Submitted by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,
The West has capitulated on freedom of expression. Nobody in the West launched the motto "Je Suis Avijit Roy," the name of the first of the several bloggers butchered, flogged or jailed last year for criticizing Islam.
Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which supposed had thawed as part of Obama's landmark 2015 nuclear deal which also allowed Iran to resume exporting its oil, are once again on the fence following a statement by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which accused the United States of scaring businesses away from Tehran and undermining a deal to lift international sanctions.
President Obama has asked NATO ally Germany to actively deploy troops along NATO’s eastern borders, raising the fear of an invasion by Russia. The West is afraid of a Russian invasion of Europe based on Russia’s annexation of Crimea. NATO is expanding eastwards because of it, giving the Russian’s a legitimate reason to fear an invasion. Russia saw the Ukrainian conflict from the start as an attempt by the west to destabilize the region and encroach upon Russian interests.
For those who thought that the world's biggest company losing over $40 billion in market cap in an instant on disappointing Apple earnings, would have been sufficient to put a dent in US equity futures, we have some disappointing news: with just over 7 hours until the FOMC reveals its April statement, futures are practically unchanged, even though the Nasdaq appears set for an early bruising in the aftermath of what is becoming a disturbing quarter for tech companies. "It’s pretty disappointing,” Angus Nicholson, an analyst at IG Ltd., told Bloomberg.
In the last week of March, immediately in the aftermath of the tragic Brussels bombing which ISIS took responsibility for and which was subsequently revealed as organized by a semi-autonomous Brussels cell operating closely with the French cell responsible for the November 2015 terrorist attack, we reported that the Islamic State group has trained at least 400 attackers and sent them into Europe for terror attacks.