So many Wall Street CEOs and other titans of investing and industry have pulled out of next week's "Davos in the Desert" conference that even the Ritz-Carlton, owner of the Riyadh venue hosting the conference (as it did last year), has been slammed by human rights groups over its continued support for Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and his brutal regime. In perhaps the biggest blow to the conference's clout, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has opted not to attend, eve as President Trump has insisted that Saudi Arabia's story about the circumstances surrounding the (now confirmed) death of critical journalist (and former government insider) Jamal Khashoggi is "credible". To deflect blame away from MbS, the Saudi leadership has orchestrated a purge of the country's senior intelligence apparatus and arrested 18 other Saudi nationals for their "involvement" in orchestrating and carrying out the killing.

The debate about land redistribution in South Africa has been a passionate one, as many South African cities face a housing crunch that has left hundreds of thousands of people living in informal settlements. Just as this debate is starting to reach a fever pitch, one South African city, Ekurhuleni, is about to embark on what mayor Mzwandile Masina calls "a test case" for the nation: the government is going to seize hundreds of acres of land, from white citizens without paying for it, to build low-cost housing.

Last month, the city voted in favor of pushing forward with "expropriation without compensation". According to ABC News, this was cited by the African National Congress as a legal rule that is necessary in order to distribute land equitably and correct "historic injustices" that took place in the country.

A Washington federal judge on Thursday ordered special counsel Robert Mueller's team to clarify election meddling claims lodged against a Russian company operated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Bloomberg.

Concord Management and Consulting, LLC. - one of three businesses indicted by Mueller in February along with 13 individuals for election meddling, surprised the special counsel in April when they actually showed up in court to fight the charges. Mueller's team tried to delay Concord from entering the case, arguing that thee Russian company not been properly served, however Judge Dabney Friedrich denied the request - effectively telling prosecutors 'well, they're here.'

On Thursday, Judge Freidrich asked Mueller's prosecutors if she should assume they aren't accusing Concord of violating US laws applicable to election expenditures and failure to register as a foreign agent.

It is doubtful that such sums came from the kiddies' college funds. Evidence of Soros funding of an earlier "spontaneous" migration have been found among the tentacles of support that flow from his Open Society group coffers:

Several major ultra-liberal foundations and corporations have supported the asylum-seeking migrant caravans, and Soros' funding has been tied to several groups that have spearheaded the "refugee" invasion coalition – also dubbed "the Soros Express."

After months of violence and widespread protests along the Israeli-Gaza border fence, Israeli is quickly ramping up its military presence with a show of force a day after launching deadly airstrikes on Gaza in response to what officials say were two rockets fired from the strip earlier this week.

Reuters has reported some 60 Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers now stationed at a deployment area along the border as of Thursday, which is the largest reported mustering of forces since the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas.

National security adviser John Bolton is traveling to Russia for talks early next week with top Russian officials that are likely to cover a variety of high-priority issues for the administration.

The trip is Bolton’s first to Moscow since he went to broker the details of the now infamous Helsinki summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin last July.

The visit comes amid high tensions with Moscow on several fronts, including the conflict in Syria and the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Britain earlier this year.

Bolton is expected in his meetings with Russian officials next week to further discussions on issues that Putin and Trump discussed in July, including Syria, where Moscow says it has delivered a S-300 missile defense system — in defiance of warnings from the Trump administration and Israel.

The talks are also likely to cover Iran, efforts to denuclearize North Korea, Israeli security and nuclear arms treaties.

BRITAIN will be braced for a chilling Halloween this year as snow is predicted to start falling in the UK next week.

Foreign banks will soon be able to become part of Russia's money transfer network which serves as an alternative to the traditional SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system.

“Non-residents will start connecting to us this year. People are already turning to us,” said First Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Russia Olga Skorobogatova. Earlier, the official said that by using the alternative payment system foreign firms would be able to do business with sanctioned Russian companies.

Transparency reports are standard practice across the tech industry, disclosing the nature, quantity and scope of all the law enforcement requests each company receives in a given year.

But there's a notable exception to this practice: the "smart home" companies who sell you products that fill your house with gadgets that know every intimate fact of your life -- all-seeing eyes, all-listening ears, all-surveillance network taps. The companies that sell these products refuse to say whether (or how) they are being suborned to serve as state surveillance adjuncts by law enforcement.

One wonders what went on in Russian minds during last month’s spectacle of US President Trump raking Beijing over the coals on accusations of meddling, in the upcoming US midterm elections, to try to undermine his trade policies.
Certainly the Chinese, who evidently didn’t expect it, were shocked and outraged, but it was behavior to which Moscow was accustomed to being on the receiving end of – this time aimed at someone else for a change.

Geng Shuang, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, called Donald Trump’s claims “totally far-fetched and fictional,” and advised the “US side to stop its unwarranted accusations and slander against China and refrain from wrong words and deeds that might hurt our bilateral relations and fundamental interests.”

The United States has placed its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians under the authority of the US embassy in Israel, a downgrade that has sparked uproar among the West Bank leadership.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the consulate general, which is currently a separate office in Jerusalem, would be closed down and replaced by a new Palestinian Affairs Unit inside their embassy which the US controversially moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem earlier this year.

The move would effectively mean the Palestinians are forced to recognise the US’s decision to label Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It would also make David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, who is hated by Palestinians over his support for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the main interlocutor with the Palestinian leadership.

At least 32 civilians have lost their lives when warplanes of the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group carried out a series of airstrikes in Syria's oil-rich eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr in less than 24 hours, a monitoring group says.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that strikes on the village of Sousa killed 18 civilians including seven children late Thursday and 14 more civilians on Friday. Dozens were wounded and many remained under the rubble in the village.

The monitoring group said nine Daesh terrorists also lost their lives in the raids.

Since 2014, the US-led coalition has acknowledged direct responsibility for more than 1,100 civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq, but rights groups put the number killed much higher.

The USS Ronald Reagan has resumed flight operations Friday morning after a mysterious incident where a MH-60R Seahawk helicopter crashed while making an emergency landing on the ship's flight deck shortly after taking off at 9 am on Oct. 19. The Navy said it is investigating the crash after the helicopter, a member of the "Saberhawks" Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron, crash landed shortly after lifting off from the ship's deck at approximately 9 am on Oct. 19.

The carrier, a member of the Navy's 7th fleet, was situated off the coast of the Philippines at the time of the crash.

Meanwhile, Stars and Stripes reported Friday in a different article that the Navy is investigating the cause of another crash involving a HH-60H Seahawk helicopter, which crashed into another helicopter on an Okinawa runway on Oct. 9.

Some 130 Palestinian protesters, including 25 children, have been injured by Israeli fire during anti-occupation protests at the Gaza border, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, amid Amnesty International's condemnation of Israel's newly proclaimed "zero tolerance" towards protesters.

The official reminded that the US had vetoed 44 resolutions targeting Israel at the Security Council, while the regime itself had breached all the 300 resolutions that had so far been ratified against it.

"The regime is the number one violator of the Council's resolutions," he said.

The West is complicit in Saudi crimes and its outrage is just for show, says Daniel Patrick Welch, an American writer and political analyst.

Maybe a minor reshuffling of some heads will take place in Saudi Arabia over the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but no heads would roll, Welch told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

Nearly a million Haitians took to the streets nationwide in Haiti today, October 17, 2018. The day marked the 212th year anniversary of the assassination of Haiti’s liberator and founding father Janjak Desalin by the mulatto sons of France and their slave-making European fathers and white settler colonists. The comical colonial co-option was obvious as many of the suspected criminals/Bafyòti who are at the heart of Haiti’s neocolonial corruption and who are accused of stealing state funds, entered the demonstrations, also asking for the stolen monies to be returned and for a stop to impunity! But the people know who they are. The Haitian population assures they are mobilized in an unprecedented manner and won’t be distracted…. Haitians died today. They want the Western-imposed government out of Haiti. They want an end to impunity. The people of Haiti want the $3.8 billion PetroCaribe funds returned to Haiti with a legitimate government ruling.

Palestinian historian and analyst Jafar Ramini says that powerful Zionist lobbies are very influential in American politics to the extent that any American politician has to seek approval from the lobby in order to have a chance of being elected.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with FNA, Jafar Ramini said he believes that the powerful Zionist lobby controls American politics and consequently the American support provides the Israeli regime with the feeling of impunity to continue with its crimes against the Palestinians.

Commenting on the Saudi crown prince’s controversial remarks on formal relations with Israel, the Palestinian historian said that Mohammad bin Salman’s hunger for power has made him betray the Palestinian cause and to side with Israel.

Jafar Ramini is a Palestinian historian, writer and analyst on Middle Eastern affairs living in London. He has also shared his expert comments on many international news outlets such as Press TV and Radio Sputnik.

Scores of Palestinian protesters have been injured by Israeli soldiers near the separation fence in the east of the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians who demonstrated in their thousands as part of the weekly Great Return March Rallies. Press TV correspondent Ashraf Shannon brings us more details in the following report.

Years of US allegations that Russia is violating the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) may be coming to a head, with John Bolton reportedly pushing hard for President Trump to withdraw outright from the pact.

Instead of negotiating over the questions, Bolton wants the US to just withdraw outright, despite that being a major escalation on tensions with Russia. State Department and Pentagon officials are both opposed to this.

The administration was to have talks on Monday to discuss Bolton’s idea, but this has been postponed, at least for now. Still, Congress is also pushing for action on Russia, as part of general hostility toward Russia.

US Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison suggested that the US was preparing to preemptively attack Russia and “take out” the missiles they consider a violation. Bolton’s pullout, while intended as a provocation, appears to be at least somewhat less-so than attacking Russia outright.

Ukrainian forces used 122mm artillery, mortars, weapons on armored vehicles, grenade launchers and small arms

The Justice Department has brought its first criminal case over alleged Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections.

Elena Khusyaynova, 44, a St. Petersburg, Russia-based accountant, was charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to defraud the United States for taking part in a scheme to spend in excess of $10 million since the beginning of the year on targeted social media ads and web postings intended “to sow division and discord in the U.S. political system.”

Khusyaynova, who is not in U.S. custody, allegedly works for Concord, a Russia-based firm that special counsel Robert Mueller's office indicted in February for alleged interference in the 2016 election.

The FBI has refused to declassify 37 pages of materials related to the Uranium One deal, citing national security and the privacy issues, reports The Hill's John Solomon. The documents are thought to contain information regarding then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's involvement, as well as the Obama administration's knowledge of the controversial deal.

The existence of the documents became known after a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) release of related material contained an entry entitled "Uranium One Transaction." The publicly available portion includes benign material, such as public letters from members of Congress who demanded information on the Uranium One approval.

Perhaps the FBI’s unexpected “release” — and I use that word loosely, since they gave up no public information of importance — in the FOIA vault was a warning flare designed to remind America there might be evidence worth looking at.

The caravan of Honduran migrants making their way to the US stormed through a border gate in Guatemala on Friday morning to run over a bridge to Mexico where they were met with tear gas from riot police before being allowed into the country and continue their march towards America.

The group of around 4,000 migrants overpowered police first in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, to make their way over the short bridge into Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexican's southernmost state of Chiapas.

At least a dozen people jumped into the water, either to try and swim across the river of simply because they were trying to get away from the crowds in the stifling heat.

The migrants had been forced to retreat and reorganize earlier in the day after being met with strong resistance.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on an agricultural bio-weapon, and a team of scientists are speaking out about it.

Look, Muammar Gaddafi was a thief, plain and simple – but he shared the wealth with his people, something you can’t say for the “leaders” of the US.

Before the US destabilization, Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa: free universal health care, free universal education, and many other benefits American citizens can only dream of.

Now the country is in ruins, it’s infrastructure destroyed, the social order is in chaos, atrocities have become a daily occurrence and its weapons stockpile is now in the hands of terrorists.

The US did that, not because Gaddafi was a threat, but because the US declared there was a “civil war” and they had to come down on the side of “freedom” and “humanitarian aid.”

Sound familiar?

This is the same scam Bill Clinton ran in Yugoslavia. The same scam being run now against Syria.

By the way, this operation was Hillary Clinton’s baby. She ran it from end to end.

An Israeli court in Jerusalem has ordered two New Zealand activists to pay more than $12,000 in damages because the pop singer Lorde canceled a concert in Tel Aviv last year.

The two activists have rejected the ruling, which legal experts say cannot be enforced anyway.

Nadia Abu-Shanab and Justine Sachs say they won’t pay and are instead using the publicity generated by the case to raise money to support mental healthcare in Gaza.

The lawsuit was filed earlier this year on behalf of three Israeli fans of Lorde, under Israel’s anti-boycott law.

From wood batons to stun batons to water cannons to sound cannons to. . . frickin' plasma lasers that can "vaporize" your skin?

Recent reporting out of the Pentagon reveals that the U.S. military is working on perfecting what they called a Scalable Compact Ultra-short Pulse Laser System (SCUPLS)—or plasma gun, for short—intended for mounting on a truck or a tank.

Billed as the military's latest "crowd control" technology, what this has typically meant is a new "non-lethal" weapon designed for use by militaries or police forces against unruly demonstrators or those standing against powerful state actors or corporate forces.

Israel’s high court on Thursday overturned a government decision to bar entry to Lara Alqasem, a Palestinian American student enrolled to study at Hebrew University in violation of the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli institutions.

Alqasem had been in detention since 2 October, when she was denied entry at Ben Gurion airport.

Israel’s strategic affairs minister Gilad Erdan said the decision to invalidate Alqasem’s student visa was taken because she had been a member of the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.

Haaretz investigation spanning 100 sources in 15 countries reveals Israel has become a leading exporter of tools for spying on civilians. Dictators around the world – even in countries with no formal ties to Israel – use them eavesdrop on human rights activists, monitor emails, hack into apps and record conversations

Judicial Watch claims terrorists can easily slip into the ranks of such groups because the march organizers do not properly vet minors

The latest mystery mission of the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane has now passed the 400-day mark .

This mission — known as Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-5) — was rocketed into Earth orbit on Sept. 7, 2017, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The uncrewed space plane is carrying out secretive duties during the X-37B program's fifth flight.

Part of the reason the F-22’s were left in the path of the storm is that they were broken and too expensive to fix or fly.

A crucial Pentagon report on the US defense industrial base and “supply chain resiliency” bluntly accuses China of “military expansion” and “a strategy of economic aggression,” mostly because Beijing is the only source for “a number of chemical products used in munitions and missiles.”

Russia is mentioned only once, but in a crucial paragraph: as a – what else – “threat,” alongside China, for the US defense industry.

More than half of Germans living under Merkel's open-border regime want to leave their homeland, according to Die Welt, citing a YouGov survey commissioned by financial services provider Transferwise.

It was conducted between September 19 and 21, and included 2109 adults who were asked the following questions;

Would you like to live abroad sometime (outside Germany)?

Compared to two years ago - is it more or less likely that you will live abroad, or is there no difference?

Which of the following are reasons why you want to move abroad? (Multiple answers possible).

Approximately 1/3 of the respondents say they would like to leave forever, while thirteen percent said that they would prefer to leave for two to five years. Nine percent would stay away for no more than a year.

Nineteen foreign aircraft had been detected while carrying out reconnaissance activities near the Russian border over the past week, the Russian Armed Forces' official newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda reported on Friday.

Russian aircraft had been scrambled eight times to prevent foreign jets from crossing the Russian border, the outlet added.

Sabo, a conservative street artist, replaced a photo of killer Michael Myers with one of the congresswoman.

Jamal Khashoggi, the missing activist and writer last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Turkey on Oct. 2, was killed in a fight, Saudi state media reported on Friday.

“Discussions between citizen Jamal Khashoggi and those who met him while he was in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul led to a brawl and a physical altercation, which led to his death,” Saudi Arabia’s attorney general said in a statement, according to The Wall Street Journal. The announcement of Kashoggi’s death followed the preliminary findings of a probe into what happened to the activist.

State media also quoted prosecutors as saying 18 Saudi nationals are being held on suspicion of being involved in the Washington Post columnist’s death. Saudi state media also said a royal court adviser close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was fired along with three leaders in the kingdom’s intelligence services and other officials.

The statements did not identify the 18 Saudis being held by authorities.

This is Unbelievable 4500 Immigrants packed like sardines on Suchiate River Bridge connecting Mexico/Guatemala. Human Catastrophe in progress.This will not end well. ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR OBSTRUCTION NOW DEMOCRATS?

Each summer, moms enjoy taking their children to the public library to engage their children in summer reading programs and explore new books.

But a dangerous new trend is taking place at multiple libraries, and every mom must be on the lookout.

And if moms don’t know the horrors taking place at their local library, children could suffer horrific trauma at the exposure to the unthinkable.

LGBT activists are determined to get their hands on innocent children, and they are doing everything they can to surround themselves with children.

From becoming leftist teachers and principals and attempting to indoctrinate children, to creating “transgender” summer camps , they will not stop.

Julian Assange today launched a case accusing the government of Ecuador of violating his fundamental rights and freedoms. WikiLeaks general counsel Baltasar Garzon arrived in Ecuador yesterday to launch the case against the government. The move comes almost seven months after Ecuador threatened to remove his protection and summarily cut off his access to the outside world, including by refusing to allow journalists and human rights organisations to see him, and installing three signal jammers in the embassy to prevent his phone calls and internet access.

Ecuador refused to let Human Rights Watch General Counsel Dinah PoKempner, who likened Ecuador’s isolation to “solitary confinement” [https://twitter.com/RockinTrump/status/981286495934803968] see him as well several meetings with his lawyers. Ecuador’s measures against Julian Assange have been widely condemned by the human rights community.

In a combative exchange at a hearing Friday in Washington, D.C., a federal judge unabashedly accused career State Department officials of lying and signing "clearly false" affidavits to derail a series of lawsuits seeking information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server and her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth also said he was "shocked" and "dumbfounded" when he learned that FBI had granted immunity to former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills during its investigation into the use of Clinton's server, according to a court transcript of his remarks.

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spent over $1 million in taxpayer money flying around the country aboard military jets, often traveling for personal purposes, according to an estimate by American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a complaint to the Board of Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals of Debra S. Katz, Lisa J. Banks, and Michael R. Bromwich for violating the rules of professional responsibility in their representation of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearings on the nomination of the Honorable Brett Kavanaugh.

According to the Judicial Watch complaint, by not informing their client Dr. Ford that Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee offered in a letter to “fly female staff investigators to meet Dr. Ford… in California, or anywhere else, to obtain (her) testimony,” Katz, Banks, and Bromwich violated the following District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct:

Rule l.4(a) – A lawyer shall keep a client reasonably informed about the status of a matter and promptly comply with reasonable requests for information.

In the terminal collapse of the Roman Empire, there was perhaps no greater burden to the average citizen than the extreme taxes they were forced to pay.

The tax ‘reforms’ of Emperor Diocletian in the 3rd century were so rigid and unwavering that many people were driven to starvation and bankruptcy. The state went so far as to chase around widows and children to collect taxes owed.

By the 4th century, the Roman economy and tax structure were so dismal that many farmers abandoned their lands in order to receive public entitlements.