Tag: news

On Monday four rockets of unknown origin struck an Iraqi military base near the Baghdad International Airport, also site to many US and coalition forces. This follows at least nine “increasingly sophisticated” rocket attacks on joint US-Iraq military facilities over just the past five weeks. 

The Pentagon believes Iran is behind these and other attacks, CNN reports, according to several US defense official sources, who say further Iran’s Shia proxies are involved in planning “new provocations against US troops and interests in the region.”

Monday’s major assault near the sprawling Baghdad airport appeared to target a main training center where US troops advise members of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service. No Americans were reported hurt; however, six Iraq security force members were injured according to official statements, with two in critical condition.

Iraqi security officials believe an even larger attack was planned, given launchers recovered in the aftermath included rockets that hadn’t fired properly.

This week’s attack came days following last Thursday’s incident wherein two Katyusha rockets landed inside Balad air base, known to host US forces and contractors north of Baghdad. 

That attack prompted Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to observe on Saturday that the US has seen a “little bit of an uptick” in such attacks, which is “another indicator for us of Iran reaching out.” 

And the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker also alleged “Iranian-backed militias are now shelling Iraqi bases with American and anti-ISIS Coalition forces on them.”

Meanwhile, US officials this month cited intelligence saying that for years Iran has been “secretly moving missiles into Iraq,” according to the Jerusalem Post and other international reports. 

Following Monday’s attack Pentagon spokesperson Cdr. Sean Robertson told CNN in a statement: “We have made clear that attacks on US. and Coalition personnel and facilities will not be tolerated and we retain the right to defend ourselves.”

According to multiple reports, the Trump administration is weighing deploying an additional 4,000 to 7,000 troops to the Middle East in the face of Iran tit-for-tat for sanctions.

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Venezuela has released six Citgo executives who were arrested and sent to jail on charges of corruption two years ago, Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources.

The prison sentences have apparently been replaced with house arrest, the source said.

The executives – all of them U.S. citizens, five of them with dual citizenship – were first arrested in 2017 and were only brought to court in the middle of 2019, after 18 months in prison. During that hearing, the presiding judge accepted the prosecution’s request for a trial on corruption charges without setting a date.

At the time of the arrest, U.S. authorities requested that its nationals be released, but Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro refused, saying

“These are people born in Venezuela, they’re Venezuelan and they’re going to be judged for being corrupt, thieving traitors.”

According to opposition sources, however, the arrests were not about corruption, but about infighting in the Communist Party as well as an attempt by the government to get its hands on profitable companies to patch up its budget, currently in tatters and with no great improvement prospects.

Reuters reports that U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence and two senators had called on Maduro to release the Citgo executives on worry about their health, after Pence earlier this year met with the families of the arrested men who asked for the U.S. government’s help in the matter.

According to the sources, the six executives—including five former vice presidents of Citgo and a former president—will be banned from leaving Venezuela. No reasons for the release have been provided by Venezuelan authorities.

Citgo, in the meantime, has passed under the control of opposition leader Juan Guaidó with the help of Washington, which was the first government to recognize Guaidó as the legitimate, albeit interim, president of Venezuela, after earlier this year he declared himself interim president until new elections are called.

It turns out that Americans don’t want to “be like Mike” after all… the other Mike…

A Monmouth University poll found about twice as many registered voters rated Bloomberg negatively as positively — 54% unfavorable, 26% favorable. That margin was significantly worse than for five other Democratic candidates, as well as for President Trump, and as StamfordAdvocate.com reports, that same measure hampered Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.

And while Bloomberg garnered 5% support nationally for the Democratic nomination, narrowly higher than some other recent polls, the odds of him getting the nomination have been tumbling in the last two weeks…

Source: Bloomberg

Which is incredibly ironic – as that’s when he started really ramping up his massive ad campaign…

Source: fivethirtyeight.com

Since its launch last month, his campaign has spent more money on ads than all the top-polling Democrats combined and is simultaneously building out ground operations in 27 states.

“Bloomberg said he got into this race because he wants to defeat Trump, but his campaign kicks off with even lower ratings than the incumbent,” said Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray.

“That is not the most auspicious start, but views of Bloomberg are not as deeply held as they are for Trump, so he has room to shift those opinions.”

Is it any wonder he is wildly unpopular when he drops truth-bombs like this…

BLOOMBERG: “I think Trump is getting stronger and I think he would just eat alive the candidates” pic.twitter.com/uFKMePIccG

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) December 10, 2019

Not making friends or influencing people…

Attorney General William Barr says he believes the FBI may have been operating in “bad faith” when it launched a counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election.

“[T]hese irregularities, these misstatements, these omissions were not satisfactorily explained,” said Barr in a lengthy interview with NBC, just one day after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released the so-called FISA report.

AG Barr: IG found “damning” irregularities, misstatements, & omissions in FISA applicationhttps://t.co/0xcyMMIGU9 pic.twitter.com/DF2RrcsqIZ

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 10, 2019

“And I think that leaves open the possibility to infer bad faith. I think it’s premature now to reach a judgment on that, but I think that further work has to be done and that’s what Durham is doing,” he added, referring to US Attorney John Durham – who Barr hand picked to lead a concurrent investigation into the 2016 US election.

Barr described Durham’s role as “Looking at the issue of how it got started. He’s looking at whether or not the narrative of Trump being involved in the Russian interference actually preceded July, and was it in fact what precipitated the trigger for the investigation.”

“He’s also looking at the conduct of the investigation,” added Barr – who then said that he instructed Durham to look just as carefully into the “post-election period.”

“I did that because of some of the stuff that Horowitz has uncovered, which to me is inexplicable. Their case collapsed after the election, and they never told the court, and they kept on getting renewals on these applications. There was documents falsified in order to get these renewals. There was all kinds of withholding of information from the court. And the question really is ‘what was the agenda after the election that kept them pressing ahead, after their case collapsed?’ This is the president of the Untied States!”

Barr, who has characterized the FBI’s actions during Trump-Russia investigation as spying, slammed the Obama DOJ and the press for the Russiagate narrative that President Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.

“I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press,” Barr said.

AG Barr: “Our nation was turned on its head for three years . . . based on a completely bogus narrative.” pic.twitter.com/TIiPDVwnus

— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) December 10, 2019

Developing…

The U.S. economy is decelerating into an election year and could print below-trend growth by 2H20.

Manufacturing, employment, and inflation have all been in downturns for one year, hence why the Federal Reserve has been quick to slash interest rates, as President Trump has been begging for negative interest rates, quantitative easing, and emergency tax cuts.

New data from Reuters’ John Kemp shows how manufacturing continues to decelerate into year-end as there’s little evidence that growth will trough and zoom higher in early 2020.

Kemp says waning diesel consumption is a significant warning sign of manufacturing output continuing to contract and volume of freight plunging. These factors have put downward pressure on spot oil prices.

U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data shows consumption of diesel was down 3% in Q3 versus a year earlier.

Kemp notes that diesel is used by “trucking firms, railroads, manufacturers, construction firms, oil and gas drillers, and farmers, so diesel consumption is tightly coupled with the manufacturing cycle.”

He said the drop in diesel consumption relative to gasoline shows that the manufacturing recession is worsening as the consumer is generating slower growth.

Consumption growth of diesel has plunged across the world.

Manufacturing downturns in China, India, Europe, South America, and the U.S. have contributed to declining demand.

As the global economy decelerates into 2020, diesel demand will continue to decline, forcing oversupplied conditions and lower prices.