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TraderRavi

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Did Saudis, CIA Fear Khashoggi 9/11 Bombshell?


The macabre case of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi raises the question: did Saudi rulers fear him revealing highly damaging information on their secret dealings? In particular, possible involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks on New York in 2001.

Even more intriguing are US media reports now emerging that American intelligence had snooped on and were aware of Saudi officials making plans to capture Khashoggi prior to his apparent disappearance at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week. If the Americans knew the journalist’s life was in danger, why didn’t they tip him off to avoid his doom?

Jamal Khashoggi (59) had gone rogue, from the Saudi elite’s point of view. Formerly a senior editor in Saudi state media and an advisor to the royal court, he was imminently connected and versed in House of Saud affairs. As one commentator cryptically put it: “He knew where all the bodies were buried.”

For the past year, Khashoggi went into self-imposed exile, taking up residence in the US, where he began writing opinion columns for the Washington Post.

Khashoggi’s articles appeared to be taking on increasingly critical tone against the heir to the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The 33-year-old Crown Prince, or MbS as he’s known, is de facto ruler of the oil-rich kingdom, in place of his aging father, King Salman.

While Western media and several leaders, such as Presidents Trump and Macron, have been indulging MbS as “a reformer”, Khashoggi was spoiling this Saudi public relations effort by criticizing the war in Yemen, the blockade on Qatar and the crackdown on Saudi critics back home.

However, what may have caused the Saudi royals more concern was what Khashoggi knew about darker, dirtier matters. And not just the Saudis, but American deep state actors as as well.

He was formerly a media aide to Prince Turki al Faisal, who is an eminence gris figure in Saudi intelligence, with its systematic relations to American and British counterparts. Prince Turki’s father, Faisal, was formerly the king of Saudi Arabia until his assassination in 1975 by a family rival. Faisal was a half-brother of the present king, Salman, and therefore Prince Turki is a cousin of the Crown Prince – albeit at 73 more than twice his age.

For nearly 23 years, from 1977 to 2001, Prince Turki was the director of the Mukhabarat, the Saudi state intelligence apparatus. He was instrumental in Saudi, American and British organization of the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan to combat Soviet forces. Those militants in Afghanistan later evolved into the al Qaeda terror network, which has served as a cat’s paw in various US proxy wars across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, including Russia’s backyard in the Caucasus.

Ten days before the 9/11 terror attacks on New York City, in which some 3,000 Americans died, Prince Turki retired from his post as head of Saudi intelligence. It was an abrupt departure, well before his tenure was due to expire.

There has previously been speculation in US media that this senior Saudi figure knew in advance that something major was going down on 9/11. At least 15 of the 19 Arabs who allegedly hijacked three commercial airplanes that day were Saudi nationals.

Prince Turki has subsequently been named in a 2002 lawsuit mounted by families of 9/11 victims. There is little suggestion he was wittingly involved in organizing the terror plot. Later public comments indicated that Prince Turki was horrified by the atrocity. But the question is: did he know of the impending incident, and did he alert US intelligence, which then did not take appropriate action to prevent it?

Jamal Khashoggi had long served as a trusted media advisor to Prince Turki, before the latter resigned from public office in 2007. Following 9/11, Turki was the Saudi ambassador to both the US and Britain.

A tentative idea here is that Khashoggi, in his close dealings with Prince Turki over the years, may have gleaned highly sensitive inside information on what actually happened on 9/11. Were the Arab hijackers mere patsies used by the American CIA to facilitate an event which has since been used by American military planners to launch a global “war on terror” as a cover for illegal wars overseas? There is a huge body of evidence that the 9/11 attacks were indeed a “false flag” event orchestrated by the US deep state as a pretext for its imperialist rampages.

The apparent abduction and murder last week of Jamal Khashoggi seems such an astoundingly desperate move by the Saudi rulers. More evidence is emerging from Turkish sources that the journalist was indeed lured to the consulate in Istanbul where he was killed by a 15-member hit squad. Reports are saying that the alleged assassination was ordered at the highest level of the Saudi royal court, which implicates Crown Prince MbS.
Why would the Saudi rulers order such a heinous act, which would inevitably lead to acute political problems, as we are seeing in the fallout from governments and media coverage around the world?

Over the past year, the House of Saud had been appealing to Khashoggi to return to Riyadh and resume his services as a media advisor to the royal court. He declined, fearing that something more sinister was afoot. When Khashoggi turned up in Istanbul to collect a divorce document from the Saudi consulate on September 28, it appears that the House of Saud decided to nab him. He was told to return to the consulate on October 2. On that same day, the 15-member group arrived from Riyadh on two private Gulfstream jets for the mission to kill him.

Official Saudi claims stretch credulity. They say Khashoggi left the consulate building unharmed by a backdoor, although they won’t provide CCTV images to prove that. The Turks say their own CCTV facilities monitoring the front and back of the Saudi consulate show that Khashoggi did not leave the premises. The Turks seem confident of their claim he was murdered inside the building, his remains dismembered and removed in diplomatic vehicles. The two private jets left the same day from Istanbul with the 15 Saudis onboard to return to Riyadh, via Cairo and Dubai.

To carry out such a reckless act, the Saudis must have been alarmed by Khashoggi’s critical commentaries appearing in the Washington Post. The columns appeared to be delivering more and more damaging insights into the regime under Crown Prince MbS.
The Washington Post this week is reporting that US intelligence sources knew from telecom intercepts that the Saudis were planning to abduct Khashoggi. That implicates the House of Saud in a dastardly premeditated act of murder.

But furthermore this same disclosure could also, unwittingly, implicate US intelligence. If the latter knew of a malicious intent towards Khashoggi, why didn’t US agents warn him about going to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul? Surely, he could have obtained the same personal documents from the Saudi embassy in Washington DC, a country where he was residing and would have been safer.

Jamal Khashoggi may have known too many dark secrets about US and Saudi intel collusion, primarily related to the 9/11 terror incidents. And with his increasing volubility as a critical journalist in a prominent American news outlet, it may have been time to silence him. The Saudis as hitmen, the American CIA as facilitators.


https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/10/14/did-saudis-cia-fear-khashoggi-9-11-bombshell.html
 

TraderRavi

low risk profile
Why Rafale and S-400 missile system will not give India’s defence sector an edge
The government’s defence of the deal for 36 Rafale jets is not credible, and so is the multi-billion dollar S-400 deal which has no technology offsets

Bharat Karnad

The current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has, in its penultimate year in office, signed a flurry of arms deals, the largest among them, inevitably, enmeshing it in no end of trouble. The most important of these being for the French Rafale combat aircraft and for the Russian S-400 air defence system. Both these decisions are problematic for various reasons.

The charge of personal corruption, as alleged by sections of the Opposition, against Prime Minister Narendra Modi may not stick. However, what may be harder to defend are the procedural shortcuts adopted — no prior approvals by the Defence Acquisitions Council (DAC) and, more significantly, by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CAS) — before announcing the buy of 36 Rafale jets from the French aviation major, Dassault Avions, in April 2015.

Even worse, the Rafale was a redundant purchase that fills no clear or definite requirement or military need that’s not already being adequately met by the Su-30MKI in service with the Indian Air Force.

The long-hanging S-400 contract, on the other hand, can be faulted on the grounds that the mandatory offsets clause was waived.
At its core, the mindless hankering of the Indian military for the supposedly more sophisticated Western-origin armaments, in this case, of the Indian Air Force (IAF) for the Rafale, may be to blame. Time and again, it has led to corruption, scams, scandals and tainted regimes being voted out of power by an enraged and disillusioned public.

First, some basic facts. The Rafale is no more ‘medium’ weight than the Su-30 — both actually being in the heavy, 18-20 tonne, combat aircraft category. The concept of a medium, multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) was invented out of thin air — advanced air forces subscribe to only the light and heavy types of fighter-bomber planes — to meet a non-existent requirement to be filled by a Western warplane.
This goal was finessed and the original Air Staff Qualitative Requirements (ASQRs) modified in 2002 by the directorate in air headquarters headed by AL Matheswaran to favour Rafale among the six aircraft in the MMRCA race — the EADS Typhoon Eurofighter, Saab Gripen, Lockheed F-16, Boeing F-18, and the Russian MiG-35.

The official explanation offered for the Rafale tilt during the Manmohan Singh decade was that it realised the strategic objective of 'diversifying' sources of military supply because over-dependence on Russia was imprudent. This flew in the face of common sense and historical record and, worse, exacerbated the logistics nightmare for the Air Force, especially in crises and war, with a mind boggling array of imported aircraft in its inventory — at last count over 27 different varieties, each requiring a separate supply line of spare parts and specialised support infrastructure.
Moreover, whether there is one aircraft or 200 of any given type, the investment in building up the repair and servicing infrastructure in far-flung air bases will be the same — humongous! The enormity of the logistics problems spawned by a too diverse inventory of planes is beginning to dawn on the IAF. For the first time a former chief, Air Chief Marshal Anil Tipnis has voiced concern.

The rationale of diversification doesn’t stand up to historical scrutiny. Russia has never sanctioned India and stopped the flow of spares and servicing support for its hardware in Indian military’s employ. What spares shortages have been experienced is because the Indian military has yet to understand the Russian system of indentation of spares.

This is not the case with the Western suppliers, with the United States, in particular, proving an extremely unreliable and punitive source. It has frequently imposed sanctions on India, cut off spares and grounded Indian capability, as happened, for instance, with the Indian Navy’s Sea King anti-submarine helicopter fleet after the 1998 nuclear tests.

In this context, the United Kingdom, Germany and France are equally susceptible to American pressure to tow its line. Around 40 percent of components and technology packages in Sweden’s Gripen is sourced to US companies. Washington can thus at any time stymie India’s military forces and who knows the stranglehold it could have in case the government follows through on its inclination to buy the F-16 or F-18.
These are the sorts of reasons that persuaded former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to be partial to the cost-effective option of enlarging the Su-30MKI force instead of getting embroiled in the MMRCA/Rafale deal.

Parrikar’s successor, Nirmala Sitharaman, has been vocal these past few weeks, giving interviews in a bid to staunch the criticism and stop the Rafale from becoming for the BJP what Bofors is for the Congress — the perennial sword of Damocles.

Sitharaman justified buying only 36 aircraft from France and that too without any transfer of technology (ToT) for almost the same amount as the cost of 126 Rafale as part of the MMRCA transaction that would have permitted 108 of this aircraft to be built in India with ToT. The original deal, she contends, was bad because the aircraft would not have been available for urgent induction.

Except, by her own lights the IAF will not be flying all 36 Rafale jets before 2022. But this is around the time that the first of the India-assembled aircraft would have been inducted. She brushed aside the scepticism about just two squadrons — too few aircraft to be used effectively — by saying there is a tender to be issued for 100 more of such aircrafts for production in India.

Given the controversy, Rafale will stand no chance of increasing its numbers in IAF, not even with ToT. That will mean an altogether new but still more dated single-engine aircraft from the MMRCA sweepstakes of the early 2000s (Eurofighter or F-16 or F-18 or Gripen or MiG-35) with yet another separate logistics set up and a rocketing price tag for a force of essentially antique aircraft entering the 2030s and 2040s. This is absurd, but try telling the IAF or the government that.

On its part, the IAF rationalises the small offtake of Rafale jets by talking of the Beyond Visual Range (BVR) weapons such as the Meteor air-to-air missile on board the Rafale as giving it uncommon punch. The trouble is the greater the stand-off range from which these BVR missiles are fired, the more likely they are to miss the target. If BVR ordnance are as effective as they are cracked up to be, then why is it that the 5th and 6th generation combat aircraft are emphasising their enhanced manoeuvring ability? This last would suggest that BVR missiles can be easily countered by good pilots on fast, agile, platforms.

As regards the charge of the government was favouring Anil Ambani, Sitharaman’s view that Dassault decided on its own to choose Reliance Defence as its strategic partner was refuted by a Dassault representative.

The minister’s defence of the deal for 36 Rafale jets is not credible. But is her rationale as to why the multi-billion dollar S-400 deal has no technology offsets, any more so? She says that negotiating technology offsets is time consuming and the immediate need for it led to the government fast-tracking a straightforward buy minus offsets.

In the Rafale case, the buy was likewise justified in terms of an oppressive timeline, but the outcome in both cases is that India has paid good money for no technology whatsoever. This is at a time when China too has acquired a few S-400 units and is expected to reverse-engineer this system inside of a decade, field it, and to pass it to its partners, like Pakistan.

With the defence procurement system titled towards importing arms, India’s status as an arms dependency is preserved. This gives the impression that the Make in India programme, as many long ago suspected, is only an empty slogan.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/t...ve-indias-defence-sector-an-edge-3049861.html
 

TraderRavi

low risk profile
To get girls to college, this couple bought a bus with their PF money

Avijit Ghosh


Two years ago, paediatrician Rameshwar Prasad Yadav was driving to Churi, his village in Rajasthan, when he saw four girls standing by the road in the pouring rain. His wife Tarawati offered them a lift. In the conversation that followed the couple learnt that the girls went to a college in Kotputli, the closest town about 18km away, but their attendance was awfully low. Though it doesn't rain too often in this part of the country, the girls usually had to trudge 3 to 6km on a hot and dusty road — stones are mined in the area — before reaching the public bus stop. "The boys misbehave with us on the bus," one student told them.

The story touched their hearts. "After we reached home, my wife asked me, ‘Apan kuchh kar sakte hain kya (can we do something for them)?" The doctor replied with another question: "If our own daughter was alive today, how much would we have spent on her education and wedding?" "Around Rs 20 lakh," she estimated.

"I decided to buy a bus for them," says Yadav. The government doctor took Rs 17 lakh from his general provident fund — 75% of the total — added Rs 2 lakh from his savings and bought a white Tata Starbus for Rs 19 lakh. The bus provides free rides to and from college for the girls of Churi and the villages of Pawala, Kayampura Baas and Banethi in central Rajasthan's Jaipur district. Yadav invited the four girls of that life-changing monsoon afternoon in 2016 to inaugurate it. "After our daughter's death, there was a sense of loss. But now there's is a feeling of fulfilment," says Tarawati.

The couple married young and had a daughter, Hemlata, when Tarawati was 18. In 1976, Yadav was preparing for the medical entrance test when his six-month-old daughter caught a fever.

My wife took her to a doctor who gave her an injection.
Her body turned blue and she died soon after," he remembers. It was a loss he struggled to overcome. "We wanted a daughter but had three sons thereafter. Now, I feel I have 50 Hemlatas," he says.

The 40-seater is a boon for the girls who hated the overloaded public buses and the harassment they faced every day. The daily discomfort affected their attendance records. "Parents would ask why they needed to go to college every day," says Yamini Chaturvedi, who teaches home science. She recounts the case of a poor parent who was wary of sending his daughter to college unaccompanied. "He would call to check if the lecturer had arrived and only then send her," she says.

With the ‘nishulka beti vahini' ferrying them, the girls are showing up for class in larger numbers. Aman Verma, a BA second-year student in Kotputli's Shrimati Pana Devi Girls College, says she saves Rs 40 and one hour every day. "My attendance has almost doubled,"
says Aman, whose father lost a leg in an accident and whose mother works as a farmhand.


Retired teacher Vishnu Dutt says he is no longer worried about how his three daughters will get home from college. Surendra Singh Tanwar of Baneti says, "But for the bus, many girls might have dropped out."


In an area where parents worry about the safety of girls, even selecting the bus driver required careful thought. Yadav hit upon an ingenious idea. Four drivers from neighbouring villages had applied for the job. He asked the parents of all 37 girls who had registered for the bus service — the number has swelled to 62 since — to name the driver they preferred. "Thirty-four of them named Laxman Singh," he says. Aging yet spindly, Singh is under instructions not to let any male step inside the bus. "Not even me. Once when driving the girls home, he ignored me on the road. I rewarded him Rs 100," says Yadav.


The doctor, who runs a private practice about 50km away in Neem Ka Thana after retiring from government service last July, is aggrieved that he has to pay road tax. "I spend Rs 36,000 every month on diesel, salary of the driver and conductor. The authorities have waived the toll, but I still pay Rs 5,000 as road tax every month. I have written to the authorities to waive it but it's futile," he says.


The bus, now a year old, has given wings to the dreams of girls like Pooja of Baneti who wants to join Delhi Police. Aman wants to be a nurse. Kajal wants to join the Army. It is also a message. "I want the bus to motivate others to do positive things and discover the joys of giving," says Yadav. He drives a finely-aged 12-year-old Maruti 800.




Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
 

TraderRavi

low risk profile
Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful and heart touching article, @TraderRavi bhai. :up:
Print media/ TV channel ko aisi news dikhana chahiye taki aur log bhi motivate ho sake. But they are busy in showing jhand netas/murders/ jhagda fasad/sensational news/viral crap videos etc.
How happy that doctor must be now, samaj ke liye kuch accha kiya. kudos to him.
 
Print media/ TV channel ko aisi news dikhana chahiye taki aur log bhi motivate ho sake. But they are busy in showing jhand netas/murders/ jhagda fasad/sensational news/viral crap videos etc.
How happy that doctor must be now, samaj ke liye kuch accha kiya. kudos to him.
Brother I have exactly the same feelings. Such positive news should be spread all around. These days most doctors are living the life as hell, because most of them have become totally blood sucking parasites and they just treat the patients as MURGA from whom they have to suck out maximum possible blood, without bothering about anything at all. They give wrong medicines, do non needed operations and what not !

It is such a pleasant feeling to see that all doctors are not like them. The doctor in the article is a true hero.
Thank you so much again for sharing this.

Best wishes for your trading.

PS: bhai, please try to control your trading, when you deviate from the rules. I have noticed that most often you give up all your profits, in just a couple of trades. I personally feel bad, every time I see such post of yours. I feel like - o teri ke, ravi bhai ne to fir see sara maal gava diya in 2-3 trades main hi, fir se gayi bhains pani mein !

If you can somehow follow strict rules of RISK MANAGEMENT and prevent your loses from become big, then you would do real good. I know it is hard to control, but you can do it.
Best Regards