Category: zerohedge

In a bombshell development, the former head of Israel’s Communications Ministry has agreed to turn state’s witness in one of several ongoing corruption investigations against Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, local media reports.

Schlomo Filber – appointed by Netanyahu to head the Communications Ministry, finalized the agreement to testify against his former boss in a Tuesday night agreement – making him the first member of the Prime Minister’s inner circle to testify against the Israeli leader. 

Filber was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of bribery, fraud, breach of trust and obstruction of justice in connection with an investigation into ties between Israel’s largest telecom company, Bezeq, and senior government officials. Filber is suspected of granting financial and other benefits to Shaul Elovich, who owns a controlling interest in Bezeq, in exchange for favorable coverage towards Mr. Netanyahu and his wife, Sara on the Walla news website.

As part of the agreement made late Tuesday night, Filber offered police a detailed account of everything he knows about Netanyahu’s part in the so-called Case 4000, as well as others involved in the affair. According to the deal, Filber will not receive jail time.

Filber’s testimony is likely to establish the nature of the compensation given by the prime minister for the slanted coverage he received on Walla. –Haretz

Bibi and Sara Netanyahu have been embroiled in several ongoing corruption investigations, with some of the Prime Minister’s critics claiming he is now a political corpse. 

Netanyahu ousted the former Director of the Communications Ministry, General Avi Berger – replaceing him with Filber, who had been a close confidant for years. On his first day in office, Filber met with Elovich where the two were said to have reached a mutual understanding over the relationship between Bezeq and the Netanyahu administration. After the matter was investigated by the State Comptroller, Filber was considered a de-facto agent of Bezeq within the ministry. 

While under investigation by the Securities Authority in August of last year, Filber said he wouldn’t testify against Netanyahu – and told Channel 2 News that the Prime Minister had “never talked to him” about discussing positive news coverage with Bezeq. “The subject never came up in our conversations.” 

Investigators subsequently recommended Filber for prosecution. As part of his deal to turn state’s witness, he is likely to testify that he was “simply following orders” from his old pal Bibi. 

More alleged favors

In a second claim against Netanyahu, the Prime Minister is suspected of offering the position of Attorney General to a retired judge in return for her expeditious closing of the case against his wife, Sara Netanyahu, in which she is accused of improprieties over household expenses at their official residence.

Netanyahu is accused of offering the job to retired Israeli judge Hila Gerstl through an intermediary, Nir Hefetz – a former personal spokesman for the Netanyahus. The case has been ongoing for several years, with details of Hefetz’s involvement revealed on Tuesday over the alleged attempt to shut it down. 

Netanyahu responds

“What has happened over the last two days is simply that the world has gone mad. It’s a scandal,” said Netanyahu. “They’ve brought two delusional, false allegations as part of a campaign of persecution against me and my family that has been going on for years already.”

“First, regarding Bezeq: All decisions on Bezeq were made by professional committees, by the professionals, under close legal supervision. There’s no Wild West here. There are no private decisions. All decisions are transparent and subject to oversight. Therefore, the claim that I worked to benefit Bezeq at the expense of substantive considerations is simply and fundamentally absurd.

“As for the second claim, which is no less delusional and no less malicious, regarding the appointment of the attorney general: I never spoke to Nir Hefetz on this issue, he never proposed anything to me on this issue, and you know what? I don’t believe he raised this possibility with anyone.”

Some have suspected that Netanyahu will now call a snap election in the next few months to try and stall the legal proceedings, however Haretz reports that it’s unlikely he’ll be the head of the Likud party by the time they would occur – and even less likely that he would win. 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2BImwYK Tyler Durden

Authored by Jonathan Cook via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Behind the scenes, Sweden wanted to drop the extradition case against Assange back in 2013. Why was this not made public? Because Britain persuaded Sweden to pretend that they still wished to pursue the case.

In other words, for more than four years Assange has been holed up in a tiny room, policed at great cost to British taxpayers, not because of any allegations in Sweden but because the British authorities wanted him to remain there.

On what possible grounds could that be, one has to wonder? Might it have something to do with his work as the head of Wikileaks, publishing information from whistleblowers that has severely embarrassed the United States and the UK.

In fact, Assange should have walked free years ago if this was really about an investigation – a sham one at that – into an alleged sexual assault in Sweden. Instead, as Assange has long warned, there is a very different agenda at work: efforts to extradite him onwards to the US, where he could be locked away for good. That was why UN experts argued two years ago that he was being “arbitrarily detained” – for political crimes – not unlike the situation of dissidents in other parts of the world who are supported by western liberals and leftists.

According to a new release of emails between officials, the Swedish director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, wrote to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service on 18 October 2013, warning that Swedish law would not allow the case for extradition to be continued. This was, remember, after Sweden had repeatedly failed to take up an offer from Assange to interview him in London, as had happened in 44 other extradition cases between Sweden and Britain.

Ny wrote to the CPS: “We have found us to be obliged to lift the detention order … and to withdraw the European arrest warrant. If so this should be done in a couple of weeks. This would affect not only us but you too in a significant way.”

Three days later, suggesting that legal concerns were far from anyone’s mind, she emailed the CPS again: “I am sorry this came as a [bad] surprise… I hope I didn’t ruin your weekend.”

In a similar vein, proving that this was about politics, not the law, the chief CPS lawyer handling the case in the UK, had earlier written to the Swedish prosecutors: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

In December 2013, the unnamed CPS lawyer again wrote to Ny: “I do not consider costs are a relevant factor in this matter.” This was at a time when it had been revealed that the policing of Assange’s detention in the embassy had cost Britain at that point £3.8 million. In another email from the CPS, it was noted: “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.”

These are only fragments of the email correspondence, after most of it was destroyed by the CPS against its own protocols. The deletions appear to have been carried out to avoid releasing the electronic files to a tribunal that has been considering a freedom of information request.

Other surviving emails, according to a Guardian report last year, have shown that the CPS “advised the Swedes in 2010 or 2011 not to visit London to interview Assange. An interview at that time could have prevented the long-running embassy standoff.”

Assange is still holed up in the embassy, at great risk to his physical and mental health, even though last year Sweden formally dropped an investigation that in reality it had not actually been pursuing for more than four years.

Now the UK (read US) authorities have a new, even less credible pretext for continuing to hold Assange: because he “skipped bail”. Apparently the price he should pay for this relatively minor infraction is more than five years of confinement.

London magistrates are due to consider on Tuesday the arguments of Assange’s lawyers that he should be freed and that after so many years the continuing enforcement of the arrest warrant is disproportionate. Given the blurring of legal and political considerations in this case, don’t hold your breath that Assange will finally get a fair hearing.

Remember too that, according to the UK Foreign Office, Ecuador recently notified it that Assange had received diplomatic status following his successful application for Ecuadorean citizenship.

As former British ambassador Craig Murray has explained, the UK has no choice but to accept Assange’s diplomatic immunity. The most it can do is insist that he leave the country – something that Assange and Ecuador presumably each desire. And yet the UK continues to ignore its obligation to allow Assange his freedom to leave. So far there has been zero debate in the British corporate media about this fundamental violation of his rights.

One has to wonder at what point will most people realise that this is – and always was – political persecution masquerading as law enforcement.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2CddNPi Tyler Durden

One of President Trump’s earliest campaign staffers who was fired in August 2015 is expected to meet with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in Washington DC on Thursday, according to ABC News.

Sam Nunberg, who was fired over racially charged Facebook posts and later sued by Trump for $10 million over a breach of confidentiality agreement, will be accompanied by defense attorney Patrick Brackley. Nunberg received an invitation to meet with the Special Counsel following the publication of Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” in which the former staffer is reported to have called President Trump an “idiot,” in a conversation with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. 

The book quotes the former Trump aide describing everything from his allegiance with ex-strategist Steve Bannon to Trump’s decision to run for president and attempts to explain the Constitution to the rookie political candidate. –Politico

“I got as far as the Fourth Amendment before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head,” wrote Wolff of Nunberg’s account.

Despite being fired from the campaign, Nunberg has remained a close Bannon ally and a loyal supporter of President Trump. Last December, he called for the President to fire White House attorney Ty Cobb over what he described as an unrealistic expectation over when the Russia investigation will end. 

“In my humble opinion and many others believe that Cobb is not very competent and he’s not an asset to the president,” Nunberg told Politico.

Trump sued Nunberg in May 2016, alleging he was involved with leaking the details of a verbal altercation between former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and White House communications director Hope Hicks. 

Nunberg fired back, calling the allegations baseless, and retaliation for his subsequent suport for Trump challenger Ted Cruz during the GOP primary. 

“The Trump Campaign is attempting to bring a frivolous and retaliatory arbitration proceeding against me essentially to punish me and shut me up,” Nunberg stated at the time.  

Three months later, Trump and Nunberg settled the lawsuit “amicably,” according to CNN. 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2ohsEQ1 Tyler Durden

Authored by A.Z.Mohamed via The Gatestone Institute,

Britain’s terrorism watchdog, Max Hill QC (Queen’s Counsel), recently told a parliamentary committee that it is “fundamentally wrong to attach the word ‘terrorism’ to any of the world religions,” and suggested that the term “Daesh-inspired terrorism” should be used instead of “Islamist terrorism” to refer to attacks carried out by Muslims (“Daesh” is the Arabic acronym for ISIS).

His recommendation comes despite the fact that Hill himself, whose official title is Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, referred to the “threats from Islamist terrorism” in his first report, released in January. In that first report, Hill also argued that “what [Islamic terrorists] claim to do in the name of religion is actually born from an absence of real understanding about the nature of the religion they claim to follow.” How impressive that he knows more about their religion than they do, despite the fact that the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, received a PhD in Koranic Studies from Saddam University for Islamic Studies in 2007.

Although Hill’s statements ostensibly put him at odds with Prime Minister Theresa May, she too has mystifyingly called terrorism “a perversion of Islam.”

Max Hill QC, the British government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. (Image source: Sky News video screenshot)

 

There are two problems with this expression of political correctness. One is that although the Quran and Sunnah contain inherently contradictory texts, most jihadi leaders and ideologues follow and act upon the most extremist and violent interpretation of them. Therefore, constantly apologizing for the religion is worse than counter-productive: it is incorrect. The other, related, problem is that British policy is forged and implemented on the basis of ideas; so when those ideas stem from a fear of offending Muslims, the policy is necessarily flawed.

In October, for instance, Hill told BBC Radio that Britons “possibly [brainwashed] in their mid-teens… who travelled [to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS] out of a sense of naivety… and return in a sense of utter disillusionment” should be spared prosecution upon their return home.

“Really,” Hill said, “we should be looking at reintegration and moving away from any notion that we are going to lose a generation from this.”

Meanwhile, also in October, MI5 Director General Andrew Parker delivered a speech in London, during which he talked about the threat of Islamist terrorism. He said that jihadists are increasing the speed at which they plan and carry out attacks, many of which security services have thwarted. In 2017 alone, there were four ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks in the UK.

Hill’s skirting this issue impairs his ability to carry out his highly important and sensitive role, which is to review terror legislation for the British government and the public. His aim to ban the term “Islamist terrorism” indicates that political correctness is more important to him than strengthening Britain’s counter-terrorist efforts.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2CzdlXf Tyler Durden

The former head of Deutsche Bank’s mortgage bond desk has made a notably unorthodox mid-career pivot: He’s taken up writing young-adult fiction, hoping to ride the wave of dystopian novels to a multimillion dollar movie deal a la the Hunger Games.

Chris Babu ran the government-backed mortgage-bond trading at Deutsche Bank AG until 2016 before leaving to try his hand at writing novels. He says he’s gotten used to funny looks when people hear about his career change, according to a short profile published by Bloomberg.

“You’re nuts,” Babu says old colleagues sometimes tell him. “Get a job that’s going to pay you a lot of money.”

Of course, as he tells BBG, he hopes he’s done just that: Investing a “not insignificant” amount of his own money in marketing his series. The first book, “the Initiation” is set to be published this month by Permuted Press, which specializes in sci-fi and dystopian fiction.

Chris Babu, soaking up some inspiration for his novels in New York City’s subway.

He describes the series as “the Hunger Games” for nerds – noting that his books have more of a hard sci-fi bent. The story was inspired by Babu’s formerly hellish commute on New York City’s subways.

The novel was partly inspired by what Babu called his “daily hellish commute” from Manhattan’s Upper West Side to Wall Street on the 2/3 subway line. The main character is a 16-year-old math geek who, along with five other kids, has to undergo a series of tests in the abandoned subway tunnels of Babu’s post-apocalyptic New York. You fail, you die.

Despite the instant relatability of his premise, many of his friends and former colleagues questioned Babu’s sanity, he says.

“The general reaction was, ‘That’s a cool thing you’re doing,'” Babu said, despite the occasional questioning of his sanity. “A lot of people didn’t take me seriously. They were surprised that I stuck with it.”

Babu, 42, had always been a voracious reader. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in mathematics, and worked at Bank of America Corp. before landing at Deutsche Bank in 2005, eventually rising to oversee 35 mortgage-bond traders and an $18 billion balance sheet.

However, during the post-crisis era, fixed-income trading eventually got boring, as the Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of Japan and other central banks unleashed a wave of quantitative easing that led to years of mostly one-directional trading. Babu said he blames the Fed, but also the Volcker Rule and overzealous post-crisis compliance requirements for removing the volatility – and, with it, most of the fun and excitement – from trading. 

By the spring of 2015, Babu was winding down his desk at Deutsche Bank, which was reeling from more than $500 million in losses on bonds amassed by former trading head Troy Dixon. He was also spending large chunks of time in a dentist’s chair suffering through a series of root canals. Babu had never considered putting his own ideas to paper, but after mulling it over he realized he had a story to tell.

“I had no qualifications to write a novel,” Babu said. He took to writing after work in his final months at Deutsche Bank, and stuck with that schedule once he left Wall Street, sleeping from sunrise to sunset and waking around 5 pm to work.

While his friends might be skeptical, Babu’s publisher appreciates his career shift, saying it’s refreshing to work with an artist who knows something about the business end of the industry.

“The fact that he understands business was a huge asset to us,” Michael L. Wilson, the publisher’s president, said. “So many artists don’t understand the business side of things.”

While he loves his work, Babu says he hasn’t ruled out making a return to finance.

“As committed as I am to this, I’m not ruling out going back to work in finance,” Babu said. “If the books do well, and they become movies, then probably not.”

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Babu’s career transition is that his work at DB wasn’t more influential. Because what could be more apocalyptic than a novel about the global collapse of capitalism, and what could be more wonky than explaining to readers how a global bank’s staggering derivatives exposure could trigger such an epoch-defining event?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2BI0AwQ Tyler Durden

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

If you’ve been following much international news, you’ve probably heard that, after literally years of scandal, abuse, and incompetence, South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma was finally forced to resign last week.

This is a big deal for South Africa.

The country has been suffering for nearly a decade under Zuma’s corruption.

And people are certainly hoping that the new President, Cyril Ramaphosa, will represent a positive, new chapter for South Africa.

Yesterday Ramaphosa addressed the nation’s parliament in Cape Town and made clear that his priority is to heal the divisions and injustice of the past, going all the way back to the original European colonists in the 1600s taking land from the indigenous tribes.

Ramaphosa called this “original sin”, and stated that he wants to see “the return of the land to the people from whom it was taken… to heal the divisions of the past.”

How does he plan on doing that?

Confiscation. Specifically– confiscation without compensation.

“The expropriation of land without compensation is envisaged as one of the measures that we will use to accelerate redistribution of land to black South Africans.”

Ramaphosa minced no words: he’s talking about taking land from white farmers and giving it to black South Africans.

Astonishingly, he followed up that statement by saying, “We will handle it in a way that is not going to damage our economy. . .”

Wow, what a relief. For a minute it sounded like South Africa wants to do what Zimbabwe did several years ago.

Oh wait a minute.

That’s exactly what Zimbabwe did.

Seeking to correct similar colonial and Apartheid-era injustices in his country, Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe initiated a land redistribution program in 1999-2000.

Thousands of white-owned farms were confiscated by the government, and the farmers were forced out.

Bear in mind that Zimbabwe used to be known as the breadbasket of southern Africa. Zimbabwe’s world-class farmers were major food exporters to the rest of the region.

But within a few years of Mugabe’s land distribution, food production plummeted.

Without its professional, experienced farmers, the nation went from being an agricultural export powerhouse to having to rely on handouts from the United Nations’ World Food Programme.

Hyperinflation and a multi-decade depression followed.

If there’s an economic model in the world that you DON’T want to follow, it’s Zimbabwe.

And you’d think that the politicians in neighboring South Africa would know that.

They had a front-row seat to the effects of Mugabe’s land redistribution, not to mention they had to absorb millions of starving Zimbabwean refugees who came across their borders.

Yet this is precisely the policy that they want to adopt.

However you might feel about social justice, it seems pretty clear that copying Zimbabwe is a pretty stupid idea… and will only end up hurting the people they claim to be helping.

Yet the president claims that they want to initiate a land redistribution program that won’t impact the economy or South Africa’s food security.

Yeah sure. And I want to be the starting quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys next season.

But sadly you won’t see Simon Black throwing any touchdown passes anytime soon.

That’s because we have to live in a world with certain realities and limitations.

One of those realities is that land distribution, even if you believe the intentions to be noble, never works.

And of course, the most important reality is that anyone who willfully chooses to copy Zimbabwe’s economic model deserves to suffer the consequences of their stupidity.

[You can watch his remarks yourself here: the fun starts around 30:45]

And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2HBRq5N Tyler Durden

As we’ve pointed out time and time again, anybody who has read the Mueller indictment would likely assume that Russian agents were orchestrating a sophisticated psy-op against the American people during the run-up to the 2016 vote – and that their meddling had a demonstrable impact on the outcome.

As if anybody expected the 2016 campaign season to be a placid affair, with two of the most controversial candidates in US electoral history going head-to-head?

In today’s New York Post, columnist Rich Lowry highlights how exaggerating the impact that the 13 Russians and 3 Russian entities charged by Mueller had on the election risks doing more harm than good. The Post also reported that it couldn’t find any evidence that pro-Trump and anti-Hillary rallies that were purportedly organized by the Russians in New York — not exactly a swing state — in June and July of 2016 had ever taken place.

The Russia campaign was a shockingly cynical violation of our sovereignty. President Trump would do himself and the country a favor by frankly denouncing it.

But the scale of the operation shouldn’t be exaggerated. In the context of a hugely expensive, obsessively covered, impossibly dramatic presidential election, the Russian contribution on social media was piddling and often laughable.

The Russians wanted to boost Trump, but as a Facebook executive noted, most of their spending on Facebook ads came after the election. The larger goal was to sow discord, yet we had already primed ourselves for plenty of that ourselves.

Lowry’s column comes at an opportune time. Earlier this week, two interesting stories published this week by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal fleshed out new details of the suspected Putin-linked Russian bots’ activities. And in both instances, though the content was salacious, alarmist and crude, almost none of it pertained directly to candidates for American office.

Which reminds us of the fact that Mueller has said there’s no proof the Russians had a material impact on the election – though he has unequivocally allowed – even encouraged via the fusillade of leaks out of his office – the unfounded suspicion of unalterable wrongdoing to linger.

First, the New York Times published a story about Russia-linked bots spreading misinformation and hysteria following last week’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

Any news event – no matter how tragic has become fodder to spread inflammatory messages in what is believed to be a far-reaching Russian disinformation campaign. The disinformation comes in various forms: conspiracy videos on YouTube, fake interest groups on Facebook, and armies of bot accounts that can hijack a topic or discussion on Twitter.

Those automated Twitter accounts have been closely tracked by researchers. Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian influence campaign.

That’s right: These accounts are meticulously tracked, and, researchers have proven that the vast majority of the content they produce has nothing to do with American politics. They have one trait in common: They are salacious and often include disinformation. But rarely are they political.

And, as the Wall Street Journal demonstrates in a deeply researched piece published yesterday, this is not a new strategy. These accounts have been active for years. In citing incidents that have been identified by investigators as coordinated disinformation campaigns, the aim appears more toward impacting markets and spreading hysteria than any expressly political aim.

The story begins with a recounting of how Russian trolls spread a swiftly discredited story about food poisoning being spread by Wal-Mart turkeys. While there’s no evidence the hoax impacted the stock, it’s easy to imagine that this was it’s aim.

WSJ says most of the bots identified by the US government first became active in 2014.

The Journal’s data shows a small number of Russian tweets before 2014, but it was a deadly plane crash that year that brought out the strongest early response. On July 17, 2014, an anti-aircraft missile shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

…Some of the false stories spread by the bots were intended to discredit the Ukrainian government…

Russian-linked Twitter users at first tweeted news of the tragedy, but within hours they were raising questions about who was responsible. By the next morning, they had latched onto a hashtag blaming the Ukrainian government: КиевСбилБоинг – Kiev shot down the airliner.

Despite this, Mueller insists that he’s still investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russia – though, at this point, it appears that the investigation’s primary achievement will be a lengthy prison sentence for former campaign executive Paul Manafort, who has been a long-time target of the FBI, beginning back in the early 2000s, around the time that Mueller’s tenure as head of the bureau began.

After all, one shouldn’t exaggerate the role Russians played in the election – if only to avoid sowing more partisan fear and division in a system that’s already rife with both.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2BI2i1m Tyler Durden

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

Syria reportedly agreed to the Kurdish PYD-YPG “federalist” militia’s request to enter Afrin and stop the Turks’ military advance, though it still remains to be seen whether Damascus will actually carry through on this decision or not.

There have been conflicting reports on this topic all across the past week, but the official “Syrian Arab News Agency” (SANA) confirmed that the “Popular Mobilization Units” (PMU) will deploy to the region in order to thwart the Turks, debunking earlier claims that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) will directly do so instead. Even so, this would b e a very dangerous development if it actually happens because it could quickly lead to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) entering the fray in support of their pro-government partners and thus sparking a conventional state-to-state war with Turkey. Syria has every sovereign right to deploy its own forces and those of its allies anywhere within its territory, but taking a step back from principled idealism and soberly assessing the reality of the situation, this might not be the wisest decision at the moment.

The Turkish Foreign Minister warned in no uncertain terms that his country’s military forces will not be stopped by the SAA or its allied PMU if they intervene on behalf of the PYD-YPG “federal” Kurds that Ankara equates with the terrorist-designated PKK, and it’s very likely that the war-weary and completely exhausted Syrian military might be routed by the much more powerful Turks if “push comes to shove”. Not only that, but there’s close to no possibility that Russia would get involved in “saving Syria” either since its military mandate is strictly for anti-terrorist purposes and President Assad’s closest advisor Ms. Bouthaina Shaaban confirmed that Moscow withdrew all of its ground forces except for a few remaining aircraft.

In addition, Dr. Vitaly Naumkin – Russia’s premier Mideast expert and the man who’s playing a crucial role in organizing Moscow’s peacemaking efforts in Syria – wrote in the position paper released at the beginning of the prestigious Valdai Club’s two-day conference earlier this week that “part of the government elite may have greater hopes for military victory than the dividends that negotiations would eventually pay”. This is the strongest statement yet of Moscow’s growing impatience with Damascus’ refusal to enter into the “compromises” that President Putin suggested that the authorities make back in November in order to facilitate an internationally brokered peace to the conflict. On top of that, Damascus rejected the outcome of the “Syrian National Dialogue Congress” just last week, which may have prompted Naumkin’s stark warning about so-called ‘hardliners’ who might prospectively impede the peace process.

Bearing in mind this high-level official’s words and the fact that Russia withdrew most of its military forces from Syria, as well as Moscow’s visibly growing dissatisfaction with the Syrian government’s procrastination on making any tangible progress towards a “political solution”, there are concrete grounds for predicting that Russia would not support the SAA if they enter into conflict with the Turks, further amplifying the existential risk that Damascus faces if it allows the Kurds to “play them like a fiddle” and falls for this disastrous scenario. It might be for this reason why the authorities never carried through on their implied threat to dispatch conventional military units to Afrin, begrudgingly realizing after President Putin’s phone call with President Erdogan that Russia would “hang them out to dry” as they initiate what might have amounted to an act of “national suicide”.

Nevertheless, the situation is still highly combustible right now and a larger war could break out at any time due to even the slightest miscalculation by the Syrian side, thus leaving the whole world watching with bated breath to see what happens next.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2GBgA38 Tyler Durden

On October 25, an unidentified flying object (UFO) was detected on radar, which turned into a series of eyewitness accounts made by commercial airline pilots over the skies of Northern California and Oregon. Even the U.S. Air Force scrambled their McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagles as part of the military’s protocol to combat threats of an intruding aircraft penetrating deep inside America’s airspace. By the time the interceptor fighter jets arrived, the mysterious aircraft became invisible and disappeared from radar.

Last November, “The War Zone” blog of the automotive website The Drive, posted an exclusive story detailing the mysterious white object buzzing around the skies near commercial airliners in Northern California and Oregon. The blog tracked down various accounts of what happened that day from pilots and also obtained confirmation about the F-15 Eagles launch to intercept the intruding aircraft that has left so many people puzzled.

Now, through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), The War Zone presents a mindblowing and insightful account of official documentation surrounding what really happened on October 25 over the skies of Northern California and Oregon. The FOIA includes “fascinating audio recordings of radio transmissions and phone calls made as the incident was unfolding, as well as pilot interviews, and conversations between FAA officials made in the aftermath of the highly peculiar incident,” said The War Zone.

The first video is a brief overview of the entire incident:

Full radar obtained from the FAA via FOIA for Northern California and Oregon from 4:34 pm to 5:25 pm PST on October 25.

The War Zone indicates that Oakland Center controllers first spotted the mysterious aircraft on radar moving “very fast at 37,000” feet near sector 31 and bordering sectors 13/14.

Oakland Center Sector 31 first detected the target around 4:30pm PST. Below is a chart showing where Oakland Center’s high altitude sectors are situated around Northern California. Sector 31 spans roughly from Sacramento up towards Redding, before its northern edge, which is near the border with Oregon, terminates and Seattle Center’s airspace begins. To the east, the airspace sits along the California-Nevada border. This makes sense as the craft was eventually tracked by airline pilots as it made its way up over Crater Lake and towards the Willamette Valley.

In the audio, the Oakland Center controller notes that it is near his boundary, so it seems the aircraft’s first appearance officially occurred near the border of Oakland Center Sector 31 and Seattle Center Sector 13 or 14. The target was moving “very fast at 37,000” feet when it was first detected.

As the mysterious aircraft disappeared from radar, numerous reports from different airline crews began radioing into the air traffic controller of an unidentifiable white aircraft. Shortly after, F-15 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the mysterious white aircraft, but it had turned on “stealth mode,” said one controller.

The “intruder” quickly dropped off radar and that’s when the visual sightings made by airline crews began. They continued for roughly half an hour and over hundreds of miles. The exchanges between nearby pilots and air traffic control regarding the unidentified aircraft were constant in the audio, with the same description coming back time and again—that of a white aircraft cruising at around 37,000 feet that is too far away to tell the type or if it has markings of any kind on it.

At roughly 27:30 into the video we get our first indication that the F-15s out of PDX are about to scramble, with the air traffic controller noting this while talking to another FAA controller, during which the controller also reiterates that there has still been no radar contact with the aircraft. The controller also repeatedly asks aircrews nearby to check their Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS) for the aircraft, which all come back negative.

The F-15s first appear on radar as they climb out of Portland to the south at time index 33:33 as “Rock” flight—a common callsign used for the alert F-15s stationed at PDX. Alaska 439 asks for an update on the unidentified aircraft and the controller notes they still have nothing on him, saying colloquially that it must be in a kind of “stealth mode or something.” It’s also interesting that the F-15s first went south when it seems as if the object would have been north of PDX by the time they finally launched.

Next, the FOIA request uncovered very interesting recordings demonstrating how FAA officials were in contact with the Western Air Defense sector of NORAD.

 Aside from that, the audio is unedited by us, although we cannot be certain if parts were redacted by the FAA or not. There were a few strange areas where conversations went mute and it’s not clear if this was edited or just an anomaly. The primary person talking in most of these calls is the Operations Manager In Charge for Seattle Center at the time that the incident took place.  

The first call is to Oakland Center, and it occurs early on after the initial radar detection and as pilots began spotting the craft visually. He also mentions that “air defense” is looking for the target now too (on radar), so it shows how early the military was involved in the encounter.

You will notice that the term “DEN” is referred to repeatedly in these recordings. That is the Domestic Events Network, a sort of hotline system that is used to bridge the FAA with federal authorities, namely the military, during a number of circumstances which you can read about here. You will also hear the term “WADS” and the nickname/callsign “Bigfoot.” This refers to the Western Air Defense sector of NORAD that monitors the airspace over a huge swath of territory in the United States and Canada. Based out of McChord AFB in Washington, WADS scrambles the fighters when needed and works to direct them to their targets of interest during domestic air sovereignty missions, among other responsibilities.

When the Manager In Charge is asked if he was asking for military assistance by another FAA controller, the tape goes blank. The same inquiry is heard moments later, and it goes silent again before another call begins. Although it really doesn’t have much impact on the greater mystery, who asked for the F-15s to scramble and when, comes up in the next video in an exchange between the same manager and an FAA official.

In the final set of calls in the video we hear controllers talking about how the Air Force wants to set up an air patrol over Battle Ground, Washington, which is a dozen miles directly north of PDX. We know the F-15s headed south initially, so it isn’t clear if this call came after they initially headed in that direction or before they were even airborne and the plan changed later on for some reason. Once again “Rock” refers to the callsign of the alert fighters.

The next round of audio is from Seattle Center’s Manager In Charge of Operation, in which he investigates the incident minutes after it happened. He is heard talking with airline pilots who had visual contact on the mysterious white aircraft.

First we hear about the big question as to who “requested” the scramble, as according to the call, it has to come from FAA headquarters. The manager floats the idea, in retrospect, of having the airliners keep a visual on the craft instead of allowing them to descending into PDX, at least until the F-15s show up, but the FAA official swats that down as they didn’t know what the aircraft was, “if they are equipped with anything” or its intentions. She reiterates that getting the military involved was a good idea but that it should have come from FAA headquarters over the DEN. The manager reminds her again that he doesn’t know who requested military assistance and that Oakland Center told him to call WADS initially.

Next we hear from Oakland Center again, at first discussing who ordered the scramble, but then the conversation goes into talking about what actually happened. Both agree that there was “definitely something out there” with the Oakland Center controller saying the aircraft first appeared going southbound at high speed before executing an abrupt maneuver and then “took off northbound.” Even figuring out how to report the encounter seems totally foreign to both higher ranking controllers, with one stating “I have a feeling someone is going to go through this with a fine-tooth comb.”

Then we get into the pilot interviews over the phone, with the manager’s intention being for each crew to write up a report detailing their individual perspective of the incident. During the call with United 612 there are some odd dropped moments, but the pilot describes the encounter, stating that he was too far away to make out the type. The next call, with Alaska Airlines 525, also doesn’t reveal much as the crew says they never were able to see it, but the crew of Skywest 3478 did, although he didn’t have much to add.

The call with the pilot of Southwest 4712 was by far the most interesting. He immediately notes how strange the encounter was and how he has never seen an incident like it in nearly 30 years of flying jets. The pilot noted, “if it was like a Lear (private jet) type airframe I probably would not have seen it this clear. This was a white airplane and it was big. And it was moving at a clip too, because we were keeping pace with it, it was probably moving faster than we were… It was a larger aircraft yeah.” He also said they watched the object from Northern California all the way to their descent into Portland.

The manager’s final call, was with the FAA’s Quality Assurance Group, who is taken by surprise by the details surrounding the event, and especially with the fact that nobody still knew what the aircraft was or where it ended up. “Wow that’s weird” is the operative quote by the FAA official, which is insightful to say the least as these people deal with unique incidents that occur in American airspace on a daily basis. The manager agreed with the sentiment and noted that it wasn’t some small aircraft and it was moving fast, outpacing a 737 cruising nearby. The official also says that the incident should be classified as “potentially significant” on reporting documents. She even said that this was “a weird enough thing that there is not a set procedure… It’s not often we hear about an unknown guy up at that altitude.”

And lastly, The War Zone concludes:

Collectively these materials give us incredible insight not only into this incident, but also into how such an event is actually handled in real-time by those who are responsible for the safety of those in the air and those on ground below. What they don’t offer is any sort of an explanation for what happened on that fall evening. But really, the fact that all those involved, from air traffic controllers, to Air Force radar operators, to airline pilots, and even special FAA officials tasked with responding to all types of out of the ordinary incidents that occur in the sky on a daily basis seem just as puzzled with this event as we are makes the story all that much more intriguing.  

The FOIA request of FAA audio and video provides an interesting view of what government officials saw and heard during the incident over the skies of California and Oregon on October 25.

While there is no definitive answer of what and where the mysterious aircraft came from. We should point out that the United States is in a fierce race for hypersonic technologies against China and Russia. Considering Area-51 is some 500-miles away from the incident, it would not of shocked us that the mysterious aircraft is, in fact, a hypersonic airplane from DARPA.

Nevertheless, some speculate the aircraft was likely to be the top-secret B-21 “Raider” of the US Air Force, a next-generation stealth bomber.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2sM6tpW Tyler Durden

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Though the media often attempts to twist the gun rights debate into a web of complexity, gun rights is in fact a rather simple issue — either you believe that people have an inherent right to self defense, or you don’t. All other arguments are a peripheral distraction…

Firearms are a powerful epoch changing development. Not because they necessarily make killing “easier;” killing was always easy for certain groups of people throughout history, including governments and organized thugs. Instead, guns changed the world because for the first time in thousands of years the common man or woman could realistically stop a more powerful and more skilled attacker. Firearms are a miraculous equalizer in a world otherwise dominated and enslaved by everyday psychopaths.

The Founding Fathers understood this dynamic very well. Despite arguments from the extreme left falsely insinuating that the founders are essentially barbarians from a defunct era that were too stupid to understand future developments and technology, the fact is that they knew the core philosophical justification for an armed citizenry was always the most important matter at hand. Today’s debates try to muddle meaningful discourse by swamping the public in the minutia of background checks, etc. But the following quotes from the early days of the Republic outline what we should all really be talking about:

“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776

“To disarm the people…[i]s the most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason, referencing advice given to the British Parliament by Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, June 14, 1788

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
– Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.”
– Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778

“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
– Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833

“On every occasion [of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 12 June 1823

The inborn right to self defense and the ability of the people to maintain individual liberties in the face of tyranny supersedes all other arguments on gun rights. In fact, nothing else matters. This key point is so unassailable that anti-gun lobbyists have in most cases given up trying to defeat it. Instead of trying to confiscate firearms outright (which is their ultimate goal), they attempt to chip away at gun rights a piece at a time through endless flurries of legislation. This legislation is usually implemented in the wake of a tragedy involving firearms, for gun grabbers never let a good crisis go to waste. Exploiting the deaths of innocent people to further an ideological agenda is a common strategy for them.

This leads us to the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. The narrative being constructed around this event is the same as usual — that stronger “gun control and background checks” are needed to prevent such things from ever happening again.

Of course, Nikolas Cruz, the alleged perpetrator of the shooting, obtained his firearms legally and by passing existing background checks. Being that these background checks have been highly effective in stopping the vast majority of potential criminals from purchasing firearms through legal channels, one wonders what more can be done to make these checks somehow “foolproof.”

Around 1.5 million 4473 forms (background checks) have been rejected by the ATF in the two decades since more stringent background checks were instituted. As many as 160,000 forms are denied each year for multiple reasons, including mental health reasons.

So, the question is, did background checks fail in the case of Nikolas Cruz? And would any suggested amendments to current 4473 methods have made any difference whatsoever in stopping Cruz from purchasing a weapon? The answer is no. No suggested changes to ATF background checks would have made a difference. But there are stop-gaps to preventing mass shootings other than the ATF.

The FBI, for example, had been warned on multiple occasions about Cruz, including his open threats to commit a school shooting. Yet, the FBI did nothing.

Could the FBI have prevented the killings in Parkland by following up repeated warnings on Nikolas Cruz? I would say yes, it is possible they could have investigated Cruz’s threats, verified them and prosecuted for conspiracy to commit a violent crime, or at the very least, they could have frightened him away from the idea.

Was the Parkland shooting then a failure of background checks or a failure of the FBI? And, if it was a failure of the FBI, then shouldn’t anti-gun advocates focus on revamping the FBI instead of pushing the same background check and gun show “loophole” rhetoric they always do?

They aren’t interested in instituting changes at the FBI because this could help solve the problem, and they do not care about solving the problem, they only care about pursuing their ultimate goal of deconstructing the 2^nd Amendment for all time.

Gun control advocates will conjure up a host of arguments for diminishing gun rights, but just like the background check issue and Nikolas Cruz, most of them are nonsensical.

They’ll make the claim that guns for self defense are fine, but that high capacity military grade weapons were never protected under the Constitution. “The founding fathers were talking about single shot muskets when they wrote that…” is the commonly regurgitated propaganda meme. This is false. High capacity “machine guns” (like the Puckle gun and the Girandoni rifle) and even artillery were actually common during the time of the founders and were indeed protected under the 2^nd Amendment. In fact, the 2^nd Amendment applies to all firearms under common military usage regardless of the era.

They’ll claim that high capacity “assault weapons” are not needed and that low capacity firearms are more practical for self defense. They obviously are ignoring the circumstances surrounding any given self defense scenario. What if you are facing off with multiple assailants? What if those assailants are mass shooters themselves and obtained their weapons on the black market as the ISIS terrorists in Paris did in 2015? What if the assailant is a tyrannical government? Who is to say what capacity is “practical” in those situations?

They’ll claim that tougher gun laws and even confiscation will prevent mass shootings in the future, yet multiple nations (including France) have suffered horrific mass shootings despite having far more Orwellian gun laws than the U.S.

Criminals and terrorists do not follow laws. Laws are words on paper backed up by perceived consequences that only law abiding people care about.  The vast majority of successful mass shootings take place in “gun free zones,” places where average law abiding citizens are left unarmed and easy prey.

So, what is the solution that gun grabbers don’t want to talk about? What could have stopped the shooting in Parkland? What is the one thing that the mainstream media actively seeks to avoid any dialogue about?

The solution is simple — abolish all gun free zones. If teachers at the high school in Parkland had been armed the day Nikolas Cruz showed up with the intent to murder, then the entire event could have gone far differently. Instead of acting helplessly as human shields against a spray of bullets, teachers and coaches could have been shooting back, actually stopping the threat instead of just slowing it down for a few seconds. Or, knowing that he might be immediately shot and killed before accomplishing his attack, Cruz may have abandoned the attempt altogether. There is no way to calculate how many crimes and mass shootings have been prevented exactly because private gun ownership acted as a deterrent.

Most gun grabbers are oblivious to this kind of logic because they are blinded by ideological biases. Some of them, however, understand the truth of this completely, and they don’t care. They are not in the business of saving lives; they are in the business of exploiting death. They want something entirely different from what they claim they want. They are not interested in life, they are interested in control.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2BFWC7Q Tyler Durden