United States

The Middle East is fertile ground for conspiracy theories, and one growing to towering heights these days says the US created the Islamic State.  But while the US may well have aided ISIS in its formative days with covert supplies of weapons and CIA funding (directly or indirectly, via Turkey leading political families) the one nation most responsible for iteration after iteration of "terrorist organizations" is Saudi Arabia which "created" not only the Islamic State, but al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and many other Sunni Jihadist groups in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Pakistan. 

The main purpose of this article is to bring to USA government's attention that " Pivot to Asia" policy is far more dangerous than they expected, because China may use this policy reversely to trigger U.S.'s crisis.

Earlier this month, we brought you an in-depth look inside Islamic State’s sprawling propaganda machine. 

As outlined extensively by Charlie Winter in a study entitled "Documenting The Virtual 'Caliphate'”, ISIS produces nearly 40 pieces of propaganda each day in various formats ranging from video, to print, to radio. 

The workload is divided between dozens of individual production units hailing from all corners of the caliphate from Libya to Raqqa to Mosul. Here’s Winter’s org chart which shows how each discrete unit fits into the larger picture: 

Paul Anthony Gosar is an American Republican politician and member of the United States House of Representatives from Arizona since 2011, representing Arizona's 4th congressional district.

Yesterday, Gosar took to his Facebook page to expose the reality of the massive Omnibus Spending Bill... and who is to blame... Why I Am Voting NO on the Massive Omnibus Spending Bill:

While the afterglow of exuberance remains in stocks, BofAML's Michael Hartnett is less than impressed by what comes next...

As Fed hikes rates for the first time in 3,460 days, officially ending the era of extreme, abnormal monetary policy in the form of QE and zero rates, what do we see?

 

Risk assets were very oversold going into the Fed hike...they now bounce.

 

But the Fed hike follows significant tightening of liquidity; negative blowback is more and more visible, e.g. credit crunch causing less stock buybacks.