Bonyduck Campersang
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2022
- Messages
- 2,816
Looks like the attack was in Syria, not Jordan
Middle East thread
- Thread starter Bonyduck Campersang
- Start date
So this is the operation that the president officially declared was "only for the oil"?
Estebonrober
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2017
- Messages
- 5,867
It is not okay that US Cent Com is misreporting this kind of thing...
Plains-Cow
Best Resource; Always Wins
I love hummus.
Phone messages reveal detained British mothers fear death in Syrian camp
British mothers held in a prison camp in north-east Syria fear that they may die in detention after an “alarming” deterioration in living conditions.
Their testimony – revealed in a series of WhatsApp messages seen by the Guardian – will place fresh pressure on the UK government to repatriate them and their children.
An estimated 60 Britons are in Roj, including Shamima Begum, who left London in 2015 to join Islamic State in Syria as a teenager. Of these, about 40 are children, with most aged under 10 and detained indefinitely in the camp since the collapse of Islamic State four years ago.
Most European countries, including France and Spain, along with the US, have repatriated their citizens to face justice, concerned about the inhumane conditions, and that not bringing them home undermines global efforts to fight terrorism.
By contrast, the British government has stripped most of the women of their citizenship and, Australia aside, is the last western country to routinely block the return of families linked to Islamic State.
Cornett said: “These are essentially internment camps, they have no freedom of movement, they cannot leave, their communications are extremely circumscribed. These are detention facilities.”
In July, a UN expert issued a report after visiting Roj warning countries of their need to repatriate the women and children, highlighting their “absolute obligation to protect the right to life of their nationals”.
There are horrible first hand stories in the article that I have copied over.
British mothers held in a prison camp in north-east Syria fear that they may die in detention after an “alarming” deterioration in living conditions.
Their testimony – revealed in a series of WhatsApp messages seen by the Guardian – will place fresh pressure on the UK government to repatriate them and their children.
An estimated 60 Britons are in Roj, including Shamima Begum, who left London in 2015 to join Islamic State in Syria as a teenager. Of these, about 40 are children, with most aged under 10 and detained indefinitely in the camp since the collapse of Islamic State four years ago.
Most European countries, including France and Spain, along with the US, have repatriated their citizens to face justice, concerned about the inhumane conditions, and that not bringing them home undermines global efforts to fight terrorism.
By contrast, the British government has stripped most of the women of their citizenship and, Australia aside, is the last western country to routinely block the return of families linked to Islamic State.
Cornett said: “These are essentially internment camps, they have no freedom of movement, they cannot leave, their communications are extremely circumscribed. These are detention facilities.”
In July, a UN expert issued a report after visiting Roj warning countries of their need to repatriate the women and children, highlighting their “absolute obligation to protect the right to life of their nationals”.
There are horrible first hand stories in the article that I have copied over.
Megaprojects in the Desert Drain Saudi Arabia’s Cash
BY ELIOT BROWN AND CHELSEY DULANEY
Saudi Arabia has been a conveyor belt of flashy spending plans over the past year: a $48 billion property development anchored by a quarter-mile tall cube; a global airline to rival aviation giants; a merger with the PGA Tour; a $100 billion investment in chips and electronics.
It is all getting rather expensive. The country’s sovereign-wealth fund, which is tasked with these initiatives, last month said its cash levels as of September had fallen by about three-quarters to about $15 billion, the lowest since December 2020, when the fund began reporting the data. To keep the spending taps open, the kingdom has turned to a tool it has shunned in recent decades: borrowing. It also plans another gargantuan sale of stock in the country’s crown jewel, oil behemoth Saudi Aramco, according to people familiar with the sale. The supersize spending and borrowing underscore Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s expansive ambitions for the country and show how they could face fiscal strains in a world of elevated interest rates and moderate oil prices. The kingdom is now halfway through an economic development plan called Vision 2030, which aims to turn Saudi Arabia into an economically diverse powerhouse. Prince Mohammed has described his vision to remake the Middle East into “the new Europe.”
Saudi Arabia ordered last spring $35 billion of jets from Boeing, half for the new airline. The sovereign-wealth fund has shaken the economics of professional golf and soccer through a proposed merger of its LIV Golf and the PGA Tour and weighty offers to poach Premier League soccer players for the local Saudi league. There are also new commitments, including a plan to spend $38 billion developing an esports and videogame sector and to create a homegrown electric-car manufacturing industry. Vision 2030, paired with social liberalization moves such as the integration of women into the workforce and a more activist foreign policy, have been signatures of Prince Mohammed’s de facto rule over the country of 36 million people. Among the most expensive elements are an array of what he calls “gigaprojects.” They include New Murabba, a Riyadh development with the giant cube, and a yacht resort on the Red Sea. The most notable is a planned sci-fi-like city of nine million called Neom that features a pair of mirror-glass-covered, 110-mile-long buildings taller than the Empire State Building with a $500 billion price tag.
Much of the spending is only just ramping up.
A $62 billion Riyadh gigaproject called Diriyah is a sea of construction cranes, while armies of excavators are digging foundations for the first sections of Neom’s lengthy towers. Neom committed $5 billion last month to build a dam at the base of a planned arid mountain ski resort marked by its heavy reliance on artificial snow-making. Academics who study the fund said it could need hundreds of billions of dollars more from the Saudi state. The 2030 plan calls for the wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund to manage $2 trillion in assets, up from $718 billion as of September. PIF has said it expects to receive more funding from the government. “It’s mind-boggling the amount of stuff that’s trying to be done here,” said Tim Callen, a visiting fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute think tank in Washington. He estimated the government might need to contribute another $270 billion into PIF by 2030. “It will involve taking more risk” fiscally, he said, either by adding debt or lowering reserves that keep the Saudi riyal currency pegged to the dollar. At the same time that spending has ramped up, oil revenues have leveled off. The IMF estimated oil prices would need to be above $86 a barrel in 2023 and $80 a barrel this year to balance the government’s budget. Prices have hovered around $81 over the past year. Despite the huge spending, Saudi Arabia experienced a rare economic contraction in 2023.
This year, Saudi Arabia is expected to run a budget deficit of $21 billion, or about 2% of the country’s gross domestic product. Riyadh projects it will run small annual deficits through 2026, a change from a previous forecast for surpluses.
To make up the gap, Saudi Arabia started the year with two massive debt sales. In early January the government caught investors off guard with a $12 billion bond offering. Just days earlier, it estimated it would borrow around $9 billion from international debt markets in all of 2024. A few weeks later, PIF separately sold $5 billion in bonds. Outside of the U.S., Saudi Arabia has more outstanding dollar-denominated bonds— about $100 billion—than any entity in the world except for the World Bank.
No one is predicting an imminent financial meltdown for the country, which has plenty of fiscal breathing room. Saudi Arabia’s debt is expected to reach 26% of its gross domestic product this year after bottoming out at a level of 1.5% a decade ago, according to Capital Economics.
Such debt levels are conservative— budget-conscious Germany’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands more than twice as high. Foreign-currency reserves at the Saudi central bank are around $400 billion, down from $700 billion in 2015. Saudi Arabia uses that money to maintain its currency’s peg to the dollar and in the past has transferred some to PIF.
‘It’s mind-boggling the amount of stuff that’s trying to be done here.’
Questions about whether the pace of debt issuance will continue have weighed on Saudi bond prices and driven up the interest rate it pays to borrow, said Razan Nasser, a sovereign analyst at T. Rowe Price. The country’s 10-year government bonds trade at a yield of around 5.3%, compared with yields below 5% for similar bonds from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Another way to raise cash: Riyadh has plans to sell 1% of state oil company Aramco to stock-market investors, according to the people familiar with the sale. The move could bring in about $20 billion. Proceeds from Aramco’s $25.6 billion initial public offering in 2019, the largest of all time, largely went to PIF. The sovereign fund owns 8% of Aramco. An Aramco share sale poses trade-offs. It decreases one of the state’s single biggest sources of ongoing revenue: Aramco dividends.
The pace of spending last year made PIF the world’s most active sovereign-wealth fund, according to data firm Global SWF. PIF spent $32 billion across 49 acquisitions and other deals tracked by Global SWF, up 33% from the year before. Saudi Arabian officials said they want outside investors to help share the burden. The country recently implemented judicial changes to make the legal system more friendly to outside money. But direct foreign investment in 2030 projects has been limited. Concerns linger about earlier generations of ambitious developments that later stalled. And some investors remain wary about the reputational stain from the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Karen Young, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said many of the giant projects might be pulled back or stalled as costs mount and their effectiveness becomes more clear, but the state would likely keep pumping money into PIF for the next few years.
“I think you will see a splashout up till 2030, and then there will be a reckoning,” she said.
—Summer Said and Ben Dummett contributed to this article.
BY ELIOT BROWN AND CHELSEY DULANEY
Saudi Arabia has been a conveyor belt of flashy spending plans over the past year: a $48 billion property development anchored by a quarter-mile tall cube; a global airline to rival aviation giants; a merger with the PGA Tour; a $100 billion investment in chips and electronics.
It is all getting rather expensive. The country’s sovereign-wealth fund, which is tasked with these initiatives, last month said its cash levels as of September had fallen by about three-quarters to about $15 billion, the lowest since December 2020, when the fund began reporting the data. To keep the spending taps open, the kingdom has turned to a tool it has shunned in recent decades: borrowing. It also plans another gargantuan sale of stock in the country’s crown jewel, oil behemoth Saudi Aramco, according to people familiar with the sale. The supersize spending and borrowing underscore Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s expansive ambitions for the country and show how they could face fiscal strains in a world of elevated interest rates and moderate oil prices. The kingdom is now halfway through an economic development plan called Vision 2030, which aims to turn Saudi Arabia into an economically diverse powerhouse. Prince Mohammed has described his vision to remake the Middle East into “the new Europe.”
Saudi Arabia ordered last spring $35 billion of jets from Boeing, half for the new airline. The sovereign-wealth fund has shaken the economics of professional golf and soccer through a proposed merger of its LIV Golf and the PGA Tour and weighty offers to poach Premier League soccer players for the local Saudi league. There are also new commitments, including a plan to spend $38 billion developing an esports and videogame sector and to create a homegrown electric-car manufacturing industry. Vision 2030, paired with social liberalization moves such as the integration of women into the workforce and a more activist foreign policy, have been signatures of Prince Mohammed’s de facto rule over the country of 36 million people. Among the most expensive elements are an array of what he calls “gigaprojects.” They include New Murabba, a Riyadh development with the giant cube, and a yacht resort on the Red Sea. The most notable is a planned sci-fi-like city of nine million called Neom that features a pair of mirror-glass-covered, 110-mile-long buildings taller than the Empire State Building with a $500 billion price tag.
Much of the spending is only just ramping up.
A $62 billion Riyadh gigaproject called Diriyah is a sea of construction cranes, while armies of excavators are digging foundations for the first sections of Neom’s lengthy towers. Neom committed $5 billion last month to build a dam at the base of a planned arid mountain ski resort marked by its heavy reliance on artificial snow-making. Academics who study the fund said it could need hundreds of billions of dollars more from the Saudi state. The 2030 plan calls for the wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund to manage $2 trillion in assets, up from $718 billion as of September. PIF has said it expects to receive more funding from the government. “It’s mind-boggling the amount of stuff that’s trying to be done here,” said Tim Callen, a visiting fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute think tank in Washington. He estimated the government might need to contribute another $270 billion into PIF by 2030. “It will involve taking more risk” fiscally, he said, either by adding debt or lowering reserves that keep the Saudi riyal currency pegged to the dollar. At the same time that spending has ramped up, oil revenues have leveled off. The IMF estimated oil prices would need to be above $86 a barrel in 2023 and $80 a barrel this year to balance the government’s budget. Prices have hovered around $81 over the past year. Despite the huge spending, Saudi Arabia experienced a rare economic contraction in 2023.
This year, Saudi Arabia is expected to run a budget deficit of $21 billion, or about 2% of the country’s gross domestic product. Riyadh projects it will run small annual deficits through 2026, a change from a previous forecast for surpluses.
To make up the gap, Saudi Arabia started the year with two massive debt sales. In early January the government caught investors off guard with a $12 billion bond offering. Just days earlier, it estimated it would borrow around $9 billion from international debt markets in all of 2024. A few weeks later, PIF separately sold $5 billion in bonds. Outside of the U.S., Saudi Arabia has more outstanding dollar-denominated bonds— about $100 billion—than any entity in the world except for the World Bank.
No one is predicting an imminent financial meltdown for the country, which has plenty of fiscal breathing room. Saudi Arabia’s debt is expected to reach 26% of its gross domestic product this year after bottoming out at a level of 1.5% a decade ago, according to Capital Economics.
Such debt levels are conservative— budget-conscious Germany’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands more than twice as high. Foreign-currency reserves at the Saudi central bank are around $400 billion, down from $700 billion in 2015. Saudi Arabia uses that money to maintain its currency’s peg to the dollar and in the past has transferred some to PIF.
‘It’s mind-boggling the amount of stuff that’s trying to be done here.’
Questions about whether the pace of debt issuance will continue have weighed on Saudi bond prices and driven up the interest rate it pays to borrow, said Razan Nasser, a sovereign analyst at T. Rowe Price. The country’s 10-year government bonds trade at a yield of around 5.3%, compared with yields below 5% for similar bonds from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Another way to raise cash: Riyadh has plans to sell 1% of state oil company Aramco to stock-market investors, according to the people familiar with the sale. The move could bring in about $20 billion. Proceeds from Aramco’s $25.6 billion initial public offering in 2019, the largest of all time, largely went to PIF. The sovereign fund owns 8% of Aramco. An Aramco share sale poses trade-offs. It decreases one of the state’s single biggest sources of ongoing revenue: Aramco dividends.
The pace of spending last year made PIF the world’s most active sovereign-wealth fund, according to data firm Global SWF. PIF spent $32 billion across 49 acquisitions and other deals tracked by Global SWF, up 33% from the year before. Saudi Arabian officials said they want outside investors to help share the burden. The country recently implemented judicial changes to make the legal system more friendly to outside money. But direct foreign investment in 2030 projects has been limited. Concerns linger about earlier generations of ambitious developments that later stalled. And some investors remain wary about the reputational stain from the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Karen Young, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said many of the giant projects might be pulled back or stalled as costs mount and their effectiveness becomes more clear, but the state would likely keep pumping money into PIF for the next few years.
“I think you will see a splashout up till 2030, and then there will be a reckoning,” she said.
—Summer Said and Ben Dummett contributed to this article.
H4run
Deity
Salman
new Europe in the desert dry-up Saudi economy. He's more fit to become an event organizer than organizing a country, no one know the best way to waste money but brother salman, what else he'll do next I wonder.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,069
No, like or dislike him, he's a smart one, that I have to grant. Saudi Arabia is spending a part of its accumulated dollars, which were of no practical use stashed as US treasuries. And exposed Saudi Arabia to a kind of blackmail: do as we say or we steal all your money. So they spend it inside their country, importing and building stuff.
The lesson has been learned by all.
The lesson has been learned by all.
And what is your source for this?
Lexicus
Deity
Does the US not routinely as a matter of course freeze the US-financial-system-exposed assets of countries that do things we don't like?
Is there a list of to whom and when this has happened?
1200+ pages of this listing only people.
ALPHABETICAL LISTING OF SPECIALLY DESIGNATED NATIONALS AND BLOCKED
PERSONS ("SDN List"):
This publication of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control
("OFAC") is designed as a reference tool providing actual notice of
actions by OFAC with respect to Specially Designated Nationals and
other persons (which term includes both individuals and entities)
whose property is blocked, to assist the public in complying with
the various sanctions programs administered by OFAC. The latest
changes to the SDN List may appear here prior to their publication
in the Federal Register, and it is intended that users rely on
changes indicated in this document. Such changes reflect official
actions of OFAC, and will be reflected as soon as practicable in
the Federal Register under the index heading "Foreign Assets
Control." New Federal Register notices with regard to Specially
Designated Nationals or blocked persons may be published at any
time. Users are advised to check the Federal Register and this
electronic publication routinely for additional names or other
changes to the SDN List.
0DAY TECHNOLOGIES (a.k.a. LIMITED 0DAY TECHNOLOGIES; a.k.a. LLC
ZIROUDEY TEKHNOLODZHIS; a.k.a. "LTD 0DT"), UL. Profsoyuznaya D.
125, Floor Tsokolnyi, Pomeshch. I. Kom. 14, Moscow 117647, Russia;
St. Vvedenskogo, House 23A, Structure 3, etazh 4, Room XIV, Room
62, Rm1b, Moscow 117342, Russia; Website https://0day.llc/;
Organization Established Date 29 Dec 2001; Organization Type: Other
information technology and computer service activities; Target Type
Private Company; Registration ID 5117746070558 (Russia); Tax ID No.
7728795098 (Russia) [RUSSIA-EO14024].
2ND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES (a.k.a. ACADEMY OF NATURAL
SCIENCES; a.k.a. CHAYON KWAHAK-WON; a.k.a. CHE 2 CHAYON KWAHAK-WON;
a.k.a. KUKPANG KWAHAK-WON; a.k.a. NATIONAL DEFENSE ACADEMY; a.k.a.
SANSRI; a.k.a. SECOND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES; a.k.a. SECOND
ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES RESEARCH INSTITUTE), Pyongyang, Korea,
North; Secondary sanctions risk: North Korea Sanctions Regulations,
sections 510.201 and 510.210; Transactions Prohibited For Persons
Owned or Controlled By U.S. Financial Institutions: North Korea
Sanctions Regulations section 510.214 [NPWMD].
3G LOJISTIK VE HAVACILIK HIZMETLARI LTD., No. 3/182 Altintepe
Bagdat Cad. Istasyon Yolu Sok., Istanbul 34840, Turkey; Additional
Sanctions Information - Subject to Secondary Sanctions [SDGT]
[IFSR] (Linked To: MAHAN AIR).
3LOGIC GROUP (a.k.a. OOO NOVYI AI TI PROEKT), Nab. Berezhkovskaya
D. 20, Str. 33, Moscow 121059, Russia; Ul. Nagatinskaya D. 16, Str.
9, Pomeshch. VII, Kom. 15, Office 5, Moscow 115487, Russia; Ul.
Kiyevskaya D. 7, Korp. 2, Pod. 7, Moscow 121059, Russia; Tax ID No.
7724338125 (Russia); Registration Number 1157746958830 (Russia)
[RUSSIA-EO14024].
ALPHABETICAL LISTING OF SPECIALLY DESIGNATED NATIONALS AND BLOCKED
PERSONS ("SDN List"):
This publication of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control
("OFAC") is designed as a reference tool providing actual notice of
actions by OFAC with respect to Specially Designated Nationals and
other persons (which term includes both individuals and entities)
whose property is blocked, to assist the public in complying with
the various sanctions programs administered by OFAC. The latest
changes to the SDN List may appear here prior to their publication
in the Federal Register, and it is intended that users rely on
changes indicated in this document. Such changes reflect official
actions of OFAC, and will be reflected as soon as practicable in
the Federal Register under the index heading "Foreign Assets
Control." New Federal Register notices with regard to Specially
Designated Nationals or blocked persons may be published at any
time. Users are advised to check the Federal Register and this
electronic publication routinely for additional names or other
changes to the SDN List.
0DAY TECHNOLOGIES (a.k.a. LIMITED 0DAY TECHNOLOGIES; a.k.a. LLC
ZIROUDEY TEKHNOLODZHIS; a.k.a. "LTD 0DT"), UL. Profsoyuznaya D.
125, Floor Tsokolnyi, Pomeshch. I. Kom. 14, Moscow 117647, Russia;
St. Vvedenskogo, House 23A, Structure 3, etazh 4, Room XIV, Room
62, Rm1b, Moscow 117342, Russia; Website https://0day.llc/;
Organization Established Date 29 Dec 2001; Organization Type: Other
information technology and computer service activities; Target Type
Private Company; Registration ID 5117746070558 (Russia); Tax ID No.
7728795098 (Russia) [RUSSIA-EO14024].
2ND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES (a.k.a. ACADEMY OF NATURAL
SCIENCES; a.k.a. CHAYON KWAHAK-WON; a.k.a. CHE 2 CHAYON KWAHAK-WON;
a.k.a. KUKPANG KWAHAK-WON; a.k.a. NATIONAL DEFENSE ACADEMY; a.k.a.
SANSRI; a.k.a. SECOND ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES; a.k.a. SECOND
ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES RESEARCH INSTITUTE), Pyongyang, Korea,
North; Secondary sanctions risk: North Korea Sanctions Regulations,
sections 510.201 and 510.210; Transactions Prohibited For Persons
Owned or Controlled By U.S. Financial Institutions: North Korea
Sanctions Regulations section 510.214 [NPWMD].
3G LOJISTIK VE HAVACILIK HIZMETLARI LTD., No. 3/182 Altintepe
Bagdat Cad. Istasyon Yolu Sok., Istanbul 34840, Turkey; Additional
Sanctions Information - Subject to Secondary Sanctions [SDGT]
[IFSR] (Linked To: MAHAN AIR).
3LOGIC GROUP (a.k.a. OOO NOVYI AI TI PROEKT), Nab. Berezhkovskaya
D. 20, Str. 33, Moscow 121059, Russia; Ul. Nagatinskaya D. 16, Str.
9, Pomeshch. VII, Kom. 15, Office 5, Moscow 115487, Russia; Ul.
Kiyevskaya D. 7, Korp. 2, Pod. 7, Moscow 121059, Russia; Tax ID No.
7724338125 (Russia); Registration Number 1157746958830 (Russia)
[RUSSIA-EO14024].
Your link is people/companies
This is nations:
Lexicus
Deity
Okay, well there you go!
The link I posted was on the link you posted, so thanks.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,069
The next time you update your adress with your bank, try putting "Iran" as country of residence and see what happens.
I posted a link up thread that has a list of who and what countries have been sanctioned. The people/company list is quite long (1200+ pages). The country list is less than 30. It is not easy reading. Noting that Iran is one of them is not saying much.
Are you suggesting that "less than 30" is still not a notable list of countries that evidences Lexi's point? The one you originally questioned?
And beyond that, a second question. Do you not think that sanctioning people / companies is a handy way to get around sanctioning countries? I doubt anyone here's got the time to go through 1200+ pages (I certainly don't, so I wouldn't ask it of anyone else), but I'm willing to bet that there's a skew in the countries of origin, overall.
