Group items tagged

Local police agencies have been denying access to records about this surveillance equipment under state public records laws. Agencies in San Diego, Chicago and Oakland County, Michigan, for instance, declined to tell the AP what devices they purchased, how much they cost and with whom they shared information. San Diego police released a heavily censored purchasing document. Oakland officials said police-secrecy exemptions and attorney-client privilege keep their hands tied. It was unclear whether the Obama administration interfered in the AP requests. "It's troubling to think the FBI can just trump the state's open records law," said Ginger McCall, director of the open government project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. McCall suspects the surveillance would not pass constitutional muster. "The vast amount of information it sweeps in is totally irrelevant to the investigation," she said.

A court case challenging the public release of information from the Tucson Police Department includes an affidavit from an FBI special agent, Bradley Morrison, who said the disclosure would "result in the FBI's inability to protect the public from terrorism and other criminal activity because through public disclosures, this technology has been rendered essentially useless for future investigations." Morrison said revealing any information about the technology would violate a federal homeland security law about information-sharing and arms-control laws — legal arguments that that outside lawyers and transparency experts said are specious and don't comport with court cases on the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The FBI did not answer questions about its role in states' open records proceedings.

But a former Justice Department official said the federal government should be making this argument in federal court, not a state level where different public records laws apply. "The federal government appears to be attempting to assert a federal interest in the information being sought, but it's going about it the wrong way," said Dan Metcalfe, the former director of the Justice Department's office of information and privacy. Currently Metcalfe is the executive director of American University's law school Collaboration on Government Secrecy project. A criminal case in Tallahassee cites the same homeland security laws in Morrison's affidavit, court records show, and prosecutors told the court they consulted with the FBI to keep portions of a transcript sealed. That transcript, released earlier this month, revealed that Stingrays "force" cellphones to register their location and identifying information with the police device and enables officers to track calls whenever the phone is on.

One law enforcement official familiar with the Tucson lawsuit, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak about internal discussions, said federal lawyers told Tucson police they couldn't hand over a PowerPoint presentation made by local officers about how to operate the Stingray device. Federal officials forwarded Morrison's affidavit for use in the Tucson police department's reply to the lawsuit, rather than requesting the case be moved to federal court. In Sarasota, Florida, the U.S. Marshals Service confiscated local records on the use of the surveillance equipment, removing the documents from the reach of Florida's expansive open-records law after the ACLU asked under Florida law to see the documents. The ACLU has asked a judge to intervene. The Marshals Service said it deputized the officer as a federal agent and therefore the records weren't accessible under Florida law.

Of course, there are plenty of parties interested in concealing the real facts about flight MH17. Symptomatically, on August 8, 2014 the Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia signed a non-disclosure agreement on the crash investigation. Procrastination and delaying of an objective investigation by these sides and international organizations raises doubts whether the concerned parties will make public the findings and true circumstances of the crash of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. Are the relatives of those who died in the flight MH17 the only interested people in bringing the real perpetrators of this horrible criminal act to justice?

Record shows Abbottabad Commission was penetrated by CIA​ Umar Cheema Friday, August 02, 2013 From Print Edition ISLAMABAD: A mind-blowing detail has emerged from the internal correspondence of NGO Save the Children disclosing its infiltration into the Abbottabad Commission to save its skin following allegations of the CIA’s penetration into the NGO in a hunt for Osama bin Laden through Dr Shakil Afridi, now under arrest in Peshawar. “Some of us suspected that the khakis had access to the record and receive daily updates but never realised an NGO had infiltrated too,” said an official privy to the Commission’s working. The leaked communication indicates that Lt Gen (retd) Nadeem Ahmed, an unofficial representative of the Army and ISI in the Commission, was allegedly cultivated by Save the Children who would offer him ‘how-to-do’ bailout advice, even sharing details about the internal politics of the Commission and classified record, something in radical contradiction to his reputation as a thorough professional and a man of integrity. He briefed the deputy country director of Save the Children, according to the email, about the views of different members, staunch opposition from a panel colleague, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, resulting in his dissenting note on the NGO and other institutions, and Gen (retd) Nadeem’s plan to effectively counter this note in collaboration with Justice (R) Javed Iqbal, the Chairman.

The Commission could not issue the report with that note and therefore now they are working on developing counter arguments on the note, read the email. The Commission needs to have a lot of comments removed from the note before it is in a shape that allows the report to be shared, the email continues, otherwise it can jeopardize the integrity of the members of the Commission. Justice (R) Javed Iqbal and Gen (R) Nadeem ‘have to work extra hard to factually prove a lot of things wrong that this third member is referring to,’ read the email of deputy country director. The email then explained the position of the fourth member, Abbas Ali Khan, absent from discussion. He is not willing to sign the report in the current shape, reads Hassan’s email, but also does not want to put in a note of dissent and therefore continues to prolong his stay in the US where he went on the pretext of treatment. As a way forward, the email continues, the two members will work with the third member (Ashraf Qazi) and try to come to a point where the note is significantly reduced and numbers of comments are taken out of the report. Gen (R) Nadeem’s advisory role of the NGO: The email also brings to light his role as adviser to the NGO. To a question that what Save the Children should do, Nadeem advised the deputy country director to build relationship and confidence with the Ministry of Interior and Economic Affairs Division. “It would take few months for you to be back to complete normalcy,” Gen (R) Nadeem advised.

In another email generated on August 29, 2012, David Wright, the country director, wrote that ‘on my instructions Hassan asked Gen (R) Nadeem to give an honest assessment as to what he thinks our chances are of surviving this.’ Gen (R) Nadeem replied that he felt confident regarding the answers we (NGO) will give to the questions proposed, ‘he could convince the other commission members to go with the fact rather than the content of Afridi’s statement.’ Gen (R) Nadeem also advised to fight the expulsion of our expatriates, Wrights email continued. “He felt if we did not do this and the expats left, the ISI would then move quickly to close down the country programme before the Commission report comes out.” Report draft shared with the NGO: Wright’s another email indicates that the draft was shared more than once with the NGO. Referring to a meeting of two senior officers of Save the Children with Gen (R) Nadeem, the country director said they were shown the report written by the Chairman of the Commission. The email said there were four versions of the report in June 2012 and these were reduced to two in August that year. However, they have reservations about the latest version shared in August as ‘the report which was originally thought to be our saviour, will be the tool for this expulsion.’ We will do our best, the email reads, to work ‘with our friends and try and get our responses in before the report is finalised.’ SOURCE: THE NEWS Record shows Abbottabad Commission was penetrated by CIA - thenews.com.pk

The main players in the top-secret negotiations are the United States and all 28 members of the European Union. However, the broad scope of the treaty also includes Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey. Combined they represent almost 70 percent of all trade in services worldwide. An explicit goal of the TiSA negotiations is to overcome the exceptions in GATS that protect certain non-tariff trade barriers, such as data protection. For example, the draft Financial Services Annex of TiSA, published by Wikileaks in June 2014, would allow financial institutions, such as banks, the free transfer of data, including personal data, from one country to another. As Ralf Bendrath, a senior policy advisor to the MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht, writes in State Watch, this would constitute a radical carve-out from current European data protection rules:

Earlier on Wednesday, the European Parliament accepted, with a large majority, a decision expressing support "in principle" of the recognition of a Palestinian state, along with furthering negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Some 498 parliamentarians voted in favor of the motion, 88 voted against it, and 111 abstained. On Tuesday, the U.S. clarified that it would be willing to support a United Nations Security Council proposal on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, as long as it contains "no unilateral measures" that would predetermine the outcome of diplomatic negotiations. State Department Spokesman Jen Psaki said that if the wording of the resolution included terms of reference for negotiations on the core issues, the United States would accept it, and not view it as a unilateral move.

This past year she watched as Holder's Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called "statements of facts," which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts. 

Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her. She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way," Fleischmann says.

And now, with Holder about to leave office and his Justice Department reportedly wrapping up its final settlements, the state is effectively putting the finishing touches on what will amount to a sweeping, industrywide effort to bury the facts of a whole generation of Wall Street corruption. "I could be sued into bankruptcy," she says. "I could lose my license to practice law. I could lose everything. But if we don't start speaking up, then this really is all we're going to get: the biggest financial cover-up in history." 

That July speech represented a truly Oedipal moment, for Orban was eager to drive a stake right through the heart of the ideology that had fathered him. As a young man more than 25 years earlier, he had led the Alliance of Young Democrats — Fidesz — one of the region’s most promising liberal parties. In the intervening years, sensing political opportunity elsewhere on the political spectrum, he had guided Fidesz out of the Liberal International and into the European People’s Party, alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Now, however, he was on the move again and his new role model wasn’t Merkel, but Russian President Vladimir Putin and his iron-fisted style of politics. Given the disappointing performance of liberal economic reforms and the stinginess of the EU, it was hardly surprising that Orban had decided to hedge his bets by looking east. The European Union has responded by harshly criticizing Orban’s government for pushing through a raft of constitutional changes that restrict the media and compromise the independence of the judiciary. Racism and xenophobia are on the uptick in Hungary, particularly anti-Roma sentiment and anti-Semitism. And the state has taken steps to reassert control over the economy and impose controls on foreign investment.

The Hungarian prime minister, after all, has many European allies in his Euroskeptical project. Far right parties are climbing in the polls across the continent. With 25% of the votes, Marine Le Pen’s National Front, for instance, topped the French elections for the European parliament last May. In local elections in 2014, it also seized 12 mayoralties, and polls show that Le Pen would win the 2017 presidential race if it were held today. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the National Front has been pushing a range of policies from reinstating the death penalty to closing borders that would deliberately challenge the whole European project. In Denmark, the far-right People’s Party also won the most votes in the European parliamentary elections. In November, it topped opinion polls for the first time. The People’s Party has called for Denmark to slam shut its open-door policy toward refugees and re-introduce border controls. Much as the Green Party did in Germany in the 1970s, groupings like Great Britain’s Independence Party, the Finns Party, and even Sweden’s Democrats are shattering the comfortable conservative-social democratic duopoly that has rotated in power throughout Europe during the Cold War and in its aftermath.

The Islamophobia that has surged in the wake of the murders in France provides an even more potent arrow in the quiver of these parties as they take on the mainstream. The sentiment currently expressed against Islam — at rallies, in the media, and in the occasional criminal act — recalls a Europe of long ago, when armed pilgrims set out on a multiple crusades against Muslim powers, when early nation-states mobilized against the Ottoman Empire, and when European unity was forged not out of economic interest or political agreement but as a “civilizational” response to the infidel.

Euroskepticism doesn’t only come from the right side of the political spectrum. In Greece, the Syriza party has challenged liberalism from the left, as it leads protests against EU and International Monetary Fund austerity programs that have plunged the population into recession and revolt. As elsewhere in Europe, the far right might have taken advantage of this economic crisis, too, had the government not arrested the Golden Dawn leadership on murder and other charges. In parliamentary elections on Sunday, Syriza won an overwhelming victory, coming only a couple seats short of an absolute majority. In a sign of the ongoing realignment of European politics, that party then formed a new government not with the center-left, but with the right-wing Independent Greeks, which is similarly anti-austerity but also skeptical of the EU and in favor of a crackdown on illegal immigration.

But the manner and execution and overall tone-deafness of Netanyahu’s recent ploy suggest that he—and his current ambassador—don’t understand how to manage Israel’s relationships in Washington. Netanyahu wants a role in shaping the Iranian nuclear agreement, should one materialize. His recent actions suggest that he doesn't quite know what he's doing.

The second would be to have a third-party company hold all user data, with some sort of agreement to disclose information to the government, Lofgren said.“I think actually the trend line is in a different direction, which is encryption that is not accessible to the companies that provide it, either,” she added.  Major tech companies like Apple have done exactly that, claiming that even they can’t unlock data on newer devices.

One of the untold stories of the recent Syria-driven diplomatic flurry is how Moscow has been silently working on mollifying both Saudi Arabia and Turkey behind the scenes. That was already the case when the foreign ministers of US, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia met before Vienna.Vienna was crucial not only because Iran was on the table for the first time but also because of the presence of Egypt – incidentally, fresh from recent discovery of new oil reserves, and engaging in a reinforced relationship with Russia.The absolute key point was this paragraph included in Vienna’s final declaration: “This political process will be Syrian-led and Syrian-owned, and the Syrian people will decide the future of Syria.”It’s not by accident that only Russian and Iranian media chose to give the paragraph the appropriate relevance. Because this meant the actual death of the regime change obsession, much to the distress of US neocons, Erdogan and the House of Saud.

The main point is the death of the regime change option, brought about by Moscow. And that leaves Putin free to further project his extremely elaborate strategy. He called Erdogan on Wednesday to congratulate him on his and the AKP’s election landslide. This means that now Moscow clearly has someone to talk to in Ankara. Not only about Syria. But also about gas.Putin and Erdogan will have a crucial energy-related meeting at the G20 summit on November 15 in Turkey; and there’s an upcoming visit by Erdogan to Moscow. Bets are on that the Turk Stream agreement will be – finally – reached before the end of the year. And on northern Syria, Erdogan has been forced to admit by Russian facts on the ground and skies that his no-fly zone scheme will never fly.

That leaves us with the much larger problem: the House of Saud.There’s a wall of silence surrounding the number one reason for Saudi Arabia to bomb and invade Yemen, and that is to exploit Yemen’s virgin oil lands, side by side with Israel – no less. Not to mention the strategic foolishness of picking a fight with redoubtable warriors such as the Houthis, which have sowed panic amidst the pathetic, mercenary-crammed Saudi army.Riyadh, following its American reflexes, even resorted to recruiting Academi – formerly Blackwater - to round up the usual mercenary suspects as far away as Colombia.It was also suspected from the beginning, but now it's a done deal that the responsible actor for the costly Yemen military disaster is none other than Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the King’s son who, crucially, was sent by his father to meet Putin face-to-face.

Meanwhile, Qatar will keep crying because it was counting on Syria as a destination point for its much-coveted gas pipeline to serve European customers, or at least as a key transit hub on the way to Turkey.Iran on the other hand needed both Iraq and Syria for the rival Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline because Tehran could not rely on Ankara while it was under US sanctions (this will now change, fast). The point is Iranian gas won’t replace Gazprom as a major source for the EU anytime soon. If it ever did, or course, that would be a savage blow to Russia.

In oil terms, Russia and the Saudis are natural allies. Saudi Arabia cannot export natural gas; Qatar can. To get their finances in order – after all even the IMF knows they are on a highway to hell - the Saudis would have to cut back around ten percent of production with OPEC, in concert with Russia; the oil price would more than double. A 10 percent cutback would make a fortune for the House of Saud.So for both Moscow and Riyadh, a deal on the oil price, to be eventually pushed towards $100 a barrel, would make total economic sense. Arguably, in both cases, it might even mean a matter of national security.But it won’t be easy. OPEC’s latest report assumes a basket of crude oil to be quoted at only $55 in 2015, and to rise by $5 a year reaching $80 only by 2020. This state of affairs does not suit either Moscow or Riyadh.

Meanwhile, fomenting all sorts of wild speculation, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh still manages to collect as much as $50 million a month from selling crude from oilfields it controls across “Syraq”, according to the best Iraq-based estimates.The fact that this mini-oil caliphate is able to bring in equipment and technical experts from “abroad” to keep its energy sector running beggars belief. “Abroad” in this context means essentially Turkey – engineers plus equipment for extraction, refinement, transport and energy production.One of the reasons this is happening is that the US-led Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists (CDO) – which includes Saudi Arabia and Turkey - is actually bombing the Syrian state energy infrastructure, not the mini oil-Caliphate domains. So we have the proverbial “international actors” in the region de facto aiding ISIS/ISIL/Daesh to sell crude to smugglers for as low as $10 a barrel.Saudis – as much as Russian intel - have noted how ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is able to take over the most advanced US equipment that takes months to master, and instead integrate it into their ops at once. This implies they must have been extensively trained. The Pentagon, meanwhile, sent and will be sending top military across “Syraq” with an overarching message: if you choose Russia we won’t help you.ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, for their part, never talks about freeing Jerusalem. It’s always about Mecca and Medina.

There has been a spike in hate crimes against refugees, with much far-right anger and criticism directed at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to suspend the Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that migrants and refugees can only claim asylum at a German port of entry.

The migration crisis has given fresh impetus to the PEGIDA movement (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident), whose activists staged a number of demos across Germany last month.Some EU member countries are introducing temporary border controls to halt the influx of refugees and to screen those trying to enter the country illegally.

Meanwhile John Kerry is doing fancy footwork, explaining the legislation away, in a letter to Javad Zarif. we remain fully committed to the sanctions lifting provided for under the JCPOA. We will adhere to the full measure of our commitments, per the agreement. At the State Department briefing Monday, reporters questioned why the legislation didn’t amount to a violation of the Iran Deal:

Here is some more blindness in the media on these issues. NPR has continually deceived listeners about Sheldon Adelson’s agenda, and it did so again yesterday. Adelson is a leading opponent of the Iran Deal, as a supporter of Israel. He has called on President Obama to nuke Iran. But in a report on Adelson’s purchase of a Nevada newspaper, NPR once again leaves out the Israel angle of Adelson’s interests. It says blandly: Adelson is also prominently involved in national politics. That link is to a story about his on-line gambling concerns. But as Cory Bennett of the Hill said on CSPAN the other day– something I did not know till now– Iran is said to have undertaken a cyber-attack on Sheldon Adelson’s casino last year because of his call to nuke Iran.  The alleged cyber-attack:  Investigators determined that hacker activists were the ones who broke into servers belonging to the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in February 2014, costing the company more than $40 million in damages and data recovery costs, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Thusday citing a report by cybersecurity firm Dell SecureWorks. The hackers were acting in retaliation to the company’s CEO, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s statement that Obama should detonate a nuclear bomb in Tehran, which stirred controversy around the world. This is the battle behind the headlines. And in a transparent effort to get Adelson’s backing, as well as that of the Andrew Herenstein’s of the world, the neoconservative favorite in the Republican race, Senator Marco Rubio, has vowed to tear up the Iran deal on his first day in the White House if he’s elected. Thus the ideological war over how much the U.S. should support Israel is playing out in global terms; and our media are shying away from the story.

On more thought from me on why the dimwits did not foresee that Nusra would attack. The White House insisted on calling a part of Nusra the "Khorasan group" and explained that it was only bombing this groups of alQaeda veterans now part of Nusra because the "Khorasan group" planning to hit in "western" countries. No expert nor anyone on the ground in Syria thought that this differentiation was meaningful. Nusra is alQaeda and so are all of its members. But the White House and Pentagon probably thought that Nusra would accept the artificial separation they themselves had made up. That Nusra would understand that it is seen as an "ally" and only the "Khorasan group" is seen as an enemy. If that was the line of thinking, and the situation seems to point to that, then these people have fallen for their own propaganda stunt. They probably believed that the "Khorasan group" was an accepted narrative because they were telling that tale to themselves. Poor idiots.

UPDATE: The one sane guy at the Council of Foreign relations, Micah Zenko, foresaw this debacle and wrote on March 2: [The U.S. trained mercenaries] will immediately be an attractive target for attacks by the Islamic State, Assad’s ground and air forces, and perhaps Nusra and other forces. Killing or taking prisoner fighters (or the families of those fighters) who were trained by the U.S. military will offer propaganda value, as well as leverage, to bargain for those prisoners’ release. He compared the whole operation to the 1961 CIA invasion of Cuba: Last September, the White House and Congress agreed to authorize and fund a train-and-equip project similar to the Bay of Pigs, but this time in the Middle East, without any discussion about phase two. The Syrian project resembles 1961 in two ways: What happens when the fighting starts is undecided, and the intended strategic objective is wholly implausible.

The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day after the Nusra Front captured two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program. In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure. While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State....A senior Defense Department official acknowledged that the threat to the trainees and their Syrian recruiters had been misjudged, and said that officials were trying to understand why the Nusra Front had turned on the trainees. Like other Obama administration operations this one did not fail because of "intelligence failure" but because an utter lack of common sense.

U.S. media can no agree with itself if Russia is giving ISIS an airforce or if Russia pounds ISIS with the biggest bomber raid in decades. Such confusion occurs when propaganda fantasies collide with the observable reality. To bridge such divide requires some fudging. So when the U.S. claims to act against the finances of the Islamic State while not doing much, the U.S Public Broadcasting Service has to use footage of Russian airstrikes against the Islamic State while reporting claimed U.S. airstrike successes. The U.S. military recently claimed to have hit Islamic State oil tankers in Syria. This only after Putin embarrassed Obama at the G-20 meeting in Turkey. Putin showed satellite pictures of ridiculous long tanker lines waiting for days and weeks to load oil from the Islamic State without any U.S. interference.

The U.S. then claimed to have hit 116 oil tankers while the Russian air force claims to have hit 500. But there is an important difference between these claims. The Russians provided videos showing how their airstrikes hit at least two different very large oil tanker assemblies with hundreds of tankers in each. They also provided video of several hits on oil storage sites and refinery infrastructure. I have found no video of U.S. hits on Islamic State oil tanker assemblies. The U.S. PBS NewsHour did not find any either. In their TV report yesterday about Islamic State financing and the claimed U.S. hits on oil trucks they used the videos Russia provided without revealing the source. You can see the Russian videos played within an interview with a U.S. military spokesperson at 2:22 min.

The U.S. military spokesperson speaks on camera about U.S. airforce hits against the Islamic State. The video cuts to footage taken by Russian airplanes hitting oil tanks and then trucks. The voice-over while showing the Russian video with the Russians blowing up trucks says: "For the first time the U.S. is attacking oil delivery trucks." The video then cuts back to the U.S. military spokesperson. At no point is the Russian campaign mentioned or the source of the footage revealed. Any average viewer of the PBS report will assume that the black and white explosions of oil trucks and tanks are from of U.S. airstrikes filmed by U.S. air force planes. The U.S. military itself admitted that its strikes on IS oil infrastructure over the last year were "minimally effective". One wonders then how effective the claimed strike against 116 trucks really was. But unless we have U.S. video of such strikes and not copies of Russian strike video fraudulently passed off as U.S. strikes we will not know if those strikes happened at all.

The wannabe Sultan Erdogan did not get his will in Syria where he had planned to capture and annex Aleppo. The Russians prevented that. He now goes for his secondary target, Mosul in Iraq, which many Turks see as historic part of their country

Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city with about a million inhabitants, is currently occupied by the Islamic State. On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey. The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.

Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields. That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government. The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds: Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported. The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4. There are two problems with this. First: Massoud Barzani is no longer president of the KRG. His mandate ran out and the parliament refused to prolong it. Second: Mosul and its Bashiqa area are not part of the KRG. Barzani making a deal about it is like him making a deal about Paris.

The Iraqi government and all major Iraqi parties see the Turkish invasion as a hostile act against their country. Abadi demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Turkish forces but it is unlikely that Turkey will act on that. Some Iraqi politicians have called for the immediate dispatch of the Iraqi air force to bomb the Turks near Mosul. That would probably the best solution right now but the U.S. installed Premier Abadi is too timid to go for such strikes. The thinking in Baghdad is that Turkey can be kicked out after the Islamic State is defeated. But this thinking gives Turkey only more reason to keep the Islamic State alive and use it for its own purpose. The cancer should be routed now as it is still small. Barzani's Kurdistan is so broke that is has even confiscated foreign bank accounts to pay some bills. That may be the reason why Barzani agreed to the deal now. But the roots run deeper. Barzani is illegally selling oil that belongs to the Iraqi government to Turkey. The Barzani family occupies  not only the presidential office in the KRG but also the prime minister position and the local secret services. It is running the oil business and gets a big share of everything else. On the Turkish side the oil deal is handled within the family of President Erdogan. His son in law, now energy minister, had the exclusive right to transport the Kurdish oil through Turkey. Erdogan's son controls the shipping company that transports the oil over sea to the customer, most often Israel. The oil under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq passes the exactly same route. These are businesses that generate hundreds of millions per year.

It is unlikely that U.S., if it is not behinds Turkey new escapade, will do anything about it. The best Iraq could do now is to ask the Russians for their active military support. The Turks insisted on their sovereignty when they ambushed a Russian jet that brushed its border but had no intend of harming Turkey. Iraq should likewise insist on its sovereignty, ask Russia for help and immediately kick the Turks out. The longer it waits the bigger the risk that Turkey will eventually own Mosul.

Another fake news item currently circling is that Trump has given order to the military to create safe zones for Syria. The reality is still far from it: [H]is administration crafted a draft order that would direct the Pentagon and the State Department to submit plans for the safe zones within 90 days. The order hasn't yet been issued. The draft of the order, which will be endlessly revised, says that safe zones could be in Syria or in neighboring countries. The Pentagon has always argued against such zones in Syria and the plans it will submit, should such an order be issued at all, will reflect that. The safe zones in Syria ain't gonna happen

"No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort”, a former Green Beret writes of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian insurgents, “they know we are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”. “I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added. ... Murphy states bluntly: “distinguishing between the FSA and al-Nusra is impossible, because they are virtually the same organization. As early as 2013, FSA commanders were defecting with their entire units to join al-Nusra. There, they still retain the FSA monicker, but it is merely for show, to give the appearance of secularism so they can maintain access to weaponry provided by the CIA and Saudi intelligence services. The reality is that the FSA is little more than a cover for the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra. ... It is one thing when Russia says somesthing, but another when Reuters, WSJ, and independent German and U.S. subject experts report this as facts. The first can be shunned as "Putin lies" but the others are extremely hard to refute. The Russians are right. The U.S. did not separate the "moderate rebels" from al Qaeda, as it had agreed to in the ceasefire agreement, because the "moderates" and al-Qaeda are the same. The "moderates" are al-Qaeda. This was not unknown. The 2012 Defense Intelligence Analysis said as much. The CIA of course knew this all along. But the Saudi tool heading the CIA, John Brennan, can not admit such as his masters in the Gulf are also the ones who finance al-Qaeda. They buy the weapons Brennan's people hadn over to al-Qaeda. The "end-user" according to this certificate for a weapon buy in Ukraine is Saudi Arabia. But who will believe that the Saudi dictators need for example 100 obsolete T-55 tanks? The weapons on the certificate, for an estimated $300-$500 million, are obviously for al-Qaeda in Yemen and in Syria. (Did Joe Biden or his son, both heavily engaged in Ukraine, get a provision from the deal?)

As the facts accumulate how long can the New York Times and Washington Post keep up with their propaganda claims. One has to admit, they really try their best. Unfortunately for them, their best is only mediocre. The NYT today found out that Vladimir Putin Relishes His Role as Disrupter. How does the NYT know what Putin "relishes"? The reporter did not ask Putin himself. But he did ask some knowledgeable experts with insight into Putin's inner mind and those assured the author that this is indeed the case. They know exactly how Putin feels. They are Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director and Robert Kagan, leading voice of of the neocons and Clinton promoter. Some "experts". Add that to dozens of stories on how "Russia indiscriminately bombs civilians/hospitals/bakeries in east-Aleppo" but never hits any "rebels" because none occur in these stories at all. A recent NYT piece of that kind had 14 "voices" in it. Eight belonged to various propagandists associated with the "White Helmets", four were "western" diplomats, one Syrian government official and a Russian spokesperson were quoted at the end. No Russian military and no one from west-Aleppo, where by far most people in the city live under government protection and daily rocket hail by the "rebels", were even asked. But all those tales we hear about the devilish Russians MUST be true! Even the 7 years old Bana Alabeb now tweets from east-Aleppo about her tragic fate under indiscriminate Russian assaults. This in perfect English and with an excellent WiFi and Internet connection as her many "White Helmets" photo attachments and her videos attest. But the whole city is devastated and in ruins she says, with phosphor bombs going off right in front of her house.

But Bana is a very responsible little lady: Bana Alabed @AlabedBana Dear world, it's better to start 3rd world war instead of letting Russia & assad commit #HolocaustAleppo 1:53 PM - 29 Sep 2016 Here "mother" phoned up the Daily Mail for an "exclusive" and assures us that this is all true. The Telegraph has her in a slideshow with sad music and the Guardian promotes her too. Another Gay Girl in Damascus media fail. In 2011 the Guardian also was part of that scam. If that 7-year old girl is in east-Aleppo and not in Denmark or the UK, I must be on Mars. No sane reader will take such a stunt serious. What Public Relation company came up with this sorry flimflam? Like the "moderate rebels" fantasy, such tales and the nonsense the "White Helmet" propaganda outlet distributes, are starting to fail. The UAE's National, a well established international newspaper, recently dug a bit around the White Helmet's creator, a "former" British military agent working for Gulf defense interests. That does not sound charitable. This is noticeable report, even as it still lacks any details, as it is the first in a major paper that shows some auspiciousness against that outlet. The Obama administration's lies about the "moderate rebels" are now openly discussed in major media. The propaganda of #HolocaustAleppo (isn't abusing the holocaust meme anti-semitic?) is turning into a laughing stock.

Russia is upping its stake in Syria. Additional Russian SU-24, SU-25 and SU-34 jets are arriving. Nearly 6,000 Russian soldiers are on the ground. The CIA's  al-Qaeda "rebels" are losing in east-Aleppo and are in stalemate and under pressure elsewhere. They will be bombed to smithereens. A few new BM-21 multiple missile launchers and heavier anti-air artillery was delivered to them. But those are just band-aids on lethally bleeding wounds. Even MANPADs will not change the situation one bit. The U.S., the Saudis and especially Brennan's CIA have lost that fight. Will Obama and Kerry admit it? Or will they throw another Hail Mary and do something crazy?