Israel

Today’s Eurogroup meeting will be key in determining where Greece and its creditors negotiations currently stand. Over in the US today, it’s the usual post payrolls lull with just the labor market conditions data expected.

Ever since the mysterious, unexpected bursting of ISIS on the global stage one year ago with much fanfare and even more carefully produced with just the right amount of lighting beheading video clip, we said from the very beginning that entire rehashed sequence of events in the middle east is about one thing: removing Syria's Assad from power just so the nat gas infrastructure from Qatar can traverse the territory and enter Europe, eliminating Russia's energy dominance over the continent. Today we got the latest confirmation of this in an AP report according to which "Turkey and Saudi Arabia have converged on an aggressive new strategy to bring down Syrian President Bashar Assad."

For a long time there was confusion about the "quo" to the Saudi Arabian "quid" over its agreement to side with the US on the Iranian "nuclear deal" (which incidentally looks like it will never happen simply due to the Russian and Chinese UN vetoes). Then over the weekend we finally got the answer: the details are quite familiar to anyone who has seen the US Military-Industrial Complex in action: the US pretends to wage an aggressive diplomatic campaign of peace while behind the scenes it is just as actively selling weapons of war.

On July 12 of 2014 as part of Operation Protective Edge, Israel launched a ground assault into Gaza which promptly led to a mini-war in the Strip that left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead and reduced vast areas to rubble: a "war" which many speculated was nothing but a massacre by highly skilled, trained, and ethically drained Israeli soldiers who used civilians for target practice. Yesterday we got confirmation of just that. In a 242-page report, soldiers recount how they fire artillery at random houses to avenge fallen comrades, shoot at innocent civilians because they were bored and watch armed drones attack a pair of women. That and much more.

Yes ... They're Collecting the Content of AMERICANS' Phone Calls, Too

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Whatever happens with the nuclear negotiations this summer, and as much as Tehran wants cooperation and not confrontation, Iran is bound to remain - alongside Russia - a key US geostrategic target. What the Pentagon - with customary hubris - does not see is Moscow and Tehran easily identifying the power play; the US government's hidden agenda of manipulating a "rehabilitated" Iran to sell plenty of oil and gas to the EU, thus undermining Gazprom.

As Sarao faces charges for crashing the US market for "spoofing" stocks, there is another seemingly much graver 'hack' that is now publicly available for all to utilize (and has been). As SputnikNews reports, the information necessary to hack a military drone is freely available to the public via a simple Google search that explains how to successfully "spoof" GPS signals. NATO has admitted this is possible in a 2013 report, and as we have previously noted Iran has already allegedly brought down and reverse-engineered a US drone.

Recently, France decided to crack down on those people who make cash payments and withdrawals and who hold small bank accounts. The reason given was, not surprisingly, to “fight terrorism,” the handy catchall justification for any new restriction governments wish to impose on their citizens. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin stated at the time, “[T]errorism feeds on fraud, money laundering, and petty trafficking." What we are witnessing is the creation of totalitarian control of your finances. The implication that you may have some sort of terrorist involvement is a smokescreen.

The law of unintended consequences is becoming ever more prominent in the economic sphere, as the world becomes exponentially more complex with every passing year. Just as a network grows in complexity and value as the number of connections in that network grows, the global economy becomes more complex, interesting, and hard to manage as the number of individuals, businesses, governmental bodies, and other institutions swells, all of them interconnected by contracts and security instruments, as well as by financial and information flows. It is hubris to presume, as current economic thinking does, that the entire economic world can be managed by manipulating one (albeit major) subset of that network without incurring unintended consequences for the other parts of the network.

The airline has been working with its banks and the relevant authorities and understands that the funds – less than $5 million – have now been frozen. Although the sum stolen was relatively small in corporate terms and appears to have been tracked and frozen quite quickly, the incident - yet again - highlights the threat posed by cybercrime to today’s banking and financial systems.

Update 2: Curiously, while we were confident Iran would deny the report first, it was in fact the US: US NAVY DENIES CONFRONTATION WITH IRANIAN MILITARY: CNBC

Update: WHITE HOUSE REFERS COMMENT ON IRAN SHIP CAPTURE TO DEFENSE DEPT

Moments ago according to Saudi-owned Arabiya news, Iranian forces have seized a US cargo ship, which has some 34 American sailors, which they have taken to the port of Bandar Abbas. Iran's Farsnews confirms the Arabiya report, stating that "a US cargo ship with 34 crew was stopped and seized by Iranian Navy warships on Tuesday. The Iranian Navy has confiscated the American trade vessel with all its 34 crew for trespassing on Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf."

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The lines have been drawn in many police departments: it’s us vs. them. Trust in many departments has been utterly shattered within some communities because the police hold themselves to a different standard than they do the populace.  But the recent cases of police brutality are simply a symptom of a much larger problem. Society in the US is breaking down, civility has been lost, and the country is rapidly becoming uncivilized. This extends within and across all of the most important institutions.

Germany had lost the war, the Nazi industrialists agreed, but the struggle would continue along new lines. The Fourth Reich would be a financial, rather than a military imperium. The industrialists were to plan for a “postwar commercial campaign.” They should make “contacts and alliances” with foreign firms but ensure this was done without “attracting any suspicion.”... The State Department’s efforts on Schacht’s behalf worked. He was initially found guilty but was then acquitted, to the fury of the Soviet judge.