Free Republic

Female members of Saudi Arabia's advisory Shura Council attend a session (AFP) Saudi Arabia’s consultative assembly has passed a law requiring female television to wear “modest dress”, according to local media reports. Arab News, which is part of a group of companies owned by King Salman's son Prince Turki, said the law passed in the Shura Council, an advisory body, will make it mandatory for women not to “show off their beauty” while on air. The law will come into force once approved by the country's cabinet and will apply to “women media workers in the Kingdom” including on the...

Saudi Arabia is prepared to let Israeli fighter jets use its airspace if it proves necessary to attack Iran’s nuclear program, an Israeli TV station reported Tuesday, highlighting growing ties in the shadow of Tehran’s nuclear drive. Riyadh’s only condition is that Israel make some kind of progress in peace talks with the Palestinians, Channel 2 reported Tuesday, citing an unnamed senior European source. “The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” the European official in Brussels said. Jerusalem and Riyadh do not have diplomatic ties, but unconfirmed reports have swirled for years of...

The State Department has appointed its first special envoy to promote LGBT rights globally. Randy Berry, a senior U.S. Foreign Service officer will oversee the government’s efforts to end violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world. Secretary of State John Kerry said that too often, in too many countries, LGBT people are threatened, jailed and prosecuted. “That’s why we’re working to overturn laws that criminalize consensual same-sex conduct in countries around the world,” he said in a statement. “It’s why we’re building our capacity to respond rapidly to violence against LGBT persons, and it’s...

In private talks with European sources, the Saudis have expressed their willingness to cooperate with Israel on Iran, including use of Saudi air space by the IDF for a possible air strike, according to a report by Channel 2. Cooperation with Saudi Arabia would not come free, however. According to the report, the Saudi officials said they would need to see progress between Israelis and Palestinians before having enough legitimacy to allow Israel to use their air space. Arab governments, not only Israel, have been expressing concern over the development of a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, the...

RIYADH (Reuters) - An Islamic court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to death for renouncing his Muslim faith, the English-language daily Saudi Gazette reported on Tuesday. The man, in his 20s, posted an online video ripping up a copy of Islam's holy book, the Koran, and hitting it with a shoe, the newspaper reported.

LONDON -- Although inflation-adjusted defense spending is falling in the U.S. and Europe, global defense outlays rose in 2014, driven by large increases in three countries: China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. China continues to far outspend its Asian neighbors, with its share of the region's defense spending rising from 28% in 2010 to 38% in 2014, according to the annual Military Balance report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank. http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20150219-India-s-got-the-bright-stuff/Politics-Economy/What-economic-slowdown-China-s-military-still-on-a-spending-spree

STAGE one of Saudi Arabia’s plan—or perhaps hope—to restructure the oil market is taking longer than expected. By refusing to rein in production while prices fell, the Saudis permitted a big surplus to grow and served notice on higher-cost rivals (Russia, Venezuela, American shale-oil producers) that they would not prop up other people’s profit margins at the expense of their own market share. That signal has been weakened by the growing amount of oil in storage, which is absorbing most of the glut. World oil stocks rose about 265m barrels last year and Société Générale, a French bank, reckons they...

Conventional wisdom indicates slowing global economy and increased production are the root causes behind the precipitous drop in oil prices since mid-2014. ~~ snip ~~ Further signs of the impact of deflation, despite trillions of stimulus funds, include: 1.Negative interest rates on short-term securities and debt instruments. 2.The reduction of risk premiums in short and long-term debt financing for governments. 3.Increasing costs of healthcare for virtually every American, which adversely affects disposable income. 4.Declining real wages in the United States due to tax increases at the state and local levels. 5.Declines in labor force participation rates. 6.Lack of wage growth...

Below, we demonstrate that the U.S. keeps “losing” war after war. There are 3 potential reasons this might be happening: •Is this chaos an intentional way to implement regime change and grab resources? •Or is this a sign of the decline of the American empire … and we just can’t win a war anymore? •Or do those in charge just not really give a damn about winning … and are they just focusing on one short-term goal after another?

Turkey, U.S. sign deal to train, equip Islamists against Syria By Julio Severo The United States and Turkey signed, according to Reuters, an agreement on Thursday to train and equip Islamists to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey will provide an equal number of trainers to work alongside their American military counterparts, said an official at the U.S. military’s Central Command. Reuters said that the agreement is “to train and equip Syrian moderates to fight the Islamic State.” Yet, the same Reuters report said, “Turkey hopes the training will also bolster the weakened and divided Syrian opposition in their...

Saudi Arabia is a chief funder and supporter of external jihads: better to send its own zealots out of its borders to fight distant infidels than have them stick around In a move reminiscent of “ancient history,” Saudi Arabia is building a 600-mile-long “Great Wall”—a combined fence and ditch—to separate itself from the Islamic State to the north in Iraq: Plans for the 600-mile wall and ditch Saudi Arabia will build with Iraq in an effort to insulate itself from the chaos engulfing its neighbors. Much of the area on the Iraqi side is now controlled by Isil [the Islamic...

Companies across all sectors of the oil, gas and chemicals industry will need to better plan and manage projects to ensure their survival during the recent downturn in oil prices, according to a recent study by global business advisory firms AlixPartners. Oil and gas companies not only need to improve their ability to plan and manage projects, but create a “cost culture” inside of their companies. Only 30 percent of respondents in a study of 250 high-level industry executives across the world said their companies had explicit return-on-capital targets for projects before the oil price collapse. Perhaps most surprising is...

China's Real Estate Market Crashing... Real Estate is the single biggest domestic lending segment in China. Combined with deflation in Iron Ore, Steel, Copper, and other industrial metals China's collateral quality is looking very very shaky compared to loan volume... SNIP While the world's attention is glued to events in Greece, the real action continues to evolve quietly thousands of kilometers east, in China, where the near record surge in new loans remains unable to offset the dramatic slowdown in shadow banking issuance. And while China's bubble-chasing, animal spirits have recently reoriented themselves from real estate to the stock market,...

The sun revolves around the Earth, a Saudi cleric insisted to a student panel Sunday—prompting a social media storm. Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari told a student that the Earth is “stationary and does not move,” according to Al-Arabiya, justifying the statement with religious texts and statements. But then he tried to debunk the common knowledge about the Earth’s rotation using “logic,” in a visual demonstration that prompted the speech to go viral. “First of all, where are we now?” he asked. “We go to Sharjah airport to travel to China by plane, clear?!” Khaibari argued, confusingly, that the Earth cannot rotate...

At about $50 a barrel, crude oil prices are down by more than half from their June 2014 peak of $107. They may fall more, perhaps even as low as $10 to $20. Here’s why.

SIS and Saudi Arabia: Living and dying by the sword. In a move reminiscent of “ancient history,” Saudi Arabia is building a 600-mile-long “Great Wall” – a combined fence and ditch – to separate itself from the Islamic State to the north in Iraq: Plans for the 600-mile wall and ditch Saudi Arabia will build with Iraq in an effort to insulate itself from the chaos engulfing its neighbors.Much of the area on the Iraqi side is now controlled by Isil [the Islamic State], which regards the ultimate capture of Saudi Arabia, home to the “Two Holy Mosques” of Mecca...

Egyptian warplanes struck hard at ISIS militants in neighboring Libya, killing as many as 64 militants and destroying the Islamist terror group's training camps and weapons caches a day after a sickening video surfaced showing black-clad jihadists beheading 21 Coptic Christians. The strikes came in two waves after Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi went on national television in the world's most populous Arab nation and vowed revenge was coming. The address was followed by the airing of military video showing the planes taking off for the mission and an Armed Forces General Command statement saying the strikes were "to avenge...

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/economics/2007/12/17/Why-Oil-Prices-Will-Drop

AMMAN, Jordan — The deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan was sentenced on Sunday to 18 months in prison for criticizing the United Arab Emirates in a Facebook post. The state security court, a special body that has jurisdiction over Jordan’s internal and external threats, found the Brotherhood leader, Zaki Bani Rushaid, guilty of “acts harmful to the country’s relations with a friendly nation.” On his personal Facebook page, Mr. Bani Rushaid wrote on Nov. 17 that the Emirates, an important ally of Jordan and one of several countries in the region, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that...

As the Islamic State seeks to export its brand of barbaric terror to would-be affiliates, the U.S. faces a growing challenge to find the sources of ISIS funding and blunt its flow to allied militants. The terror army's most recent atrocity was the mass beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya. It remains unclear how closely tied those militants are to ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but the Islamic State's underground economy continues to thrive. Even as the U.S.-led coalition strikes at what was long the heart of ISIS' revenue stream -- oil fields and refineries -- officials say the...

Egypt says it has bombed Islamic State targets in Libya, hours after the group published video showing the apparent beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians. State TV said the dawn strikes had targeted camps, training sites and weapons storage areas. Earlier, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egypt had the "right to respond" against IS. A video emerged on Sunday showing a group wearing orange overalls being forced to the ground and decapitated. IS militants claim to have carried out several attacks in Libya, which is in effect without a government. "Egypt reserves the right to respond at the proper time and...

Saudi Arabia on Sunday condemned the killing in North Carolina of three American Muslim college students as a "heinous terrorist" act, and called for an end to incitement against Muslims. The statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency also condemned as a "terrorist" act the recent attacks that killed two people in Denmark, one at a panel discussion that included an artist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad and the other outside a synagogue.

Yale anti-fossil fuel campaigners have indefinitely postponed a protest that was set for this weekend due to “unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues.”

Three of the nine US oil refineries targeted by the largest oil worker refinery strike since 1980 have reported interruptions and unplanned repairs since the United Steelworkers Union (USW) workers went on strike earlier this month. Shell's 327,000 bpd refinery in Deer Park, Texas, is now operating normally after experiencing an upset at a fluid catalytic cracker on February 8. "Shell Deer Park continues to safely operate at planned production rates. While not formally at the negotiating table, the lines of communication remain open. Shell remains hopeful that both parties will reach a mutually satisfactory agreement," Shell said in a...

Moody's Say's Cheaper Oil WILL NOT Boost Global Growth... What have I been saying all along... Someone should tell the morons at CNBC... Lower oil prices will fail to give a "significant boost" to global growth in the next two years, Moody's has said. The ratings agency said any boost from cheaper oil would be offset by the eurozone's economic woes as well as slowdowns in China, Japan and Russia. As a result, Moody's said it would not be revising its growth forecasts for the G20 countries. "For the G20 economies, we expect GDP growth of just under 3% each...

It’s always a pleasure returning to the beautiful Lone Star State. This week I’m in Houston speaking with the industrious men and women of America’s oil patch at the North American Prospect Expo. These are the unsung heroes of our nation’s energy renaissance. In the brutal economic environment of the last six years, one sector had good news to report, and it came straight out of America’s oil patch. From 2007 to 2012, employment in the energy industry rose a dramatic 31.6 percent while employment nationwide fell 2.7 percent. U.S. oil production increased from 6.5 million barrels per day in...

Governor Palin wrote a great article for the Houston Tribune today loaded with a lot of good facts on energy.  She also notes an interesting flip flop from our president on the matter. It’s always a pleasure returning to the beautiful Lone Star State. This week I’m in Houston speaking with the industrious men and women of America’s oil patch at the North American Prospect Expo. These are the unsung heroes of our nation’s energy renaissance.In the brutal economic environment of the last six years, one sector had good news to report, and it came straight out of America’s oil patch. From...

A week ago we explained that yet another conspiracy theory, one involving virtually every geopolitical hotzone, from Saudi Arabia, to Russia, the United States, Qatar, Syria, ISIS, and Ukraine, has become fact when our speculation from last September, namely that the plunge in oil was an choreographed move between the US and the Saudis (even if Kerry realized - we hope - that it meant a recession for the US energy producing states and a collapse in the only vibrant US industry of the past decade: shale), one seeking to dislodge Russian control over the Syrian government and to facilitate...

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa – An early Saturday morning political event on an unusually warm February day might not be the ideal conditions to draw a good crowd. However, 140 Marshall County Republicans packed into the Legends American Grill in Marshalltown to hear their new representative in Congress, Rod Blum, and likely presidential candidate Rand Paul. Most of Rod Blum’s brief remarks focused on his tangle with President Obama’s budget director, Shaun Donovan, last week on Capitol Hill. Iowa’s new First District representative also relayed his controversial first vote in Congress, supporting Daniel Webster over John Boehner for House speaker. Many in...

(Reuters) - Oil rose for a third straight session on Monday as OPEC forecast greater demand for crude this year than previously thought and projected less supply from countries outside the group. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries forecast demand for its oil will average 29.21 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2015, up 430,000 bpd from its previous forecast, while slashing its outlook for crude supply growth in non-OPEC countries. Benchmark Brent oil futures LCOc1 were up 35 cents, or half a percent, at $58.15 a barrel by 11:40 a.m. EST, after revisiting Friday's one-week peak of $59.06.

Lynch said the classified 28 pages, which are drawn from intelligence collection and FBI investigations, "are consistent" with Moussaoui's testimony. The New York lawsuit argues that Saudi rulers were playing a double game in the years before the attacks, expelling Osama bin Laden and declaring opposition to al-Qaida, while secretly funding it to assuage the kingdom's religious conservatives. Moussaoui, in testimony from a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, told plaintiff lawyers it was "an absolute lie" that Saudi Arabia severed its ties with bin Laden and al-Qaida in 1994. "This is a complete misleading ... assumption of people who are...

Fox News Correspondent James Rosen reported on Wednesday night that a “major investor in the parent company” of Fox News has been implicated in financing the terrorist group al-Qaeda. Rosen made the embarrassing disclosure in a story on the channel’s “Special Report” show hosted by Bret Baier. The alleged al-Qaeda financier, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, is a very close friend of Rupert Murdoch and his family, who control major media companies like News Corp and 21st Century Fox. The latter is now the parent company of the Fox News Channel. Fox News is to be congratulated for reporting...

Susan Rice pushed back on critics of President Obama's foreign policy Friday as she unveiled the White House’s new national security strategy. Rice, the White House's national security adviser, said in a speech at the Brookings Institution that the nation is “stronger than we have been in a very long time” despite the bitter debates raging in Washington. “Too often, what's missing here in Washington is a sense of perspective. Yes, there is a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World...

The Obama administration is considering whether to declassify still-secret sections of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks which examined Saudi Arabian support for Islamist militants, the White House said on Thursday. Interest in the 28-page section of the report was raised after an imprisoned former al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, said in deposition transcripts filed this week that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures donated to his group in the late 1990s. Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the report's classified section, which documented the involvement of Saudi families and entities in financing terrorism, were...

A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years — 28 pages that examine crucial support given the hijackers and that by all accounts implicate prominent Saudis in financing terrorism. Now new claims by Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of Al Qaeda, that he had high-level contact with officials of the Saudi government in the prelude to Sept. 11 have brought renewed attention to the inquiry’s withheld findings, which lawmakers and relatives of those killed in the attacks have tried...

A study paid for by the Michigan Corn Growers Association was recently reported in the news media as though it had been conducted independently. This public relations coup for the ethanol industry was pulled off by touting it as “a Michigan State University study” and omitting the fact that it was done on behalf of the Michigan Corn Growers Association. Reporters then assumed it was an academic study conducted independently of the ethanol industry. On Dec. 17, Michigan Capitol Confidential asked MSU spokesman Jason Cody if the study “Greenhouse Gas Reduction in Michigan Due to Ethanol Fuel Use,” was an...

Few individual investors have quite as much capital to deploy as Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. Through his Kingdom Holding , he holds significant stakes in companies including Citigroup C -0.41%, Twitter TWTR +1.28% – and, until recently, News Corporation. The Prince hasn’t sold out completely – he still owns about 1% of the company, as well as a separate 6.6% shareholding in 21st Century Fox Inc which in itself is worth about $1.7 billion – but he previously also held 6.6% of News Corp NWSA 0%, or a total of 13.184 million class B shares. He’s shed...

The UAE “ceased its participation because of concerns over a lack of contingency plans to rescue downed aircrew.” Indeed. The whole enterprise against the Islamic State has been poorly thought out and continues to be hamstrung by the prevailing denial and refusal to examine its guiding ideology. US officials confirmed that the UAE, one of the four Arab states in the anti-Isis coalition, had ceased its participation because of concerns over a lack of contingency plans to rescue downed aircrew…. The UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain joined the coalition when attacks began in September. All have flown sorties against...

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and European missiles manufacturer MBDA have signed the first export contract of the Meteor active radar guided beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM), for an estimated amount of $1 bn, reports today French newspaper La Tribune. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and European missiles manufacturer MBDA have signed the first export contract of the Meteor active radar guided beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM), for an estimated amount of $1 bn, reports today French newspaper La Tribune. MBDA's Meteor active radar guided beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile and Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile fitted on an Eurofighter Typhoon The Meteor missiles...

Right now the oil market is totally focused on finding a bottom for oil prices. However, according to OPEC's Secretary-General Abdulla al-Badri we've already hit bottom. Not only that, but he sees a real possibility that oil prices could explode higher to upwards of $200 per barrel in the future. He's far from the only one that sees a return of triple-digit oil prices. Finding a bottom: According to recent comments by the Secretary-General when he was in London, the oil market doesn't need to look for oil prices to bottom as the market has already bottomed. Instead, he offered...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Vermont just replaced its only only nuclear reactor (which had accounted for 71.8% of the state’s electricity production) with fossil fuels obtained from fracking For the past 42 years, Vermont’s only nuclear power plant was responsible for 71.8% of the state’s electricity production. This huge amount of electricity was generated by a single nuclear reactor.Vermont has just shut down this reactor.The replacement energy source for this shut down reactor is shale gas, a fossil fuel whose combustion causes global warming, and which is obtained from fracking.And all this time, I had thought that liberals in Vermont...

In fact, the USW enjoys the right to pick which company will head up negotiations and specifically chose Shell this year for its perceived flexibility. Shell forged deals with the union in 2006, 2009 and 2012. Those contracts were considered successes, especially after a months-long walkout in 1980, a time people still talk about as a low point for disputes in the sector. This year, however, was different. John Abbott took over as Shell's refining chief in 2013 and Ben van Beurden became chief executive officer in 2014. This time, there were new faces on the negotiating team from Shell,...

IA conducts a survey of gasoline prices each Monday, and yesterday's survey showed the U.S. average regular retail gasoline price increasing for the first time in 18 weeks. The steady decline in prices over the previous 17 weeks was the longest consecutive decrease in EIA's weekly survey since prices fell 14 cents per gallon over a 24-week period in 1995. The decline is the largest percentage decline since a 58% drop in gasoline prices over 15 weeks in late 2008. With oil prices at around $45 per barrel (bbl), petroleum refinery outages in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions in...

Oil prices continued their rally Tuesday as investors bet that a sharp decline in U.S. drilling activity will balance the oversupplied global market, and even as analysts cautioned that the rebound in prices may not prove to be sustainable. Front-month Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, rose 3.7% to be at $56.80 a barrel on London’s ICE futures exchange. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in March recently traded at $51.15 a barrel, up more than 3% from Monday’s settlement. Both the global oil benchmarks have gained more than 11% over the past three...

The Financial Times [subscription] is reporting that the US is poised to become the world’s largest producer of liquid petroleum (oil and natural gas liquids): US production of oil and related liquids such as ethane and propane was neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia in June and again in August at about 11.5m barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency, the watchdog backed by rich countries. With US production continuing to boom, its output is set to exceed Saudi Arabia’s this month or next for the first time since 1991. [...] Rising oil and gas production has caused the US...

As a senior archivist for the KGB’s foreign-intelligence directorate, Vasili Mitrokhin had access to a treasure trove of information. He unveiled those secrets after defecting to Britain in 1992. One such secret concerned the “active measures” — the lies – the KGB had used against the West during the Cold War. In the 1980s, for example, the KGB spread a couple of particularly pernicious rumors. It claimed the United States had manufactured the AIDS virus and that rich Americans were murdering children in the Third World for organ-harvesting purposes. Framed by faux science and ideologically screened “experts,” and harnessing anti-American...

Last week the Senate, with votes from Democrats and Republicans, passed long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline legislation. President Obama is planning on vetoing the legislation despite broad support from lawmakers and the American people. In the meantime, the Saudis are doing everything they can to undermine U.S. domestic oil production and far-left eco-fascist groups like the Sierra Club are loving it. Washington Free Beacon's Lachlan Markay has the details: Saudi Arabia’s efforts to “drown” American energy producers make the oil-rich theocracy a crucial ally of the environmentalist movement, according to a leading green group. The House of Saud, the kingdom’s royal family,...

Sanaa - A Shiite militia on Sunday set a three-day deadline for political parties to resolve the power vacuum in Yemen since the president and prime minister offered to resign last month. The Huthis and their allies urged parties "to reach a solution and fill the vacuum" within three days or "the revolutionary leadership" would "take care of the situation of the state". ... The militia, which overran Sanaa in September, seized the presidential palace and key government buildings on January 20, plunging the country deeper into crisis and prompting President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and his premier to tender their...

President Barack Obama‘s visit to Saudi Arabia this week with a heavy-duty delegation was a smart move. But nobody should have any illusions that this quick stop will fix what’s troubling U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia or other key allies in the region. These days, the United States’ two oldest and most important friends in the Middle East–Israel and Saudi Arabia–seem to have more in common with one another than they do with Washington. Throw Egypt into the mix and you have an unusual threesome–a Jewish state, a monarchy, and a military-controlled phony republic–that have, as a practical matter, aligned...