Two Decades After 9/11, Pentagon Is Providing Covert Air Support To The Taliban

Nearly two decades following 9/11 and the initial invasion of Afghanistan which ostensibly had as its objective the removal and destruction of the hardline Islamist Taliban government, the United States military is providing covert support to the same "outlawed" Taliban with the latest aim of booting ISIS from the country.

A report in The Washington Post on Thursday details that this secret assistance focuses on the Pentagon providing air power to the Taliban as the group wars against against ISIS in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunar Province.

That's right, the very terrorist group that for years has waged a campaign to kill and maim large numbers of American troops in Afghanistan (not to mention many thousands of local civilians) is now being covered by US air power.

The Post's reporting is sourced to members of the elite Joint Special Operations Command counterterrorism task force based at Bagram air base, who say the strikes are helping the Taliban gain ground against ISIS, seen as the greater and more immediate US nemesis, despite as recently as earlier this year the US being engaged in major bombing operations on the Taliban.

Here are some of the shocking details as reported in The Washington Post:

Army Sgt. 1st Class Steve Frye was stuck on base last summer in Afghanistan, bored and fiddling around on a military network, when he came across live video footage of a battle in the Korengal Valley, where he had first seen combat 13 years earlier. It was infamous terrain, where at least 40 U.S. troops had died over the years, including some of Frye’s friends. Watching the Reaper drone footage closely, he saw that no American forces were involved in the fighting, and none from the Afghan government. Instead, the Taliban and the Islamic State were duking it out…

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/two-decades-after-911-pentagon-providing-covert-air-support-taliban

To Save The Stock Market, The Fed Threatens Destruction Of Trillions In Middle-Class Retirement

The Federal Reserve, which these days seems to be the only major part of the federal government capable of operating drama-free, has done a lot to help keep our economy afloat. It has cut interest rates to unprecedented low levels, bought billions of dollars of corporate IOUs, helped stabilize the debt markets and helped rescue a stock market that had begun falling sharply in mid-February when the COVID-19 recession started and that seemed headed for a crash.

In the process, the Fed has indirectly provided support to house prices and to the vital home construction business by forcing down mortgage interest rates to all-time lows of about 3%. Given that home equity is a major asset for many middle-class Americans, supporting home prices is especially important. As is supporting the home construction industry, which is a major source of blue-collar jobs.

But if you dig deeper, you’ll see that the Fed is unintentionally worsening economic inequality by providing the most help to Americans who are least in need of it. And it’s also putting stress on the middle class’ most important asset: retirement benefits.

Higher stock prices are great for people (including me) who own a lot of stocks, but those people are primarily the top 10% of the country, in terms of wealth. According to Fed statistics, more than half of stocks — 52% — are owned by the wealthiest 1% of Americans, and 88% are owned by the top 10%.

To show you a different aspect of helping the upper class but not the working class, the Fed’s securities purchases include buying debt issued by firms that are laying off workers while paying substantial dividends to shareholders. And for some imprudent or troubled corporate borrowers, the Fed’s moves have been hugely helpful.

But those moves are hurting prudent savers of modest means by greatly reducing the income they can earn on Treasury securities and other no-risk investments such as bank certificates of deposit. That tends to drive people seeking income into the stock market, where their capital is at risk. By contrast, if you buy a Treasury security, you’re sure of getting your money back when the security comes due, even though the security’s market value will fluctuate both up and down while you hold it.

Interest rates are so low that they’ve largely erased the key benefit — income — Treasury bonds are theoretically supposed to provide over stocks. If you own a low-cost Standard & Poor’s 500 index fund, you’re getting much more income from dividends than the interest you’d earn having the same amount invested in a 10-year Treasury note. For example, the dividend yield (a year’s worth of dividends divided by the current market price) on Admiral shares of Vanguard’s S&P 500 fund is more than double the interest yield of a 10-year Treasury. It’s even higher than the yield on a 30-year Treasury bond, something that you rarely see.

The yield on the Vanguard fund was 1.65% as of Sept. 30, the most recent available date. As I write this, the yield on a 10-year Treasury, the security it generally makes the most sense for a retail investor to buy and hold to maturity, was 0.76%. The yield on the 30-year Treasury was 1.56%.

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/save-stock-market-fed-threatens-destruction-trillions-middle-class-retirement

Russian Ambassador to US Rejects Charges Against Russia's Sanctioned Research Institute

The Russian Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, has rejected charges by the Trump administration against Russia's FGUP Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (CNIIHM), after the institute came under US sanctions.

On Friday, the adminsitration of US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the Russian research institute as, from Washington's point of view, it is linked to Triton malware.

"We completely reject the charges brought by the administration against the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Central Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics.” We emphasize once again the illegitimacy of any one-sided restrictions. Russia, unlike the United States, does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain. Malicious activity in the information space is contrary to the principles of our foreign policy, national interests and understanding of interstate relations," Antonov stated late Friday, quoted by the embassy's Facebook page.

The Russian ambassador called on the US to "abandon the vicious practice of unfounded accusations", pointing out that Russia "proceeds from the fact that the interests of our countries are in line with a professional dialogue on international information security, which President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin proposed to restore."

The sanctions, announced earlier in the day by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, were authorized under the Republican-sponsored Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) which Trump signed in August, 2017.

In the Friday statement, the US Treasury Department accused Russian government research institutions of being connected to the Triton malware, which was reportedly designed to breach industrial safety systems. and which, according to the US Treasury, has been used against US partners in the Middle East.

In 2018, the US-based FireEye cyber security company claimed that CNIIHM could be involved in cyberattacks with the use of Triton malware, which was allegedly used, in particular, against a Saudi Arabian petrochemical plant's database.

Russia has been repeatedly accused of interference with American internal affairs, most often of influencing US elections. Moscow has consistently denied the allegations, pointing out that Russia adheres to the international legal principle of non-interference.

https://sputniknews.com/russia/202010241080865654-russian-ambassador-to-us-rejects-charges-against-russias-sanctioned-research-institute/