Saad Hariri’s fate still unclear, giving rise to rumors that he is being held in Gulf state against his will

By ZEINA KARAM and BASSEM MROUE

In this November 6, 2017 photo, a street is decorated with Lebanese flags and pictures of Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, right, the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, center, and his son, outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri, in Beirut, Lebanon. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese officials insisted Friday on the return home of Prime Minister Saad Hariri from Saudi Arabia, and the leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah said the Saudis had “declared war” on Lebanon by holding Hariri against his will.
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The CIA has finally released hundreds of thousands of al Qaeda documents

By Clifford D. May, WASH TIMES

On May 2, 2011, a Navy SEAL team made a brief stop in Abbottabad, Pakistan where they  terminated Osama bin Laden’s life and then moved on to their second mission: collecting as much information as possible from within the al Qaeda leader’s compound.

They carried off computers, memoranda, photos, audio files, even a 228-page handwritten diary – “the single largest collection of senior terrorists materials ever,” a Pentagon briefer told reporters five days later.

Over the years since, what have we learned from this treasure trove? Almost nothing. Why not? Because President Obama promptly put almost all of it under lock and key.
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The Fusion GPS dossier was one of the dirtiest political tricks in U.S. history.

By Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal  Nov. 9, 2017

The Steele dossier has already become a thing of John le Carré-like intrigue—British spies, Kremlin agents, legal cutouts, hidden bank accounts. What all this obscures is the more immediate point: The dossier amounts to one of the dirtiest tricks in U.S. political history. It was perpetrated by Team Clinton and yielded a vast payoff for Hillary’s campaign.

The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign hired the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS in April 2016 to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. Fusion in turn hired former U.K. spook Christopher Steele to assemble the (now largely discredited) dossier. That full dossier of allegations wasn’t made public until after the election, in January 2017. And the media and Democrats continue to peddle the line that it played no role during the election itself.
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VOA NEWS

This frame grab from video provided Nov. 8, 2017, by the government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media, shows a tank firing on militants’ positions on the Iraq-Syria border.

BEIRUT — With the fall of the Islamic State group’s last significant stronghold in Syria, Iranian and Russian-backed Syrian troops now turn to face off with their main rival, the U.S.-backed forces holding large oil fields and strategic territory in the country’s north and east.

The complicated map puts U.S. and Iranian forces at close proximity, standing just across the Euphrates River from each other, amid multiple hotspots that could turn violent, particularly in the absence of a clear American policy.

There are already signs.
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by Tyler Durden,  ZERO HEDGE

Famous photograph of George W. Bush and his close confidant Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

According to a new report by Middle East Eye, Prince Bandar bin Sultan – Saudi Arabia’s most famous arms dealer, longtime former ambassador to the US, and recent head of Saudi intelligence – was among those detained as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) so-called “corruption purge” that started with the initial arrests of up to a dozen princes and other top officials last weekend.

If confirmed, the arrest and detention of Bandar would constitute the most significant and high profile figure caught up in the purge – even above that of high profile billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal – given Bandar’s closeness to multiple US administrations and involvement in events ranging from Reagan’s Nicaraguan Contra program (including direct involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal), to making the case for the Iraq War as a trusted friend of Bush and Cheney, to directing US-Saudi covert operations overseeing the arming of jihadists in Syria.
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Ignore the Cassandras. Israel is not facing a potential Arab demographic time bomb.

By Yoram Ettinger, INN

In 2017, Israel is the only advanced economy and Western democracy endowed with a relatively high fertility rate, which facilitates further economic growth with no reliance on migrant labor.

Moreover, Israel’s thriving demography provides for bolstered national security (larger classes of recruits) and a more confident foreign policy.

In contrast to conventional demographic wisdom, Israel is not facing a potential Arab demographic time bomb. In fact, the Jewish State benefits from a robust Jewish demographic tailwind.
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The old guard globalist world order is collapsing, starting with the Clintons

The Clinton and Bush era of the last 30 years is about to come to an end in light of the sudden Saudi Arabian purge of Clinton and Bush allies.

Saudi Arabia is going through a major internal political crisis the likes of which has rarely been seen.

By Tyler Durden, ZERO HEDGE

According to initial reports, two Saudi princes died back to back in 24 hours: one in an “accidental” helicopter crash, the other during a firefight that broke out while security forces were trying to arrest him. On November 7, Saudi Arabia’s information ministry spokesman said that “Prince Abdulaziz is alive and well”. However, the prince could not be independently reached for comment by the media.

Other high-ranking members of the establishment and the royal family – the two tend to be one and the same in Saudi Arabia – get arrested on charges of corruption, with their bank accounts frozen.
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By Amb. Dore Gold

Amb. Dore Gold told the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Nov. 8:

• President Donald Trump has made a commitment to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and I believe he will stand by what he has said. The U.S. will evaluate the timing and circumstances for executing that decision in accordance with its interests.
• The embassy question is a subset of a much more important issue: the need for Western recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The denial of recognition helps fuel the dangerous fantasy that Israel is impermanent and illegitimate – that the presence of the Jews is an imposition because the land is not their homeland.
• The main international interest in Jerusalem concerns the protection of the holy sites and assuring complete freedom of access to them. The State of Israel and the people of Israel assumed responsibility for protecting Jerusalem’s holy sites in 1967, when Jerusalem was re-united after the Six-Day War.

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Patel was the head of the UK Conservative Friends of Israel.

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by Scott Newark, Special to IPT News

Thanks to excellent reporting by Andrew Duffy of the Ottawa Citizen, Canadians recently learned of a disturbing decision from Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith that acquitted a man of sexual assault against his former wife because the man and his then wife believed that their religion and culture entitled him to have sex with her whether she consented or not.

The decision is especially alarming as it is based on a presumption that Canada’s clear criminal law that requires actual consent to sexual contact is somehow superseded by a cultural or religious belief. Further, the ruling undermines specific protections enacted in Canadian law that protect women, including those who are married, from non-consensual sexual contact.
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The Jordanian Opposition Coalition, headed by Mudar Zahran, asked me to post this Press Release of theirs.

Notice from the Jordanian Opposition Coallition

Mr. Michael Ross, a prominent Jewish activist, has resigned his position as foreign policy advisor for the JOC effective immediately.

Mr. Ross announced his resignation for personal, political and business reasons, which include accepting full time responsibility for the International Jewish Muslim Dialogue Center and an increased role as an educator and philosopher.

The JOC would like to thank Mr. Ross for his efforts and valuable advice, as well as outstanding work.

While the JOC deeply appreciates the values of freedom of speech and choice, it cannot endorse or condone previous lobbying efforts conducted by Mr. Ross with respect to certain legally accepted industries within the United States and Western World.

While we adore America’s free trade and business values, we also proudly uphold Jordanian social and moral values, which are in fact, very similar to those of the American people.

We wish Mr. Ross continued success in his future endeavors on behalf of Israel and world Jewry.

Israeli ambassador to Kazakhstan says that Israeli technologies may well fit in into the concept of the New Silk Road.

BY ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, JPOST

As US President Donald Trump is in Asia this week, a topic of conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping could be his ambitious multi-billion- dollar plan to create the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) – a modern Silk Road of trade and infrastructure connecting Asia to Europe and the Middle East.

Israel has a great opportunity to expand relations with Central Asian countries, which are the linchpin in the project, to tap into this bonanza.
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by Tyler Durden, ZERO HEDGE

One year ago, we introduced readers to William Binney, a former high-ranking NSA official turned whistleblower with an interesting theory: Binney believes the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia-linked hackers stole emails from the DNC as they pushed to sway the election in Trump’s favor is bullshit.

The real story, he says, is that a DNC insider stole the emails by downloading them manually from the DNC’s server onto a hard drive. Binney says he arrived at this conclusion after conducting an independent analysis of the metadata from the emails with a particular eye toward timestamps that he says indicate a download speed consistent with loading the files onto a thumb drive.
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