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Russia's military build-up in Syria includes a "considerable and growing" naval presence, long-range rockets and a battalion of ground troops backed by Moscow's most modern tanks, the U.S. ambassador to NATO said on Wednesday.Speaking on the eve of a NATO defense ministers meeting to be dominated by Russia's intervention in Syria's civil war, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute said Moscow had managed a "quite impressive" military deployment over the past week to its Syria naval base in Tartous and its army base in Latakia."There is a considerable and growing Russia naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean, more than 10 ships now, which is a bit out of the ordinary," he told a news briefing."The recent Russian reinforcements over the last week or so feature a battalion-size ground force ... There is artillery, there are long-range rocket capabilities, there are air defense capabilities," Lute said.

Western officials say that in strategic terms, Russia's new air strike campaign in Syria appears designed to help reverse rebel gains increasingly endangering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, protect Russian military assets in the country including its sole Mediterranean port, and reassert Moscow’s place as a big international power competing with the United States. "The force that they have deployed down there is actually quite impressive for a rapid deployment of a week or so," Lute said. "(It is) all arms, combined arms, attack aircraft, it is the attack helicopters and artillery, rocket artillery." Russia's ground forces in Syria include some of its most advanced tanks, he added.

rlier this week, we ran a two-parter on the US, Guatemala, corruption, the CIA, genocide, torture, and more. Reader interest was considerable.We now invite you to watch this video of a presentation made by Jennifer Harbury, an American whose late Guatemalan husband, a Mayan indigenous activist, was “disappeared” by the military. After hunger strikes and investigations, she learned that Efraín Bámaca Velásquez had been tortured and then killed — and that the CIA knew all about it. Her story is a powerful one.

Ratcheting up the confrontation over the Syria war, Russia said Monday that its “volunteer” ground forces would join the fight,

The Russian air and ground deployments in Syria challenge the regional policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Obama and NATO.

A Russian ground force could fundamentally alter the conflict, which has left 250,000 people dead and displaced half the country’s population since it started in 2011.Although President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he would not put troops in Syria, the plan for so-called volunteers was disclosed Monday by his top military liaison to the Parliament, Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov. It seemed similar to Russia’s stealth tactic in using soldiers to seize Crimea from Ukraine in March of 2014 and to aid pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine.Moreover, American military officials said they believed that more than 600 Russian military personnel were already on the ground in Syria, not counting aircrews, and that tents for nearly 2,000 people had been seen at Russia’s air base near Latakia, in northwest Syria near the Turkish border.

Even a determined debunker of 9/11 skeptics, while laying out a coherent argument that the official 9/11 Pentagon story is true (and conflating physical evidence with photography), ends up concluding: In this essay I asked what conclusions about the Pentagon attack were supported by physical evidence — primarily post-crash photographs of the site. I found that, in every aspect I considered, this evidence comports with the crash of a Boeing 757. At the same time, the evidence does not conclusively prove that the aircraft was a 757, much less that it was Flight 77. However, that lack of conclusiveness should not be surprising given the systematic suppression of evidence by authorities.

At best, the events of 9/11 represent the catastrophic failure of numerous American agencies, including airport security, air traffic controllers, national air defense command, and the U.S. Air Force. That reality alone is enough to raise suspicions of a cover-up, if only to avoid accountability for lethal incompetence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. At worst, the events of 9/11 were the result of an almost unimaginable criminal conspiracy designed to produce the “new Pearl Harbor” that would enable fans of the New American Century (many of them members of the Bush administration) to take the United States in new, warlike, world-dominating directions (maybe something like a Global War on Terror).

In any event, the Bush administration fought long and hard to prevent any investigation of 9/11 and continued to work to undermine the 9/11 Commission until it produced its flawed report in August 2004. That final report omits any mention, much less explanation, of what Vice President Dick Cheney knew and when he knew it regarding the attack on the Pentagon. The 9/11 Commission knew full well – and chose not to confront – the serious implications of the testimony to the commission by Transportation Secretary Norman Pinetta (May 23, 2003): During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President…the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!??”

A senior federal nuclear expert is urging regulators to shut down California's last operating nuclear plant until they can determine whether the facility's twin reactors can withstand powerful shaking from any one of several nearby earthquake faults.Michael Peck, who for five years was Diablo Canyon's lead on-site inspector, says in a 42-page, confidential report that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not applying the safety rules it set out for the plant's operation.The document, which was obtained and verified by The Associated Press, does not say the plant itself is unsafe. Instead, according to Peck's analysis, no one knows whether the facility's key equipment can withstand strong shaking from those faults — the potential for which was realized decades after the facility was built.

Continuing to run the reactors, Peck writes, "challenges the presumption of nuclear safety."Peck's July 2013 filing is part of an agency review in which employees can appeal a supervisor's or agency ruling — a process that normally takes 60 to 120 days, but can be extended. The NRC, however, has not yet ruled. Spokeswoman Lara Uselding said in emails that the agency would have no comment on the document.The NRC, which oversees the nation's commercial nuclear power industry, and Diablo Canyon owner Pacific Gas and Electric Co., say the nearly three-decade-old reactors, which produce enough electricity for more than 3 million people annually, are safe and that the facility complies with its operating license, including earthquake safety standards.

The disaster preparedness of the world's nuclear plants came into sharp focus in 2011, when the coastal Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan suffered multiple meltdowns after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed its power and cooling systems. The magnitude-9 earthquake was far larger than had been believed possible. The NRC has since directed U.S. nuclear plants to reevaluate seismic risks, and those studies are due by March 2015.The important of such an analysis came into sharp focus on Sunday when a magnitude 6.0-earthquake struck in Northern California's wine country, injuring scores of residents, knocking out power to thousands and toppling wine bottles at vineyards.

Exactly one year ago Obama proposed to take Bashar Al Assad to the woodshed because he had allegedly unleashed a vicious chemical attack on his own citizens. That was all pretext, of course, because even the CIA refused to sign-off on the flimsy case for Assad’s culpability at the time—-a reluctance corroborated since then by the considerable evidence that hundreds of Syrian civilians were murdered during a false flag operation staged by the rebels with help from Turkey. The aim of the rebels, of course, was to activate American tomahawk missiles and bombers in behalf of “regime change”, which was also the stated goal of the Obama Administration. Now the White House is threatening to bomb Syria again, but this time its “regime change” objective has been expanded to include both sides! In 12 short months what had been the allegedly heroic Sunni opposition to the “brutal rule” of the Assad/Alawite minority has transmuted into the “greatest terrorist threat ever”, according to the Secretary of Defense.

Adding to this blinding farce is the warning of Syria’s Foreign Affairs minister that Obama should please to request permission before he rains destruction from the sky on the Opposition—-that is, the opposition to the very same Damascus regime which the White House has vowed to eradicate. Needless to say,  the Washington apparatus is having nothing to do with aiding the enemy of its new enemy:

In fact, there is apparently an option emerging from the bowels of the war machine that calls for an odd/even day plan to bomb both sides, thereby making clear that Washington is an equal opportunity spanker. Apparently, whether you use a 12th century sword or 20th century attack helicopter as a means of rule, you will be bombed by the “indispensable nation”, as Obama put it, adding that “no other nation can do what we do”. Well, that involves some “doing”. According to AP, it appears that Syrian airstrikes are imminent, but could be carried out under the odd/even day plan: “In an effort to avoid unintentionally strengthening the Syrian government, the White House could seek to balance strikes against the Islamic State with attacks on Assad regime targets.” Is any more evidence needed that Washington has gone stark raving mad than even the possibility that such an absurd option could  be under consideration? Has not the imperial city on the Potomac become so inured to its pretensions of global hegemony and to instant resort to deployment of its war machine that any semblance of rationality and coherence has been dissolved?

The Islamic State is a determined, skilful, and lethal enemy. Defeating it again will require hard fighting and strong diplomacy. It will be a massive undertaking, both militarily and politically. It will certainly require a dramatic expansion of air strikes throughout Iraq and Syria. It will also require the deployment of thousands of American forces - primarily Special Forces - to engage directly with moderate Sunnis in both countries and train the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and the Syrian moderate opposition. Effective trainers must fight alongside those they are training in order to sustain their respect and trust. Americans must work directly with local tribes to help them survive against the lethal threat that the Islamic State poses. In Syria, the US must help moderate Sunnis fight Bashar al-Assad while strengthening them against other violent Islamist forces as well. In Iraq we must once again help rebuild trust between the central government and the tribes. None of these tasks can be accomplished from 30,000 feet.

The original BBC Video Report was published by BBC Russian Service on July 23, 2014. In a bitter irony, The BBC is censoring its own news productions.  Why did BBC delete this report by Olga Ivshina? Is it because the BBC team was unable to find any evidence that a rocket was launched in the area that the Ukrainian Security Service (“SBU”) alleges to be the place from which the Novorossiya Militia launched a “BUK” missile? Or is it because every eyewitness interviewed by the BBC team specifically indicated the presence of a Ukrainian military aircraft right beside the Malaysian Airlines Boeing MH17 at the time that it was shot down?

Or is it because of eyewitness accounts confirming that the Ukrainian air force regularly used civilian aircraft flying over Novorossiya as human shields to protect its military aircraft conducting strikes against the civilian population from the Militia’s anti-aircraft units?

ISTANBUL, Turkey — A diplomatic crisis looms. Turkey, a key U.S. ally and the only NATO member that borders areas controlled by ISIS jihadists in Syria and Iraq, is in a prime location to hit the extremists next door. But it prefers not to. Instead, Ankara is seeking a low-profile role—so low as to be almost invisible—in the international alliance that Washington is building up against the so-called caliphate, and that fact is undermining the American strategy to strike back against the terrorists President Barack Obama deems “unique in their brutality.”  

Washington, obviously aware of the problem, is working overtime to get some sort of concrete supportive commitments from the Turkish government for a strategy in which American airpower supports regional armies with boots on the ground to crush the ISIS forces. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Ankara on Monday; Secretary of State John Kerry is expected in the Turkish capital Friday. But background briefings to the Turkish press suggest that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government will refuse to give the United States more than the bare minimum of support: It won’t allow the Americans to attack from NATO air bases in Turkey and it will decline to let Turkish troops take part in combat operations. Before traveling to Turkey, Kerry tried to downplay Ankara’s reluctance, despite the fact that the NATO ally refused to sign a joint declaration of Arab and other states outlining the battle against ISIS in a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Kerry said Turkey was dealing with some “sensitive issues,” according to the BBC.

Following talks by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu with top military and diplomatic officials on Wednesday, the newspaper Yeni Safak, which often reflects the government line, reported that Turkey would opt for a “passive” role in the fight against ISIS in Syria. Other news reports said Turkey would strengthen controls along the Syrian border and open its air space and its air force bases for logistical operations and for humanitarian flights—for example to save the lives of U.S. pilots—but not for the expected attacks on ISIS targets. Direct participation of Turkey’s modern air force in the attacks is out of the question as well.

The Iraqi military launched a major campaign to take back a key city from the self-proclaimed Islamic State over the weekend—a move that caught the U.S. “by surprise,” in the words of one American government official.The U.S.-led coalition forces that have conducted seven months of airstrikes on Iraq’s behalf did not participate in the attack, defense officials told The Daily Beast, and the American military has no plans to chip in.Instead, embedded Iranian advisers and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are taking part in the offensive on the largely Sunni town, raising the prospect that the fight to beat back ISIS could become a sectarian war. The news is the latest indication that not all is well with the American effort against the terror group. On Friday, U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast that a planned offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul had been indefinitely postponed. Over the weekend, an American-backed rebel group in Syria announced that it was dissolving, and joining an Islamist faction.

Then there was the unexpected battle for Tikrit. Over the weekend, a reported 30,000 troops and militiamen—mostly Shiites —stormed the Sunni dominated city of Tikrit, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s hometown and the symbolic birthplace of his three decades of repressive practices against the majority Shiite population.U.S. officials were largely left in the dark of the planning and timing of the operation, defense officials said. The Pentagon said Monday it was not conducting airstrikes in support of the Tikrit offensive because the Iraqi government did not ask for such help.The U.S. had seen the prospect of strikes in Tikrit for a while but the timing and nature of the attack “caught us by surprise,” one government official explained to The Daily Beast.

The depth of Iranian involvement and the dearth of U.S. engagement in the battle for Tikrit suggested the coalition-led campaign did little to weaken Iranian influence on Iraqi security. Two U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast that Iranian troops were firing Iranian artillery  “in the vicinity of” the Iraqi military campaign. And there were several reports that Major General Qassem Soleimani, the shadowy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s overseas operation arm, is also on the ground near Tikrit. The Iraqi decision to cut out the U.S.-led coalition turned the war against ISIS in Iraq into a dual track approach—one carried out by the U.S.-led coalition another directed by the Iranians. Each has its own military strategy.

Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking By Matt Taibbi | November 6, 2014

tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore.  "It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'"  Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a whistle-blower.

Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing. Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank's mortgage operations. Thanks to a confidentiality agreement, she's kept her mouth shut since then. "My closest family and friends don't know what I've been living with," she says. "Even my brother will only find out for the first time when he sees this interview." 

Ever since the head of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakeemullah Mehsud, was killed in a US drone strike in late 2013, the al Qaeda-linked group has been plagued by leadership disputes, infighting, and defections. Mullah Fazlullah, Mehsud's successor, has proven to be incapable of holding the coalition of jihadists together. The latest members to leave the group are its spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, and five regional emirs: Hafiz Dolat Khan from Kurram, Hafiz Saeed Khan from Arakzai, Maulana Gul Zaman from Khyber, Mufti Hassan Swati from Peshawar, and Khalid Mansoor from Hangu. Shahid announced their defection in a video (seen above) that was released online earlier this week. The Pakistani Taliban figures are now loyal to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State, which has been attempting to woo al Qaeda and Taliban leaders for months.

"I pledge allegiance to the Commander of the Faithful and the Caliph of Muslims Abu Bakr al Baghdadi al Qurashi al Husayni, to obey him when we are enthusiastic and when we are halfhearted, as well as in difficulty and relief," Shahid says in the video, according to a translation obtained by The Long War Journal. Shahid stresses that his pledge of allegiance (bayat) is not on behalf of the "entire movement," nor has Mullah Fazlullah himself sworn an oath of fealty to Baghdadi. Instead, Shahid says, the oath is "pledged by myself as well as five other Pakistani Taliban emirs, who are the emirs of Orakzai, Kuram, Khaybar, Hangu, and Peshawar regions." Shahid goes on to claim that this is the fourth time he has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. His claim is curious, to say the least. The video above was disseminated online on Oct. 13. But less just one week earlier, on Oct. 6, Shahid was quoted as denying that the Pakistani Taliban had sworn allegiance to Baghdadi's group. Shahid was quoted in an account by Reuters, and there is nothing in that report about Shahid or the five other Pakistani Taliban leaders switching their allegiance to Baghdadi. On the contrary, Shahid was quoted as saying, "We are not supporting any specific group in Syria or Iraq; all groups there are noble and they are our brothers." Shahid continued, "Mullah Omar is our head and we are following him."

In just one week, therefore, the Pakistani Taliban spokesman went from claiming that the group was entirely loyal to Mullah Omar to announcing that he and five commanders now counted themselves among the Islamic State's ranks. Interestingly, Shahid claims in his defection notice that on a prior occasion in early July he privately swore his allegiance to Baghdadi through Abu Huda al Sudani. This has a ring of truth to it, as al Sudani is a disgruntled al Qaeda veteran who leads a faction in Afghanistan that has sided with the Islamic State. Al Sudani leads a faction that is now loyal to Baghdadi. It is not clear how many former Pakistani Taliban fighters the defectors command. The emirs of the five regions did have forces under their direction, but it is not publicly known how many jihadists they direct, or if all of their fighters have followed suit. In reality, Shahid's announced defection to the Islamic State is just the latest blow to Fazlullah's group. It is clear that Fazlullah has not been able to fill Hakeemullah Mehsud's shoes. Indeed, well before the six Pakistani Taliban leaders announced their decision to side with Baghdadi this past week most of the group had already defected. The majority of the Pakistani Taliban's leaders and fighters had already left its ranks, forming new groups. And the most prominent of these organizations are still loyal to Mullah Omar.

It’s easy to strike a pose of cynicism when contemplating Hillary Clinton’s inevitable (and terribly imminent) presidential campaign. As a drearily soulless, principle-free, power-hungry veteran of DC’s game of thrones, she’s about as banal of an American politician as it gets. One of the few unique aspects to her, perhaps the only one, is how the genuinely inspiring gender milestone of her election will (following the Obama model) be exploited to obscure her primary role as guardian of the status quo. That she’s the beneficiary of dynastic succession – who may very well be pitted against the next heir in line from the regal Bush dynasty (this one, not yet this one) - makes it all the more tempting to regard #HillaryTime with an evenly distributed mix of boredom and contempt. The tens of millions of dollars the Clintons have jointly “earned” off their political celebrity - much of it speaking to the very globalists, industry groups, hedge funds, and other Wall Street appendages who would have among the largest stake in her presidency - make the spectacle that much more depressing (the likely candidate is pictured above with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at an event in September).

But one shouldn’t be so jaded. There is genuine and intense excitement over the prospect of (another) Clinton presidency. Many significant American factions regard her elevation to the Oval Office as an opportunity for rejuvenation, as a stirring symbol of hope and change, as the vehicle for vital policy advances. Those increasingly inspired factions include: Wall Street Politico Magazine, November 11, 2014 (“Why Wall Street Loves Hillary”):

The Israel Lobby Foreign Policy, Aaron David Miller, November 7, 2014 (“Would Hillary Be Good For the Holy Land?”):

The United States is considering sending a small number of special operations forces to Syria and attack helicopters to Iraq as it weighs options to build momentum in the battle against Islamic State, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.President Barack Obama, deeply averse to over-committing American troops to unpopular wars in the Middle East, could view some of the options as more viable than others as he approaches the final stretch of his presidency.Still, Obama's administration is under pressure to ramp up America's effort, particularly after the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to Islamic State in May and the failure of a U.S. military program to train and arm thousands of Syrian rebels.Two U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations, said any deployments would be narrowly tailored, seeking to advance specific, limited military objectives in both Iraq and Syria.

That option includes temporarily deploying some U.S. special operations forces inside of Syria to advise moderate Syrian opposition fighters for the first time and, potentially, to help call in U.S. air strikes, one official said.

Senators on Tuesday blasted President Obama's Syria strategy as incoherent, questioning efforts to force Bashar Assad to step down and grilling Defense Secretary Ash Carter on efforts to counter extremists.Carter at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing discussed new changes to the administration's strategy against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria, where the U.S. and allies are currently launching airstrikes and arming about a dozen Syrian Arab groups to counter ISIS.ADVERTISEMENTCarter said the U.S.-led military coalition hopes to strengthen the new Syrian Arab Coalition, intensify the air campaign, and target more ISIS leaders and the group's oil operations.“If done in concert as we intend, all those actions on the ground and from the air should help shrink ISIL’s territory into a smaller and smaller area and create new opportunities for targeting ISIL — ultimately denying this evil movement any safe haven in its supposed heartland,” Carter said, using another acronym for ISIS.“This is a half-assed strategy at best,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Republican presidential candidate and a leading defense hawk in the Senate.

Committee members questioned how the U.S.-led coalition intended to support Syrian rebels going after ISIS when the Syrian regime — assisted by Hezbollah, Russia and Iran — was targeting them in a bid to shore up Assad’s grip on power in the country’s four-year civil war.Carter said the U.S. was only obligated to protect the small number of rebels who had taken part in a now-defunct Pentagon plan to train and equip a rebel force against ISIS, leaving many senators incredulous.That program only yielded 145 rebels, out of a planned force of 5,000 this year.Carter acknowledged that Russian forces were already hitting moderate Syrian rebel groups — including some supported by the coalition — but said the U.S. was not obligated to protect them since they were not Pentagon-trained.His comments come amid reports that the Russian strikes have targeted groups that were trained by the CIA.  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committed, called that policy “immoral.”“You are making a distinction without a difference, Mr. Secretary,” he said, exasperated. “These are American-supported and coalition-supported men who are going in and being slaughtered.”The administration has tried to avoid actions that would bring them into direct conflict with Syria or Russia, and maintains the coalition is supporting rebels who will target ISIS, not the Assad regime. 

Iran has been invited to join talks in Vienna this week with Russia, the United States and European nations on whether a political resolution is possible in the Syrian civil war. If Iran accepts, it will be the first time Secretary of State John Kerry will enter formal negotiations with Tehran on issues beyond the nuclear accord reached in July. Russia has been pressing to include Iran, the only other major power giving military support to President Bashar al-Assad in his effort to remain in power. Senior American officials have begun to acknowledge in recent weeks that no serious discussion of a possible political succession plan in Syria can happen without Tehran’s involvement.But the American denunciation of Iran’s activities in Syria, including its support for Mr. Assad’s forces and for terror groups like Hezbollah, has always prevented the United States from including Iran in formal talks about the Syrian crisis. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Turkey Confirms Strikes Against Kurdish Militias in SyriaOCT. 27, 2015 U.N. Rights Investigator Highly Critical of IranOCT. 27, 2015 Assad Makes Unannounced Trip to Moscow to Discuss Syria With PutinOCT. 21, 2015 The State Department spokesman, John Kirby, buried that policy at a briefing on Tuesday, before it was announced that Mr. Kerry would attend the meeting on Syria in Vienna on Thursday and Friday. “We anticipate that Iran will be invited to attend this upcoming meeting,” Mr. Kirby said.

Mr. Kirby added that the United States still opposed what he termed Iran’s “destabilizing activities” in Syria. But he said that the United States “recognized that at some point in the discussion, moving toward a political transition, we have to have a conversation and a dialogue with Iran.”The change is another example of how Russia’s military entry into the Syrian war has changed the power dynamic of the sporadic negotiations. For a long while the United States argued that Mr. Assad must go — as President Obama declared four years ago at the White House — before negotiations on a successor could begin. That position was altered recently to say that a political solution could be sought as long as it included an eventual transition of power, perhaps to another Alawite-dominated government.But the latest shift is a recognition that Russia and Iran may well be the two biggest voices in who succeeds Mr. Assad — if any political transition can be engineered — and that to leave the Iranians out of the conversation was “simply ignoring reality,” one senior American diplomat said.

Pro-government forces in Syria have reportedly broken a rebel siege of two villages northwest of Aleppo, effectively cutting off Turkey's supply line to opposition groups operating in and around Syria's largest city. Government troops, accompanied by Iran-backed Shiite militias and Hezbollah forces, apparently reached the cities of Nubl and Zahraa with the help of heavy Russian airstrikes on Wednesday. The opposition had held these cities since 2012, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Russian airstrikes across northern Syria had been steadily shifting the epicenter of the war toward the corridor north of Aleppo since late November, in retaliation for Turkey's decision to shoot down a Russian warplane that it said violated its airspace.

A stepped-up Russian bombing campaign in the Bayirbucak region of northwest Syria, near the strategically important city of Azaz, had primarily targeted the Turkey-backed Turkmen rebels and civilians — and the Turkish aid convoys that supplied them. As a result, Turkey's policy in Syria of bolstering rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime — and establishing a "safe zone" for displaced Syrians that might hinder the regime's efforts to take Aleppo — has been unraveling for months, and now appears to have been defeated entirely.

"It cuts Turkey off from Aleppo via Azaz," Aaron Stein, an expert on Turkey and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Business Insider on Wednesday. "Ankara can still access Aleppo via Reyhanli, through Idlib," Stein said in an email. But "Turkey is on the back foot in Syria and is at a disadvantage now that Russia is deterring them from flying strike missions," he added. Indeed, Turkey's ability to retaliate against the Russian bombing campaign in northern Syria was severely limited by the de facto no-fly zone Russia created in the north following Turkey's downing of the Russian warplane in November. "This has to be Turkey's weakest position in Syria in years," David Kenner, Foreign Policy magazine's Middle East editor, noted on Twitter. "Shooting down of that Russian jet was a pivot point — backfired in a major way."

Russia asked the United Nations Security Council on Friday to call for Syria's sovereignty to be respected, for cross-border shelling and incursions to be halted and for "attempts or plans for foreign ground intervention" to be abandoned.Russia circulated a short draft resolution to the 15-member council over concerns about an escalation in hostilities after Turkey this week said it and other countries could commit ground troops to Syria. The Security Council met on Friday afternoon to discuss the draft, but veto-powers the United States, France and Britain all said it had no future. "Rather than trying to distract the world with the resolution they just laid down, it would be really great if Russia implemented the resolution that's already agreed to," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told reporters after the meeting. She was referring to a resolution unanimously agreed by the Security Council in December that endorsed an international road map for a Syria peace process. The Russian draft, seen by Reuters, would have the council express "its grave alarm at the reports of military buildup and preparatory activities aimed at launching foreign ground intervention into the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic."

It also demands that states "refrain from provocative rhetoric and inflammatory statements inciting further violence and interference into internal affairs of the Syrian Arab Republic."Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Reuters this week that his country, Saudi Arabia and some European powers wanted ground troops in Syria, though no serious plan had been debated. Russian air strikes have helped to bring the Syrian army to within 25 km (15 miles) of Turkey's borders, while Kurdish militia fighters, regarded by Ankara as hostile insurgents, have also gained ground, heightening the sense of urgency.Turkey has been shelling positions of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in response to what it says is hostile fire coming across the border into Turkey.Russia's relations with Turkey hit a low in November when Turkish warplanes downed a Russian bomber near the Syrian-Turkish border, a move described by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "dastardly stab in the back."

The Russian/Syrian agreement to the cessation of hostilities in Syria is seen critical from a military point of view. It would have been better to use the current momentum and to proceed fighting instead of giving respite to the enemy. But the agreement has one huge advantage. It excludes the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra. Every "western" media report on the agreement and its likelihood to proceed now has to admit what has long been denied. That the unicorn U.S. supported "moderate rebels" are in deep alliance with al-Qaeda. Even the grey lady now concedes: many of the anti-Assad groups aligned with the United States fight alongside the Nusra Front The readers of such piece note that the U.S. is actually supporting the terrorists it claimed to be fighting for the last 13 years. Somehow that does not compute. This will put pressure the Obama administration. It can hardly blame Russia and Syria for continuing a campaign against Al-Qaeda even during a cessation of hostility with U.S. supported "moderates". The U.S. lauds itself over killing alleged Al-Qaeda followers in drone strikes all over the world. How can it blame Russia for doing like in Syria?

But not only "western" media are now exposed. The new situation compels the actors behind Nusra/al-Qaeda to reveal their positions: "The PYD is supported because it fights against ISIL. Nusra Front is also fighting against ISIL. Why is it bad?" [the Turkish President Erdogan] asked. "AIDS also kills ISIL? Why is it bad?" Just in time the BBC is reporting what everybody watching the war on Yemen already knew. Al-Qaeda is fighting together Saudi and other Gulf troops in their assault on the city of Taiz. Since 9/11 the "western" public has been conditioned to see Al-Qaeda as the evil enemy. I do not think that it is possible to eradicate that within a few weeks or month. With the push for the cessation of hostilities the Russian/Syrian side has won a major point in the public relation position. It is becoming clear to even average "western" reader that they are fighting real terrorists while the U.S. and its allies support at least associates to terrorists, if not the terrorists themselves.

The United Kingdom may soon begin bombing the Islamic State in Libya, following on from the recent decision to carry out air strikes against the group in Syria.A government source told the Daily Telegraph on Friday that the UK is “moving in the direction” of launching military action in war torn Libya, where IS has emerged out of a civil war that has paralysed the country since a revolution in 2011 overthrew long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi.“Things are moving in that direction. We are taking it one step at a time,” the source said.Ministers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told the Telegraph that they are “extremely concerned” by the rise of IS in Libya and want to intervene in the troubled North African country.Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said it is important “to keep an eye on Libya”, according to the Telegraph.Militants proclaiming affinity with IS have taken control in the central Libyan city of Sirte, and have carried out attacks across the country, including in the capital Tripoli and in the eastern town of Derna, where they have an ongoing presence.

Support for intervention in Libya is growing across Europe, with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Friday demanding that IS be confronted in Libya.“We are at war, we have an enemy, that we must fight and crush in Syria, in Iraq, and soon in Libya too,” he said.France has already sent reconnaissance plans over Libya to monitor militias battling on the ground for control of Africa’s largest oil reserves.The fear among Western officials is that IS may establish a presence along Libya’s Mediterranean coast in order to launch attacks against Europe.The group has already claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on European soil, including a string of massacres in Paris last month that saw 130 people killed.Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood recently told MPs: “We are working closely with international partners to develop our understanding of its (IS’s) presence and how to tackle it there.”But any intervention in Libya will be dependent on a national unity government being formed. At the moment there are two rival administrations – one in the east and the other in Tripoli – who are vying for control, backed by opposing military forces waging war on the ground.

“There needs to be a recognised government in place in Libya that can ask us for help,” the government source told the Telegraph. “Then we will do whatever we can to help them deal with IS.”The rival Libyan parliaments have committed to signing a UN-backed deal to form a unity government next week. However, there remains staunch opposition to the agreement in both camps, with analysts suggesting a rushed deal will do little to bring a sustainable end to Libya’s civil war.