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One Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the legal strategy is confidential, said the Israeli government is planning a defense of the Gaza operation and that counter-claims, including against the administration of President Mahmoud Abbas, could follow if the ICC launches a case. "We are talking about terrorism involving officials, security personnel and others, from his administration, and emanating from areas under his control," the official said.

ICC membership has been described by diplomats and officials as the Palestinian "nuclear option" because it is the key leverage the Palestinians hold in negotiations. It would also expose the Palestinians themselves to possible prosecution. Nearly a month of fighting in Gaza "left us no choice" but to seek a case against Israel at the ICC, Palestinian Foreign Minister Raid al-Malki said on Tuesday after meeting with prosecutors to discuss joining the court. "An investigation by the ICC is becoming crucial in the absence of a real system of accountability, due to the existence of a pervasive culture of impunity given to Israel and resulting from the lack of action by the international community," he said. Malki said "there is no difficulty for us to show or build the case. Israel is in clear violation of international law."

The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu’s apparent disrespect for the US leadership was particularly offensive to Secretary of State John Kerry, who over the past month had made frenzied efforts on Israel’s behalf on the world stage — making dozens of calls to world leaders to convince them to oppose a UN Security Council resolution which would have set a timeframe for the establishment of a Palestinian state. “The secretary’s patience is not infinite,” a source close to Kerry told the Post. “The bilateral relationship is unshakable. But playing politics with that relationship could blunt Secretary Kerry’s enthusiasm for being Israel’s primary defender.”

Israel is scheduled to hold elections on March 17. Netanyahu confirmed Thursday that he would address Congress in early March. He was initially slated to speak on February 11, but changed the date so he could attend the AIPAC conference.

“I look forward to the opportunity to express before the joint session Israel’s vision for a joint effort to deal with [Islamist terrorism and Iran’s nuclear program], and to emphasize Israel’s commitment to the special bond between our two democracies,” Netanyahu said, according to the statement.

First, they target a Muslim: not due to any evidence of intent or capability to engage in terrorism, but rather for the “radical” political views he expresses. In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the FBI is a very young (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of mastering basic life functions, let alone carrying out a serious terror attack, and has no known involvement with actual terrorist groups. They then find another Muslim who is highly motivated to help disrupt a “terror plot”: either because they’re being paid substantial sums of money by the FBI or because (as appears to be the case here) they are charged with some unrelated crime and are desperate to please the FBI in exchange for leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the informant a detailed attack plan, and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry it out, and the informant then shares all of that with the target. Typically, the informant also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry out the FBI-designed plot. In some instances where the target refuses to go along, they have their informant offer huge cash inducements to the impoverished target. Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad and permissive interpretation of “entrapment” that it could almost never be successfully invoked. As AP noted last night, “defense arguments have repeatedly failed with judges, and the stings have led to many convictions.”

There are countless similar cases where the FBI triumphantly disrupts its own plots, causing people to be imprisoned as terrorists who would not and could not have acted on their own. Trevor Aaronson has comprehensively covered what amounts to the FBI’s own domestic terror network, and has reported that “nearly half [of all DOJ terrorism] prosecutions involved the use of informants, many of them incentivized by money (operatives can be paid as much as $100,000 per assignment) or the need to work off criminal or immigration violation.” He documents “49 [terrorism] defendants [who] participated in plots led by an agent provocateur—an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.” In 2012, Petra Bartosiewicz in The Nation reviewed the post-9/11 body of terrorism cases and concluded: Nearly every major post-9/11 terrorism-related prosecution has involved a sting operation, at the center of which is a government informant. In these cases, the informants — who work for money or are seeking leniency on criminal charges of their own — have crossed the line from merely observing potential criminal behavior to encouraging and assisting people to participate in plots that are largely scripted by the FBI itself. Under the FBI’s guiding hand, the informants provide the weapons, suggest the targets and even initiate the inflammatory political rhetoric that later elevates the charges to the level of terrorism.

Thousands of Venezuelans filled the streets of the capital on Sunday in support of a new constitutional enabling law that authorizes President Maduro to pass legislation in defense against U.S. threats to national sovereignty, which was approved in a special session of the National Assembly that very day. Waving banners that read “peace” and “Yankees go home,” the seemingly endless columns of demonstrators reached Miraflores Palace, where they were addressed by President of the Republic Nicolas Maduro. 

The last several days have seen large marches in solidarity with Venezuela staged in capitals throughout the world, including Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Spain, China, and Russia. This mood of popular repudiation of U.S. aggression against Venezuela by international civil society was reflected at the regional level in a UNASUR statement rejecting U.S. interference and calling for dialogue. 

German foreign policy experts are united in their view of Breedlove as a hawk. "I would prefer that Breedlove's comments on political questions be intelligent and reserved," says Social Democrat parliamentarian Niels Annen, for example. "Instead, NATO in the past has always announced a new Russian offensive just as, from our point of view, the time had come for cautious optimism." Annen, who has long specialized in foreign policy, has also been frequently dissatisfied with the information provided by NATO headquarters. "We parliamentarians were often confused by information regarding alleged troop movements that were inconsistent with the information we had," he says. The pressure on Obama from the Republicans, but also from his own political camp, is intense. Should the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine not hold, it will likely be difficult to continue refusing Kiev's requests for shipments of so-called "defensive weapons." And that would represent a dramatic escalation of the crisis. Moscow has already begun issuing threats in anticipation of such deliveries. "Any weapons deliveries to Kiev will escalate the tensions and would unhinge European security," Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's national security council, told the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday.

The German government, meanwhile, is doing what it can to influence Breedlove. Sources in Berlin say that conversations to this end have taken place in recent weeks. But there are many at NATO headquarters in Brussels who are likewise concerned about Breedlove's statements. On Tuesday of last week, Breedlove's public appearances were an official item on the agenda of the North Atlantic Council's weekly lunch meeting. Several ambassadors present criticized Breedlove and expressed their incredulity at some of the commander's statements. The government in Berlin is concerned that Breedlove's statements could harm the West's credibility. The West can't counter Russian propaganda with its own propaganda, "rather it must use arguments that are worthy of a constitutional state." Berlin sources also say that it has become conspicuous that Breedlove's controversial statements are often made just as a step forward has been made in the difficult negotiations aimed at a political resolution. Berlin sources say that Germany should be able to depend on its allies to support its efforts at peace.

A mixture of political argumentation and military propaganda is necessary. But for months now, many in the Chancellery simply shake their heads each time NATO, under Breedlove's leadership, goes public with striking announcements about Russian troop or tank movements. To be sure, neither Berlin's Russia experts nor BND intelligence analysts doubt that Moscow is supporting the pro-Russian separatists. The BND even has proof of such support. But it is the tone of Breedlove's announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO -- and by extension, the entire West -- in danger of losing its credibility.

Although President Obama has decided for the time being to give European diplomacy a chance, hawks like Breedlove or Victoria Nuland are doing what they can to pave the way for weapons deliveries. "We can fight against the Europeans, fight against them rhetorically," Nuland said during a private meeting of American officials on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of February.

In reporting on the meeting later, the German tabloid Bild reported that Nuland referred to the chancellor's early February trip to Moscow for talks with Putin as "Merkel's Moscow stuff." No wonder, then, that people in Berlin have the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military's ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. "We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations," said one Berlin official.

uland, who is seen as a possible secretary of state should the Republicans win back the White House in next year's presidential election, is an important voice in US policy concerning Ukraine and Russia.

She is also very direct. She can be very keen and entertaining, but has been known to take on an undiplomatic tone -- and has not always been wrong to do so. Mykola Asarov, who was prime minister under toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, recalls that Nuland basically blackmailed Yanukovych in order to prevent greater bloodshed in Kiev during the Maidan protests. "No violence against the protesters or you'll fall," Nuland told him according to Asarov. She also, he said, threatened tough economic and political sanctions against both Ukraine and the country's leaders. According to Asarov, Nuland said that, were violence used against the protesters on Maidan Square, information about the money he and his cronies had taken out of the country would be made public.

Nuland has also been open -- at least internally -- about her contempt for European weakness and is famous for having said "Fuck the EU" during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014. Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus. When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to discuss their strategy for breaking Europe's resistance to arming Ukraine

On the seventh floor of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in the heart of Munich, it was Nuland who began coaching. "While talking to the Europeans this weekend, you need to make the case that Russia is putting in more and more offensive stuff while we want to help the Ukrainians defend against these systems," Nuland said. "It is defensive in nature although some of it has lethality."

Breedlove complemented that with the military details, saying that moderate weapons aid was inevitable -- otherwise neither sanctions nor diplomatic pressure would have any effect. "If we can increase the cost for Russia on the battlefield, the other tools will become more effective," he said. "That's what we should do here." In Berlin, top politicians have always considered a common position vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but the dispute is a fundamental one -- and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action. Additionally, the trans-Atlantic partners also have differing goals. Whereas the aim of the Franco-German initiative is to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, it is Russia that concerns hawks within the US administration. They want to drive back Moscow's influence in the region and destabilize Putin's power. For them, the dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow.

But virtually ignored by the American mainstream media was a bombshell allegation by Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet. On Feb. 26, 2014, Paet—no friend of Russia’s—said in an intercepted and later authenticated phone call: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind [the] snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” What Paet called “the new coalition” is essentially the West-leaning Ukrainian government that succeeded Yanukovych. (Please see the full transcript of the conversation here, the most relevant 48 seconds here, and audio of the entire conversation here.) Getting It Right In such conflicts, the truth is one of the first casualties.

For an American media outlet willing to tackle this issue, one has to turn to The National Interest, a specialized journal on international relations. Although its parent, The Center for the National Interest, was originally called The Nixon Center—hardly a left-wing group—it recently published “Ukraine Exposed: Kiev’s Authoritarianism” by James Carden, who served as an advisor to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the State Department from 2011 to 2012. Questioning U.S. policy in Ukraine, Carden wrote: From the very start of the Ukraine crisis, Washington’s neoconservative lobby has sought to downplay the less appealing aspects of the government that came to power in Kiev in February. … But examples of the new authoritarianism gripping Kiev have become tougher to miss in recent months … Carden goes on to highlight a case in point. In October, Poroshenko signed a decree establishing October 14 as an official “Day of Ukrainian Defenders” to commemorate the founding of the Ukrainian Insurrectionist Army, known as the UPA, during World War II. Carden then notes:

As the historian Halik Kochanski has noted, the UPA worked hand in hand with Poland’s Nazi occupiers, killing, to take but one example, nearly 10,000 Poles over the night of July 11-12, 1943. “A feature of the UPA action,” according to Kochanski, “was its sheer barbarity. They were not content merely to shoot their victims but often tortured them first or desecrated their bodies afterwards.” … Don’t let anyone tell you Russia has a monopoly on “disinformation.” Thus, in its zeal to legitimize Poroshenko’s anti-Russian government in Kiev, the mainstream American media managed to ignore his commemoration of former Ukrainian atrocities. Under the Nuclear Cloud

The Risks of Ignorance

Although Miliband told MPs that detainees had not been held on Diego Garcia, others have contradicted this assertion.Manfred Nowak, as United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said he had received "credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island" that CIA detainees had been held there between 2002 and 2003.General Barry McCaffrey, a former head of Southcom, the US military's southern command, has twice stated publicly that Diego Garcia has been used by the US to hold prisoners, saying in one radio interview in May 2004: "We're probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq."In 2003, Time magazine quoted "a regional intelligence official" as saying that a man accused of plotting the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing was being interrogated on Diego Garcia. Five years later the magazine reported that a CIA counter-terrorism official said a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being held and interrogated on the island.In August 2008, the Observer reported that former US intelligence officers "unofficially told senior Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón that Mustafa Setmarian, a Spanish-based Syrian accused of running terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, was taken to Diego Garcia in late 2005 and held there for months".

These accounts represent a cross section of the hacker community and security scene. In addition to monitoring multiple accounts affiliated with Anonymous, GCHQ monitored the tweets of Kevin Mitnick, who was sent to prison in 1999 for various computer and fraud related offenses. The U.S. Government once characterized Mitnick as one of the world’s most villainous hackers, but he has since turned security consultant and exploit broker. Among others, GCHQ monitored the tweets of reverse-engineer and Google employee, Thomas Dullien. Fellow Googler Tavis Ormandy, from Google’s vulnerability research team Project Zero, is featured on the list, along with other well known offensive security researchers, including Metasploit’s HD Moore and James Lee (aka Egypt) together with Dino Dai Zovi and Alexander Sotirov, who at the time both worked for New York-based offensive security company, Trail of Bits (Dai Zovi has since taken up a position at payment company, Square). The list also includes notable anti-forensics and operational security expert “The Grugq.” GCHQ monitored the tweets of former NSA agents Dave Aitel and Charlie Miller, and former Air Force intelligence officer Richard Bejtlich as well as French exploit vendor, VUPEN (who sold a one year subscription for its binary analysis and exploits service to the NSA in 2012).

Documents published with this article: LOVELY HORSE – GCHQ Wiki Overview INTOLERANT – Who Else Is Targeting Your Target? Collecting Data Stolen by Hackers – SIDtoday  HAPPY TRIGGER/LOVELY HORSE/Zool/TWO FACE – Open Source for Cyber Defence/Progress NATO Civilian Intelligence Council – Cyber Panel – US Talking Points

The U.S., U.K. and Canadian governments characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents. In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. “Hackers are stealing the emails of some of our targets… by collecting the hackers’ ‘take,’ we . . .  get access to the emails themselves,” reads one top secret 2010 National Security Agency document. These and other revelations about the intelligence agencies’ reliance on hackers are contained in documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents—which come from the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters agency and NSA—shed new light on the various means used by intelligence agencies to exploit hackers’ successes and learn from their skills, while also raising questions about whether governments have overstated the threat posed by some hackers.

For more on the private thoughts and the presidency of the 41st president, watch Fox News Reporting -- Destiny and Power -- The Private Diaries of George Herbert Walker Bush. The new special airs Friday Nov. 6 at 10 p.m. ET on Fox News.

In December 2014, Turkish intelligence services helped to set up camps in Turkey, particularly in Hatay Province, to gather illegal migrants and provide training in preparation for the dispatch of extremist gangs to Syria. In January 2015, the Turkish MIT was involved in the operation to merge three terrorist bands, Osman Gazi, Omer bin Abdulaziz and Omer Mukhtar, into a group called the Sultan Abdulhamid Brigade, of which Omer Abdullah was appointed commander. The members of this group are trained in a camp in Bayır-Bucak in Turkey under the leadership of instructors from special operations units of the Turkish Armed Forces general command and MIT personnel. The activities of the Sultan Abdulhamid Brigade are coordinated with the activities of Jabhat al-Nusrah fighters in the north of the Syrian province of Latakia.

It is well known that on 21 September 2015, in the Syrian town of Tell Rifaat, representatives of the Syrian opposition who had received military training at a camp in Kırşehir in Turkey had delivered weapons to Jabhat al-Nusrah fighters. Deliveries of weapons to terrorist groups in Syria are reportedly still taking place, profiting from the facilities of Turkish-based foundations İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ve İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH — Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief), İmkander and Öncü Nesil İnsani Yardım Derneği.

Supplies of various forms of weapons, military equipment and ammunition are arriving from abroad via the Turkish port of İskenderun. Military equipment and supplies are transported from there through Hatay Province (Öncüpinar border crossing) to Aleppo and Idlib in Syria using vehicles belonging to IHH, İmkander and Öncü Nesil with the following Turkish registrations: 33 SU 317, 06 DY 7807, 33 SU 540, 33 SU 960, 42 GL 074 and 31 R 5487. Within Syria, the weapons and ammunition are distributed to Turkmen gangs and Jabhat al-Nusrah units.

On 15 September 2014, representatives of IHH brought supplies of weapons and medicines from Bursa through the Ceylanpınar border crossing (Reyhanlı district) by vehicle into Syria for ISIL groups. This shipment was followed and escorted through Turkey by a vehicle carrying MIT personnel.

Last week Syria’s First Deputy Prime Minister Faisal Mikdad reiterated that the government was ready to immediately proceed with attempts to find a political settlement with what he describes as a “worthy national opposition”. Mikdad said: “We are ready to immediately sit down at the negotiating table with the worthy national opposition, but not with the opposition connected with external forces,” the agency quotes him as saying. “We are prepared to take part in the work of four groups to seek ways out of the conflict set up at the initiative of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.” One of the most persistent points of contention between the Syrian government and the foreign-backed, foreign-based opposition groups is the opposition’s demand for the formation of a transitional government. While the Syrian government does not reject such a transitional government on an a priori basis, it insists that it has no constitutional mandate to form any government without involving the Syrian electorate.

Last week, House Republicans issued a report portraying as reckless and illegal Mr. Obama’s decision in May 2014 to swap Sergeant Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees who were being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

On Wednesday, December 2, the Speaker of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), Yuli Edelstein commented on the EU directive during a special session of the German Bundestags (Parliamentary) Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Defense Committee. Edelstein denounced the EU directive as “unfortunate” and complained that the EU provides fertile ground for the international Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Edelstein especially denounced measures such as economic and academic boycotts as “improper”. Israel has occupied large swaps of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Lebanese Sheba Farm Area since the 1967 “six days war”. Israel continues the occupation in defiance of multiple UN resolutions as well as international and humanitarian law. Israel has officially stated that it plans to permanently annex the Syrian Golan Heights. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for example, stated that Israel and the Golan are part and parcel, and that the international community should accept the annexation as a fact. It is noteworthy that there has been a discovery of major Syrian oil resources in the Golan Heights. Entrepreneurs with vested interests include the US-based Genie Energy. Members of the “think tank” are, among others, Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, Bill Richardson, Jacob Lord Rothschild, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Summers and Michael Steinhardt who all are members of the Strategic Advisory Board of a Newark, New Jersey-based oil and gas group with the name, Genie Energy.

Late November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel would not concede one meter of the occupied Palestinian West Bank’s Area C. Israel is providing support for the Syrian Al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusrah and other jihadist mercenary forces via the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Al-Nusrah insurgents are also known for using the Israeli occupied Lebanese Sheba Farms area to infiltrate into Lebanon, and especially Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.