Category: Politics

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THE STATE DEPARTMENT’S STRANGE OBSESSION

The decision to follow through with sending Iraqi Jewish archives back to Iraq is part of a disturbing pattern.

The law of Occam’s Razor, refined to common parlance, is that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

If we apply Occam’s Razor to recently reported positions of the US State Department, then we can conclude that the people making decisions at Foggy Bottom have “issues” with Jews and with Israel.

Last Friday, JTA reported that the State Department intends to abide by an agreement it reached in 2014 with the Iraqi government and return the Iraqi Jewish archives to Iraq next year.

The Iraqi Jewish archives were rescued in Baghdad by US forces in 2003 from a flooded basement of the Iraqi secret services headquarters. The tens of thousands of documents include everything from sacred texts from as early as the 16th century to Jewish school records.

The books and documents were looted from the Iraqi Jewish community by successive Iraqi regimes. They were restored by the National Archives in Washington, DC.

The Iraqi Jewish community was one of the oldest exilic Jewish communities.

It began with the Babylonian exile following the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem 2,600 years ago. Until the early 20th century, it was one of the most accomplished Jewish communities in the world. Some of the most important yeshivas in Jewish history were in present-day Iraq. The Babylonian Talmud was written in Iraq. The Jewish community in Iraq predated the current people of Iraq by nearly a thousand years.

It was a huge community. In 1948, Jews were the largest minority in Baghdad.

Jews comprised a third of the population of Basra. The status of the community was imperiled during World War II, when the pro-Nazi junta of generals that seized control of the government in 1940 instigated the Farhud, a weeklong pogrom. 900 Jews were murdered.

Thousands of Jewish homes, schools and businesses were burned to the ground.

With Israel’s establishment, and later with the Baathist seizure of power in Iraq in the 1960s, the once great Jewish community was systematically destroyed.

Between 1948 and 1951, 130,000 Iraqi Jews, three quarters of the community, were forced to flee the country. Those who remained faced massive persecution, imprisonment, torture, execution and expulsion in the succeeding decades.

When US forces overthrew the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, only a dozen or so remained in the country.

Today, there are none left.

As for the current Iraqi government that the State Department wishes to support by implementing its 2014 agreement, it is an Iranian satrapy. Its leadership and military receive operational orders from Iran.

The Iraqi Jewish archive was not created by the Iraqi government. It is comprised of property looted from persecuted and fleeing Jews. In light of this, it ought to be clear to the State Department that the Iraqi government’s claim to ownership is no stronger than the German government’s claim to ownership of looted Jewish property seized by the Nazis would be.

On the other hand, members of the former Jewish community and their descendants have an incontrovertible claim to them. And they have made this claim, repeatedly.

To no avail. As far as the State Department is concerned, they have no claim to sacred books and documents illegally seized from them.

When asked how the US could guarantee that the archive would be properly cared for in Iraq, all State Department spokesman Pablo Rodriguez said was, “When the IJA [Iraqi Jewish archive] is returned, the State Department will urge the Iraqi government to take the proper steps necessary to preserve the archive, and make it available to members of the public to enjoy.”

It is hard not to be taken aback by the callousness of Rodriguez’s statement.

Again, the “members of the public” who wish to “enjoy” the archive are not living in Iraq. They are not living in Iraq because they were forced to run for their lives – after surrendering their communal archives to their persecutors. And still today, as Jews, they will be unable to visit the archives in Iraq without risking their lives because today, at a minimum, the Iraqi regime kowtows to forces that openly seek the annihilation of the Jewish People.

And the State Department knows this.

Then there is the second story that came out this week, whose implications are no less dismal.

Friday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is leading an effort by State Department officials to convince President Donald Trump to force Israel to return $75 million in congressionally authorized supplementary aid.

On the face of it, the demand is part of a turf war that the State Department has long fought with Congress regarding the scope of Congress’s power to engage in foreign policy. In the final year of the Obama administration, Obama forced Israel to agree not to accept supplementary appropriations in defense aid from Congress beyond what was agreed upon in the memorandum of understanding he concluded. Obama’s position was rightly viewed as a means to undermine Israel’s relations with members of Congress.

But it was equally a means to undermine Congress’s ability to assert its constitutional power to appropriate funding.

As negotiations between Israel and the Obama administration progressed last year, Senator Lindsay Graham implored Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to accede to Obama’s demand.

But in the empty hope of averting a last-minute move by the Obama administration to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass at the UN Security Council, and concerned that a Hillary Clinton administration would offer Israel less assistance than Obama had offered, Netanyahu signed the deal.

Graham reacted to the MOU’s conclusion by stating that it is unconstitutional and therefore Congress would disregard it.

After Trump was elected, his advisers assured Israel that they would not enforce the MOU’s restrictions on supplementary funding. And yet, now, the State Department is seeking to do just that.

While in many ways this is an internal American fight, the unmistakable fact is that the State Department always seems to fight its turf war with Congress over issues relating to Israel. Moreover, the fight always involves bearing down on some of the dumbest aspects of traditional US Middle East policy.

Over the past 20 years, the State Department has fought and won two major battles against Congress relating to Israel. First, the State Department has continuously blocked the 1996 Embassy Act that requires the State Department to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Second, the State Department fought and won a Supreme Court battle to block implementation of the law requiring it to permit US citizens born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their country of birth on their passports.

In both cases, the State Department’s actions reflected a longstanding policy of mollycoddling antisemitic Arab regimes and terrorist groups at Israel’s expense. No US interest has been advanced by these efforts. To the contrary, as Senator Tom Cotton argues in relation to the State Department’s current efforts to force Israel to return the $75m. supplemental appropriation for missile defense projects, the US harms itself by undermining its key ally in fighting the enemies it shares with Israel.

Moreover, the $75m. supplemental assistance for development of missile defense technologies is not a gift to Israel. As the current standoff between the US and North Korea makes clear, the US itself is in dire need of just the sort of anti-missile technologies that Israel is developing. Indeed, the US stands to lose if Israel cuts back its missile defense programs due to lack of funding.

So again, we return to Occam’s Razor.

The State Department’s determination to return the purloined Iraqi Jewish archive to the Iraqi government, like its efforts to convince Trump to demand that Israel return the supplemental aid, doesn’t appear to be guided by any underlying concern for US interests.

Why would Egypt or Saudi Arabia object to Israel developing new means to intercept Hamas, Hezbollah or Iranian missiles? So like its fights against congressional efforts to recognize Israel’s capital city, and indeed like the State Department’s insistence that the US has no option other than recertifying Iranian compliance with Obama’s nuclear deal with the ayatollahs despite overwhelming evidence of Iranian noncompliance, there is an undercurrent of obsessive vindictiveness to the State Department’s current efforts.

In issue after issue, the same officials engage in behavior that appears to reflect a compulsive habit of always demanding that the US adopt positions that weaken US-Israel ties and undermine Jewish rights in Israel, and throughout the Middle East.

Perhaps there is another explanation for this consistent pattern of behavior.

But the simplest explanation is that the State Department suffers from an unhealthy obsession with regard to Jewish rights and the Jewish state.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

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TRUMP SHOULD BLOCK OBAMA MOVE TO SEND STOLEN JEWISH RELIGIOUS ARTIFACTS TO IRAQ

The Point has been covering this story for a while. This goes back to 2013.

Iraq in the 40s had 350,000 Jews. Today it has somewhere between four and none.

Despite that the Obama administration plans to send the Jewish Archive consisting of religious artifacts, bibles, marriage contracts, community records and private notebooks seized by the Iraqi Secret Police from the Jewish community back to Iraq.

The material is not the property of the Iraqi government, either Saddam’s regime which stole it, or its Shiite successor which claims to want it, but not the Jews who owned it. It’s the property of Iraqi Jewish refugees and their reconstituted communities in America, Israel and anywhere else.

The personal material, like marriage contracts and school books, should go to the families that owned them and to their descendants. The religious material, which a Muslim country that purged its Jewish and Christian communities has no use for, should go Iraqi Jewish religious communities wherever they are now.

Jewish bibles seized from the custody of the Nazi SS would not be sent to the German government. There is no reason to send Jewish bibles into the custody of the Iraqi government.

Despite that, the State Department has announced that the stolen Jewish property will be sent to the Iranian puppet regime in Baghdad.

The United States will return to Iraq next year a trove of Iraqi Jewish artifacts that lawmakers and Jewish groups have lobbied to keep in this country, a State Department official said.

A four-year extension to keep the Iraqi Jewish Archive in the U.S. is set to expire in September 2018, as is funding for maintaining and transporting the items. The materials will then be sent back to Iraq, spokesman Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement sent to JTA on Thursday.

Rodriguez said the State Department “is keenly aware of the interest in the status” of the archive.

“Maintaining the archive outside of Iraq is possible,” he said, “but would require a new agreement between the Government of Iraq and a temporary host institution or government.”

No, it doesn’t. The archive doesn’t belong to the Iraqi government, but to the Jewish population that was ethnically cleansed from Iraq.

The United States recovered the archive and should have turned it over to the Jewish community. Instead we had a bizarre Kafkaesque process in which the archive was restored to be turned over to the thieves who stole it.

Jewish political leaders have invested a lot of energy into looted art in Europe. And that’s a worthwhile cause. Yet this is a far more compelling issue. The archive contains the history of a Jewish community. It matters far more than a Klimt painting. Sadly, the priorities are those of a secular Ashkenazi leadership that is uninterested in the Iraqi Jewish archive because it’s Sephardi and religious. Meanwhile the American Sephardi Federation’s Ashkenazi boss Jason Guberman-Pfeffer seems far more interested in defending the hateful anti-Israel prejudices of David N. Myers, than in fighting for the archive.

And, another factor was the reluctance of a largely liberal leadership to stand up to Obama.

The archive is set to be exhibited at the Jewish Museum of Maryland Oct. 15-Jan. 15. The exhibit page says the items include a Hebrew Bible with commentaries from 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793 and an 1815 version of the Zohar, a Jewish mystical text.

“There is no justification in sending the Jewish archives back to Iraq, a country that has virtually no Jews and no accessibility to Jewish scholars or the descendants of Iraqi Jews,” Gina Waldman, founder and president of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, said Friday in a statement to JTA. “The U.S. government must ensure that the Iraqi archives are returned to its rightful owners, the exiled Iraqi Jewish community,”

Stanley Urman, executive vice president for Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, echoed Waldman in saying there was no justification for sending back the archive.

“This is Jewish communal property. Iraq stole it and kept it hidden away in a basement. Now that we’ve managed to reclaim it, it would be like returning stolen goods back to the thief,” Urman told JTA on Friday.

It’s exactly like it. Meanwhile here’s the bizarre anti-Semitic justification on the Iraqi side for wanting the archive. Here’s Al Arabiya’s explanation

Experts add that Israel is keen on obtaining the manuscripts in order to prove their claim that the Jews had built the Tower of Babel as part of its attempt to distort the history of the Middle East for its own interests.

Wonderful.

Harold Rhode, who discovered the trove while working as a Defense Department policy analyst assigned to Iraq’s transitional government, said he is “horrified” to think the material would be returned when it had been “stolen by the government of Iraq from the Jewish community.”

“It would be comparable to the U.S. returning to the German government Jewish property that had been looted by the Nazis,” he told The Jewish Week.

It’s exactly like it.

I don’t expect Tillerson to care. Between McMaster at the NSC, Mattis on Defense and Tillerson, foreign policy is under the control of the usual Islam Firsters who are very concerned with Muslim feelings, particularly in the oil states, and very little else. And so the old Obama plan to turn over stolen Jewish religious items to a hostile Islamic regime is moving forward.

But President Trump can and should block the move. It’s the right thing to do. And Jewish activists should make that case.

Originally Published in FrontPageMag.

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Is Ayelet Shaked Leading a Revolution in Judea and Samaria?

Known for her tough stance in regards to Israel’s overtly left-wing activist court, Ayelet Shaked is leading another battle that is riling the left. If she wins she will change the relationship between Israel and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Known as the Settlements Regulations Law, the measure drew severe criticism fromt he left, when it was passed in the Knesset earlier in the year.  Now, 13 left-wing NGOs have petitioned the Suprement Court to nullify the law. The law would effectively legalize 4,000 Jewish homes built with government help on private “Palestinian” Land.  This land often time lies vacant and unused as most owners abandoned it decades earlier.

Having lost at the ballot box election after election, the left and its European partners decided to use Israeli Supreme Court as a tool to upend Jewish growth in Israel’s biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria.  Most NGOs locate a tacitly related relative to the original landowner, most of the time living in Amman.  Once located these NGOs file a complaint with the Supreme Court. Almost always, the Supreme Court has ruled in the Arab’s favor.

This process has led to whole communities becoming uprooted, even if they were established decades ago. The Settlements Regulations Law is the first major step to reeling the power of the Supreme Court in relation to housing in Judea and Samaria and handing it back to the Knesset. The Law not only grants legality to these communities, it compensates the Arab 125% of the value of the property.

This is what Ayelet Shaked meant when she told the Jerusalem Post last week that “We want to revolutionize our [legal] perception,” she said. “Foremost is that it is possible for [the Knesset] to legislate [for Judea and Samaria] and in addition that we don’t solve one injustice with another.”

As usual, the left is caught up with the present Supreme Court case. Yet, they themselves are blind to what is actually playing out. Whether or not the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Settlements Regulations Law, is not the point. For years, the left has had a superficial strategy in dealing with the natural and just recalmation of Jewish land in Judea and Samaria, but this strategy ended up being just a set of tactics, that the right could never figure out how to take down until Shaked decided to go where no one dared to go before.

By taking on the root cause of the internal challenges facing the State of Israel, Shaked has made a solution that is far more attenable than settling another hilltop. By limiting the power of the Supreme Court to constitutional decisions, these matters which are essentially a matter of eminant domain can be decided primarily by the Knesset itself.

This is why those who back Judicial activism are so incensed by Shaked.  The elite left has finally seen the proverbial writing on the wall.  What makes matters worse for them is they are cornered.  If they fight too hard against Shaked they will make her into an unmovable leader of the right and set her up to be a possible candidate for Prime Minister after Bibi Netanyahu leaves.

On the other hand, if they do not oppose her, their judicial cartel will wither and die along with the last remaining avenue for the left’s battle against the Jews in Judea and Samaria.  Essentially, Shaked has set up the ultimate Gordian Knot.

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WHY IS HOMELAND SECURITY FUNDING ANTI-ISRAEL TERROR DEFENDERS?

You can’t counter terrorism by defending it.

Countering Violent Extremism was one of the great counterterrorism frauds of the Obama era. Not only was CVE useless, but it was an excuse for building ties with assorted Muslim Brotherhood groups.

A week before President Trump’s inauguration, Jeh Johnson, Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Secretary, gave his allies one last gift with millions in CVE grants. The list of grantees included the Muslim American Leadership Alliance, Unity Productions Foundation and Ka Joog. Once Kelly took over at DHS, some were either removed or, like Ka Joog, claimed that they had opted out to protest the Muslim travel ban.

But when the final grantees were announced, two troubling organizations remained on the list: Peace Catalyst International and Masjid Muhammad.

Though it bills itself as the ‘Nation’s Mosque’, Masjid Muhammad was set up by the racist hate group known as the Nation of Islam which believed that white people were racially inferior. Lucius Bey Muhammad, who set it up, had said, “The black man is indeed the greatest. His genes are stronger! No white man can produce a baby darker than himself.”

Elijah Muhammad, whom the mosque’s site still praises, had allied with the American Nazi Party. He had preached that, “these enemies of Allah are known at the present as the white race”

While the branch of the movement represented by Masjid Muhammad has parted ways with Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, they still maintain a relationship. At the mosque’s 53rd anniversary, Farrakhan’s personal representative phoned in with remarks.

Should Countering Violent Extremism funding be going to a mosque set up by violent extremists and which still seems unable to end all connections with one of the nation’s worst racist hate groups?

But the case of Peace Catalyst International is in some ways more troubling than Masjid Muhammad.

Peace Catalyst International claims to “create safe spaces and foster authentic relationships between Christians and Muslims”. While PCI strongly emphasizes its Christian identity, its agenda largely seems to involve propagandizing for Islamists. Sometimes to an extremely disturbing degree.

PCI boss Rick Love wrote, “Some Pakistanis do hate us for these reasons: the war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, decades-long support for oppressive regimes in the Muslim world, bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the killing of thousands of innocent Muslims described as ‘collateral damage’”.




PCI’s latest post is from Jennifer S. Bryson  and it includes a call to Christians to engage in “sacrificial listening” to Muslims.  Even if they’re ISIS supporters. Bryson heads the Zephyr Institute and its pet project, the Center for Islam and Religious Freedom. Also working at the Center for Islam is convicted Jihadist Ismail Royer. Bryson was formerly a member of the Board of Directors of PCI.

An earlier posting consists of PCI boss Rick Love interviewing Imam Taha Hassane who urges readers to understand “the roots of terrorism”. “When we drop drones on innocent people in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and kill innocent civilians, what do we expect these people to think about us?” Hassane says. Rick and the Imam then discuss how supporting Black Lives Matter is Sharia.

This isn’t opposing extremism. It’s making excuses for it while echoing its talking points. And that sums up much of what is already wrong with CVE.

Love had already signed a letter claiming that “support of the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrates the truth that the Word became flesh.”

Rick Love has been criticized before for his flirtation with Islamist groups. On his own site, Love insists that Jihad is inner struggle or defensive warfare, that Mohammed did not spread Islam through the sword and that, “Islamic law in practice, however, is mostly relegated to family status law.”

An article at Peace Catalyst International insists, “You do NOT need to be fearful about Sharia taking over America.”

“The US Constitution is upheld in courts. No Muslim organization has ever called for it to become subordinate to Sharia, and that’s not even something American Muslims want.”

This is the sort of distorted reality that could just as easily come from any Islamist organization.

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran … should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth,” CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad had declared.

“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future,” CAIR co-founder Ibrahm Hooper had admitted.

Peace Catalyst International ought to know as it collaborates with CAIR.

But there is another area that makes Peace Catalyst International’s CVE grant deeply troubling. On the same page where Love denies that Jihad is anything but personal or defensive, he also writes, “The issue of jihad for the sake of Palestine has gained lots of traction among many Muslims internationally.”

One of Peace Catalyst International’s “favorite peaceworkers” is Sami Awad whom the organization has worked with and promoted.

Awad is an anti-Israel BDS activist often praised for his non-violence. That non-violence is a pose. On his own blog, Sami Awad writes that a demonstration “is not a substitute for the armed struggle”.

He describes Islamic terrorism as, “The Palestinian armed resistance, labeled ‘terrorism’ by Israel.”

Awad also insists that, “The struggle to end the occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state does not gain or lose legitimacy if nonviolent means are preferred over violent means and vice versa.” Non-violence, like terrorism, is a tactic. It’s a means to achieve the same ends.

At one point, Awad even claimed that, “We’ve actually done training in non-violence for Hamas leaders.”

Rick Love’s own position isn’t subtle. In response to a question as to whether he prefers, Coexistence or Coresistance, he endorses “Coresistance”. That’s a euphemism for hostility to Israel over peacemaking. When an organization with “peace” in its time picks resistance over coexistence, it’s revealing.

It’s hard to see any of this as countering violent extremism. Instead it seems to be aiding it.

Peace Catalyst International doesn’t push back against Islamism. Instead it lies about it. It follows the usual leftist line that Islamic terrorism is the work of a tiny minority who ought to be disregarded. It denies the linkage between Islamic teachings and Islamic violence.

That is the standard CVE position. And there is no reason for it to be funded in the Trump era.

And DHS should really not be in the business of providing legitimacy to Peace Catalyst International’s anti-Israel activism, which includes supporting BDS activists.

But the problem with Countering Violent Extremism was always in the name. Not only is its name a deliberate effort to avoid using the “I word”, but the issue isn’t mere violence. And, as Sami Awad and Rick Love tragically show us, the solution isn’t to be found with tactical displays of non-violence.

The core issue isn’t violence. It’s Islamic supremacism. The violence is just a natural symptom.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist takeover in Egypt wasn’t accomplished through suicide bombings. The Brotherhood won an election. But once in power, it persecuted Christians. And before long, its followers had embarked on a series of attacks on churches.

Tactical non-violence combines virtue signaling with support for terrorists. It’s an abomination that should be disavowed by anyone who genuinely believes in non-violence as a principle, not a tactic.

The Islamic conquests were accompanied by clever tactics of divide and conquer. Muslim warlords pitted Christians against each other, promising one Christian denomination protection against another. The Islamists working to conquer the West are once again cleverly making inroads among their Christian and Jewish enemies. And any move to counter Islamism should oppose such groups, not fund them.

Originally Posted on FrontpageMag.

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China’s Latest Strike Against Petrodollar is Another Shot to Kill US Hegemony in the Middle East

China Petrodollar

China took another major step towards the inevitable end of petrodollar dominance and the further internationalization of the yuan. Via this report:

‘China is expected shortly to launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold in what analysts say could be a game-changer for the industry.
The contract could become the most important Asia-based crude oil benchmark, given that China is the world’s biggest oil importer. Crude oil is usually priced in relation to Brent or West Texas Intermediate futures, both denominated in U.S. dollars.
China’s move will allow exporters such as Russia and Iran to circumvent U.S. sanctions by trading in yuan. To further entice trade, China says the yuan will be fully convertible into gold on exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong.’

Critical to this move is the decision by Saudi Arabia:

‘If Saudi Arabia accepts yuan settlement for oil, Gave said, “this would go down like a lead balloon in Washington, where the U.S. Treasury would see this as a threat to the dollar’s hegemony… and it is unlikely the U.S. would continue to approve modern weapon sales to Saudi and the embedded protection of the House of Saud [the kingdom’s ruling family] that comes with them.”
The alternative for Saudi Arabia is equally unappetizing. “Getting boxed out of the Chinese market will increasingly mean having to dump excess oil inventories on the global stage, thereby ensuring a sustained low price for oil,” said Gave.’

If Saudi Arabia feels that China can act as an effective shield against its Iranian adversary, it most likely will forgo this ‘embedded protection’ from the US and acquiesce to Chinese demands. It may feel greater pressure as Qatar recently restored diplomatic relations with Iran thereby strengthening the Iran-Turkey-Qatar alliance.

Chinese Relations with Pakistan / Afghanistan

China has made inroads with non-oil producing nations in the region. Primarily, it has a growing economic relationship with Pakistan. While challenges of political and economic isolation exist, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor commonly known as CPEC has grown larger than its initially planned $46 billion investment plan announced in 2015. The investment is potentially crucial to China’s Belt and Road Initiative as it could provide a link from China through Europe and Africa. In addition, China has aggressively pushed development of a railway linking China and Afghanistan that is aimed to cut travel time between the two nations from six months to two weeks. Although the project has run into problems, the importance of this railway cannot be understated. Back in September, Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan Yao Jing went so far to say, “Without Afghan connectivity, there is no way to connect China with the rest of the world.”




Gold Moves

Curiously, on August 21, US Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin became the first government official to visit Fort Knox in 43 years. Just prior to his visit, he said to an audience (hopefully in humor) ‘I assume the gold is still there…It would really be quite a movie if we walked in and there was no gold.” After his visit, he tweeted ‘Glad gold is safe!’. Unfortunately, it would have been more reassuring to some if there had been a full audit (i.e. serial numbers per each gold bar).
In addition, Germany recently announced that its central bank completed the transfer of $27.9 billion worth of gold bars back to Frankfurt three years ahead of expectations. The gold was held by the Federal Reserve in New York and France’s central bank to hedge against political and currency risks.

China’s Strike Against Cryptocurrency Threat

Yesterday, China effectively banned all organizations and individuals from raising funds through ICO activities. Also, all banks and financial institutions in China will not be able do any business related to ICO trading. Cryptocurrency prices dropped sharply as a result. While intended to protect investors from fraud, the decision may have been timed to strike back at the US – Japan alliance to transition to a world reserve currency led by Bitcoin. It would not be in China’s interest to allow this transition to occur smoothly (if at all). It is unclear how committed China is to blockchain technology as its primary goal is to prevent any financial instability in its markets as it attempts to undermine US hegemony.

US – China Comparison

In spite of the numerous deficiencies of Chinese government behavior (especially towards its own people), its acumen in establishing relationships throughout the Middle East without using military force can be characterized as highly impressive. Contrast that with the US and its consistent failed policy of invasion in the name of ‘fighting terrorists’. Sixteen years of US occupation has left Afghanistan as a failed state where the Taliban control roughly 40% of the country and opium production has risen from 185 tons in 2001 to 3,300 tons in 2015 despite the US spending $8.4 billion in counter narcotics programs. Equally troubling is President Trump’s recent decision to break his campaign promise and raise troop levels in Afghanistan. His deference to the military industrial complex has garnered meaningless praise from many of the same people who have supported these failed policies.
As Democrats and their compliant media hyped the fake Russian hacking narrative (updated to Russian collusion), Russia has only become more unified with China to counter US power. While China has economic issues of debt and ghost cities, the US is gripped in a state of chaos as it has:

  • An illusion of a healthy economy (due to central bank manipulation) and in contrast to the reality of a failing economy with fake economic data published by a corrupt government (Even David Stockman, former Reagan administration budget director, asks ‘How can there be “full-employment” at 4.4% unemployment claimed by the BLS and the Fed’s monetary central planners, when there are 103 million adults without jobs?’)
  • Dire circumstances for many as anywhere from 49% of Americans to 78% of all American full-time workers live paycheck to paycheck
  • A likely cost of $150 to $180 billion from Hurricane Harvey that will be added to a national debt of approximately $20 trillion
  • Death threats made by ‘deep state’ members against its president on a regular basis
  • An Attorney General that is too scared or compromised to follow the rule of law and proceed with justice and who has no problem instituting a widely criticized a policy that abuses its citizens

Conclusion

The repercussions of a Saudi move to side with China should not come as any surprise but will affect everyone in the world. For years, Dr. Ron Paul has warned about the end of the petrodollar system causing the US dollar to lose its world’s reserve currency status and to subsequently collapse. As a result, Russia would immediately demand the end of a US presence in Syria. This could be followed by the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Turkey and other countries. In the midst of great uncertainty, some may use the event to their advantage. The Kurdish population could feel emboldened and seize the opportunity to declare an independent state. In this case, Israel would be the beneficiary as a new Kurdish state would counter the looming threat from Iran.

Originally Published on News with Chai.