[Sultan Knish] The obsession of the Irish government with falsely accusing Israel of genocide is only equaled by its determination to commit an actual genocide against the Irish people.
In its latest move, the Irish government has called for watering down the definition of genocide to be able to apply it to the Jewish State, but there is no need to water down the formal definition, the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group", to charge Ireland’s government with ’self-genocide’ or ’autogenocide’ against its own people.
In the last 20 years, Ireland, a small nation of millions, has been overwhelmed by a mass migration of 1.6 million people. In 2023, there were 54,678 births in the Republic of Ireland and 141,600 immigrants. Birth rates dropped 5% in 2023 (hovering at 1.5 births per woman well below replacement rate) but the number of immigrants grew by 31%. And will grow further.
...Israel and Ireland as modern states arose from 19th century nationalist movements seeking to restore the glorious past of diaspora peoples. Animated by writers, artists, linguists and poets determined to revive what many saw as dead languages and the dead past, Zionism and Celtic nationalism seemed to have much in common. But the outcomes have been very different.
Half the Jewish diaspora lives in Israel while the vast majority of the Irish diaspora still lives abroad. Israel is a technological pioneer while Ireland serves as a Big Tech tax shelter. Israel has fought and won wars against Muslim invaders while Ireland shamefully kneels to them.
The revival of Israel is an object of pride to Jews around the world, but Ireland remains little more than a tourist stop with little about its state to take pride in as a modern day nation.
And most damningly, Israel’s birth rate is double that of the Irish birth rate.
Israel could very easily have ended up like Ireland: a kleptocracy run by crooked club socialists doling out just enough social welfare to keep the population voting for them, a cafe cultural establishment whose literary and linguistic experiments had soured into a club of worthless worthies, and plenty of history for scholars to look back on but no future to look forward to.
And if the Israelis hadn’t spent the last century fighting for their lives, maybe it would have.
If Israel had been living next door to some dying socialist republics with nothing to aspire to beyond wrangling about their share of EU subsidies, maybe it would have also become a failed experiment with Labor and Likud as its Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, Amos Oz as its Joyce, and people who don’t bother with the national language, but just want to move to Europe.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) the Jews were cursed or blessed with their enemies.
[NYP] New Jersey is now subject to nonstop and often sensational civilian reports of swarms of nocturnal drones crossing city skies and violating the airspace of airports and military bases.
Terrified thousands demand to know what these drones are doing and to whom they belong.
In response, the Biden administration had initially kept mum.
Then, under mounting public pressure, it assured the public to be calm, given that most of the drones were likely launched by hobbyists and private citizens.
When that narrative failed to convince many, spokespeople pivoted to claims of mass hysteria and mistaken identity.
Amateur sightseers, they inferred, were subject to panic and hallucinations — supposedly wrongly confusing normal civilian and airline planes with drones.
Perhaps.
But as the sightings continued, more government narratives followed that the drones were unidentified but assuredly still harmless and certainly not foreign-operated.
Still, the mysterious sightings continued.
And the public’s initial curiosity soon turned to fear and finally to anger at their government’s silence, subsequent gaslighting and final mendacity.
In its characteristic stonewalling, the Biden administration has only fueled speculations and occasional conspiracy theories when it could have at least reviewed logical theories and welcomed legitimate questions.
Is a controversial government agency — perhaps the CIA or the EPA — surveilling installations, areas or people that would either be too embarrassing to be revealed or otherwise might set off panic?
[ElizabethNicksonuibstack] "We in Silicon Valley were floored that Trump got nominated. Then that 10Xed when he won, 10Xed again with the Steele Dossier, 10Xed again with Charlottesville, 10Xed again with impeachment, and again with both Covid and BLM.
It was like this incredible ramping up of emotion and drama and change."
(It was then that Andreessen took a step back and considered.)
"I don’t understand what’s happening on the left and I don’t understand these purges."
-Honestly podcast - Bari Weiss and Marc Andreessen
It’s the voice that drives me crazy. The drawl, the self-satisfied well-fed glottal stop, layers of expensive fat choking the windpipe, I can even hear that. Even the quickness of speech annoys me. So certain, no pause for reflection, just words unfurling from a 3 Sigma intelligence. Never missed a meal, anxiety curbed by privilege so entrenched they can’t even imagine. Thin, carefully enhanced thirty year old women, the cynicism of a bored aristocrat bleeding from their voices, that vocal fry drawling, knowing it all, having seen it all, never having left their Ivy colleges, their leafy suburbs, never going without anything, much less a desperately needed holiday, rent money, food, dentistry for their kids. My fingers itch to slap them.
They bankrupted us. They ruined the lives of the bottom 70%. They spent ALL the money. They then proceeded to bankrupt the world. And, realizing the money was all gone, their gamemasters tried to kill us off, first with an engineered virus that failed, then with a vaccine that didn’t. Then they ran up $10 trillion in four years trying to keep the vegetable in power, to get to that point where the Green New Deal paid off in torrents of lovely other people’s money. Which was such a stupid idea that clearly IQ has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with wisdom.
Every time you hear one of these ghastly regime-puppets-opinionated-fatuous-gym hardened-glossed-up made-up gargoyles speak, think: you bastards bankrupted the world. And you don’t even know it. This character demonstrates how legalistic, how extractive, how unprincipled this class is. I mean, just yuck.
People like this idiot stole everything. Everything. And then they prance around with a substitute set of values: DEI and ESG, and force them on the people already ruined. And those moronic ideas destroyed the little they hadn’t taken.
Back when I was a Bolshevik I was fretting to my geneticist cousin (world renowned for the credentialed) about my brilliant daughter and her brilliant father, and the breeding of the brilliant creating an oligarchy of the brilliant, so detached from nature and culture they bring down the world. (Which is today)
Nope, said Bob. First, genius is a freak occurrence and evenly distributed across the population. Further a genius in the working or middle class is likely to be possessed of so much ambition and energy it will repel them out of their environment so fast, they will forget where they came from.
He didn’t say that last phrase. I added it because that is where we are today. Marc Andreeesen, Netscape inventor and insanely successful digital investor, is instructive. I don’t want to pick on him particularly, because he seems like a jolly fellow, but he admits to being totally bowled over by Trump’s win in 2016, despite the fact he comes from a rural Wisconsin farming community.
"It’s all staunch Trump country. Farmer world was in for Trump early and hard."
I’d lost touch with the culture.
I tried to reset my own psychology and I need to read a lot. I had to rebuild my world view."
How the actual fuck (I’m sorry there is no other appropriate word) did someone so (apparently) brilliant miss what was happening in his home town? I knew it was happening by 2007 and they weren’t my people. But it was happening to his family. To his people. This bespeaks an arrogance and pride and blindness worthy of Charles 1 and he was beheaded in the public square.
Again, Andreessen is one of the honest ones. I can’t read the others. I don’t know what treat I would have to promise myself to read the Atlantic. David Frum? I couldn’t afford the freight - a Rolex? Instead I’d be racking my metaphorical shotgun. I cannot for the life of me understand the forbearance of the deplorables with these ghastly people and their ability to write 15,000 insanely boring words demanding the confiscation of the lives of their tax slaves.
I grew up in the Wasp oligarchy. that skein of families that runs down the east coast of the U.S. and Canada, who started arriving with their Puritan views, their Christian ecstasies, their city on a hill in 1630, which marked the first flood of ships. This was starting to die in the 1970’s, about to be overwhelmed then drowned by people like Andreessen and his crowd in Silicon Valley, his ultra-credentialed cohorts in government, in the corporate world, in the Great Game. All the geniuses from the working and obscure middle class flooded into the centres of power and were well entrenched by 2010, so brilliant they got all the glittering prizes.
But we lasted 400 years. They lasted 50. We will see their death, their gasping flapping on the dock, their floundering around for wreckage to cling to, their slinking over to the side of the people they called garbage. Their attempt to find a berth using ideas they have been trained to loathe. They won’t come back. It’s over for them. They have failed. Wednesday’s Continuing Resolution illustrates their retreat pattern.
They were giving themselves a 35% raise, for one. They were continuing the pandemic/WHO biometric tracking regime, and they were funding the International Censorship Regime. There were billions of dollars going to various pet projects, a last lovely looting of the public purse before it all came to a crashing end.
And Republicans were going to vote for it. Of course they were, they were getting another $60K a year.
The deplorables rose up in a great wave and defeated it. Oh I know the blithering morons think it was Trump and Musk, but trust me on this, Trump and Musk are a symptom, not a cause. The blowback, the underlying thinking had been developing for forty years among the garbage people. Trump is our weapon. So is Musk. They. Follow. Us. They are using our ideas. We are the brains trust. RTWT Continued on Page 47
[JustTheNews] From the disastrous Afghanistan retreat to Lloyd Austin's surgery, Biden's Pentagon has been flagged regularly for mistruths if not outright disinformation.
The Pentagon vowed to do better after hiding from Americans for days the fact that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was medically AWOL. It also struggled for a week to get its story straight on the nature of a Chinese spy balloon transversing U.S. air space. And it falsely claimed the withdrawal from Afghanistan would be orderly when its own emails conceded there was "chaos." Videos shown around the world revealed civilians falling to their deaths trying to cling to evacuating U.S. military aircraft.
The trouble with the truth inside America's most famous five-sided building exploded anew Thursday when a two-star general admitted at the beginning of a Pentagon press briefing that the Biden administration had doubled the number of U.S. troops inside Syria months ago while continuing to provide a false and lower number to reporters.
"As you know, we have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 U.S. troops deployed to Syria," Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told stunned reporters. "In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interest, we recently learned that those numbers were higher.
"So asked to look into it, I learned today that, in fact, there are approximately 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria," he added.
The revelation that the Biden administration had doubled the number of deployed troops for months without public disclosure left even one of the country's oldest and most revered military publications incredulous.
"The surge of 1,100 troops to the country has been going on for months without being disclosed publicly," the Navy Times blared on X.
LEGACY OF MISTRUTHS
The four-year record of mistruths and obfuscation from the Pentagon podium under President Joe Biden is likely to be one of the administration's enduring legacies, which combined with the White House's own falsehoods about Biden's mental decline, border security and family business dealings has eroded public trust, experts said. Biden called for stricter gun control laws this week after pardoning his own son, Hunter, for federal weapons charges.
"The Biden administration has lost the American people, the credibility of the American people," former Trump Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Just the News on Thursday night. "You mentioned all the different things coming out of the Pentagon, but this is also the administration that said the border was secure, right? Nothing to see there."
"It's in part why Donald Trump won that election, will be in office next year, because the American people just want someone to tell them the truth," he added.
The mistrust began just months into the Biden presidency when the Pentagon insisted it had an orderly plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan and that the country's government was capable of keeping control from falling to the Taliban. The Taliban took control within days and when news video footage showed a country in utter chaos, the Pentagon's chief spokesman at the time implored Americans not to believe their eyes.
“Now, some say we should have started mass evacuations sooner and, ‘Couldn’t this have been done in a more orderly manner?’” Kirby said following the pullout. “I respectfully disagree.”
But Kirby's own contemporaneous emails, obtained by Just the News three years later, showed he was told himself the exit was in disarray and the country in chaos.
BIDEN'S OUTRIGHT LIES IN DEBATE
One State Department situation report emailed to Kirby on Aug. 16, 2021 — 10 days before a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. Marines at an airport gate in Kabul — referred to "breaches" and "flightline insecurity" at the airport that resulted in the exchange of gunfire that killed five Afghans and may have wounded an American soldier. Biden himself lied in his disastrous debate with then-GOP nominee Donald Trump, claiming that under his watch, "no American troops died anywhere in the world."
"The crowd was out of control, the firing was only done to defuse the chaos," the email reported, citing an official U.S. statement released inside the country.
Such deception extended all the way to the president, who told Americans on July 8, 2021, that the Afghan government was unlikely to fall and that there would be no chaotic evacuations of Americans similar to the end of the Vietnam War.
But by that time, classified intelligence reports obtained in 2023 by The New York Times and Congress were directly questioning whether Afghan security forces could resist the Taliban or hold on to the capital city of Kabul.
#2
The main mission of US troops in Syria is to be a problem for the Russian troops in Syria. Everything flows from that. So, the Russians are gone, and we can leave? Ho, Ho, Ho.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
12/23/2024 9:12 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Let this be a warning *DO NOT NATION BUILD* unless you have completely leveled the country and its people first.
#4
The government lied to us. I need to reevaluate everything I believed.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/23/2024 10:50 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I thought they’re there to be the anvil to the SDF (Kurds) hammer keeping ISIS entrapped, and to keep Turkey and whoever is running the rest of Syria from jointly or separately trying to wipe them out.
[Washington Examiner] The result of President Joe Biden’s permissive folly at the southern border is that the immigrant population of the United States grew by a record 8 million people in the last four years, with over half that number entering the country illegally. This mass of foreigners who have no right to be here and are not wanted by American citizens has inflicted financial havoc on state and local governments. If Congress does not act, the illegal population will add to federal deficits as well.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, Biden’s failure to secure the border will add $300 billion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years. Other estimates place the financial burden of Biden’s illegal immigration wave to federal, state, and local governments at over $150 billion a year.
Most illegal immigrants are ineligible for most federal welfare programs, but there are important exceptions. More than half of illegal immigrant households include a child born in the United States. These children are eligible for all federal welfare programs. Many states have also extended Medicaid eligibility to illegal immigrants directly, and six states allow them to collect food stamps. All illegal immigrant children are also eligible for school lunch and other benefits under current law.
Finally, and most importantly, immigrants who have been paroled into the United States for a term longer than a year — most illegal immigrants released into the country by Biden have a two-year parole term — are eligible for all federal welfare programs. Parole status, granted by Biden to most of the illegal immigrants he allowed into the country, drives illegal immigrant welfare spending.
#2
Cut the welfare, cut the flow of government funds to trafficking NGOs, require E-Verify across the board and deport the criminals. Also find the kids, DNA test everyone, implement a ban on illegals getting citizenship, finish the wall, tariff countries facilitating illegal immigration, implement remain in Mexico, and extend it to Canada. How much problem would be left?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/23/2024 7:55 Comments ||
Top||
[IsraelTimes] After rebels sweep to power in Damascus, Syrian Kurdish leader asks Trump to prevent northern incursion by Ankara — which views Kurdish factions as a national security threat
With hostile Ottoman Turkish-backed groups mobilizing against them in Syria’s north, and Damascus ruled by a group friendly to Ankara, Syria’s main Kurdish factions are on the back foot as they seek to preserve political gains carved out during 13 years of war.
Part of a stateless ethnic group straddling Iraq, Iran, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... member, but not the most reliable... , Armenia and Syria, Kurds have so far been among the few winners of the Syrian conflict, controlling nearly a quarter of the country and leading a powerful gang that is a key US ally in countering the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... But the power balance has tilted against them since the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS) swept into Damascus this month, toppling president Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... , two analysts and a senior Western diplomat told Rooters.
The seismic change in Syria is expected to yield deeper Ottoman Turkish sway just as a change of US administration is raising questions over how long Washington will keep backing the country’s Kurdish-led forces.
For Turkey, the Kurdish factions represent a national security threat. Ankara views them as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against the Ottoman Turkish state since 1984 and is deemed a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and other powers.
The Syrian Kurdish groups "are in deep, deep trouble," said Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, a US-based think tank. "The balance has shifted fundamentally in Syria to the advantage of Turkey-backed or Turkey-aligned factions, and Turkey seems determined to exploit this to the fullest."
The shift has been reflected in renewed fighting for control of the north, where Turkey-backed gangs known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) have made military advances against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Fanar al-Kait, a bigwig in the Kurdish-led regional administration, told Rooters that the ouster of Assad, whose Arab nationalist Baath Party oppressed Kurds for decades, presented a chance to stitch the fragmented country back together.
He said the administration is ready for dialogue with Turkey, but the conflict in the north showed Ankara had "very bad intentions."
"This will certainly push the region towards... a new conflict," he added.
Ottoman Turkish President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important... said Friday he expected foreign states would withdraw support for Kurdish fighters following Assad’s toppling, as Ankara seeks to isolate the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish militia that spearheaded the SDF alliance.
Responding to questions from Rooters, a Ottoman Turkish official said the root cause of the conflict is "not Turkey’s view towards the region; it is that the PKK/YPG is a terrorist organization."
"The PKK/YPG elements must lay down their arms and leave Syria," the official said.
SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, in a Rooters interview on Thursday, acknowledged the presence of PKK fighters in Syria for the first time, saying they had helped battle Islamic State and would return home in the event a total ceasefire was agreed with Turkey. He denied any organizational ties with the PKK.
Meanwhile,
...back at the abandoned silver mine, a triangular dorsal fin appeared in the water. Then another... in Damascus, the new leadership is showing warmth towards Ankara and indicating it wants to bring all Syria back under central authority — a potential challenge to the decentralization Kurds favor.
While Turkey provides direct backing to the SNA, it along with other states deems HTS a terrorist group because of its al Qaeda past.
Despite this, Ankara is believed to have significant sway over the group. A senior Western diplomat said: "The Turks can clearly influence them more than anyone else."
HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa told a Ottoman Turkish newspaper that Assad’s ouster was "not only the victory of the Syrian people, but also the Ottoman Turkish people."
The Ottoman Turkish official said HTS was not and never had been under Ankara’s control, calling it a structure "we were communicating with due to circumstances," and adding many Western states were also doing so.
Syrian Kurdish groups led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the affiliated YPG militia took control of much of the north after the uprising against Assad began in 2011. They established their own administration, while insisting their aim was autonomy, not independence.
Their politics, emphasizing socialism and feminism, differ starkly from HTS’s Islamism. Their area grew as US-led forces partnered with the SDF in the campaign against Islamic State, capturing Arab-majority areas.
The Turkey-backed SNA groups stepped up their campaign against the SDF as Assad was being toppled, seizing the city of Manbij on Dec. 9
Washington brokered a ceasefire, but the SDF has said Turkey and its allies have not abided by it, and a Ottoman Turkish defense ministry official said there was no such deal.
US support for the SDF has been a point of tension with its NATO ally, Turkey. Washington views the SDF as a key partner in countering Islamic State, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm... has warned will try to use this period to re-establish capabilities in Syria. The SDF is still guarding tens of thousands of detainees linked to the hard boy group.
Ottoman Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said last weekend that Turkey saw no sign of an Islamic State resurgence in Syria. On Friday, Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, told his German counterpart during talks in Ankara that alternatives needed to be found for the management of camps and prisons where the detainees are being held.
Separately, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf said on Friday that Washington was working with Ankara and the SDF to find "a managed transition in terms of SDF’s role in that part of the country."
US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. I'm not working for you. Don't be such a horse's ass.... ’s administration has said that US troops will stay on in Syria, but President-elect Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... could remove them when he takes office on Jan. 20.
During his first administration, Trump attempted to pull out of Syria but faced pressure at home and from US allies.
In a Dec. 17 letter to Trump, reviewed by Rooters, top Syrian Kurdish official Ilham Ahmed said Turkey was preparing to invade the northeast before he takes office.
Turkey’s plan "threatens to undo years of progress in securing stability and fighting terrorism," she wrote. "We believe you have the power to prevent this catastrophe."
Asked for comment, Trump-Vance transition front man Brian Hughes said: "We continue to monitor the situation in Syria. President Trump is committed to diminishing threats to peace and stability in the Middle East and to protecting Americans here at home."
Trump said on Dec. 16 that Turkey will "hold the key" to what happens in Syria but has not announced his plans for US forces stationed there.
"The Kurds are in an unenviable position," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. "Once Damascus consolidates its power, it will move on the region. The US can’t remain there forever."
HTS leader Sharaa told British broadcaster the BBC that Kurds were "part of our people" and "there should be no division of Syria," adding arms should be entirely in the state’s hands.
Sharaa acknowledged one of Turkey’s main concerns — the presence of non-Syrian Kurdish fighters in Syria — and said: "We do not accept that Syrian lands threaten and destabilize Turkey or other places."
He pledged to work through dialogue and negotiations to find "a peaceful formula to solve the problem," saying he believed initial contacts had been established "between the Kurds in northeastern Syria or the SDF organization."
Kait, the Kurdish official, said his administration wanted "a democratic Syria, a decentralized Syria, a Syria that represents all Syrians of all sects, religions and ethnicities," describing these as red lines. The SDF would be "a nucleus of the coming Syrian army," he added.
SDF commander Abdi, in his Rooters interview, confirmed that contact had been established with HTS to avoid festivities between their forces but said Ankara would try to drive a wedge between Damascus and the Kurdish-led administration.
Still, he said there was strong support from international parties, including the U.S.-led coalition, for the SDF joining "the new political phase" in Damascus, calling it "a great opportunity."
"We are preparing, after a total ceasefire between us and between Turkey and the affiliated factions, to join this phase," he said.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/23/2024 2024-12-23 02:22 ||
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[11142 views]
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[ZeroHedge] In an astonishing turn of events, amid the recent turmoil and shifts in power that have engulfed Syria over the past 3 weeks, one key component of the country’s wealth which has remained unscathed in the fog of war, at least according to Reuters reporter Timour Azhari, is the Syrian central bank’s gold reserves in Damascus - all 25.8 tonnes of gold worth over US $2.2 billion at current market prices.
According to the Reuters report, while the bank’s FX balances have fallen to just “US$ 200 million in cash”, the “vault of Syria's central bank holds nearly 26 tons of gold, the same amount it had at the start of its bloody civil war in 2011."
This is despite the fall of Damascus, the escape of former leader Bashar al-Assad to Moscow, and the rise of Ahmed al-Sharaa, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as commander-in-chief of the new administration, with Mohammed al-Bashir as leader of a caretaker government.
Reuters news agency, part of Thomson Reuters group (which is majority controlled by The Woodbridge Company Limited, a holding company of the Canadian Thomson family) first admits that...
“Reuters could not access the central bank vaults.”
So none of the 600 photo journalists employed by Reuters could get even one photo of some gold bars in the Damascus vault. What a pity.
Reuters then also admits that “media representatives for Syria's new ruling administration and for the Central Bank of Syria did not respond to Reuters requests.” This left Reuters to talk to the proverbial “four people familiar with the situation”.
One of these four unidentified sources told Reuters that “The vault is bomb-proof and requires three keys, each held by a different person, and a combination code to be opened”.
Two other sources told Reuters that “the vault was inspected by members of Syria's new administration last week, days after the rebels took control of the Syrian capital Damascus.”
One week ago on December 10, Reuters’ Timour Azhari also reported that looters had entered Syria's central bank in recent days and “stolen some money from the central bank building but that the main vault had remained untouched”,
Strangely however, that Reuters report from last week didn’t mention any gold, and was only based on comments from the “head of the Damascus Chambers of Commerce” who was relaying information from the “authorities”. A more direct source was not available because neither the Syrian central bank governor, Issam Hazima, nor his deputy, Maysaa Sabreen, has responded to Reuters requests for comment.
Other recent coverage from Damascus did however report that “National Bank of Syria is looted by US backed rebels with dollars, euros and gold stolen.”
Back to the Reuters, which continues that “the sources familiar with the situation” said that “the gold was never liquidated in order to keep sufficient collateral for the Syrian pounds circulating in the market.”
This is all the more surprising however, since the very same Reuters news agency was reporting 12 years ago that...
“Syria is trying to sell gold reserves to raise revenue as Western and Arab sanctions targeting its central bank and oil exports begin to bite, diplomats and traders said.”
In that article from April 2012, titled "Syria selling gold reserves as sanctions bite: sources" Reuters stated that:
"Syria is selling its gold at rock bottom prices," said a Western diplomatic source, declining to say where it was being sold.
A second diplomatic source confirmed the information, adding that Damascus was looking to offload everything it could to raise cash, including currency reserves.
Two gold traders in the United Arab Emirates said the Syrian government had been offering gold at a discount, with one saying it was making offers at about 15 percent below the market price.
The trader said Damascus was selling small volumes of around 20-30 kilos which were easier to offload, with offers being made through private accounts set up with free email providers.
Notably, the World Gold Council says that the last time Syria’s central bank reported gold reserves levels to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was in 2011, when it reported total gold holdings of 25.8 tonnes, just before the Syrian central bank’s rumored gold sales of 2012. So how could the Syrian central bank still have 25.8 tonnes of gold given the gold sales in 2012 when it was “selling its gold at rock bottom prices" in “volumes of around 20-30 kilos”?
But according to Reuters, the Syrian central bank gold reserves are the luckiest gold reserves in the world. They have miraculously defied the odds and survived 12 years of sanctions as FX reserves dwindled, survived multiple attempts to sell the gold being all over the Middle East, survived 3 weeks of recent fighting and chaos, the flight of Assad to Moscow, the arrival of a previously designated terrorist organization (HTS) into power, and an assault by looters into the central bank building last week. It must be because the vault is “bomb proof” and “needs 3 keys to open it”.
The claim by Reuters now that the Syrian central bank still holds 25.8 tonnes of gold is not credible, even based on its own reporting from 2012. This therefore undermines the entire Reuters story about the gold still being in the Syrian central bank vault.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Skidmark ||
12/23/2024 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11141 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
Given the speed of departure, weight of enough gold or even various currencies, to keep him comfortable.
So I wonder if maybe a few $100 Million in Bit-coins were quietly accumulated, or funds were already hidden in foreign bank anonymous acct's long ago?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm...
