A CIA officer who filed a second-hand whistleblower complaint against President Trump has gotten cold feet about testifying after revelations emerged that he worked with Joe Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan, and a DNC operative who sought dirt on President Trump from officials in Ukraine's former government.

According to the Washington Examiner, discussions with the whistleblower - revealed by RealClearInvestigations as 33-year-old Eric Ciaramella have been halted, "and there is no discussion of testimony from a second whistleblower, who supported the first's claims."

Ciaramella complained that President Trump abused his office when he asked Ukraine to investigate corruption allegations against Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as claims related to pro-Clinton election interference and DNC hacking in 2016.

The United States is to keep forces at the oil fields in Syria despite the troops' withdrawal from the north of the country. The formal justification of the move is the need to "deny ISIS access" to the oil fields. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that the US military is already "taking some actions" to strengthen and reinforce their position in Deir Ezzor. This, Esper said, will include "some mechanized forces".

US military convoys already started entering Syria from Iraq and moving towards the US-controlled oil fields on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. The Pentagon provided few details regarding numbers of troops and equipment that will remain in the area. Media reports speculate that around 500 personnel reinforced with dozens of pieces of military equipment will be stationed there. For example, Newsweek reported that the US is seeking to deploy a half of a US Army armored brigade combat team battalion that includes as many as 30 Abrams battle tanks to the oil fields. The US is also going to keep its military garrison in the al-Tanf area, on the Damascus-Baghdad highway, where about 150-200 troops remain.


The version of the troops' withdrawal from Syria that the media is trying to sell its audience says that the US is leaving the country. In reality, the US actions look more like re-deployment than withdrawal.

Official Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport has sold US$11 billion worth of military equipment to 43 countries in the first 10 months of 2019, the company's director general revealed.

The arms dealer has also signed over 800 contracts for future deliveries, Alexander Mikheev of Rosoboronexport said, noting that the results are not final for 2019, as there are still two months of work till the end of the year.

"Simultaneously, the portfolio of orders of the company keeps at the level of nearly 50 billion dollars, which guarantees the load for Russian defense industry enterprises for several years ahead," reads the statement published on Friday, three days before Rosoboronexport's 19th anniversary.

Google(GOOG) has agreed to acquire wearable technology company, Fitbit, in a deal worth approximately $2.1 billion. The purchase of Fitbit (FIT) gives Google some real firepower in the fight to take-on industry leaders like Apple (AAPL), which has dominated the wearable space ever since the release of its Apple Watch in 2015.

"It's less of a hardware play on the trackers and on the smartwatches but really a data play... Google will now have information on not only the temperature of my house, to the extent I've got four Nest thermostats or whether or not I have a smoke alarm going off or things like that, they'll know, in fact, how much I move on a given day, how many steps I take, things of that nature," D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte told Yahoo Finance. "This is very interesting data for Google. And if you think about Google's efforts, again, Amazon with Alexa and Apple with its various devices, they're all just collecting data for consumers. But this helps round out the data set for Google, given that it gives you, again, health care-related data."

Judging by the volume of intemperate emails and angry social media blasts that come my way, the party of impeachment seems to be inhaling way too much gas from the smoking guns it keeps finding in the various star chambers of its inquisition against you-know-who. You'd think that the failure of Mr. Mueller's extravaganza might have chastened them just a little — a $32 million-dollar effort starring the most vicious partisan lawyers inside-the-Beltway, 2,800 subpoenas issued over two years, 500 search warrants exercised, and finally nothing whatever to pin on Mr. Trump — except the contra-legal assertion that now he must prove his innocence.

When you state just that, these frothing hysterics reply that many background figures — if not the Golden Golem of Greatness himself — were indicted and convicted of crimes by Mr. Mueller's crew. Oh yes! The Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency was indicted for spending $400,000 on Facebook ads (and never extradited or tried in a court-of-law). Pretty impressive victory there! The hacking of Hillary Clinton's emails by "Russia"? Still just alleged, never proven, with plenty of shady business around the search for evidence. Paul Manafort, on tax evasion of money earned in Ukraine, 2014? We'll see about that as the whole filthy business of the 2014 Ukraine regime change op under Mr. Obama gets reviewed in the months ahead. George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI? Stand by on that one, too; still a developing story. General Michael Flynn, for ditto? You may have noticed that General Flynn's case is shaping up to be the biggest instance of prosecutorial misconduct since the Dreyfus affair (France, 1894-1906, which badly-educated Americans most certainly know nothing about).

To set the record straight I'm forced to repeat something that these New Age Jacobins seem unable to process: you don't have to be a Trump cheerleader to be revolted by the behavior of his antagonists, which is a stunning spectacle of bad faith, dishonesty, incompetence, and malice — and is surely way more toxic to the American project than anything the president has done. Every time I entertain the complaints of these angry auditors, I'm forced to remind myself that these are the same people who think that "inclusion" means shutting down free speech, who believe that the US should not have borders, who promote transsexual reading hours in the grammar schools, and who fiercely desire to start a war with Russia.

Republicans who once criticized former President Barack Obama's handling of U.S. debt quietly watched as the federal government debt hit $23 trillion for the first time in history.

Treasury Department data show the national debt rose past $23 trillion Thursday, and almost $17 trillion out of this number is debt held by the public. The remaining $6 trillion comes from loans within government entities, The Hill reported.

The national debt stood at $19.9 trillion when President Donald Trump took office, after expanding by just under $9 trillion under the Obama administration. The debt has risen 16% since Trump took office, according to the Hill, hitting $22 trillion in February.

Trump warned during his 2016 presidential campaign that the national debt was dangerous, blaming Obama for the "mountain of debt" that the former president left behind him.

Though the total national debt has continued to grow under the Trump administration, Republicans have remained quiet over an issue they once championed.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo backed massive anti-government protests in Iraq which have been raging for a month despite the curfew, violence, and high death toll.

"The Government of #Iraq should listen to the legitimate demands made by the Iraqi people who have taken to the streets to have their voices heard," Pompeo tweeted on Friday. "The U.S. supports the Iraqi people who require a genuine exercise in accountability and justice."
The large-scale protests, which began a month ago, continue to rage across Iraq despite a curfew imposed in Baghdad. The demonstrators flooded the streets, expressing anger over corruption, unemployment, and poor public services. They demand the resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi and a complete overhaul of the political system, set up after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Top Syria regime-change hustlers and media "experts," from Bellingcat to pro-war journalists, helped transform the @ShamiWitness account from a foreign Salafi-jihadist recruiter into a credible "ISIS expert."

Who remembers @ShamiWitness? At the peak of ISIS's power, @ShamiWitness stood out as the genocidal militia group's "most influential Twitter account," according to a Channel 4 exposé and a Kings College report.

The @ShamiWitness account was followed by some two-thirds of foreign jihadis. But it went further than propogandizing Islamic State's massacres and rapes: ShamiWitness also actively recruited foreign jihadis and helped lead them through the ratlines in Turkey, into the ISIS killing fields in Syria and Iraq, as a George Washington University report revealed this year.

But I want to talk about the western "experts" in Washington and London who cozied up to ShamiWitness — especially since all of them are still around, many of them bigger and more influential in our political discourse than ever. They're the ones who built up ShamiWitness's social media capital, making his account so popular, and so effective, in recruiting ISIS murderers.

Nigel Farage, the minor-party leader who played a major role in Britain's decision to leave the European Union, is trying to throw his weight around again in the U.K.'s Brexit-dominated election.

Farage on Friday piled the pressure on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, saying his Brexit Party will run against Johnson's Conservatives across the country in the Dec. 12 early election unless Johnson abandons his divorce deal with the EU.

Farage spoke a day after U.S. President Donald Trump barged into the British election campaign, urging his friend Farage to make an electoral pact with Johnson's Conservatives. Trump told Farage on the Euroskeptic politician's own radio phone-in show Thursday that he and Johnson would be "an unstoppable force."


Johnson on Friday gently rebuffed Trump's suggestion and ruled out an electoral pact with Farage.

"If I may respectfully say to all our friends around the world ... the only way to get this thing done is to vote for us," Johnson told ITV News. "If you vote for any other party, the risk is you'll just get Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party, dither and delay."

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has dubbed the Thursday attack on an Israeli drone operating in southern Lebanon part of an "effort to clean up" Lebanese skies.

Speaking to his supporters in Beirut on Friday, Nasrallah boasted that "bringing down UAVs is a natural matter," adding that "our goal is to purge Lebanese skies of Israeli violations".

The Hezbollah leader vowed that the group "will continue to act in this way, regardless of internal developments in Lebanon," referring to the ongoing protests facing the country, adding that the Thursday attack on an Israeli drone "proved" Hezbollah's willingness to use its advanced defences.

"Israel is confident that we will not dare to use the weapons we used yesterday - but the resistance proves that it is daring," Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah did not name the weapon used to attack the Israeli drone.