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Attention

Saudi king's top bodyguard shot dead after alleged 'personal dispute' at friend's home


RT
Sun, 29 Sep 2019 19:46 UTC
Major General Abdulaziz al-Fagham alongside King Salman
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Major General Abdulaziz al-Fagham alongside King Salman of Saudi Arabia and US President Donald Trump.
The most trusted personal bodyguard of the king of Saudi Arabia has been shot dead by an angered friend, in a dramatic turn of events. The suspected killer was then killed in an intense shootout with police.

The kingdom's state-run media initially reported that Major General Abdulziz al-Fagham was gunned down after having "a personal dispute" at a friend's house in the city of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast, without providing any details.

The Saudi Press Agency then cited a brief police report that said al-Fagham had arrived at his friend's residence on Saturday evening, where another mutual friend named Mamdouh al-Ali was also present. At some point, an argument broke out between al-Fagham and al-Ali who then left the house and came back with a firearm, shooting the bodyguard. Al-Fagham would later succumb to his wounds in a hospital. Al-Ali also wounded the house owner's brother and a Filipino guest worker.

According to police, the suspect then barricaded himself inside the house and refused to surrender. He was killed in an ensuing firefight with police officers. Five security officials were wounded by the suspect's "indiscriminate gunfire."

Comment: According to investigative journalist Ali Al-Ahmed, Al-Fagham was dismissed from his post just days ago, and the palace is on lockdown:
AlFegham was seen few days ago walking alone #Jeddah corniche which is not constant with his job. He doesn't ever leave the side of the king & sleeps at the palace after the king goes to bed.

I can with high certainty say that AlFegham was dismissed this month by #MBS. Details will be coming when sources are able to find info & transmit

Update: #Saudi king palace in #Jeddah is high alert & on lockdown. I know that palace & have reviewed its plans & photos from inside & had sources there since 2005 until recently. Also royal court #Riyadh is on lockdown.

AlFaghem had many secrets & had served since as personal guard of King Abduulah - from 2002- as far as we can confirm. This made him a threat to #MBS given he supervised palace guards who killed #JamalKhashoggi

I can say now, it was a political murder. The report will come out Sunday with details.
Coincidentally, a massive fire has broken out at a railway station on a crucial Mecca-Medina pilgrimage route. This comes the day after the Houthis reported a massive victory over Saudi forces. New details are emerging, along with video evidence:
The Houthi media report that 2,400 fighters and several hundred vehicles were captured. The reports say that 500 Saudi soldiers were killed. This video shows the fighting. Another video shows several hundred prisoners being led away from the front. Here are additional pictures. Most the prisoners seem to be poor men that the Saudis had hired. Only a few have complete uniforms. The events happened north of Kitaf near the Saudi Yemeni border and at least partially in the Najran region within Saudi Arabia. Here is a report of the previous operation. Overnight some ten short range ballistic missiles were launched from Yemen against the airport of Al Jadhea in Saudi Arabia.
In other words, the situation after the attack on Saudi oil facilities is not cooling down. If anything, things are heating up.

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Stock Up

Climate rip off: Follow the money trail

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
green kids signs
© Unknown
Climate. Now who wudda thought. The very mega-corporations and mega-billionaires behind the globalization of the world economy over recent decades, whose pursuit of shareholder value and cost reduction who have wreaked so much damage to our environment both in the industrial world and in the under-developed economies of Africa, Asia, Latin America, are the leading backers of the "grass roots" decarbonization movement from Sweden to Germany to the USA and beyond. Is it pangs of guilty conscience, or could it be a deeper agenda of the financialization of the very air we breathe and more?

Whatever one may believe about the dangers of CO2 and risks of global warming creating a global catastrophe of 1.5 to 2 degree Celsius average temperature rise in the next roughly 12 years, it is worth noting who is promoting the current flood of propaganda and climate activism.

Green Finance

Several years before Al Gore and others decided to use a young Swedish school girl to be the poster child for climate action urgency, or in the USA the call of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a complete reorganization of the economy around a Green New Deal, the giants of finance began devising schemes for steering hundreds of billions of future funds to investments in often worthless "climate" companies.

Comment: Excellent outline of the players, the plans and the benefits they are reaping at the sacrifice of a global humanity purposefully unprepared for what is to come. There is an underlying agenda...it just isn't 'green.'

See also: Soros: A major funder of 'Global Climate Strike' groups

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Bomb

Did the Deep State plan this 'whistleblower' stink bomb all along? Sure looks like it!

Monica Showalter
American Thinker
Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
TrumpZelensky
© NY Post
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky • US President Donald Trump
Well, what a coincidence:

Just before the filing of the "whistleblower" report against President Trump, it turns out the Intelligence Community changed its own rules for filing to Congress to end any need for firsthand knowledge.

Boom. The report they wanted, claiming that President Trump had done something wrong in attempting to get to the bottom of Joe Biden's pocket-lining via his son, suddenly came out of the blue. The flypaper was laid out, and the first fly came.

According to Sean Davis at the Federalist:
Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community's behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers, who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress, to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.

The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump's July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only "heard about [wrongdoing] from others."

Comment: Trump shares the persecution and fate of the common man. The escalating erosion of rights and legal processes now include presidential privilege and protocol. The PTB have made our fight his fight. Will he be the game changer?

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Attention

With Salvini out, a renewed flow of economic migrants into Italy

Soeren Kern
The Gatestone Institute
Sat, 28 Sep 2019 19:29 UTC
.
Salvini
© Associated Press / Maurizio Brambatti
Matteo Salvini
Italy's new government, which has pledged to reverse former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini's hardline approach to migration policy, appears to have triggered a new wave of mass migration from northern Africa.

More than 1,400 migrants reached Italian shores since the new government took office on September 5, according to data compiled by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

During just the past several weeks, the number of migrant arrivals to Italy has increased incrementally: 59 migrants arrived on September 6; 67 arrived on September 9; 121 arrived on September 14; 259 arrived on September 15; 275 arrived on September 18; and 475 arrived between September 19 and September 25, according to the IOM. Overall, the number of migrant arrivals in September 2019 is up by more than 100% over the number of arrivals in September 2018.

Comment: Salvini was lambasted for wanting to preserve Italy for its citizens. The present government's reversal of his policies are very likely to sweep him back into office.

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Bizarro Earth

Soros: A major funder of 'Global Climate Strike' groups

Thomas D. Williams, PH.D.
Breitbart
Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
Soros
© Getty Images
George Soros
George Soros financed radical environmental groups partnering in this week's "Global Climate Strike" to the tune of nearly $25 million, according to a new report.

At least 22 of the left-wing activist groups listed as partners in the Global Climate Strike received $24,854,592 in funding from liberal billionaire George Soros between 2000-2017 through his Open Society Network, Joseph Vazquez reported Thursday for the Media Research Center.

Though ostensibly ignited by the protests of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Global Climate Strike has borne from the outset the indelible fingerprints of well-funded, radical environmental activists. As it turns out, much of the funding has been coming from professional disrupter George Soros.

Among the organizations receiving Soros funding were Fund for Global Human Rights, Global Greengrants Fund, 350.org, Amnesty International, Avaaz, Color of Change, and People's Action. Each of these groups has climate-related agendas and goals spanning from reducing global carbon emissions to less than 350 parts per million and 100 percent "clean energy," to the elimination of new fossil fuel projects and a "green civil rights movement."

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Up

Austrian elections: Kurz expected to win, but who will be his partner?


RT
Sun, 29 Sep 2019 00:32 UTC
Kurz
© AFP
Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz
Four months after his coalition government was brought down by a corruption scandal, former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz looks set to make a resurgence, as the country prepares to vote.

Austrians head to the polls on Sunday in an election that nobody would have anticipated five months ago. Kurz' government collapsed in May, after German media published a video showing Freedom Party (FPO) leader Heinz-Christian Strache negotiating a quid-pro-quo deal with the supposed niece of a Russian oligarch (who turned out to be an actor) in Ibiza in 2017. Strache's FPO was the minority partner in a coalition with Kurz' Austrian People's Party (OVP), and though Kurz distanced himself from the affair, a motion of no confidence saw the government liquidated and a caretaker administration installed.

According to opinion polls, the scandal seems to have left Kurz relatively unscathed. Riding to power in 2017 on a platform of tougher immigration laws, Kurz's message still clearly resonates with voters. The party is slated to take 34 percent of the vote on Sunday, up from the 31.5 percent it won in 2017.

Comment: Aljazeera has the update on the Austrian election, 29/9/2019: Projections show Sebastian Kurz wins election
Austrian conservatives won most seats in snap elections on Sunday, putting their leader Sebastian Kurz on track to retake power but forcing him into tough coalition negotiations after a corruption scandal sent his far-right former allies tumbling.

Kurz's People's Party came first at 37.1 percent, well ahead of the Social Democrats on 22.6 percent, the far-right Freedom Party on 16.7 percent, the Greens on 13 percent, and the liberal Neos 7.8 percent, a projection by ARGE Wahlen for Austrian news agency APA showed soon after polls closed at 5pm (15:00 GMT).

The Greens leader said his party would only consider governing with Kurz if there was a "radical change" of direction compared to his previous coalition with the far-right. "There must be a radical change from the policies," Werner Kogler told Austrian television. "We need a sign of an about-turn".

It could take time for the Greens and Kurz to convince their supporters about working with each other.

Many Greens voters see Kurz as their enemy since he brought the far right to power. Many of Kurz's core voters, such as farmers and big business, are wary of the left-wing Greens.

FPOe leader Norbert Hofer told Austria media he believed the result meant the party would not take part in coalition talks, adding: "That means we are preparing for opposition."

Kurz has said he will talk to all parties. His two most likely options are either to ally with the FPO again or with the Greens and the pro-business Neos.

As the campaign wound up last week, the FPO sought to focus voters' attention on its core issue of migration, railing against immigrants in general and Muslims in particular, rather than addressing recent scandals that have eroded its support.

The widespread assumption among politicians and analysts is the election will be followed by a long period of coalition talks, meaning the current provisional government of civil servants led by former judge Brigitte Bierlein could remain in place until late December or later.


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Whistle

Common themes link 'whistleblower complaint' and Crowdstrike certification of DNC 'Russia hack'

Aaron Klein
Breitbart
Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
Trump
© Unknown
There are common threads that run through an organization repeatedly relied upon in the so-called whistleblower's complaint about President Donald Trump and CrowdStrike, the outside firm utilized to conclude that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's servers since the DNC would not allow the U.S. government to inspect the servers.

One of several themes is financing tied to Google, whose Google Capital led a $100 million funding drive that financed Crowdstrike. Google Capital, which now goes by the name of CapitalG, is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor to the Democratic Party.

CrowdStrike was mentioned by Trump in his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign, reportedly helped draft CrowdStrike to aid with the DNC's allegedly hacked server. On behalf of the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Perkins Coie also paid the controversial Fusion GPS firm to produce the infamous, largely-discredited anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.

CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity technology company co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch. Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward Russia. The Council in turn is financed by Google Inc.

Comment: See also:

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Sherlock

WaPo's new Russiagate: Trump tells Russians their 'bad' meddling is the same as US' 'good' meddling

Alexandre Antonov
RT
Sat, 28 Sep 2019 12:04 UTC
Investigatetrump signs
© AFP/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds
With the US president facing a Ukraine-linked impeachment probe, the Washington Post has delivered a fresh 'bombshell.' Not only does Trump think nothing of Russian interference in 2016, he even said as much to the Russians!

The newspaper of record found a new way to flog the dead horse of collusion, treating its readers to outrageous details about a "now-infamous" meeting that Donald Trump had with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador to the US in May 2017. Trump told the Russian officials that he didn't care much about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election "because the United States did the same in other countries." However, the White House allegedly tried to cover up his comments.

Customarily helpful unnamed former officials told the WaPo how "distressed" they were by the remarks, in which Trump apparently forgave "Russia for an attack that had been designed to help elect him" and conflated "Russia's interference in the US elections with US efforts to promote democracy and good governance abroad."

"He thought the whole interference thing was ridiculous. He never bought into it," one of the sources told the newspaper.
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Arrow Up

S&P ups Ukraine rating for improved macro-management


RT
Sat, 28 Sep 2019 09:02 UTC
2 guys flag
© Sergei Grits/AP
US-based credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) has upgraded Ukraine's long-term sovereign credit rating, citing the new government's improved financial management and a potential thaw in relations between Kiev and Moscow.

"Foreign exchange reserve accumulation, strengthening growth, and narrowing fiscal deficits underpin our upgrade of Ukraine," the agency stated on Friday, justifying the move with assertions that Ukraine's new government "appears to be committed to preserving macrofiscal stability" and "liberalizing the economy."

S&P raised Ukraine's global scale long-term foreign and local currency sovereign ratings from "B-" to "B," and its national scale ratings to "uaA" from "uaBBB." Short-term ratings have been affirmed at B. The outlook on the ratings has been deemed stable.
"A stable forecast reflects our expectations that the new government of Ukraine will consolidate macroeconomic reforms in recent years, while the economy is recovering, and total public debt is reduced in relation to GDP."
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Eye 2

Susan Rice accuses Trump of cover-op, but admits Obama put transcripts on top secret server too

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sun, 29 Sep 2019 18:01 UTC
Susan Rice
© Reuters
Former national security adviser Susan Rice
After President Trump was accused of a cover-up for moving details about his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a separate, highly secured computer system, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice admitted that Obama did the same thing.

The difference? Rice says that Trump's conversation didn't meet the threshold to justify that level of classification, according to The Federalist.

"We never moved them over unless they were legitimately, in the contents classified," Rice said at the Texas Tribune Festival when asked how often the Obama administration engaged in this practice - without explaining the methodology used to determine what qualified.

Comment: Susan Rice, Swamp creature and war harpy extraordinaire:

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