs, “PRISM” and “Upstream”—is set to expire at the end of 2017.
“PRISM” lets the NSA access emails, video chats, instant messages, and other content sent via Facebook, Google, Apple and others. “Upstream” lets the NSA worm its way into the internet backbone—the cables and switches owned by private corporations like AT&T that make the internet into a global network—and scan traffic for the communications of tens of thousands of individuals labeled “targets.”
Section 702 has been used as an end-run around the Constitution to allow the government to collect the actual content of Americans’ emails, phone calls, text messages and other electronic communication without a warrant.
Under Section 702, the government collects and analyzes over 250 million internet communications every year. There are estimates that at least half of these contain information about U.S. residents, many of whom have done nothing wrong. This information is then shared with law enforcement and “routinely used for purposes unrelated to national security.”
Mind you, Section 702 gives the government access to the very content of your conversations (phone calls, text messages, video chats), your photographs, your emails.
So beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead.
For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government.
This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.
The government’s “technotyranny” surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it’s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins.
The short answer: they have become one and the same entity.
The police state has passed the baton to the surveillance state.
This hasn’t fazed President Trump who, much like his predecessors, has thus far marched in lockstep with the dictates of the police state.
For months, the Trump Administration has been actively lobbying Congress to reauthorize Section 702 in its entirety. Now, according to The Intercept, Trump is actively considering a proposal to establish his own global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies and answer directly to the White House.
If approved, this would be yet another secret government agency carrying out secret surveillance and counterintelligence, funded by a secret black ops budget that by its very nature does away with transparency, bypasses accountability and completely eludes any form of constitutionality.
As if we weren’t being spied on enough already.
On any given day, the average American is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by the U.S. government’s vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.
Talk about a system rife for abuse.
Ask the government why it’s carrying out this warrantless surveillance on American citizens, and you’ll get the same Orwellian answer the government has been trotting out since 9/11 to justify its assaults on our civil liberties: to keep America safe.
Yet warrantless mass surveillance by the government and its corporate cohorts hasn’t made America any safer. And it certainly isn’t helping to preserve our freedoms. Frankly, America will never be safe as long as the U.S. government is allowed to shred the Constitution.
Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying program because they’re only looking to get the “bad” guys who are overseas.
Don’t believe it.
Warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens is wrong, un-American, and unconstitutional.
Clearly, the outlook for reforming the government’s unconstitutional surveillance programs does not look good.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, whenever the rights of the American people are pitted against the interests of the military/corporate/security complex, “we the people” lose. Unless Congress develops a conscience—or suddenly remembers that they owe their allegiance to the citizenry and not the corporate state—we’re about to lose big.
It’s time to let Section 702 expire or reform the law to ensure that millions and millions of Americans are not being victimized by a government that no longer respects its constitutional limits.
Mark my words: if Congress votes to make the NSA’s vast spying powers permanent, it will be yet another brick in the wall imprisoning us within an electronic concentration camp from which there is no escape.
- Almost A Third Of Americans Are Working Beyond Age 65
There is a huge disparity in employment rates among over 65s across different countries…
You will find more statistics at Statista
As Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, a recent OECD report found that the highest rates of people working beyond 65 are in Asia with Indonesia particularly notable as having a 50.6 percent employment among those in the 65-69 age group. That figure is high elsewhere in Asia, standing at 45 percent in South Korea and 42.8 percent in Japan.
In contrast to Europe where there were widespread protests when the retirement age was raised even slightly, much of Asia has actually been supportive of increases in the mandatory retirement age. Reasons for support include everything from a desire to maintaing a fit and active life to more obvious concerns about finances.
New Zealand has no compulsory retirement age and it is another country with a high employment rate among older people with 42.6 percent of those aged 65 to 69 still working. The rate is far less in Australia at 25.9 percent while it's 31 percent in the United States.
In Europe where all those protests happened, the rate is lower still. In the United Kingdom, the employment rate for 65-69 year olds stands at 21 percent while in France and Spain, it is only 6.3 and 5.3 percent respectively.
- Brandon Smith Warns 'The Virtual Economy' Is The End Of Freedom
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
There is one simple rule to follow when understanding the tragic history of economies: Never put blind faith in a system built on an establishment-created foundation. You would think this would not be a difficult concept to grasp being that we have so many examples of controlled economies and collapse to reference over the centuries, but in our era more than ever the allure of a virtual world with promises of endless wealth and ease is overwhelming.
Yes, I am referring primarily to cyptocurrency "tulip-mania" (sorry bitcoiners, the description is too fitting, it isn't going away), but not this issue alone. I am also referring to a far-reaching problem of which cryptocurrencies are a mere reflection.
Namely, the fact that humanity is swiftly losing sight of what a true economy is and what it is supposed to accomplish. It is because of this reality that crypto is thriving.
First, let's be clear, fiat currencies are one of the first machinations of the virtual economy. Once paper currencies printed from thin air by central bankers were separated from tangible backing and accepted by the masses as "valuable" and worth trading labor for, the seed of financial cancer was planted. Today, there is one final step needed for the establishment to accomplish complete tyranny in global trade and that is to disconnect the masses fully from private transactions. In other words, we must be tricked into going digital, where privacy is an absurd memory.
Virtual economics is appealing for several reasons, most of them bad.
Americans and much of the west in particular are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of real production. The latest generation coming into political and social influence, the millenials, is a perfect example. Surveys show American millenials more than any other generation lack basic workplace competency skills, including scoring low on arithmetic and reading comprehension. Often portrayed as "tech savvy" in popular culture and the media, millenials are quite inept when it comes to core skills that fuel strong business and trade, which is part of the reason why the U.S. is falling into the shadow of foreign workforces.
Millenials in the West also exhibit abysmal technical skills in international testing and lag far behind foreign peers. This has come as a surprise to many mainstream economists and social analysts, primarily because millenials are also considered the "most educated" generation ever. But, of course, we have not only been given a virtual economy in recent decades, but also a virtual educational system. A majority of millenials are lacking when it comes to key production skills and entrepreneurship methods because they have been trained to dismiss such skills as negligible. In other words, millenials have been conditioned to be academic idiots.
Why go through the struggle and hardship required to become an effective producer of tangible necessities when it is far easier to join a collectivist drive for socialism and a structure in which little to no work is required to obtain such necessities? Why not steal from a productive minority and spread it thinly enough to keep the unskilled majority fed? It is only within this kind of culture that virtual production, a virtual society and virtual "money" is seen as an ideal solution.
The notion is becoming more and more prevalent in our popular media, and I believe this is rather symbolic (or ironic) of our conundrum.
For example, consider the book Ready Player One, a pop-culture craze and archetypal zeitgeist for millenials soon to be released as an intended Hollywood blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg. The novel depicts the world of 2045, a world in which fossil fuel depletion and "global warming" have triggered economic and social decline (Remember in the 1980s when they used to tell us that global warming was going to melt the polar icecaps and we would be under water by the year 2000?). A totalitarian governing body controlled by corporate behemoths rules over the dystopian sprawl.
In response to an ever painful existence in the real world, the masses have sought to escape to a virtual world called "the Oasis," created by a programming genius. The Oasis becomes a nexus for the global economy and a virtual society.
This sounds like a rousing background for a story of rebellion, and it is about that… sort of. Unfortunately, here is where the disturbing ties between our world and the fictional world of Ready Player One meet. The "rebellion" is for all intents and purposes also virtual, and for millenial audiences in particular, this is supposed to be inspiring.
Perhaps this is why cryptocurrencies are so appealing to the millenial crowd in particular. Think about it — the dismal economic doldrums of Ready Player One exist NOW; we don't have to wait until 2045. Millenials are already feeling disaffected, indebted and disenfranchised, and most of them are also skill-less. Self reliance to them is an idea so alien it rarely if ever crosses their minds. So, how do they fight back? Or, how are they tricked into thinking they can fight back against a virtual system that has left them in the gutter? Why, with a virtual community and a virtual currency, of course.
Millenials and others think that they are going to rebel and "take down the banking oligarchs" with nothing more than digital markers representing "coins" tracked on a digital ledger created by an anonymous genius programmer/programmers. Delusional? Yes. But like I said earlier, it is an appealing notion.
Here is the issue, though; true money requires intrinsic value. Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value. They are conjured from nothing by programmers, they are "mined" in a virtual mine created from nothing, and they have no unique aspects that make them rare or tangibly useful. They are an easily replicated digital product. Anyone can create a cryptocurrency. And for those that argue that "math gives crypto intrinsic value," I'm sorry to break it to them, but the math is free.
In fact, for those that are not already aware, Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hash function, created by none other than the National Security Agency (NSA) and published by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).
Yes, that's right, Bitcoin would not exist without the foundation built by the NSA. Not only this, but the entire concept for a system remarkably similar to bitcoin was published by the NSA way back in 1996 in a paper called "How To Make A Mint: The Cryptography Of Anonymous Electronic Cash."
The origins of bitcoin and thus the origins of crytpocurrencies and the blockchain ledger suggest anything other than a legitimate rebellion against the establishment framework and international financiers. I often cite this same problem when people come to me with arguments that the internet has set the stage for the collapse of the globalist information filter and the mainstream media. The truth is, the internet is also an establishment creation developed by DARPA, and as Edward Snowden exposed in his data dumps, the NSA has total information awareness and backdoor control over every aspect of web data.
Many people believe the free flow of information on the internet is a weapon in favor of the liberty movement, but it is also a weapon in favor of the establishment. With a macro overview of data flows, entities like Google can even predict future social trends and instabilities, not to mention peek into every personal detail of an individual's life and past.
To summarize, cryptocurrencies are built upon an establishment designed framework, and they are entirely dependent on an establishment created and controlled vehicle (the internet) in order to function and perpetuate trade. How exactly is this "decentralization", again?
TOTAL information awareness is the goal here; and blockchain technology helps the powers-that-be remove one of the last obstacles: private personal trade transactions. Years ago, a common argument presented in favor of bitcoin was that it was "completely anonymous." Today, this is being proven more and more a lie. Even now, in the wake of open admissions by major bitcoin proponents that the system is NOT anonymous, people still claim anonymity is possible through various measures, but this has not proven to sway the FBI or IRS which have for years now been using resources such as Chainanalysis to track bitcoin users when they feel like doing so, including those users that have taken stringent measures to hide themselves.
Bitcoin proponents will argue that "new developments" and even new cryptocurrencies are solving this problem. Yet, this was the mantra back when bitcoin was first hitting the alternative media. It wasn't a trustworthy assumption back then, so why would it be a trustworthy assumption now? The only proper assumption to make is that nothing digital is anonymous. Period.
With the ludicrous spike in bitcoin prices, champions of the virtual economy are unlikely to listen to any questions or criticisms. I have never argued one way or the other in terms of bitcoin's potential "market value," because it does not really matter. I have only ever argued that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are in no way a solution to combating the international and central banks. In fact, cyrptocurrencies only seem to be expediting their plan for full spectrum digitization and the issuance of a global currency system.
Bitcoin could easily hit $100,000, but its "value" is truly irrelevant and consistently hyped as if it makes bitcoin self evident as a solution to globalism. The higher the bitcoin price goes, the more the bitcoin cult claims victory, yet the lack of intrinsic value never seems to cross their minds. They have Scrooge McDuck-like visions of swimming in a vault of virtual millions. They'll only accuse you of being an "old fogey" that "does not understanding what the blockchain is."
The fact is, they are the one's that do not really understand what the blockchain is — a framework for a completely cashless society in which trade anonymity is dead and economic freedom is destroyed.
Ask yourself this: Why is it that central banks around the world (including the BIS and IMF) are investing in Bitcoin and other crytpocurrencies while developing their own crypto systems based on a similar framework? Could it be that THIS infusion of capital and infrastructure from major banks is the most likely explanation for the incredible spike in the bitcoin market? Why is it that globalist banking conglomerates like Goldman Sachs lavish blockchain technology with praise in their white papers? And, why are central bankers like Ben Bernanke speaking in favor of crypto at major cryptocurrency conferences if crypto is such a threat to central bank control?
Answer — because it is not a threat.
They benefit from a cashless system, and liberty champions are helping to give it to them.
Above all else, the virtual economy breeds weakness in society. It encourages a lack of tangible production. Instead of true producers, entrepreneurs and inventors, we have people scrambling to sell real world property in order to buy computing rigs capable of "mining" coins that do not really exist. That is to say, we may one day soon be faced with millions of citizens expending their labor and energy in order to obtain digital nothings programmed into existence and given artificial scarcity (for now).
It also encourages false rebellion. Real change requires actions in the real world. Removing banking elitists and their structures by force if necessary (and this will probably be necessary). Instead, freedom activists are being convinced that they will never have to lift a finger to beat the bankers. All they have to do is buy and mine crypto. The day will come in the near future when the folks that embrace this nonsense will wake up and realize they have wasted their energies chasing a unicorn and are ill prepared to weather the economic reset that continues to evolve.
To maintain a real economy in which people are self reliant and safe from fiscal shock, you need three things: tangible localized and decentralized production, independent and decentralized trade networks that are not structured around an establishment controlled system (like the internet is controlled), and the will to apply force to protect and preserve that production and those networks. If you cannot manufacture a useful thing, repair a useful thing or teach a useful skill, then you are essentially useless in a real economy. If you do not have localized trade, you have nothing. If you do not have the mindset and the community of independent people required to protect your local production, then you will not be able to keep the economy you have built.
This is the cold hard truth that crypto proponents do not want to discuss, and will dismiss outright as "archaic" or "not obtainable." The virtual economy is so much easier, so much more enticing, so much more comfortable. Why risk anything or everything in a real world effort to build a concrete trade network in your own neighborhood or town? Why risk everything by promoting true decentralization through localized commodity-backed money and barter systems? Why risk everything by defending those systems when the establishment seeks to crush them? Why do this, when you can pretend you are a virtual hero wielding virtual weapons in a no risk rebellion in a world of electronic ones and zeros?
In truth, the virtual economy is not legitimate decentralization, it is a weapon of mass distraction engineered to kill legitimate decentralization.
- "What The Hell Is Going On?": Trey Gowdy Absolutely Destroys Farcical Mueller Probe In Epic Monologue
If there is any remaining doubt in your mind that Special Counsel Mueller’s probe is anything but a farcical, politically-motivated witch hunt, then you’ll be summarily relieved of those doubts after watching the following exchange from earlier this morning between Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Presented with no further comment for your viewing pleasure…
- Is Jihad Festering In America?
Authored by A Z Mohamed via The Gatestone Institute,
- Saudi influence on American administrations, and relationships between senior officials in both countries, is behind Washington's ignoring Riyadh's "well-established… involvement in supporting terrorism and terrorist groups." – Report by the Institute for Gulf Affairs (IGA), released on June 1.
- The IGA report, covering the three-year period since then and including extremely serious charges against both Saudi Arabia and previous U.S. administration and security officials, indicates the urgency with which the current administration needs to treat the issue and act upon it.
A new investigative report reveals that hundreds of Saudi and Kuwaiti nationals residing in the United States — some with dual citizenship, and most students subsisting on government scholarships — have joined ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq during the past three years.
Titled "From American Campuses to ISIS Camps: How Hundreds of Saudis Joined ISIS in the U.S.," the report — released June 1 by the Washington-D.C.-based think tank, The Institute for Gulf Affairs (IGA) — provides details of the flow of students leaving American institutions of higher learning to fight in the Middle East.
According to a 2016 working paper produced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Saudi Arabia is the second-largest source of ISIS fighters from Muslim-majority countries, with an estimated 2,500. If the IGA report is accurate, a whopping 16% of these fighters were in the U.S. when they joined ISIS.
An equally disturbing finding of the report is that the Saudi government, which has been monitoring its nationals in the U.S., is fully aware that many of their own citizens are joining ISIS and not only has done little to stop them, but has kept information about the subject from American authorities.
This finding completely contradicts the 2014 State Department assertion that "Saudi Arabia has continued to cooperate with the United States to prevent acts of terrorism … through information exchange agreements with the United States."
Meanwhile, according to the report's authors — IGA director Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi Shiite expatriate critical of the Sunni regime in Riyadh, and researcher Mohamed Dhamen — the FBI failed to notice the steady stream of would-be jihadis exiting the U.S. and heading for Iraq and Syria. This failure should not come as a surprise, given the fact that one of the FBI's own employees — Daniela Greene, a translator with top security clearance – absconded to Syria in June 2014 and married the ISIS recruiter she had been assigned to investigate. The rogue agent lied to the FBI about where she was going, alerted the terrorist that he was the subject of an FBI probe and shared classified information with him.
In a May 10 letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley requested additional information on how Greene — who eventually turned herself in, and reached a lenient plea deal — was able to slip through the system undetected. Two days later, Grassley released a statement. "I'm troubled that a relationship between an FBI employee and a prominent ISIS recruiter went unnoticed, and more troubled that there wasn't a safeguard to successfully catch this incident," he said.
"It's important for the public to understand how this happened and how similar problems will be prevented in the future. We also need to know how prosecutors settled on the charges in this case. A sentence of two years seems unusually light for such a potential threat to national security."
Greene's case sheds light on the findings of the IGA report and its claim that Saudi influence on American administrations, and relationships between senior officials in both countries, is behind Washington's ignoring Riyadh's "well-established… involvement in supporting terrorism and terrorist groups."
The number of Saudi students in the United States in 2016 reached 125,000, the "most in the world," according to a June 14 Arab News report. Those who leave to join a terrorist group and subsequently return — enabled by their U.S. citizenship, combined with lax monitoring of and leniency with them — present a clear and present danger to America's home front.
As then-FBI director James B. Comey said during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in September 2014:
"Foreign fighters traveling to Syria or Iraq could… gain battlefield experience and increased exposure to violent extremist elements… they may use these skills and exposure to radical ideology to return to their countries of origin, including the United States, to conduct attacks on the Homeland."
The IGA report, covering the three-year period since then and including extremely serious charges against both Saudi Arabia and previous U.S. administration and security officials, indicates the urgency with which the current administration needs to treat the issue and act upon it. American blood is at stake.
- Seller Of Luxury Miami Condo Demands To Be Paid Exclusively In Bitcoin
And they said bitcoin would never work as a currency.
While that might be true for small transactions – for now – real-estate markets across the US are increasingly demonstrating that bitcoin is a viable medium of exchange. Case in point: the seller of a luxury Miami condo will only accept payment in bitcoin. The asking price – according to real-estate listings site Redfin – 33 bitcoins, or about $550,000 at bitcoin’s present valuation.
According to Redfin, this is the first time a seller is exclusively accepting payment in bitcoin. The seller’s identity wasn’t immediately clear.
It begins: Miami condo on sale for 33 bitcoins – seller won’t accept any other currency. First time that’s happened in U.S., per Redfin https://t.co/hAvnpcL5zX
— Mike Rosenberg (@ByRosenberg) December 13, 2017
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But while this might be the first time that Redfin has noticed the phenomenon, homesellers have been asking to be paid in bitcoin since at least 2013, when an anonymous seller of a luxury condo in the Trump Soho of all places listed the price as 24,700 bitcoin, according to the Daily News. While this sale was t\he first that was documented in the media, it’s also notable that it occurred before the first bitcoin bubble burst.
Also over the summer, a realtor in Texas revealed that one of her clients had accepted payment for their home in bitcoin. The number of coins – and the identity of the seller and buyer – weren’t disclosed.
And as we recently reported, more realtors in hot markets like New York City and Miami are demanding to be paid in cryptocurrency, sometimes exclusively.
This trend in broader crypto acceptance – contrary to mainstream media reports – is undoubtedly a factor behind the unprecedented price appreciation whch has seen bitcoin soar from $1,000 to $19,000 in 2017.
Meanwhile, any buyer who has accepted bitcoin as payment and kept it, has so far managed to generate a staggering profit, given the digital currency’s aggressive appreciation. The real test will come after the digital currency inevitably tanks again.
- Gundlach Reveals His Favorite Trade For 2018
One day after Stanley Druckenmiller confessional to CNBC that as a result of central planning and markets that make no sense, the legendary hedge fund manager had a “terrible” year, and his “first down year in currencies ever” (he also said many not very nice things about bitcoin), it was Jeffrey Gundlach’s turn to confess some of his more controversial views. And so, the man who two years ago correctly predicted the Trump presidency, first discussed his best investment idea for the new year. To those who listened to his latest DoubleLine investor presentation last week, the answer will hardly be a surprise: namely commodities, because they’re “historically, exactly where you want it to be a buy.”
“I think investors should add commodities to their portfolios,” Gundlach says on CNBC’s Halftime Report.
Gundlach said commodities are just as cheap relative to stocks as they were at historical turning points, while the macroeconomic backdrop also supports the case for commodities; he was referring to the following chart which he highlighted last week.
Echoing his presentation from last week, Gundlach said that once “you go into these massive cycles… the repetition is almost eerie. And so if you look at that chart the value in commodities is, historically, exactly where you want it to be a buy.”
Investors should add commodities to their portfolios. There is a really remarkable relationship between a market cap or the total return of the s&p 500 and the total return something like the Goldman Sachs commodities index. The cyclicality is really repettiive.
Gundlach also noted that commodities are just as cheap relative to stocks as they were at turning points in previous cycles that began in the 1970s and 1990s. The S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index is up 5% this year, versus the S&P 500’s 19% gain.
There is also a fundamental case for investing in commodities, Gundlach said. He pointed out that global economic activity is increasing, a tax cut could boost growth and the European Central Bank is implementing “absurd” stimulus policies in the euro zone.
Jeffrey Gundlach: Investors should add commodities to their portfolios from CNBC.
In addition to his favorite trade, Gundlach touched upon several other topics including:
What drives the dollar:
“Short-term fed moves are not what drives the dollar. It correlates much more to what the bond market thinks vis-à-vis the fed say 18 months forward. So if you actually rook at the bond market pricing for 2019 now, there’s a pretty big discrepancy between the bond market and the fed, so that’s going to be really interesting in driving the dollar, and this time i think the bond market is going to be right.”
Why the markets are so calm:
“I think it’s because of central bank pegging of rates and quantitative easing going on full bore in europe and in japan. One of the charts that i love to reference is the nearly linear rise in central bank balance sheet holdings ever since 2011, where the Fed stopped quantitative easing back three years ago, and japan and the ecb just took over the slack, and it’s just a linear rise.”
Jeffrey Gundlach: This has been a great year for investors from CNBC.
On ECB president Mario Draghi:
“That’s going to slow things down a little bit, but the real worry from the central bank activity would be forward about a year. Because Mr. Draghi has said astonishingly that they’re going to continue 30 billion euros per month of quantitative easing at least until September and then he threw in, just to put a cherry on top of the cake of stimulus, he said, and negative rates well past the end of quantitative easing. Which means – sounds to me you’ll have negative rates as long has Mr. Draghi is around which is a little under two years.”
On tax cuts and bonds:
“If there is a net tax cut, it has to be bond unfriendly. we already have growing bond supply. we’ve been liiving in a world for the last three years thanks to quantitative easing of negative net bond supply, really, from sovereign bonds in the developing world. and that’s gonna flip because the fed is now letting bonds roll off, the budget deficit is increasing, a tax cut would increase the deficit further, and to the extent that a tax cut might be stimulative to the economy, that’s bond unfriendly, because bonds don’t like economic growth and also it’s more bonds, expanding the deficit, so even more supply.”
On tax hikes and risk:
“If i’m correct and i’m going to receive a seven-point bump in my tax rate, which is actually about a 15% tax increase, i have a feeling that i’m probably going to be less able and willing to buy risky assets or buy all the other things that are bubbling up these days, and maybe that side of the narrative will start showing up.”
Jeffrey Gundlach: Tax plan could have unintended consequences from CNBC.
On stimulating the economy:
“While we’re not probably going to get 3% real for the year, we’ve had it for two quarters in a row. and gdp now at the atlanta fed has been bouncing around but it’s around 3% for the third quarter. when is the last time we had something like 3% growth for three quarters in a row? it’s a long time. why would you be stimulating the economy?”
Finally on bitcoin:
- The Enemy Within – The "Intelligence Community"
Authored by Justin Raimondo via AntiWar.com,
It was the Holy Grail of #TheResistance, the smoking gun they had been desperately searching for, solid evidence that Trump had colluded with the Russians to steal the presidency from its rightful owner: an email written and sent before WikiLeaks published the DNC material directing Trump’s attention to the data dump and even offering an “encryption key,” whatever that may be, so he could get a jump start on the news cycle.
Collusion! Impeach! Gotcha!
Except it wasn’t true.
CNN, which initially reported the story, had the date of the email wrong: a 14 had somehow morphed into a 4. It turns out that CNN had never actually seen the email, but only had it described by “multiple sources.” CBS ran a story supposedly “confirming” the provenance of the incriminating email, and MSNBC followed suit with former Los Angeles Times national security reporter Ken Dilanian, whose reputation as a mouthpiece for the CIA is well-earned: Dilanian went on the air endorsing the story and tying it into the by now elaborate conspiracy theories that preoccupy #TheResistance.
Of course it was the purest coincidence that no less than three major media outlets got the Trump email story wrong. Yes, those “multiple sources” sure were busy.
It’s absurd to think that this episode is a case of simply getting it wrong: this was undoubtedly a deliberate lie, planted in the media by the same rogue “intelligence community” that invented Russia-gate. It didn’t matter that the truth would eventually come out: look at how many times the original story was tweeted and retweeted over social media, and then consider how many people don’t know it’s been debunked.
It seems like years since the Russia-gate investigation was launched, amid predictions of Trump’s imminent doom. So what have they come up with so far? Enough evidence of foreign meddling in American politics to drive the Podesta Group out of business. Mike Flynn is in trouble not because of his Russia contacts but due to his lobbying on behalf of Turkey while in office. Of the many Russia-is-after-us stories that have come down the pipeline recently, a good many have been debunked.
In short, Russia-gate is getting old, and going nowhere. It needed a jolt to kick it back into life again, and who cares what’s true and what isn’t? The point of circulating a lie, even a debunked one, is to normalize the inconceivable. A coup against the President? Why not? Violence directed at his supporters? Oh, it’s a moral obligation. War propagandists don’t need fact-checkers, and this is a war we’re in. We’re all living on a battlefield as the struggle for power goes on around us and our intelligence community – or at least the leadership – conducts open warfare against the President.
We’ve seen the same pattern unfold abroad, as the CIA and its ancillary organizations undertook regime change operations in countries throughout the world. Remember the “color revolutions” of the Bush II era? Or look at what happened in Ukraine, where the elected president was driven out of office by a CIA-bought-and-paid-for mob. They hope to replicate their Ukrainian success in the US.
Is it really necessary to explain why this is a deadly threat to the Constitution, the rule of law, and everything we stand for as a nation?
Are we to be turned into some Third World banana republic, with coups, counter-coups, and a political police answerable to no one?
The repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which forbade the CIA from carrying out actions designed to influence US domestic opinion, was justified by officials on the grounds that these limits prevented them from doing their job. Of course, if we had known that they considered it their job to pick and choose who can be President, perhaps Smith-Mundt would still be intact. As it is now, our spooks can use government resources to push their political agenda, and rest assured they have one: they are a de facto political party as well as a welter of government agencies.
Particularly frightening is the politicization of the FBI, which seems to have become a bludgeon in the hands of the President’s enemies. Their involvement with the Trump “dossier,” their refusal to hand over key documents to congressional oversight committees, not to mention the bizarre grandstanding of former FBI director James Comey – all point to a worrisome partisanship that has somehow infiltrated US law enforcement and called into question the integrity of our entire legal system.
We have given these people access to our most private information: they have a “legal” mandate to invade our privacy at will. We’ve given them unlimited resources, although nobody knows how much they really spend. We’ve allowed them to roam the earth, overthrowing governments, assassinating opponents, and engaging in dirty tricks that we’ll never even know about. So the question isn’t “How did they get to the point where they can conceivably pull off a coup?” – it’s “Why didn’t this happen sooner?”
We are facing a mortal threat to our republic, to our liberties, and to the future of democracy in America, and it’s not coming from overseas. The danger is coming from within our own government – the permanent national security bureaucracy, which was never elected by anyone to anything, and is now determined to impose its will on a country that voted the “wrong” way.
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