Free Republic

What’s behind the Yemeni Ansar Allah (Houthis) movement and two prominent Iraqi Shi’ite militias' latest statements, and what may they imply for the direction of events? Recent statements by the Yemeni Ansar Allah (Houthis) movement and by two prominent Iraqi Shi’ite militias reflect the close levels of cooperation and coordination between different elements of the Iranian-led Mehwar al-Muqawama (Resistance Axis) in the region. The statements consist of threats against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Of particular note is the focus on Saudi Arabia by these organizations. What’s behind these latest statements, and what may they imply for the...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded its growth forecast for the Saudi economy due to ongoing oil production cuts by OPEC+. The IMF now sees 2024 growth clocking in at just 1.7%, nearly a percentage point lower than its earlier projection of 2.6%. The effects of the cuts are expected to spill over into the coming year, with the IMF projecting GDP growth of 4.7% in 2025, a downward revision of 1.3 percentage points from April...Last year, the Kingdom's private-sector investments expanded by a brisk 57 percent, reaching a record high of 959 billion Saudi Riyals (254 billion dollars),...

Kingdom affirmed its rejection of all forms of violence RIYADH: Saudi Arabia expressed on Sunday its condemnation and denunciation of the attempt on the life of the former President of the US Donald Trump, Saudi Press Agency reported. The Kingdom affirmed its complete solidarity with the US, the former President and his family. Trump was hit in the ear in an assassination attempt by a gunman at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. The 78-year-old former president was rushed off stage with blood streaked across his face after the shooting, while the shooter and a bystander were killed and...

UK studio Foster + Partners is reportedly designing a two-kilometre-high skyscraper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which if completed would be the world's tallest building.According to a report in UK architecture magazine Architects' Journal (AJ), the UK studio is designing the megatall skyscraper for a site to the north of the Saudi capital.The AJ reports that the skyscraper will be located near the city's international airport, which is currently being redeveloped by Foster + Partners.Skyscraper would be world's tallest buildingIf built, the skyscraper would become the world's tallest building, being over twice the height of the current record holder, the 828-metre-high...

NEOM in Saudi Arabia will be home to the Kingdom's first Yotel hotel, it has been announced.Yotel will open the doors on the NEOM property in 2025 at the Oxagon development in Saudi Arabia.It will be the first hotel in Oxagon, which will be the home of advanced and clean industries in NEOM...The hotel's location is at the heart of the integrated live-work-play Research and Innovation (R&I) district of Oxagon with a dedicated R&I campus.Strategically located on NEOM's Red Sea coast, Oxagon is reimagining the traditional industrial city by developing multiple thriving residential and business communities.Additional to the R&I district,...

The Saudi capital Riyadh on Tuesday won the right to host the 2030 World Expo, defeating rival bids from Italy and South Korea as well as overcoming objections from rights activists to take hold of another global mega-event. With a pledge for an Expo "built by the world for the world", Saudi's bid smashed the opposition after a years-long lobbying campaign whose intensity caused some gnashing of teeth among its Italian rivals. The World Expo -- which traces its history back to the 1851 Great Exhibition in London and the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris that saw the construction of...

Newly-released drone footage shows excavators starting work on digging the foundations for the £440 billion megacity The Line in Saudi Arabia. The project was launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and will be part of the vast desert complex of Neom, which will also feature an artificial ski resort, an octagonal floating port city, flying elevators, a swimming lane for commuters and robots and AI to serve its future residents. the skyscraper will run from the Gulf of Aqaba, through a mountain range, and then extend along the coast into a desert 'aerotropolis,' the Wall Street Journal reported. The...

FBI declassified a 1999 video of Saudi intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi casing the Capitol and other Washington D.C. sites for the 9/11 attack. How, then, did the CIA-FBI 9/11 report conclude in 2005 that Saudi Arabia was not involved in the attack? And why did the FBI maintain — for 20 years, before its recent retraction — that al-Bayoumi wasn’t a Saudi agent? Such willful deception, practiced increasingly by American intelligence, is the subject of former CIA agent J. Michael Waller’s new book Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains ......

The creator of Masameer County was charged with promoting homosexuality and terrorism for his South Park-style satirical cartoon.Masameer County was supposed to be Saudi Arabia's big break in the comedy world. The online cartoon, similar in tone to South Park and Family Guy, had been growing in popularity as the kingdom was undergoing social reforms. When Netflix picked up Masameer County in 2021, it quickly topped the viewership charts in Saudi Arabia. And you didn't have to be Saudi to enjoy it. The citizens of Masameer, a fictional Saudi metropolis, suffer from the same everyday problems as the rest of...

Chris Cuomo played video on Friday night that shows a Saudi official plotting the 9-11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. The video aired on News Nation and shows a Saudi official plotting the attack in Washington DC. This is the first time The Gateway Pundit has seen this video. Chris Cuomo: There’s a story that’s out right now that you have not been smothered with today. The more I think about it, it has been eating at me all day about how blanked up this is. We all remember 9/11. I guess we remember. Maybe we don’t? Maybe we don’t....

Paul Sperry @paulsperry_ WATCH: 9/11 hijackers Saudi government handler surveilling US Capitol for targeting, including filming flight-path landmarks, security guards, unmarked police vehicles From cbsnews.com 10:08 PM · Jun 21, 2024

Chris Cuomo played video on Friday night that shows a Saudi official plotting the 9-11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. The video aired on News Nation and shows a Saudi official plotting the attack in Washington DC. This is the first time The Gateway Pundit has seen this video. .... Snip.... In the CBS video, Omar al-Bayoui, whom the FBI says was a Saudi operative. In the video al-Bayoui is seen casing the US Capitol in Washington DC, the likely target of the Flight 93 operation that was thwarted that day by American passengers and heroes.

When Biden took office, he inherited the over 630 million barrels of oil left behind by the Trump and other previous administrations.This was not far off the high of 727 million barrels in 2010.Biden allowed the reserve to begin falling and then catastrophically depleted it to improve his party’s chances in the 2022 midterm elections. And he’s been at it again in 2024.Now despite failing to refill the strategic oil reserve, he’s talking about emptying it further from the 300 million barrels or so in order to have an outside chance of winning the 2024 election.Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s Secretary of...

The End Of The Petrodollar Is The End Of America’s Global DominanceEvery nation has had to convert its currency to the U.S. dollar, making it the de facto global currency. Thanks to Joe Biden, it’s all gone.The petrodollar agreement with Saudi Arabia began in 1974, two years into Joe Biden’s first term as a United States senator. It ended this week, a half-century later, during Biden’s first term as U.S. president. Among all the news stories that matter, few rank higher than this. It’s bigger than President Trump and Hunter Biden’s convictions, bigger than jobs reports and inflation numbers, and...

He has a high-stakes job. War and natural disasters keep him on his toes. He is often on a plane to far-flung places, travelling to negotiate with local leaders. He has the best intelligence money can buy. And as November’s election nears, he will spend lots of time looking at lines on charts. The American president and swashbuckling oil traders, it turns out, have a lot in common. Indeed, Joe Biden also seems to have a knack for the oil trade. Two years ago his administration initiated the largest ever sell-off from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (spr), an emergency store...

The Biden administration is close to finalizing a treaty with Saudi Arabia that would commit the U.S. to help defend the Gulf nation as part of a long-shot deal to encourage diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Israel, U.S. and Saudi officials said. But the success of the diplomatic effort hinges on Israel’s commitment to a separate Palestinian state, and more immediately an end to the war in Gaza, an unlikely proposition amid months of fruitless cease-fire talks and an Israeli weekend raid to retrieve hostages from the heart of the territory. The U.S. aims to present Israeli leaders with an...

(Kitco News) – The established financial world order of the past 50 years is now transitioning to a new and unknown paradigm as the petrodollar agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia was allowed to expire this past Sunday. The term ‘petrodollar’ described the U.S. dollar’s (USD) role as the currency used for crude oil transactions on the world market. It traces back to the early 1970s when the United States and Saudi Arabia struck a deal shortly after the U.S. went off the gold standard – and the agreement has had far-reaching consequences for the global economy. The petrodollar...

Senate Democrats are launching a new investigation into the foreign payments made to Jared Kushner's investment firm. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden announced the probe on Wednesday, saying that the panel would investigate the billions of dollars that Affinity Partners manages from foreign sources. Kushner started Affinity in July 2021, less than six months after leaving the White House as a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump. The firm quickly attracted big-time investors from the Middle East and within weeks, landed $2 billion from the Saudi public investment fund. Affinity continues to overwhelmingly derive the majority of its...

Saudi Arabia accused Israel on Wednesday of committing “continuous genocidal massacres” against Palestinians, casting the Biden administration’s efforts to broker a “normalization” deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia in doubt. In a statement, the Saudi Foreign Ministry — which has taken a tougher line toward Israel than Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) — accused Israel of deliberately targeting the tents of Palestinians in Gaza. #Statement | Saudi Arabia condemns and denounces in the strongest terms the continuous genocidal massacres committed by the Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian people without deterrence by continuing to target the tents of defenseless...

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF)on Monday launched the Neo Space Group to work on the kingdom's nascent satellite and space industry, its first investment in the sector. One of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, the PIF has already invested heavily in sports, gaming and so-called Saudi giga-projects including Neom, a $500-billion futuristic megacity under construction in the desert. ... Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler, Saudi Arabia has sought both to open up and diversify its oil-reliant economy. ...