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A day after the US gave tepid support for the establishment of Syrian safe zones to try to separate combatant forces and reduce the amount of fighting, they appear to have noticed that this might get in their way of their own attacks across the country, and are pledging to ignore the demilitarization of the zones.

Back when Turkey and the US were both super keen on the idea of safe zones, a big selling point was the imposition of no-fly zones over the areas, to keep the civilians within getting bombed. This was also a big obstacle, as the US wasn’t totally clear it could do this without declaring war on Russia. With Russia also on board now, that should’ve been easier. Instead, Russia announced that the safe zones, which went into effect overnight, are now officially closed to all warplanes, and US officials are livid at the idea, insisting they have no intention of respecting that. Largely this appears to be a case of the US just being deliberately difficult, as none of the safe zones are in areas US warplanes were operating in the first place. The reality, however, is that the zones are now being used in service of a ceasefire the US never really supported to begin with ,and with the US-backed rebels also objecting about the ceasefire getting in the way of their war, the US will be non-cooperative.

The United States is deploying armored vehicles and a small number of troops along the Syrian – Turkish border after recent airstrikes killed about 20 Syrian – Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Unit (YPG). The YPG is a key member organization of the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The troops and armored vehicles were deployed on Friday amidst increased tensions between the YPG and Turkey, as well as increased tensions between Turkey and Turkey’s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Footage posted by Syrian activists online showed a convoy of U.S. armored vehicles driving on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah in the Kurdish region of northern Syria, a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. Clashes in the area were reported Wednesday a day after the Turkish airstrike which also destroyed a Kurdish command headquarters. The YPG reported that a series of air strikes and attacks between April 25 and April 28 resulted in the death of at least 20 of their fighters. Both Russia, Syria and the United States expressed grave concerns about Turkey’s military actions against the YPG. All three stressed that Turkey should rather focus on fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh). The Turkish AKP government, for its part, considers the YPG as a terrorist organization on par and allied with the PKK. Moreover, Turkey strongly opposes the creation of a Kurdish state construct or a federal, predominantly Kurdish construct in northern Syria, fearing it would strengthen the PKK. Turkey is therefore counting on its cooperation with Islamist insurgents, often with links to Al-Qaeda affiliates, under the euphemism Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Pentagon Spokesman, U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, did not dispute that U.S. troops are operating with elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) along the Turkish border, but he would not get into specifics. The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated alliance fighting IS that includes Kurdish and Arab fighters as well as fighters from other local ethnic and other militia. Deserted Free Syrian Army officers and fighters are also part of the SDF. Davis commented “We have U.S. forces that are there throughout the entirety of northern Syria that operate with our Syrian Democratic Force partners,” Davis said. “The border is among the areas where they operate.” He said the U.S. wants the SDF to focus on liberating the IS-held town of Tabqa and the extremist group’s de facto capital, Raqqa, “and not be drawn into conflicts elsewhere.” In March 2016, about 200 Marines were deployed to Syrian Kurdistan backed with howitzers, significantly widening the U.S. support for the SDF, especially in the highly complex battlefield around Raqqa.

Two in five Americans back economic sanctions or more serious actions against Israel over its continued construction of settlements on occupied Palestinian land, a crime under international law, a new poll has found. Among Democrats, a clear majority – 56 percent – backs economic sanctions or tougher actions.

More than half – 54 percent – say the US should be even-handed, leaning neither towards the Israelis or Palestinians, a figure that shoots up to 72 percent among Democrats. Right now, 57 percent of respondents overall see the US leaning more towards Israel. Americans are also very open-minded towards a one-state solution encompassing all of present-day Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Overall, 37 percent of Americans favor a two-state solution, but 31 percent say they would prefer “a single democratic state in which both Jews and Arabs are full and equal citizens, covering all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories.” Only 9 percent prefer Israel annexing all of the occupied territories without giving Palestinians full rights, and another 15 percent say they favor the status quo of indefinite military occupation. When asked what they would prefer if their favored approach fails, almost two-thirds – 63 percent overall – said a one-state solution. This includes 70 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans. Just 10 percent overall would contemplate what appears to be the direction Israel is heading: annexation of the West Bank without giving Palestinians equal citizenship. According to Telhami, who summarized some of the poll’s findings in a Washington Post article, the survey results show strong polarization between Democrats and independents on the one hand, who tend to be more favorable to Palestinian rights, and supporters of President Donald Trump, on the other, who strongly back Israel.

rump recently pledged to continue the policy of his predecessor Barack Obama of maintaining military aid to Israel at record levels. But even among Republicans, the survey reveals little support for Israel entrenching its apartheid system in the long term. The poll also highlights how starkly out of step US political elites are with the public. Last week, all 100 members of the Senate signed a letter to the UN secretary-general demanding that Israel be given “equal treatment” – meaning in effect that it be exempted from scrutiny or accountability for its well-documented violations of Palestinian rights and international law. The poll is more bad news for Israel and leaders of its lobby groups, who recently acknowledged in a private report leaked to The Electronic Intifada that their efforts to thwart the “impressive growth” of the Palestine solidarity movement have failed despite vastly increasingly their spending. Similar polls in Canada and Australia in recent months have shown surging public support in those countries for actions to hold Israel accountable, including boycott, divestment and sanctions.

On Wednesday a federal judge indefinitely extended a previously temporary restraining order against U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim Ban executive order. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson turned his earlier temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Trump’s executive order banning immigration from six majority-Muslim countries. The state of Hawaii launched the lawsuit claiming Trump’s revised executive order, issued March 6, perpetuates the same unconstitutional religious discrimination as the original executive order, which was overturned by a federal judge in January.

“The court will not crawl into a corner, pull the shutters closed, and pretend it has not seen what it has,” Watson wrote on Wednesday. While Trump’s lawyers claim the executive order does not discriminate based on religion, previous courts ruled against the order noting the president and his surrogates’ repeated public promises to impose “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Watson noted that his initial decision to grant the preliminary injunction was based on the likelihood that Hawaii would succeed in proving the revised executive order violated the U.S. Constitution’s provisions protecting religious freedom.

Ousted South Korean leader Park Geun-hye was behind bars in the Seoul Detention Centre on Friday after her arrest, on charges including bribery, in a corruption scandal that has brought low some of the country's business and political elite.In a dramatic fall from power, Park, 65, became South Korea's first democratically elected leader to be thrown out of office. She is accused of colluding with a friend, Choi Soon-sil, to pressure big businesses to contribute funds to foundations that backed her policy initiatives.She and Choi, who is already in custody and on trial, deny any wrongdoing. In the early hours of Friday, the Seoul Central District Court approved prosecutors' request for an arrest warrant for Park after she gave about eight hours of testimony.Park and her lawyers had argued that she should not be arrested because she did not pose a flight risk and would not try to tamper with evidence. But the court disagreed, and said she might try to manipulate evidence.

Prosecutors now have 20 days to build their case while Park remains in detention.Park's removal from office capped months of paralysis and turmoil over the corruption scandal that also landed the head of the Samsung Group, South Korea's largest "chaebol", or family-run conglomerate, in detention and on trial.

Park's impeachment on March 10, which upheld a parliamentary vote in December, effectively left a political vacuum with only an interim president in place before a snap May 9 election.Liberal opposition politician Moon Jae-in is leading in opinion polls and is expected to win that election."The arrest of the former president Park amounts to upholding the people's stern order to build a country where justice and common sense stand firm," Moon's spokesman, Park Kwang-on, said in a statement.

A basic income (also called basic income guarantee, Citizen's Income, unconditional basic income, universal basic income, or universal demogrant[2]) is a form of social security[3] in which all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, in addition to any income received from elsewhere. An unconditional income transfer of less than the poverty line is sometimes referred to as a partial basic income. Basic income systems that are financed by the profits of publicly owned enterprises (often called social dividend, also known as citizen's dividend) are major components in many proposed models of market socialism.[4] Basic income schemes have also been promoted within the context of capitalist systems, where they would be financed through various forms of taxation.[5] Similar proposals for "capital grants provided at the age of majority" date to Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice of 1795, there paired with asset-based egalitarianism. The phrase "social dividend" was commonly used as a synonym for basic income in the English-speaking world before 1986, after which the phrase "basic income" gained widespread currency.[6

Contents  [hide]  1 Policy aspects 1.1 Transparency 1.2 Administrative efficiency 1.3 Poverty reduction 1.4 Basic income and growth 1.5 Freedom 1.6 Work incentives 1.7 Affordability 1.7.1 Key principles 1.7.2 Case studies 2 Pilot programs 3 Basic income and ideology 3.1 Economic perspectives 3.2 Georgist views 3.3 Right-wing views 3.4 Feminist views 3.5 Technological unemployment 4 Criticism 4.1 Economics research 4.2 Political debate 5 Worldwide 6 Advocates 6.1 Europe 6.2 The United States and Canada 6.3 Asia, Africa, Latin America, Oceania 7 Petitions and referendums 8 Public opinions 9 See also 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External links

Technological unemployment[edit] Concerns about automation and other causes of technological unemployment have caused many in the high-tech industry to turn to basic income proposals as a necessary implication of their business models. Journalist Nathan Schneider first highlighted the turn of the "tech elite" to these ideas with an article in Vice magazine, which cited figures such as Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman, Peter Diamandis, and others.[47] The White House, in a report to Congress, has put the probability at 83% that a worker making less than $20 an hour in 2010 will eventually lose their job to a machine. Even workers making as much as $40 an hour face odds of 31 percent.[48] To better address both the funding concerns and concerns about government control, one alternative model is that the cost and control would be distributed across the private sector instead of the public sector. Companies across the economy would be required to employ humans, but the job descriptions would be left to private innovation, and individuals would have to compete to be hired and retained. This would be a for-profit sector analog of basic income, that is, a market-based form of basic income. It differs from a job guarantee in that the government is not the employer (rather, companies are) and there is no aspect of having employees who "cannot be fired", a problem that interferes with economic dynamism. The economic salvation in this model is not that every individual is guaranteed a job, but rather just that enough jobs exist that massive unemployment is avoided and employment is no longer solely the privilege of only the very smartest or highly trained 20% of the population. Another option for a market-based form of basic income has been proposed by the Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) as part of "a Just Third Way" (a Third Way with greater justice) through widely distributed power and liberty. Called the Capital Homestead Act,[49] it is reminiscent of James S. Albus's Peoples' Capitalism[50][51] in that money creation and securities ownership are widely and directly distributed to individuals rather than flowing through, or being concentrated in, centralized or elite mechanisms.

We would like to draw attention to reports, which are received regularly, of “unidentified” aircraft that have been seen providing support to local ISIS militants in various parts of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IRA). In particular, this month, according to Jowzjan Province authorities, unmarked aircraft were spotted air-dropping consignments of weapons and other supplies to ISIS groups in at least three northern provinces of Afghanistan (Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e Pol). A representative of the Province of Gazni council in southern Afghanistan spoke publicly about the presence of unmarked helicopters in areas controlled by terrorists in the Waghaz and Khogyani districts. It is noteworthy that even amidst an anti-Russia campaign in some Afghan and Western media that aim to accuse Russia of supporting the Taliban, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and US Defence Intelligence Agency Chief Vincent Stewart said they had no evidence to corroborate these allegations. This begs the logical question that has to be put to the above NATO and US officials: what do they know about the identity of these so-called unidentified aircraft flying over Afghanistan, a country where a US and NATO military contingent has already been deployed for over 15 years and where the Afghan Air Force faces persistent shortages of fully functioning aircraft and skilled pilots?

On Tuesday, the U.S.-allied militias that have been encircling Raqqa – the de facto stronghold of Daesh – announced that they had formed a “civilian council” to govern Raqqa after its capture from Daesh militants. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed militia that comprises a large number of Syrian Kurds, claim to have spent six months setting up the council, with a preparatory committee having met “with the people and important tribal figures of Raqqa city to find out their opinions on how to govern it,” Middle East Eye reported. SDF spokesman Talal Selo stated that some towns near Raqqa had already been turned over to the council following a successful operation to drive out Daesh forces. The U.S. military had previously hinted that power would be given to rebel groups following Raqqa’s “liberation” when the head of U.S. Central Command General Joseph Votel told the Senate in early March that military officials anticipated “that America’s allies will need assistance preventing their [Daesh’s] return and establishing Syrian-led peacekeeping efforts” after a successful operation. Considering that the Syrian government is far from being one of “America’s allies,” Votel’s statement implied that the U.S.-backed militias would be given control of Raqqa and the surrounding area, despite the implications this would have for Syrian sovereignty and further destabilization in the war-torn country. As MintPress previously reported, Votel also told senators that “conventional U.S. forces would be required to stabilize the region once ISIS fighters are flushed from Raqqa,” meaning that the current U.S. troop build-up around Raqqa is by no means a temporary deployment, but rather the foundation for creating a standing army.

Military analysts and political commentators have deluged their readers over the past week with their views about the U.S. missile strike on Syria ordered by President Donald Trump. Some of the assessments were more useful than others, but what was surprising was that the authors mostly seemed surprised. They shouldn’t have been. The firing of cruise missiles into Middle Eastern countries with which the United States is not at war is old news. Some articles, including one in The Washington Post, used the word “unprecedented” about the strike, but the only unprecedented part was the identity of the ruler whose facilities were targeted. In fact, as the astute Juan Cole of the University of Michigan noted, the United States has been doing this for more than 20 years – with little if any known impact on whatever conflict provoked the missile strike or whatever ruler was in disfavor with Washington at the time.

The US-coalition Air Force has conducted airstrikes against ISIS positions in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, targeting a chemical depot for the terror group which resulted in the death of hundreds of militants as well as civilian, the Syrian Ministry of Defense said in an official statement. “Yesterday between 17:30 – 17:50 p.m., the so-called anti-ISIS coalition fighter jets struck an ISIS position in Hatla village to the east of Deir Ezzor. After the airstrike, a huge white cloud was formed –later on turned yellow – as a result of an explosion in a chemical depot. A hug fire broke out until 22:30 p.m. Hundreds have been killed – including civilians – as a result of breathing toxic materials,” the statement detailed. The official statement said this incident confirms beyond any doubt that “terror groups, particularly ISIS and Jabhet al-Nusra, already own chemical weapons, and have the ability to obtain, transport, store and use such chemical agents with the help of some regional countries. This also stresses the fact that those terror groups are coordinating with its sponsors to accuse the Syrian Arab Army of using chemical weapons.”

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela categorically rejects and protests the comments expressed by Admiral Kurt Tidd, commander of the United States Southern Command, which lay the groundwork for an attack on Venezuela under the aegis of the false doctrine of collective regional security.  On Thursday, April 6 2017, Admiral Kurt Tidd declared that: “…The growing humanitarian crisis in Venezuela could eventually compel a regional response”. This affirmation, aimed at creating uncertainty and instability in the country, is framed within the interventionist order of a group of governments that are harassing and relentlessly hounding Venezuela through the construction of false assumptions accompanied by operations in the media and fraudulent processes within the framework of the Organization of American States (OAS). 

August 24, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - US policymakers have recently announced plans to hand over control of the Syrian city of Raqqa to former Islamic State (ISIS)-affiliated officials, Newsweek would report.

Throughout the process, the US has attempted to hinder joint Syrian-Russian security operations, including both proxy and direct attacks on Syrian and Russian forces. With few options remaining, it appears the US will all but literally use its military assets illegally occupying Syrian territory to provide shelter to remaining Islamic State fighters under the tenuous guise of them having renounced their ties to the terrorist organization.

The northern city of Idlib is another admittedly Al Qaeda-controlled city the US and its allies are still flooding with torrents of aid, supplies, weapons, and equipment. Idlib and Raqqa will form the remaining footholds of foreign-sponsored violence in Syria until Syria and its allies encircle and cut them off, making effective destabilization from either city difficult if not impossible. In an effort to blunt Syria's gaining momentum, US-ally and proxy Israel has recently threatened war with Iran if it does not remove its forces from neighboring Syria. Iran and Russia have played a key role in preserving the territorial integrity of Syria and allowing the government in Damascus to restore order to the nation's most populous centers.

As the U.S. prepares to send more troops to Afghanistan to combat ISIS and the Taliban, and the specter of a war hangs over every tweet the President writes about North Korea, it’s important to remember that the U.S. has been fighting in and bombing several countries in the Middle East and Asia for 16 years. According to a new study, all that war has cost the U.S. taxpayers $5.6 trillion, which is over three times what the Pentagon estimates.

While de-certifying would not withdraw the U.S. from the deal, it would give Congress 60 days to decide whether or not to reimpose the sanctions on Iran that were suspended by it. According to a new poll from YouGov, Americans are at odds with the president's stance with most of the public supporting the nuclear deal. The research found that 56 percent of the public approve of the agreement, of which 31 percent strongly approve and 25 percent somewhat approve. Only 19 percent of those polled said they disapprove of it. Broken down by party, 68 percent of Democrats support the deal while a surprisingly large 22 percent share have no opinion on the matter. A slight 51 percent majority of Republicans are also in favor of the agreement while 23 percent are against it. YouGov also found that support for the nuclear deal doesn't necessarily mean Americans like or trust Iran with 44 percent regarding the country as a U.S. enemy.

Months after Russia became the first country to announce the creation of a state-backed Cryptorouble, Venezuela has followed suit, announcing the creation of El Petro, a state-sanctioned cryptocurrency to be backed by Venezuela’s extensive reserves of crude oil. Venezuela has already broken free of Dollar dependence months ago when Caracas announced it would be trading its oil using China’s Petroyuan. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro also stated that he would like to begin trade with Russia in the Rouble. With Venezuela heavily sanctioned by the United States, El Petro looks to be another tool which Venezuela can use to continue and conduct international commerce without relying on Dollar based financial institution.

Crucially, while existing Cryptocurrencies tend to create their initial value through an arithmetic process called “mining”, leaving them heavily subject to market fluctuation, El Petro will be backed by a known commodity, oil, thus giving it a clear advantage for risk-averse investors. While the world’s most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has seen its value skyrocket against the Dollar, some remain unconvinced of its long-term prospects for stability. A currency, backed by oil would, by contrast, ostensibly fluctuate in accordance with the well established global price of Brent Crude.

An official oil-backed cryptocurrency could work in tandem with Russia’s soon to be launched Cryptorouble, a digital currency which will ostensibly be backed by the vast resources of the Russian state. With western governments ambivalent about how to treat existing cryptocurrencies, Russia and Venezuela have taken the lead to both normalize cryptos while backing them by well-known assets.

While Trump's Twitter activity from yesterday continues to drive media and political outrage, especially in the UK, and with the focus of the frenzied coverage being that the president retweeted a far-right U.K. leader's "anti-Muslim videos", there is actually something much more interesting concerning the context to the “Muslim Destroys A Statue Of Virgin Mary” video. That particular video shared by the president is from 2013 and shows a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander named Omar Gharba destroying a Virgin Mary statue as the group invaded a Syrian Christian town. In a geopolitical and deeply ironic twist demonstrating the absurdity and contradictions of US foreign policy, the radical Islamist commander was actually supported by the United States at the time as part of the FSA, which the media and US government deemed "moderate".  So a sitting US president shared a video which reveals a Syrian "rebel" fighter committing war crimes who was part of one of the very groups backed by the CIA as official US policy under the Obama administration. Of course it is likely that Trump himself is not fully aware of this, yet the astounding geopolitical irony in this should not be missed, even as public outrage is reduced to merely discussing "anti-Muslim bigotry" and whether or not Trump is being "presidential".

nd while multiple media outlets, for example NPR, continue to claim the videos are "unverified" and "have no context" or are of "murky origins" (as the Washington Post wrongly claims), this particular video especially was widely shared and discussed among the world's top Syria analysts and Middle East scholars at the time. The video was taken in 2013 and shows the Wahhabi cleric and FSA commander smashing the Christian statue in connection with the US-backed group's prior attack on Yakubiya in Idlib province. The book, The Islamic State: Combating The Caliphate Without Borders, authored by counter-terrorism experts Yonah and Dean Alexander, gives his full name as Omar Gharba al-Khojji and like vast numbers of FSA fighters he eventually jointed ISIS (some online sources alternately list his name as Omar Raghba).

akubiyah was a mostly Christian village principally comprised of Armenian Orthodox and Catholic churches which after being taken over by the FSA was subsequently held by ISIS. The local Christians saw no distinction between the invading FSA and ISIS fighters as it was primarily the US-backed FSA which began massacring Christians and looting churches. Even the US government funded Voice of America news had this to say based on an interview with a Christian survivor: Christian refugees described to VOA the execution of a half dozen of their co-religionists in the northwestern village of al-Yakubiye, in Idlib province, by Sunni Muslims aligned with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. Rahel, a 45-year-old former teacher, said, “Al Nusra didn’t come to our village; the people who came were from villages close by, and they were Free Syrian Army.”   ...Nearly a third of Syria’s Christians, an estimated 600,000, have fled the country. Before the war, Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria’s population of 22 million. And The Daily Beast also confirmed at the time that "nearly all Christians have fled [Yakubiyah] after half a dozen were executed with their heads chopped off and about 20 more were kidnapped" by the US sponsored FSA. Furthermore, an October 2013 report in Arabic media confirmed that, Terrorists belonging to al-Nusra front broke into homes in Yakubiyah in Syria's Idlib province, killed a Chrisitan man and destroyed a Virgin Mary statue. Upon arrival at a house that had the statue of virgin Mary, Wahhabi cleric, Omar Gharba' carried the statue of the Virgin Mary after it was taken over by militants from the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) and broke it by throwing it on the ground. He stated that he and his fellow Wahhabis won't tolerate any form of worship except strict Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.   "God willing, Only God will be worshipped in the land of the Levant," the terrorist who destroyed the statue said, noting that "no other idol will be worshiped after these days . We won't accept but the religion of Allah and the Sunnah of our Prophet Mohammed bin Abdullah." In 2012 and 2013 Omar Gharba's name appeared somewhat frequently in Western news reports as he was interviewed on a few occasions and presented as a "moderate" rebel, for example by BBC Arabic in 2012. The below video is one such example of Omar Gharba insisting that he and his fellow FSA militants would be tolerant and respectful of Christians and other religious minorities should they inherit power by toppling the Assad government  - though he was subsequently outed as the destroyer of the Virgin Mary statue, as the edit of the video interview makes clear.

The Mexican Senate is set to approve a new law that would mark a qualitative step in the militarization of Mexican society. The law would put the military in charge of “internal security” and give the armed forces the authority to conduct massive spying operations under the guise of fighting against organized crime. The Interior Security Law was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on November 30, will soon be voted on by the Senate, and is expected to be signed by President Enrique Peña Nieto in the coming months. The Interior Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Interior) would authorize the president to deploy the Armed Forces in cases of “grave danger to the collective integrity of people and/or the functionality of institutions,” or even in situations that could “potentially become threats to internal security.” Any such operation would supposedly last up to one year. However, the bill specifies that the president can, without any congressional or judicial approval, extend this period if he or she considers that a “threat” is still present. Under current conditions of deep social and political crisis, the law opens the door to establishing what would amount to a military dictatorship. Small but substantial protests have taken place throughout the country against the law.

S-400 and Pantsir-S anti-aircraft weapon systems will remain in Syria despite the recently announced withdarawal of Russian forces, Viktor Bondarev, former Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces and Chairman of the Defense, and Security Committee of Russia’s Federation Council revealed on December 13. According to the Russian state-run news agency TASS, Russia is not going to reduce its anti-aircraft capabilities in the country. Some number of helicopters, warplanes and military personnel still involved in the ongoing anti-terrorist efforts will also remain.

As Turkey prepares to launch an operation against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists in Syria’s Afrin, the U.S. has threatened war with Turkey in the PKK-occupied city, in a report published by the CIA-affiliated Rand Corporation. The most recent report, titled “U.S. Strategic Interests in the Middle East and Implications for the Army,” was published by the Rand Corporation, an American think tank closely affiliated with the CIA. The report concluded that opposing interests between Ankara and Washington may lead to possible clashes between the two countries, deeming a potential confrontation to be “not entirely out of the question.”

Russia has finalized an agreement with Turkey on the sale of the S-400 air defense missile system. Vladimir Kozhin, a presidential aide who oversees Russia’s matters of military cooperation, said Thursday that the deal was now finalized and Moscow would begin delivery of the system to Ankara in late 2019. “The first deliveries are likely to begin at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020,” Kozhin said. He said no more issues remained about the deal, which was discussed between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the former’s visit to Ankara on December 11. “All aspects have been resolved over the past few days ... All parameters, all technologies, the entire deal has been agreed ... Practically speaking, the contract is entering the phase of realization,” he said.

The deal comes as Turkey has been establishing closer relations with Russia after it experienced glitches in its relations with Western governments following a crackdown in the country over the July 2016 coup attempt. The alliance originally reacted skeptically to the decision, saying the system was not compatible with its equipment. However, the Pentagon said recently that Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 system, the most significant deal Ankara has signed with a non-NATO military supplier, was generally “a good idea” as it was inter-operable with the military alliance's other systems. The S-400 is Russia’s latest surface-to-air missile defense batteries. Moscow aims to sell the system to Saudi Arabia, with Kozhin saying Thursday that the deal with Riyadh could also be finalized before the end of the year.