Gyroscopic Investing

Greg wrote: http://usuncut.com/news/what-americans- ... zi-europe/

Thoughts?

Reub wrote: Bringing in refugees from the Islamic world ensures that we end up just like Paris and Brussels.

Despite the defeat of ISIS, Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters this week that U.S. forces will remain in Syria.

The intention, he said, is to prevent the appearance of "ISIS 2.0."

There are hundreds of U.S. troops in Syria. Pentagon officials say the U.S. is on solid legal ground to be there because the U.N. Security Council endorsed the anti-ISIS mission. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the U.S. presence is "illegitimate."

"There are a lot of questions to ask about the United States' goals in Syria," Lavrov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS. "U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has told me many times that their only goal is to defeat IS."

A change in regime "runs counter to the Geneva agreements and ... assurances that the U.S.'s only goal in Syria is to fight terrorism," Lavrov said.

Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies are demanding the U.S. leave Syria.

The next meeting of the Geneva peace talks is Nov. 28. The U.S. is pressing for the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian Kurds to be included at the negotiating table.

It's unlikely that Assad and the Russians will agree. With Russian and Iranian military assistance, Assad has emerged as the dominant political and military force in Syria with no need to accommodate his opponents.

...

Pentagon officials say the U.S. has one asset to advance its interests in Syria — money. The country needs to be rebuilt and the belief is Russia lacks the will or the resources to do it.

The U.S. is spending money now in Raqqa on what it calls "stabilization," and will likely help elsewhere, but hopes Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states will finance most of the rebuilding — in exchange for a political settlement of the Syrian conflict.

Yet this would seem to run counter to the Trump administration's aversion to "nation-building."

Kriegsspiel wrote:A massive battle between US and Syrian pro-regime forces reportedly killed more than 200 Russians

Desert wrote:

ochotona wrote:I think Drumpf has people who are trading his accounts based on his Tweets. He can move the Dow hundreds of points in a day with a single tweet. What an opportunity for profit potential.

How convenient that he refused to out his assets into a blind trust, like every other recent President.

Yes. He definitely can move the markets with barely-veiled WWIII references. This is what sane people expected from him in this office, and well, now we see it. It's tragically funny ... all so predictable, but somehow people wanted to buy into his carnival barking. So sad. But it won't last much longer.

Desert wrote:

ochotona wrote:

Desert wrote:
Yes. He definitely can move the markets with barely-veiled WWIII references. This is what sane people expected from him in this office, and well, now we see it. It's tragically funny ... all so predictable, but somehow people wanted to buy into his carnival barking. So sad. But it won't last much longer.

It just seems unsustainable. How long can he go on before he just strokes out?

Yeah, I agree. The chaos is unbelievable. We've never seen turnover in WH staff like this. He isn't looking too healthy. I actually hope he makes it through his term and goes back to private life, allowing another Republican to run.

The Thebans, meantime, singly, having many skirmishes with the Spartans in Boeotia, and fighting some battles, not great indeed, but important as training and instructing them, thus had their minds raised, and their bodies inured to labour, and gained both experience and courage by these frequent encounters, insomuch that we have it related that Antalcidas, the Spartan, said to Agesilaus, returning wounded from Boeotia, "Indeed, the Thebans have paid you handsomely for instructing them in the art of war, against their wills.

-Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Pelopidas

[...]a new king of the Mendesian province was proclaimed his successor, and came against Nectanabis with an army of one hundred thousand men. Nectanabis, in his talk with Agesilaus, professed to despise them as newly raised men, who, though many in number, were of no skill in war, being most of them mechanics and tradesmen, never bred to war. To whom Agesilaus answered, that he did not fear their numbers, but did fear their ignorance, which gave no room for employing stratagem against them. Stratagem only avails with men who are alive to suspicion, and, expecting to be assailed, expose themselves by their attempts at defence; but one who has no thought or expectation of anything, gives as little opportunity to the enemy as he who stands stock-still does to a wrestler.

-Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Agesilaus

ochotona wrote:Why did the Brits and Frogs go in with Drumpf?