The Global Cop

President Donald Trump has increased the number of U.S. troops and civilians working for the Department of Defense in the Middle East to 54,180 from 40,517 in the past four months, representing a 33-percent rise.
This number doesn't even account for the big rise in troops stationed in Afghanistan since Trump announced his new strategy for the fight against the Taliban in late August.
...Based on the latest report, published November 17, here are the number of U.S. troops and Department of Defense civilians in each Middle Eastern country: Egypt, 455; Israel, 41; Lebanon, 110; Syria, 1,723; Turkey, 2,265; Jordan, 2,730; Iraq, 9,122; Kuwait, 16,592; Saudi Arabia, 850; Yemen, 14; Oman, 32; United Arab Emirates, 4,240; Qatar, 6,671; Bahrain, 9,335.

Surge in Syria

The Pentagon is likely to announce in the coming days that there are about 2,000 US troops in Syria, rather than the 500 the military has said are in the war-torn country.

Iraq Surge Not Welcome

A faction inside the Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi vowed to target US troops in Iraq if they did not leave the country.
Saraya al-Ashura, a faction of the Shia Hashd al-Shaabi militias, threatened US troops and advisers based in Iraq, warning them to retreat the country or become new targets.
In a televised speech on Tuesday, Abdullatif al-Amidi, a commander from the Saraya al-Ashura, said that “the US has become our direct enemy after the Congress’ decision against some Hashd al-Shaabi factions.”

Surge in Somalia

In a bid to bolster those counterterrorism efforts, President Trump broadened the scope of U.S. airstrikes in Somalia in March. The president designated large parts of the country as areas of active hostilities, reducing the requirement for high-level, interagency vetting of targets before strikes are carried out. Mack says that the additional authority granted by Trump “helps deny terrorists safe havens from which they could attack U.S. citizens or U.S. interests in the regions or our allies.”
But the enhanced authorities also appear to have led to civilian casualties. U.S. and Somali forces conducted a joint raid on the town of Bariire, 30 miles west of Mogadishu, in August. Somali forces killed 10 civilians—including three children—in the raid, prompting protests from the families of those killed, who are members of a powerful clan in Somalia that has traditionally backed the government. AFRICOM confirmed in August that it had taken a “supporting role” in the operation and was investigating allegations of civilian deaths.
Bronwyn Bruton, the deputy director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, says that the enhanced authorities granted by Trump “have been detrimental to the fight in Somalia” by increasing civilian casualties and forcing U.S. forces to take sides in clan warfare.

Libya: Where is the world?

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday he was "horrified" at reports of migrants being sold as slaves, which could amount to crimes against humanity.
In recent days, there has been a growing chorus of condemnation and calls for urgent action from state officials including France and Spain.
Spain's foreign ministry on Wednesday expressed its "deep concern" over the CNN report which shows "an appalling treatment of African immigrants during an alleged auction in Libya." Spain urged Libya to follow the UN against transnational crime and human trafficking, the Foreign Ministry said on its official Twitter account.
French President Emmanuel Macron called the sale of migrants at slave auctions in Libya "a crime against humanity" and vowed to press for sanctions.

FBI: Leftists working with ISIS?

Another big bomb Klein drops in his new book “All Out War” is his publishing of FBI documents warning of violence coming from Antifa and other left-wing groups, which Democrats support. Klein says, “In the FBI report that I have reproduced in full in my book, it says that these violent left wing groups traveled to Europe, met with representatives of al-Qaida and the Islamic State, or ISIS. They also went to Syria and got bomb making instructions and toxic chemical instructions. The FBI has followed these people and continue to follow these people now that they are back in America, and (the FBI) believes that when the 2018 mid-term elections come, things are going to get hotter and hotter in this country politically and that these groups are going to become more and more violent. The FBI has said in this document, I have in this new book, that these left-wing groups, like Antifa, represent the greatest threat to law enforcement since the 1970’s and the Weather Underground.”

Kaepernick does it right

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick traveled to Alcatraz Island to participate in the Indigenous People’s Sunrise Gathering for Thanksgiving Thursday.
The event, also called “Un-Thanksgiving Day,” took place on Alcatraz to remember the group of American Indians who took control of the island prison between 1969-1971 in an attempt to claim the island for their people, reports KTLA.

Today, I was on Alcatraz Island at the Indigenous People’s Sunrise Gathering, in solidarity with those celebrating their culture and paying respects to those that participated in the 19 month occupation of Alcatraz in an effort to force to honor the Treaty of Fort Laramie. pic.twitter.com/KdNtY3dp72

— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) November 24, 2017

The deadliest border

More than 33,000 migrants have died at sea trying to reach European shores this century, making the Mediterranean "by far the world’s deadliest border", the United Nations migration agency said on Friday.
.."It concludes that Europe’s Mediterranean border is by far the world’s deadliest," he said.

So far this year some 161,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe by sea, about 75 percent of them landing in Italy with the rest in Greece, Cyprus and Spain, according to IOM figures. Nearly 3,000 others are dead or missing, it said.