Headlines:

• Alan Greenspan, Former Fed Chair, Goes for the Gold

• Last US, British Forces Airlifted from Afghan Base

• Only 12% of People Killed in US Drone Strikes in Pakistan Identified as Militants, Says Report

Details:

Alan Greenspan, Former Fed Chair, Goes for the Gold

The world has no shortage of doom-saying economists ready to advise investors to stock up on gold against a coming financial catastrophe. Until recently, none of them could claim to be a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. On Wednesday, though, as the Federal Open Market Committee prepared to announce the end of the years-long asset purchase program known as Quantitative Easing, Alan Greenspan, the near-legendary Fed chair whose every utterance used to be parsed by market watchers, spoke before the Council on Foreign Relations and advised listeners that under current conditions, gold is probably a good investment. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Michael S. Derby, "Mr. Greenspan said gold is a good place to put money these days given its value as a currency outside of the policies conducted by governments." Greenspan has been talking up gold in a number of settings lately. But he didn't stop there in his appearance Wednesday. The Fed was about to make a fairly significant announcement about the end of its QE program, under which it has purchased trillions of dollars in assets in an effort to keep interest rates low and stimulate investment. Greenspan weighed in on that program with some surprising comments. The former Fed chairman from 1987 to 2006 said the QE program had failed to achieve its primary goals. As a means of boosting consumer demand, the asset purchase program, he said, "has not worked," though it did a good job of increasing asset prices. Greenspan's decision to publicly analyze the effectiveness of the QE program on the day his former colleagues were expected to announce its completion was remarkable, if only because during his tenure as Fed Chair, he was notorious for his desire to give the financial media little or nothing of substance to analyze about the central bank's decision making process. [The Fiscal Time]

The reality of printing money via quantity easing to solve the world's economic problems in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008 was never going to work. And now one of the staunchest supporters of quantity easing Mr. Greenspan is advocating investing in gold as a hedge against an economic crash. It will not be long before Greenspan and others will be championing the return to the gold standard?

Last US, British Forces Airlifted From Afghan Base

A fleet of planes and helicopters airlifted the last U.S. and British forces from a key base in southern Afghanistan on Monday, a day after the international coalition closed the massive facility and handed it over to the Afghan military. The troops' withdrawal and base closure in the province of Helmand is one of the largest operations in the winding down of the international combat mission in Afghanistan, 13 years after the toppling of the radical, Islamist Taliban regime. Monday's withdrawal operation passed off peacefully as part of a planned drawdown, though there was a sense of deja vu among some soldiers. "It was surreal," said Marine communications officer Captain Anthony Nguyen, 33, of Houston, Texas. "We're not refugees or anything, but it kind of reminding me of scenes of Vietnam, of people running to the helicopters ... just this mad dash to the aircraft," added Nguyen, who is Vietnamese-American. The withdrawal of the remaining U.S. and British troops from the combined base of Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion was carried out over 24 hours of near-continuous flights back and forth between Helmand and Kandahar Air Field, the aviation hub for southern Afghanistan. The Marine Expeditionary Force-Afghanistan is the last Marines unit in the country, while the British forces at Helmand were the Britain's final combat troops. By January 1^st 2015 , there will be only 12,500 foreign forces in the country - 9,800 of them Americans - to advise and train the Afghan security forces that have been built up almost from scratch in recent years. Staff Sergeant Kenneth Oswood of Romney, West Virginia, is one of the few members of the squadron who participated in both the Iraq withdrawal and Monday's Helmand airlift. "It's a lot different this time. ... Closing out Iraq, when we got there, we were told there hadn't been a shot fired in anger at us in years. And then you come here and they are still shooting at us," Oswood said. "It's almost like it's not over here, and we're just kind of handing it over to someone else to fight." [Voice of America]

Humiliated and defeated the crusader forces are leaving Afghanistan with the apparent realization that after 13 years nothing has been achieved, and both Britain and America are hated by the Afghans. It won't be long before the remaining 12500 troops leave Afghanistan with tails between their legs.

Only 12% of People Killed in US Drone Strikes in Pakistan Identified as Militants, Says Report

Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent news organisation based at City University, London, has found that only 12% of victims of US drone strikes in Pakistan could be identified as militants. In a report, released by the organisation, researchers also found that fewer than 4% of those killed have been identified as members of al Qaeda.   The report said that out of the 2,379 known victims of drone strikes between June 2004 and October 2014, 704 have been identified. Only 295 of these were reported to be members of some kind of armed group. The report alleges that of those there were "few corroborating details" to account for those who were solely listed as "militants". More than a third of them were not designated a rank within their militant organisation, and almost 30% were not even linked to a specific group. Only 84 of those designated as militants could be identified as members of al Qaeda, less than 4% of the total number of people killed. The Bureau's findings appear to contradict remarks made by John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, who claimed last year that American drone strikes only targeted "confirmed terrorist targets at the highest level". The report was made as part of the Bureau's ‘Naming the Dead' scheme, a project which aims to compile the names and other details of people killed by CIA drones in Pakistan. A recent strike in October this year has brought the total number of drone attacks up to 400, since the first known strike in 2004. [Source: NewsWeek]

This clearly shows that America is at war with the whole of Islam and the ummah. America's military does not differentiate between militants or civilians, and she acts with impunity while professing the values of freedom and respect for human dignity. The same can be said for America's robotic wars in other Muslim countries like Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. The time has come for the Muslim ummah to rise and stop such attacks by removing the tyrant rulers who aid and abet America in the evil crusade. This can only be done by re-establishing the rightly guided Khilafah "Caliphate" on the ruins of the regimes that side with America and her allies.