Britain's Foreign Affairs sub-Committee says the Gulf States must apply legal barriers to the private financing of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) by unidentified members of royal families in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia. The financial operations of royals in the Persian Gulf are vague, the committee concluded, recommending the Foreign Office "work with local partners in the region to ensure they have the capacity and resolve to rigorously enforce local laws to prevent the funding of Islamic State, so that the group cannot benefit from donations in future."

Assessing the likelihood of Sunni royal families directly funding terrorist groups, Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood called the issue "very opaque." "When somebody who is close to the top of a royal family is a very rich individual donor ... that is very likely to happen," Ellwood is quoted as saying in the committee report.

Foreign Office senior civil servant Dan Chugg also said when "dealing with royal families, wealthy princes and those kind of things" it is "difficult with some of these countries to know exactly what is government funding. Our strategy was not to try to ascertain whose problem and whose fault it was, but to stop the funding going to Daesh [Arabic pejorative term for IS]. That was what was important. And that is what our efforts have been focused on," Chugg told the committee.

Dear friends, did you know that the countries of the West will soon have to pass a difficult exam on confronting Russia? No? I didn't know either before I read about this in an article in The Financial Times in which the expectations of the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw were described. British media are demanding that the summit's participants somehow show Russia who's the boss and convince Putin that the NATO countries, despite their own problems, are ready to fight against Russia as a united front.

I couldn't help but laugh when I read in this article that one of the key topics of discussion at the summit will be the deployment of four (F-O-U-R!) battalions in the Baltic states and Poland in order to scare Putin and convince him that it is impossible to invade the Baltic countries. I don't even know what's funnier: Western analysts' assurance that 4 battalions of NATO are something terribly strong, or the fact that Russians are supposed to be dreaming in their sleep of capturing Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. This leaves the impression that our neighbors have some kind of very advanced case of megalomania. Well, judge for yourselves, should we take the Baltic countries? Instead of their ports, we have our own ultra modern Ust-Luga port. Our neighbors have no industry left. Nor agriculture. What's left? Tuna and Laima Vaikule? No thanks. In fact, Russians have long since switched to fish from Kaliningrad so, even from a gastronomic point of view, the Baltic countries are of no interest.

I must admit that the idea of four NATO battalions defending the Baltic countries from the Russian army seems to me to be a brilliant joke. It'll turn out like in the famous joke about the lunatic who drives crocodiles away by clapping so he won't have any crocodiles in his bathroom. It works great. But we'll see how it will work out for the Baltic states. Western media will write that Putin hasn't taken Vilnius because he's afraid of four NATO battalions. This reminds me of the triumphant bragging of Yatsenyuk, who told Ukrainians about how effective his anti-tank ditch would be against the Russian army. Apparently, NATO officials are actively adopting Ukraine's experience in conjuring virtual victories over imaginary threats.

The chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. agency that oversees civilian government broadcasting and media operations, has been detained at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and denied entry to Russia despite having a valid visa.

Jeff Shell, who is also the chairman of NBCUniversal Filmed Entertainment Group, was stopped by security officials shortly after arriving on a flight from Prague just after midnight on July 13, according to the BBG.

Shell was kept in locked rooms at the airport for several hours before being escorted to a flight to Amsterdam about 5 a.m. Moscow time, according to a BBG statement.

Shell told colleagues he was traveling with that airport security authorities told him the "denial of entry to Russia has permanent status" and was "a lifetime ban" from the country, the agency said.

British government-supported firms are engaged in a piratical contest for African natural resources as part of a new colonialist "scramble for Africa," a major new report claims.

Development NGO War On Want published its latest cutting report, titled 'The New Colonialism: Britain's scramble for Africa's energy and mineral resources', on Monday.

The study argues that a British relaunch of the 19th-century imperialist conquest of Africa is already well underway in an effort to profit from the natural wealth of the vast continent - to the detriment of those who live there.

When I first heard that Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under President Obama, was rumored to be on Donald Trump's short list for the GOP vice presidential nomination, my ears pricked up. I wrote about Flynn here, and Antiwar.com has covered the controversy surrounding the 2012 DIA report that warned the Obama administration that its policy of regime change in Syria would lead to the rise of a Sunni Islamic "caliphate" in Syria - a warning that fell on deaf ears.

Flynn was forced out of his job as DIA director because, he says, his views "did not fit the narrative." But what narrative is he talking about? In order to understand this intramural fight within the highest levels of the intelligence and military communities, we have to go back to the Bush administration, and the Iraq war.

Documents show three California sheriff's departments have been collecting iris data from arrestees over the last two and a half years under an alleged FBI pilot program. The nationwide trove includes over 430,000 iris scans.

"The fact these systems have gone forward without any public debate or oversight that we've been able to find is very troubling," Nicole Ozer, Technology and Civil Liberties Director at the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Verge, which obtained the documents through a public records request.

Documents show three California sheriff's departments have been collecting iris data from arrestees over the last two and a half years under an alleged FBI pilot program. The nationwide trove includes over 430,000 iris scans.

"The fact these systems have gone forward without any public debate or oversight that we've been able to find is very troubling," Nicole Ozer, Technology and Civil Liberties Director at the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Verge, which obtained the documents through a public records request.

The FBI argues the program is necessary to easily track criminals, promptly catch repeat offenders and suspects who try to hide their identities. The documents, or "operations reports," show collaboration through information-sharing agreements between sheriff's departments and other agencies, including US Border Patrol and the Pentagon. They further show that three counties, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside, have contributed more than quarter-million "enrollments" in the database from the California Department of Justice. In both 2014 and 2015, more than 100,000 documents were added to the system.

Details have emerged of how US and UK Special Forces clashed and drifted apart over the conduct of the Iraq occupation, with one British officer complaining about the use of tactics more akin to "Latin American-style" death squads than a modern military.

The details of the Balad special forces base and its operations, which came to shape the war, are not recounted in last week's long-awaited report by Sir John Chilcot.

However, kill or capture operations in and around Baghdad, launched from the Balad base 50 miles (80km) north of the city, were a key if little known chapter in Britain's shadow war, the Independent reports.

Despite killing or taking as prisoner up to 3,500 insurgents, the mission against the Sunni insurgency caused deep rifts to the point where a senior commander, himself ex-SAS, demanded to know why the UK Special Forces were "helping to run Latin American-style death squads?"

Privacy advocates (that's establishment speak for "normal human beings") celebrated earlier this week as the House rejected yet another attempt to expand the Patriot Act's snooping provisions. House Resolution 5606, better known by its Orwellian name, the "Anti-terrorism Information Sharing is Strength Act," would have allowed Big Brother to access American's financial information based on what the government deems to be "suspicious activity."

Given that the DHS has labeled such things as using binoculars, paying with cash, or even "appearing normal" as "possible terrorist activity" in the past (thus making pretty much every human being a possible terrorist), everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that the bill failed.

But don't breathe that sigh too deeply, because exactly as that threat to privacy was being extinguished, another one was rising to take its place. It goes by the name of "Pokémon Go" and it is a so-called "augmented reality" game that allows users to capture, train and battle virtual Pokémon by chasing them around through real world environments with your smart phone.

Full disclosure: Although I live in the land of anime and video games, I have never played any Pokémon games, watched any of the shows, read any of the comics or bought any of the toys associated with the franchise. I don't know anything about it except for the name of that ubiquitous yellow Pikachu character. So if you are an out of touch fuddy duddy like me, you may be surprised to learn that the "Pokémon Go" app, launched just one week ago, is the hottest thing on the planet right now.

To put into perspective just how popular this game is, it topped the App Store's "Top Grossing" category within 24 hours of its release. Now, just one week out, it has been downloaded an estimated 7.5 million times in the US alone and is generating an estimated $1.6 million a day for Nintendo. But here's the truly staggering part: In just the first two trading days after the game's release, Nintendo's market value rose a staggering $7.5 billion. That's right, folks, this is not merely a game, it is a phenomenon.

For those unfamiliar with "augmented reality" gaming, it's a type of game where one tracks virtual characters or objects that appear on their smart phones through real world environments. The Pokémon Go game is prompting scores of people out into the streets to go chasing for wild Pokémon to capture.

It is also prompting heists, violence, hoaxes and hysteria.

Chancellor George Osborne sought to influence a US investigation into HSBC, after the bank admitted laundering money for drug cartels and terrorists, by warning prosecution could throw the global financial system into turmoil.

A US House of Representatives committee report found the British Chancellor and Financial Services Authority (FSA) intervened in a US Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into illegal activities by the banking giant.

According to the report, prepared by Republicans, the DOJ considered criminal charges in addition to a £1.2 billion (US$1.6 billion) fine it levied in December 2012, but came under pressure from Osborne to drop prosecution.

The report, 'Too big to jail: Inside the Obama Justice Department's decision not to hold Wall Street accountable', said Osborne sent a letter in September 2012 to Ben Bernanke, then-chairman of the Federal Reserve.

"Chancellor Osborne insinuated in his letter of September 10 that the US was unfairly targeting UK banks by seeking settlements that were significantly higher than 'comparable' settlements with US banks," the report claimed.

In the letter, Osborne wrote that questions over HSBC's continued ability to clear US dollars "would risk destabilising the bank globally, with very serious implications for financial and economic stability, particularly in Europe and Asia."

Since FBI Director James Comey's press conference on July 5 and his House Oversight Committee testimony two days later, Hillary Clinton has come under withering attack for gross misrepresentations to the American people about her handling of classified material while she served as Secretary of State. Now, new questions are arising over what role her attorney, David Kendall of law firm Williams & Connolly, played in misleading Congressional investigators. There are also questions as to whether Comey himself has come clean about the full extent of Clinton's negligence.

The FBI has declined to provide Wall Street On Parade with the official FBI report on the matter, even though the investigation is now closed. Comey has indicated that Clinton was not put under oath nor did she have her testimony recorded when she was interviewed by FBI agents who were conducting a criminal investigation into the matter.


Over the past week, multiple newspaper opinion writers have weighed in on FBI Director James Comey's failure to recommend criminal charges in Hillary Clinton's blatant violations of the Federal Records Act and egregious mishandling of above Top Secret government records. While serving as Secretary of State, and without State Department approval, Clinton outsourced the transmittal and storage of the classified records from the safety of U.S. government control to a private server in the basement of her New York home, and later to a private firm, Platte River Networks, which was overseen by people lacking the proper security clearance. Clinton's private server was also backed up by a madcap group of lip-syncing 20-somethings at Datto, Inc., who also lacked the requisite security clearances.