Top Russian General Accuses US Of Training ISIS At Syrian Border Base

From ISIS To US-Backed "New Syrian Army" - "They Change Their Spots" Russia Alleges

According to a new Reuters report, the chief of the Russian General Staff has accused the United States of hosting a training facility for ISIS fighters in Syria along the Syria-Iraq border. Al-Tanf base on Syria"s southeast side has been under the control of the US-backed "New Syrian Army" and their US special forces advisers since the area was captured from ISIS in August of 2016.

Russia has previously called the base a 100km wide “black hole” operated by the US wherein an assortment of unaccountable armed groups and militants can operate freely. That American troops have long been deployed there was previously confirmed through multiple photographs and videos released early in the summer of 2017 which showed US elite soldiers on active patrols with Syrian rebel factions associated with the Free Syrian Army (or FSA, elements of which were more recently renamed the New Syrian Army).

Photos above and below were made public last summer which shows ongoing training of "New Syrian Army" fighters by US military advisers. Russia now alleges ISIS members have sought the protection of the base and area under its control. Russia"s top general said this week, "They are practically Islamic State. But after they are worked with, they change their spots and take on another name." The images were originally published through Hammurabi’s Justice News, a news outlet affiliated with Maghaweir al Thowra (MaT) - a faction which is the latest incarnation of the US-created New Syrian Army. Via the Long War Journal

Image produced by Maghaweir al Thowra (MaT) - the latest incarnation of the US-created New Syrian Army.

The head of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, made the allegations in an interview on Wednesday with Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, saying that the US base is illegal (and presumably the other roughly up to 10 or more known bases) as the Americans have no right to violate Syrian sovereignty and have not been invited to be there by Damascus in the first place. Russian military officials have recently indicated that the Syrian Army has essentially cut off the area and isolated US-backed forces" ability to expand. If true this raises significant doubts concerning how the presumed "anti-ISIL" mission of US coalition forces are valid or relevant, or how a direct US military presence in the remote southeast region could be justified.

Early this month Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the Islamic State had been destroyed and no longer holds cities or significant territory, though insurgent pockets remain. And at the same time the Russian "mission accomplished" announcement was being widely reported, the Pentagon said US forces would stay in Syria "as long as we need to, to support our partners and prevent the return of terrorist groups." Meanwhile, this week Russia has moved forward with plans brokered with the Syrian government to maintain two permanent Russian military bases on the Mediterranean - the naval station at Tartus and Khmeimim airbase outside of Latakia.

General Gerasimov told the Russian newspaper that the defense ministry possessed drone and satellite footage confirming large numbers of ISIS-affiliated fighters at the US base at Tanf. "They are in reality being trained there,” Gerasimov said, and continued “They are practically Islamic State. But after they are worked with, they change their spots and take on another name. Their task is to destabilize the situation."

Thus the allegation appears to be that as ISIS loses territory and is rooted out of various pockets in the east, its fighters then conveniently declare their allegiance to US-backed FSA/New Syrian Army factions, after which they enter training programs hosted by US advisers. 

Gerasimov further indicated that some 400 militants recently left a town in the southern al-Hasakah Province for al-Tanf, launching an offensive on the Syrian forces from the eastern bank of Euphrates, after the main ISIS forces were routed there. Russia has over the past months accused the US coalition of essentially relocating ISIS fighters in order to allow their redeploying to locations where they could attack and pressure Syrian and Russian aligned forces.

In one major instance related to the coalition and SDF victory over ISIS in Raqqa, a bombshell investigative report produced by no less than BBC News confirmed that Russia has certainly had reason to be suspicious of the Pentagon"s motives and strategy inside Syria. According the November BBC report:

The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of Islamic State fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city. A convoy included some of IS"s most notorious members and - despite reassurances - dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey.

And concerning the latest accusations of US-ISIS complicity in al-Tanf, Gen. Gerasimov further said the pattern continues: "The most important is that we have been seeing the militants advancing from there for several months. When the control [of the Syrian forces] loosened, as many as 350 militants left the area." He further said of the Russian-Syrian fight against ISIS in the area, "We took timely measures…they have suffered a defeat, these forces were destroyed. There were captives from these camps. It is clear that training is underway at those camps."

And he continued, "Instead of the New Syrian Army, mobile ISIS groups, like a jack in the box, carry out sabotage and terrorist attacks against Syrian troops and civilians from there." And though the pretext for the Tanf base’s creation was "the need to conduct operations against ISIS" - the rapid recent demise of ISIS proves that the Americans have ulterior motives, according to the Russian general.

Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has heightened his rhetoric of late regarding uninvited foreign forces operating on Syrian soil. He said last week in a televised interview which was subsequently posted to multiple Syrian official social media channels: "Those who work with foreigners against their army are traitors." Assad has also on multiple occasions promised to return all of natural Syria to the control of the Syrian government and army.

Paul Craig Roberts" Christmas Column 2017: The Greatest Gift Of All

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Dear Donors, thank you for your support in 2017. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

 

My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

 

Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

 

The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the regimes in Washington are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government’s claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty.

 

In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

 

Paul Craig Roberts

The Greatest Gift For All

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “Identity Politics,” “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.

Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have been murdered and millions displaced in order to extend Washington’s hegemony.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

As we enter into 2018, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, is in decline. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

Saudi General Reportedly Tortured To Death After Refusing To Fork Over His Fortune

Rumors that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has hired mercenaries to torture recalcitrant royals and officials sleeping in the ballroom of the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh have been circulating since shortly after last month’s “corruption crackdown” naked cash grab.

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman

Now, Middle East Eye reports that one of MbS’s guests has reportedly died under torture rather than fork over his money and assets to his domineering relative. He was reportedly beaten and tortured so bad his family members had difficulty recognizing his body.

Major general Ali Alqahtani, who was detained in early November as part of an alleged anti-corruption drive, had been working in the royal guard forces.

 

He was the manager of the private office of Prince Turki Bin Abdullah, the son of former king Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, according to the newspaper.

 

Alqahtani died on 12 December after being tortured with electric shocks, and his family struggled to recognise him after receiving his body, according to sources, the newspaper reported.

We know this might come as a shock to some – Tom Friedman and the New York Times said MbS was such a nice guy! But that doesn’t change the fact that he is effectively extorting members of his own family to help plug a gaping hole in the Saudi government’s budget, willfully employing violence when necessary in a fashion that would make Tony Soprano proud. Case in point: Yesterday, we noted that the Saudi government had reportedly made Prince Alwaleed bin Talal – one of the world’s richest men - an offer he cannot refuse: Either fork over $6 billion to the Treasury, or spend the rest of his life being strung upside down and tortured by foreign mercenaries.

Back when oil was at $100 and above, the Saudi economy was firing on all cylinders, and nobody even dreamed that the crown jewel of Saudi Arabia - Aramaco - would be on the IPO block. But official data released earlier this week showed the Saudi economy contracted this year for the first time in eight years. It’s estimated to have shrunk by 4% as thousands of state-subsidized jobs have disappeared.

But despite the contraction, the Saudis have announced a radically expansionary budget for 2018. The government is forecasting spending at 978 billion riyals ($260.8 billion), up 10% on 2017 estimates, as the royal family’s proxy war against Iran in Yemen enters its third year.

Even though oil prices are seemingly stuck at $50 a barrel, the Saudi government knows that its survival depends in part on placating the country’s citizens, who’ve grown accustomed to the trappings of a lavish welfare state.

This goes back to one of the reasons MbS has been able to get away with his crackdown: millions of regular Saudis have lauded MbS’s treatment of his fellow royals, seeing it as their long-overdue comeuppance.

Given that political opposition to the Crown Prince – who is expected to soon succeed his ailing father as king.

America Preparing "Bloody Nose" Military Attack On North Korea: Telegraph

While North Korea managed to once again drop off the list of immediate geopolitical concerns having kept relative quiet in recent weeks, without any notable provocations or ICBM launches, this may be changing soon, because according to the Telegraph, America is drawing up plans for a “bloody nose” military attack on North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program. The UK newspaper"s sources claim that the White House has “dramatically” stepped up preparation for a military solution in recent months amid fears diplomacy is not working. As a result, one option currently under consideration is destroying a launch site before it is used by the regime for a new missile test. Stockpiles of weapons could also be targeted.

The explanation for what would be an act of war, is amusing: "The hope is that military force would show Kim Jong-un that America is “serious” about stopping further nuclear development and trigger negotiations." Well, yes: launching an offensive war does tend to confirm that one is indeed serious. The question is what will China, Russia and the rest of the all too serious world do in response.

“The Pentagon is trying to find options that would allow them to punch the North Koreans in the nose, get their attention and show that we’re serious", said one former US security official briefed on policy.

Some further details:

Donald Trump’s decision to bomb a Syrian government airfield earlier this year to defend America’s “red line” on chemical weapons use is seen as a blueprint.  Details have emerged after this newspaper talked to around a dozen current and former officials in America and Britain about policy towards North Korea.

 

The conversations show that the Trump administration is more willing to consider military options to end the conflict than widely assumed. 

And while it will hardly come as a major surprise, the Telegraph notes that it can be revealed that senior British diplomats fear America has already begun a “step by step” military build-up in the region that could escalate.

Alastair Morgan, the UK ambassador to North Korea, visited Washington DC for behind-closed-doors talks about forcing the regime to the negotiating table last month.  The UK is also urging Southeast Asian and African countries to expel some North Korean diplomats amid fears they are secretly financing the regime.

Meanwhile, in a continuation of a previous US demand, the Trump administration wants North Korean ships to be stopped and searched amid fears they are being used to get round UN sanctions.

The urgency behind the plan, and the pressure to act comes from the drop in estimated time it will take for North Korea to develop a missile that could hit America with nuclear weapons.

Just a few years ago it was believed the regime was a decade away from that point, but now the figure has dropped to as little as 18 months - though estimates vary.  Senior figures in the Trump administration have made clear in public that it would be unacceptable for North Korea to reach that position.  While Mr Trump has always said a “military option” is on the table, the administration"s focus has been on building economic and diplomatic pressure. 

 

But Mr Kim’s refusal to negotiate has left senior White House figures disillusioned with diplomacy and increasingly considering military avenues.  One British source who recently attended a briefing with H.R. McMaster, Mr Trump’s national security adviser, and other officials left feeling alarmed. 

 

“The Americans said deterrence doesn’t work against North Korea and negotiation doesn’t work,” the source said. 

 

“Those who heard them left with the impression that military action is very much an option they were considering seriously.”

Kori Schake, a former director of defense strategy at the White House’s National Security Council who served under George W Bush, said military action is a real possibility. "The White House very strongly believes that either North Korea will agree to give up its nuclear weapons or we will launch a preventative attack to destroy them,” she said.  "I would put the odds of them actually carrying that out at three in 10. Other policy experts say it is four in ten."

Still, war is not a guaranteed outcome. On one hand, British officials are continuing to urge their US counterparts to focus on diplomatic solutions and are looking to increase pressure on North Korea.

Separately, while the Trump administration is considering military options, the Telegraph concedes that "it is not a foregone conclusion that the US president will choose to go down that path.  There are major uncertainties about how Mr Kim would react if provoked and the regime already has missiles that could strike nearby countries including Japan and South Korea. "

Ultimately, and as we have said since early in 2017, the decision to attack North Korea will ultimately come down to whether the generals in Trump"s circle of confidence can and will overpower the diplomats:

Experts also say there is a split in the US administration with Mr Trump and Mr McMaster more willing to consider military action than Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, and Jim Mattis, the defence secretary. 

The good news is that - for now at least - Trump no longer needs a major foreign diversion, especially after his biggest political victory of the year, with the passage of the GOP Tax Cut, which tangentially, may have also bought Kim Jong-Un a few additional quarters reprieve.

Dude Where"s My Troops? Pentagon Loses Track Of 44,000 Soldiers

"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force," said Thomas Jefferson in an 1807 letter to Chandler Price. And what would the nation"s third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence say of today"s American "global force" deployed across the earth?

America"s "global military presence" is not hyperbole, but a literal fact, as a new Department of Defense study has found that US military personnel are stationed in literally every nation on the earth. The report bluntly confirms that, "The United States has military personnel in nearly every country in the world, ranging from two liaison officers in Fiji to tens of thousands from all of the service branches in Japan and Germany, according to the report."

But perhaps more important and equally absurd (when one considers the original beginnings of the humble "republic" envisioned by founders like Madison and Jefferson) is the fact that America"s world-wide military presence is such that the Pentagon itself can"t track how many US service members are deployed where. A new bombshell article in Stars and Stripes military newspaper is non-ironically headlined, "Report: 44,000 ‘unknown’ military personnel stationed around the world".

The Stripes article opens with a line that would seem straight out of the Onion, yet matter-of-factly states, "The U.S. military has more than 44,000 troops across the globe that the Pentagon claims it cannot track, according to a recent report."

The Pentagon"s system for accounting troop deployment numbers, maintained by the Defense Manpower Data Center under the Office of the Secretary of Defense, lists up to 44,000 troops in a country location category labeled "Unknown". 

The report has come to light after a series of recent Pentagon press briefings on military actions in the Middle East and Africa which left journalists scratching their heads. For example the latest DoD admission that there are "about 2,000 troops in Syria" - four times the previously acknowledged figure - came after a late October Pentagon presser wherein an Army spokesman told reporters that 4,000 troops were deployed to Syria, after which he awkwardly walked back the statement less than 30 seconds later, saying "I"m sorry I mispoke there - there are approximately 500 troops in Syria".

And when news broke of the October 4 ambush and deaths of four elite Green Beret soldiers in Niger, the immediate reaction voiced among congressional leaders and echoed generally in the media was: "we have troops in Niger?" - after which it came to light that the US has at least 6,000 military personnel spread across the African continent, though few knew of AFRICOM"s (US Africa Command) dangerously burgeoning number of undisclosed daily missions. 

Where are they? Image source: US Marine Corps

“We are not at a point where we can give numbers other than those officially stated,” said Army Col. Rob Manning, quoted in Stripes. Though as Stripes acknowledges it appears that this is due more to the Pentagon simply not knowing where it has stationed thousands of troops rather than the officially stated reasons of "secrecy" and force protection from enemies. The Army spokesman further asserted, “Our commitment is to be as transparent as we can, within the constraints of operation security,” but it"s also that case that, "The Pentagon acknowledged in a statement that it has no good way to track how many service members are stationed overseas, where they are and when they were there," according to Stripes. 

A Pentagon statement also ambiguously acknowledged that its troop tracking methods will inevitably miscalculate the locations of its roughly 1.3 million total personnel across all branches, based on the worrisome reasoning that "there is no easy way to track all deployments":

“There is no one personnel system in the [Defense Department] that tracks the daily location of all DoD personnel. There is no easy way to track all deployments, training exercises, TDY (being attached to another unit for training or specific missions, typically for less than six months) or temporary assignments,” according to the statement. “If you take the total numbers assigned in the United States and assigned overseas, and add the ‘Unknown,’ you get the total force numbers for each service.”

The report also comes after President Trump unveiled a new Afghan strategy last summer, saying the US would not pull out of the now 16-year long war but would instead inject more troops into the country for increased anti-terror operations.  According to recent statements from the Pentagon, the total number of US soldiers in Afghanistan has risen to about 14,000, though accounting procures have been especially unclear concerning the nation"s longest running war.

When Secretary of Defense James Mattis was asked during a news conference last summer about troops levels in Afghanistan he said, “There’s a very strange accounting procedure I inherited... What I’m probably going to end up doing is out putting everyone into one thing and saying, ‘Here’s how many are really there now."

And none of this addresses the even greater numbers of civilian contractors in global hot spots where America is present. According to Stripes, "The United States maintains 23,659 contractors in Afghanistan and 4,609 in Iraq, according to a fourth-quarter 2017 report from the Defense Department."

Given that we learned this week of 44,000 troops stationed in locations the Pentagon itself deems "unknown", perhaps we are long overdue for a massive drawback of overseas forces and bloated military budgets? Of course if the Pentagon can"t find them in the first place, it might be hard to bring them home.

Blackmailing German Bomber Demands 10 Million Euros In Bitcoin From DHL

As we reported earlier, Bitcoin brushed off the weekend sell-off and blasted above the $14,000 level as the Asian trading session got underway. There was no news to catalyse the move higher, although excitement and debate over the upcoming launch of Bitcoin futures on 10 December continues. One Bitcoin-related story did peak our interest, however.

It might be a sign that Bitcoin is becoming mainstream when blackmailers are prepared to accept the cryptocurrency as payment.

German tabloid, Bild, is reporting that this has befallen logistics company, Deutsche Post DHL. However, the recipients of two deliveries containing explosive devices had a lucky escape, as Bloomberg explains.

A criminal blackmailing Deutsche Post’s DHL parcel service demands EU10m in the digital currency Bitcoin, German newspaper Bild reports, not saying where it got the information. Blackmailer placed two bombs in parcels delivered by DHL; bombs didn’t detonate because of technical problems

Parcels included QR codes with links to extortion letter to DHL

Threatened to send further bombs

German Parcel Bomb Is Part of Extortion Plan Against DHL: Police

Handelsblatt provided more details of one of the bombs found in the eastern German city of Potsdam.

Authorities confirmed Sunday the apparent bomb found near the Potsdam Christmas market on Friday was unrelated to terrorism but an attempt to blackmail delivery company DHL. The package resulted in a large-scale evacuation of the market in Potsdam, near Berlin.

“The good news is that we can say, with all likelihood, the package was not aimed at the Christmas market,” Karl-Heinz Schröter, Brandenburg’s state interior minister, told reporters. “The bad news is that it was a blackmail attempt targeting DHL.”

The Potsdam package, containing nails, an unidentified powder substance and a metal cylinder, was sent to a nearby pharmacy as a special delivery. The store’s owner informed authorities after noticing unusual wires and hearing a hissing noise while opening the package. Police initially believed the package to be a fake bomb but, after forensic teams examined it, determined it was “capable of activation.”

The other bomb was found in a similar package in another eastern city, Frankfurt/Oder,last month. German officials warned that the blackmailers would “likely” send more explosive devices in the run-up to Christmas.

Of course, Bitcoin naysayers are likely to pounce on stories like this to dismiss Bitcoin as merely a mechanism for facilitating criminal activity. Indeed, Larry Finck of Blackrock dismissed it as a index to gauge worldwide money laundering, our old friend Neil Dwane, of Allianz Global Investors, described it as a “scam for money laundering around the world” and Jamie Dimon famously described it as a “fraud”.

In the meantime, the merits of Bitcoin as a means of payment and as investment continues. Yesterday, the CEO of ICE, which owns the NYSE, lamented that his organisation was “beaten to the punch” in trading Bitcoin futures by the CME and CBOE. As we noted, Jeff Sprecher told a Goldman investor conference on Tuesday that that “we may be stupid for not being first on that" adding that “I don’t have the answers, I wish I knew” how the investments will evolve, he said. “I don’t know what to make of cryptocurrencies.”

"The Threat Is Real" - Millions In Tokyo Join Nuclear Strike Evacuation Drills

Earlier this week, Hawaii reportedly tested its system of nuclear sirens for the first time since the 1960s as the state’s governor warned that he was taking North Korea’s threats of nuclear annihilation extremely seriously. Today, the Telegraph is reporting that the paranoia has spread to Japan, where millions of Tokyo residents will participate in evacuation drills meant to simulate their response to North Korean nuclear strike.

And Tokyo isn’t the first city to conduct these types of large scale drills: Towns facing the Korean Peninsula have conducted similar drills in recent months.

The national and city governments are to carry out a series of exercises between January and March to prepare for a potential attack on Tokyo, the Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported, the first time that a major Japanese city will have carried out responses to a simulated attack.

 

Towns facing the Korean Peninsula have in recent months conducted similar drills, with residents instructed to seek shelter in response to sirens warning of an imminent missile strike.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called on local governments throughout the country to identify underground facilities or buildings that are sufficiently sturdy to withstand a missile attack and to designate those facilities as shelters.

Many ordinary Japanese believe the evacuation drills are an important precaution. One Tokyo resident said he participates because he believes that, if North Korea chose to attack, Tokyo would be the logical target.

"I believe the threat is very real and that war could break out at any time", said Ken Kato, a human rights campaigner who lives in Tokyo. Nearly 9.3 million people live in the city, with millions more travelling into the metropolis every day for work.

 

"I also believe that the average Japanese person does not want to think about the worst-case scenario because it is simply too unpleasant, but we cannot keep our heads in the sand any longer", he told The Telegraph.

 

"Evacuation drills are a sensible precaution that would help to minimize casualties, in much the same way as we practice what to do in the event of a major earthquake", he said.

 

"And if war did break out, then I think it is unfortunately inevitable that North Korea would target Tokyo", he added. "The US has a major military base at Yokota, to the west of the city, and its main naval base in the region is at Yokosuka, to the southwest. 

 

"It is hard to believe they would not want to strike those military concentrations," he said, adding that it is unlikely that the North Korean regime would be particularly concerned about casualties among civilians living nearby.

Last week, North Korea launched its ne Hwasong-15 ICBM, the country’s first missile test in more than two months. The missile’s peak height and flight time have led experts to suspect that it could probably strike anywhere on the Continental US – though perhaps not with the highest degree of accuracy.

Like the US, Japan is also at risk of an airburst – the detonation of a nuclear weapon far above the earth’s surface that could knock out the country’s power grid, indirectly killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Local Chinese Newspaper On North Korean Border Shares Some Advice On Surviving A Nuclear Attack

Just yesterday the Russian foreign ministry issued a stark warning to the international community that"the situation on the Korean Peninsula is on the brink of war," adding that "Kim seeks to raise the stakes before any talks." 

Of course, these warnings followed the announcement earlier this week that the US and South Korea launched their largest aerial drills yet, less than a week after North Korea tested its new Hwasong-15 missile which military observers said has the capacity to strike Washington DC, or nearly any other location in the continental US.

As we reported Sunday, the annual US-South Korean drills, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday. Six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters will be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part. Not surprisingly, the North has condemned the exercises as yet another provocation.

And while continuous warnings such as these go mostly unnoticed by Americans, at least one local newspaper in the Jilin province of China on North Korea"s northeastern border figures its better to be safe than sorry and issued a helpful guide on what residents should do in the event of a nuclear attack.  Per Bloomberg:

An official Chinese newspaper near North Korea has published a page of articles on coping with nuclear attacks, in a sign of growing anxiety over Kim Jong Un’s weapons program.

 

The Jilin Daily -- the government newspaper of Jilin province on North Korea’s northeastern border -- published articles on page 5 explaining how nuclear weapons work and the damage they cause. The paper used cartoons to offer advice on what residents can do about radiation exposure and provided instructions on how to respond during an attack.

 

One article listed essential items for emergency kits, including fire extinguishers and breathing masks. Another warned that air raids could mean nuclear, chemical and biological attacks, and used the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima as an example.

 

The cartoon images illustrated how residents should clean their bodies, boots and coats after being exposed to radiation. They suggested taking iodine tablets, if there is radiation nearby.

Meanwhile, the paper even offered some helpful cartoons for residents looking to prep for the nuclear apocalypse.  And while our Mandarin is not great, the cartoons seem to imply that so long as you cover your face with a cloth and down some iodine tablets...you"ll be just fine.

And, for those who like to be extra safe, the Jilin Daily also provides these helpful tips which presumably suggest you should clean your ears, take a shower and vomit as necessary.

Then again, we hear that taking "giant panic breaths" of pure oxygen also works well for scenarios such as these...

Hollywood Movie Director"s "Outlandish" London Home For Rent - Take The Tour

If you haven’t heard of Roland Emmerich, you will almost certainly have heard of some of his movies. Emmerich is the 62-year old German who directed Universal Soldier (1992), Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), White House Down (2013) and Independence Day: Resurgence (2016). He is the 11-th highest grossing director in history. Besides directing, Emmerich also produced and wrote most of his movies. Emmerich owns homes in Los Angeles, New York, London and Stuttgart. As Wikipedia notes.

He likes to decorate his homes in a self-described "outlandish" manner, adorning them with rare Hollywood memorabilia, murals and portraits of dictators and Communist figures, and World War II militaria.

Emmerich’s London home is currently available for rent – anything from a few days to six months. As The Guardian newspaper notes,

the house is filled with communist iconography, taxidermy and potentially outrageous art. The property’s interior designer John Teall says:

 

“Nothing is spared, from government and gender to race and religion – but there’s no manifesto. The idea was to provoke thought, amuse and maybe shock a little.”

If you’d like to take the tour, let’s go. Here is the outside on Brompton Square In London’s Chelsea.

Walk past the stuffed zebra towards the living room…lots of natural light.

Murals of Chairman Mao and Lenin add to the relaxed atmosphere.

Before we go upstairs, check out the waxwork of Pope John Paul II reading his own obituaries.

Fancy a shower, share the cubicle with another infamous dictator.

Let’s get cerebral…the office is covered with equations inspired by the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. The desk is constructed from the wing of a second World War plane.

Watch a movie in the low-key cinema room.

When you’re ready to retire to bed, close your eyes under the bed cover made from 70 pairs of army underwear.

If you’re a big fan of the British royal family, you’ll love this guest bedroom.

If we had to be a guest of Robert Emmerich, or one of his prospective tenants. we’d choose this one.

If you’re tempted, the weekly rent is £7,525 ($10,000). Please contact the agents, Kinleigh Folkard & Howard.
 
 

Democratic Congressman Conyers "Retires, Not Resigns" As Sexual Misconduct Allegations Build

Careful to explain to those that care, Michigan Democrat Congressman John Conyers says he will "retire" from Congress today, and is "not resigning," following a growing list of sexual misconduct allegations. Conyers is endorsing his son, John Conyers III, to replace him in Congress.

“He is not resigning. He is going to retire,” Ian Conyers told the newspaper. “His doctor advised him that the rigor of another campaign would be too much for him just in terms of his health.”

Conyers, 88, is the longest serving House member and was one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have both said Conyers should step aside in light of the sexual misconduct allegations leveled against him. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the assistant Democratic leader who is also a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) with Conyers, has also said the Michigan lawmaker should resign.

As a reminder, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi had encouraged the House Ethics Cmte to "proceed expeditiously" as it investigates accusations against Conyers.

The review began after reports Conyers reached a $27k settlement with a former aide who said she was fired for rejecting his sexual advances; since then, Conyers has been accused of harassment by other women.

Conyers has acknowledged the settlement but denied sexual harassment claims.

Conyers concluded:

“My legacy will continue through my children."

We are not so sure about that Mr. Conyers, we suspect your families legacy will be tarnished with your alleged actions.

As The Hill reports,Ian Conyers, who also serves as a Michigan state senator, also told the Times that he plans to run for John Conyers"s seat in Michigan"s 13th Congressional District.

“I’m absolutely going to file for his seat. The work of our congressional district, where I come out of, has to continue,” Ian Conyers said.

 

“We have got to have someone who has depth and experience but also historical understanding of what it takes to fight this type of evil in Washington.”

In the interview, the state senator refused to defend the alleged actions of his great uncle.

“I stand with my uncle in terms of his belief of no specific wrongdoing,” Ian Conyers told the newspaper. “However, those things need to have their day in court.”

China"s Central Bank Warns "Bitcoin Will Die" - Here"s How

On the heels of a weekend full of threats and promises from governments, bankers, and the mainstream media, Bitcoin was lambasted once again overnight, this time by The People"s Bank of China.

For a brief 6 months or so, China was the dominant region for Bitcoin in the world, but then  - as capital flows accelerated - the government and central bank began to "crackdown" on crypto, first by banning ICOs and then shutting down local exchanges. Volume disappeared...

Looking back at the crackdowns, QZ reports that Pan Gongsheng, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, believes Beijing made the right decisions.

"If we had not shut down bitcoin exchanges and cracked down on ICOs several months ago, if China still accounted for more than 80% of the world’s bitcoin trading and ICO fundraising, everyone, what would happen today? Thinking of this question makes me scared."

QZ further notes that Pan went on to share a recent column by economist Éric Pichet in the French newspaper La Tribune (link in French). In it, Pichet, a professor at the Kedge Business School in France, makes a familiar argument that bitcoin is a bubble waiting to burst, just like the tulip mania in the 1600s and the Internet bubble of 2000.

He predicts that bitcoin will die of a grand theft, a hack into the blockchain technology behind the cryptocurrency (which actually is unlikely), or a collective ban by global governments.

Pan cited lines from Pichet to wrap up his talk:

As Keynes has taught us, “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

 

There is only one thing left to do: Sit by the river bank and see bitcoin’s body pass by one day.

But for now, while his comments could have taken the shine of overnight trading, Bitcoin is bid again this morning...