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The joint address comes as the EU began a military operation to catch migrant traffickers, with European warships patrolling international waters in the Mediterranean to arrest smugglers dubbed the "mafia of the sea".The European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini announced last month that EUNAVFOR MED, an operation launched to dismantle the network of smugglers abetting the migrant boat crisis, was to enter its second phase.The first phase, which essentially entailed compiling and analysing information on the trafficker networks, has been up and running since June.Six ships are already in place in international waters off the coast of Libya - the departure point for many of the migrant boats - including an Italian aircraft carrier, a French frigate and one British, one Spanish and two German ships.At least three other vessels supplied by the Belgian, British and Slovenian navies are expected to arrive in the area at the end of October to complete the force, which also include four aircraft and 1,318 personnel."We follow the traffickers and want to arrest them and seize their ships," a German captain told AFP, adding that he'll get as close to Libyan waters as he can.Over the past few weeks, EUNAVFOR MED has identified 20 'escort' boats - the type used by traffickers who take the migrants out to sea in fishing boats and dinghies before leaving them and returning to Libya in the escort boat.

It could have taken action against all of the 17 Libyan and three Egyptian 'escort' boats spotted, had phase two of the operation already been up and running.On the map, the operation will patrol over 10 areas off the Libyan coast: four along the 12-nautical mile mark which separates international from Libyan waters, and the others further out to sea.According to the proposals, the whole of the north-western coast of Libya from the Tunisian border to Sirte will be on lockdown, apart from an area directly in front of Tripoli, which will be left open to prevent a total maritime blockade.

Hollande would later accuse Moscow of having become a party to the conflict in Syria due to what he described as Moscow’s support to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The remark fell within the context of allegations that Russian jets had targeted positions of other than ISIL fighters.

In a January 2013 interview with nsnbc, retired Pakistani Major Agha H. Amin noted that one of NATO’s long-term objectives with the destabilization of Syria was to spread a string of low intensity conflicts from the Mediterranean along Russia’s and other CSTO members soft and resource-rich underbelly to Pakistan. It is within this context that the statement of the President of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, and his country’s support for the Russian air strikes can be understood. Expanding Russian air strikes to also include e.g. Jabhat al-Nusrah and other mercenary brigades operating in Syria and Iraq would not be mission creep but rather part of a long-term strategy to counter well-documented, predominantly US and UK forged plans to destabilize and eventually to “Balkanize” the Russian Federation by drawing Russia and other CSTO member States into protracted low-intensity conflicts.

Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria. That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage. It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte. In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

A comprehensive criminal investigation by the U.S. government would dissuade future government officials from ordering or using torture and abuse. Failure to conduct an independent criminal investigation not only flouts international law but it also undermines America’s ability to advocate for human rights abroad and compromises Americans’ faith in the rule of law at home. The ACLU and other human rights groups have until May 1st to submit “shadow reports” to the Human Rights Committee, which will subsequently assess and grade U.S. implementation of the key priority recommendations.  The Obama administration can still avoid a low grade by responding to domestic and international calls to appoint a special prosecutor to conduct a comprehensive criminal investigation of the tactics described in the Senate torture report, including all acts authorizing or ordering acts of torture and other abuses and provide redress to victims of torture.  

“I am going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me, that they were preparing something in Syria. … This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister of Foreign Affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I am French, that does not interest me. … This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… in the region it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance. … Consequently, everything that moves in the region…- and I have this from a former Israeli Prime Minister who told me ´we will try to get on with our neighbors but those who don´t agree with us will be destroyed. It is a type of politics, a view of history, why not after all. But one should  know about it”. The Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL has its origin in the Unites States, the UK’s, NATO’s and Middle Eastern NATO allies’ attempt to introduce Al-Qaeda into Iraq as a pretext for the U.S.-led military presence in the country.

War For Oil – By Foreign Funded Mercenary Brigades. Details about the genesis of ISIS have been published in the nsnbc international article entitled “ISIS Unveiled: The Identity of the Insurgency in Syria and Iraq”. ISIS initially launched its assaults against Syria via Turkey and Jordan.

In 2012 the Iraqi government under the then Prime Minister al-Maliki deployed troops to Iraq’s al-Anbar province to stem up for the trafficking of weapons, munitions and fighters via old smuggling routes to Syria’s oil-rich Deir Ez-Zour province where ISIS had gained a foothold. The al-Maliki government’s initiative made it necessary to re-route much of that traffic via Jordan, where the U.S. JSOC, CIA, USAID and other organizations had established a joint command and intelligence structure with the “opposition” at the Ramtha Air Base as well as in the border town Al-Mafraq. April 22, 2013 the European Union (EU) lifted its ban on the import of Syrian oil from “rebel-held territories”. The export of Syrian oil to Turkey has since then more than doubled. In June 2014 nsnbc international’s editor-in-chief met a person from within the inner circle around the former Lebanese PM and multi-billionaire Saad Hariri. The meeting took place in the Danish capital Copenhagen.

Concerned about that the war was developing into a regional war that eventually also would engulf Lebanon the whistleblower presented evidence to support his claim that the final decision to launch the invasion of Iraq with ISIS brigades was made on the sidelines of the Atlantic Council Energy Summit in Turkey on November 22 -23, 2013. He added that ISIS operations via Turkey are run via the U.S. Embassy in Turkey, involving Ambassador Riccardione.

Also in 2013, U.S. Senator John McCain met with the then Free Syrian Army (FSA) chief Salim Idriss, ISIS leader al-Badri, a.k.a al-Baghdadi and Caliph Ibrahim in a safe house in the Syrian city of Idlib, near the Turkish border. In 2014 over 5,000 the fighters of the so-called “moderate opposition” groups which are supported by the United States and others would join the ranks of ISIS. ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusrah are currently fighting side-by-side for control over the Damascus suburb and Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk at the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. The deployment of Swedish troops, regardless how small or symbolic the contingent is, constitutes, arguably, a crime against peace committed by Margot Wallström and Peter Hulquist as it is implausible that the two Swedish Ministers are unaware of the above mentioned information that is readily available in the public domain.

Since that September 11 Kerry-Abdullah meeting (curious date to pick, given the climate of suspicion that the Bush family is covering up involvement of the Saudis in or around the events of September 11, 2001), the Saudis have a new ageing King, Absolute Monarch and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman, replacing the since deceased old ageing King, Abdullah. However, the Oil Minister remains unchanged—79-year-old Ali al-Naimi. It was al-Naimi who reportedly saw the golden opportunity in the Kerry proposal to use the chance to at the same time kill off the growing market challenge from the rising output of the unconventional USA shale oil industry. Al-Naimi has said repeatedly that he is determined to eliminate the US shale oil “disturbance” to Saudi domination of world oil markets. Not only are the Saudis unhappy with the US shale oil intrusion on their oily Kingdom. They are more than upset with the recent deal the Obama Administration made with Iran that will likely lead in several months to lifting Iran economic sanctions. In fact the Saudis are beside themselves with rage against Washington, so much so that they have openly admitted an alliance with arch foe, Israel, to combat what they see as the Iran growing dominance in the region—in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq.

This has all added up to an iron Saudi determination, aided by close Gulf Arab allies, to further crash oil prices until the expected wave of shale oil company bankruptcies—that was halted in January by Washington and Wall Street manipulations—finishes off the US shale oil competition. That day may come soon, but with unintended consequences for the entire global financial system at a time such consequences can ill be afforded. According to a recent report by Wall Street bank, Morgan Stanley, a major player in crude oil markets, OPEC oil producers have been aggressively increasing oil supply on the already glutted world market with no hint of a letup. In its report Morgan Stanley noted with visible alarm, “OPEC has added 1.5 million barrels/day to global supply in the last four months alone…the oil market is currently 800,000 barrels/day oversupplied. This suggests that the current oversupply in the oil market is fully due to OPEC’s production increase since February alone.” The Wall Street bank report adds the disconcerting note, “We anticipated that OPEC would not cut, but we didn’t foresee such a sharp increase.” In short, Washington has completely lost its strategic leverage over Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom that had been considered a Washington vassal ever since FDR’s deal to bring US oil majors in on an exclusive basis in 1945.

That breakdown in US-Saudi communication adds a new dimension to the recent June 18 high-level visit to St. Petersburg by Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister and son of King Salman, to meet President Vladimir Putin. The meeting was carefully prepared by both sides as the two discussed up to $10 billion of trade deals including Russian construction of peaceful nuclear power reactors in the Kingdom and supplying of advanced Russian military equipment and Saudi investment in Russia in agriculture, medicine, logistics, retail and real estate. Saudi Arabia today is the world’s largest oil producer and Russia a close second. A Saudi-Russian alliance on whatever level was hardly in the strategy book of the Washington State Department planners.…Oh shit! Now that OPEC oil glut the Saudis have created has cracked the shaky US effort to push oil prices back up. The price fall is being further fueled by fears that the Iran deal will add even more to the glut, and that the world’s second largest oil importer, China, may cut back imports or at least not increase them as their economy slows down. The oil market time bomb detonated in the last week of June. The US price of WTI oil went from $60 a barrel then, a level at which at least many shale oil producers can stay afloat a bit longer, to $49 on July 29, a drop of more than 18% in four weeks, tendency down. Morgan Stanley sounded loud alarm bells, stating that if the trend of recent weeks continues, “this downturn would be more severe than that in 1986. As there was no sharp downturn in the 15 years before that, the current downturn could be the worst of the last 45+ years. If this were to be the case, there would be nothing in our experience that would be a guide to the next phases of this cycle…In fact, there may be nothing in analyzable history.”

October is the next key point for bank decisions to roll-over US shale company loans or to keep extending credit on the (until now) hope that prices will slowly recover. If as strongly hinted, the Federal Reserve hikes US interest rates in September for the first time in the eight years since the global financial crisis erupted in the US real estate market in 2007, the highly-indebted US shale oil producers face disaster of a new scale. Until the past few weeks the volume of US shale oil production has remained at the maximum as shale producers desperately try to maximize cash flow, ironically, laying the seeds of the oil glut globally that will be their demise. The reason US shale oil companies have been able to continue in business since last November and not declare bankruptcy is the ongoing Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy that leads banks and other investors to look for higher interest rates in the so-called “High Yield” bond market. Back in the 1980’s when they were first created by Michael Millken and his fraudsters at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Wall Street appropriately called them “junk bonds” because when times got bad, like now for Shale companies, they turned into junk. A recent UBS bank report states, “the overall High-Yield market has doubled in size; sectors that witnessed more buoyant issuance in recent years, like energy and metals mining, have seen debt outstanding triple or quadruple.”

Assuming that the most recent downturn in WTI oil prices continues week after week into October, there well could be a panic run to sell billions of dollars of those High-Yield, high-risk junk bonds. As one investment analyst notes, “when the retail crowd finally does head for the exits en masse, fund managers will be forced to come face to face with illiquid secondary corporate credit markets where a lack of market depth…has the potential to spark a fire sale.” The problem is that this time, unlike in 2008, the Federal Reserve has no room to act. Interest rates are already near zero and the Fed has bought trillions of dollars of bank bad debt to prevent a chain-reaction US bank panic. One option that is not being discussed at all in Washington would be for Congress to repeal the disastrous 1913 Federal Reserve Act that gave control of our nation’s money to a gang of private bankers, and to create a public National Bank, owned completely by the United States Government, that could issue credit and sell Federal debt without the intermediaries of corrupt Wall Street bankers as the Constitution intended. At the same time they could completely nationalize the six or seven “Too Big To Fail” banks behind the entire financial mess that is destroying the foundations of the United States and by extension of the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, of most of the world.

In order to modernize the global economic system, at the center of which stand the US and the EU, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have created the BRICS Stock Alliance and are creating their own development bank to finance large infrastructure projects. On the whole, despite fierce criticism of BRICS as an organization with no future, it is developing and increasing cooperation with its members and, in fact, BRICS is showing pretty good results. With the suspension of Russia’s participation in G8 and the strengthening of economic sanctions against Russia, specific industries may be targeted, including limits on imported commodities. While the West seeks to hit Russia hard, it is important to notice that Russia is ready to switch to other markets, including BRICS, with a view to expanding its trade.

Moscow and Beijing, to say the least, are not exactly impressed; rather, they detect desperation. Yet things could - and should - get much nastier, irrespective of imploding Khaganates. Just wait for the Hillary doctrine.

Whatever the case, Mr. Hagel struggled to fit in with Mr. Obama’s close circle and was viewed as never gaining traction in the administration after a bruising confirmation fight among his old Senate colleagues, during which he was criticized for seeming tentative in his responses to sharp questions. Continue reading the main story Recent Comments Janet Camp 10 minutes ago The “Ebola Crisis”? How is the Defense Secretary responsible for this bit of manufactured hoo-hah? Or for the rise of IS, for that matter?... Dale 10 minutes ago Somehow Obama always chooses the least of the least for his cabinet. StandingO 10 minutes ago Expect appointment of another known figure from Congress who is similarly in tune with Obama's views. Nancy Pelosi might well be the one. See All Comments Write a comment He never really shed that pall after arriving at the Pentagon, and in the past few months he has largely ceded the stage to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who officials said initially won the confidence of Mr. Obama with his recommendation of military action against the Islamic State.

Harris suggested the videos could lead to the “perceived mistreatment of individuals,” and serve as a recruiting tool for the Islamic State. In his declaration he noted that South Florida journalist Steven Sotloff was forced by his captors to make an anti-Guantánamo statement before he was beheaded earlier this year. When Sotloff was killed, he was clad in an orange jumpsuit that has come to symbolize the prison in southeast Cuba.

Harris argued against release based on “prior experience from the release of certain provocative photographs and information.” He noted that “in 2012 the release of a video depicting Marines urinating on the corpses of alleged Taliban members was used as a recruitment tool for the Taliban and led to an Afghan soldier attacking and killing French troops.”It is not known when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit would take up the Justice Department appeal because Tuesday’s filing was not the appeal itself but notice to the court that the Obama administration was appealing Kessler’s release order.Separately, the prison camps commander Navy Rear Adm. Kyle Cozad, argued that disclosure of the videos would tip captives to certain techniques used by its tackle-and-shackle squad of soldiers — something Judge Kessler ridiculed in her ruling as “implausible” because the captives experience what is portrayed in the videos.

Cozad, however, suggested in a heavily redacted 13-page sworn statement that if the videos are released he might restrict access to news media in the cellblocks, a popular distraction at the detention center that the admiral characterized as “important for intellectual stimulation and overall morale.”He also listed a series of assaults that apparently occurred since he took over this summer, including a captive who resisted his force-feeding by biting a guard and another who hit a soldier in the face with a handcuffed fist.He called the videos a useful tool for the prison, saying staff likened them to “an NFL team watching video of the previous week’s football game to determine what plays worked well, what they did wrong, and what they could do better during the next game.”