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The US is to send some 10,000 troops to Iraq to provide support for a 90,000-strong force from the Gulf states, a leading Iraqi opposition MP has warned. The politician said the plan was announced to the Iraqi government during a visit by US Senator John McCain. During a meeting in Baghdad on November 27, McCain told Prime Minister Haider Abadi and a number of senior Iraqi cabinet and military officials that the decision was ‘non-negotiable’, claimed Hanan Fatlawi, the head of the opposition Irada Movement.“A hundred thousand foreign troops, including 90,000 from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan, and 10,000 troops from America will be deployed in western regions of Iraq,” she wrote on her Facebook page.She added that the Iraqi prime minister protested the plan, but was told that “the decision has already been taken.”

McCain and fellow hawk Senator Lindsey Graham have both been calling for a tripling in the current number of US troops deployed in Iraq to 10,000, and also advocate sending an equal number of troops to Syria to fight against the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Americans would prop up a 90,000-strong international ground force provided by Sunni Arab countries like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.“The region is ready to fight. The region hates ISIL – they are coming for Sunni Arab nations. Turkey hates ISIL. The entire region wants Assad gone. So there is an opportunity here with some American leadership to do two things: to hit ISIL before we get hit at home and to push Assad out,” Graham argued during the joint visit to Baghdad in November.“Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey – they have regional armies and they would go into the fight if we put [the removal of] Assad on the table. Most of the fight will be done by the region. They will pay for this war,” he added.

The US currently has about 3,600 troops in Iraq, including 100 special operations troops deployed last month to take part in combat missions involving hostage rescue and the assassination of IS leaders. The White House is reluctant to commit a large ground force, citing the cost in human lives and money and the possible political ramifications of what will be portrayed by America’s opponents as yet another Western invasion of the Arab world.The McCain-Graham plan also poses the risk of direct confrontation between the proposed coalition force and Russia and Iraq, which are both militarily assisting the Assad government and may not stay out of the fight – something which the hawkish duo have not factored into their plan.This is especially true after Turkey’s downing of a Russian bomber plane on the Turkish-Syrian border, which Moscow considered a stab in the back and which sent relations with Ankara to a low not seen for decades.Baghdad has its own concerns about a Turkish presence on its territory after Ankara sent troops into western Iraq and refused to withdraw them, despite Iraqi protests. Ankara claimed the incursion was made under a 2014 invitation from Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi.

A petition calling for Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump to be barred from entering the UK has gathered more than 370,000 names, so MPs will have to consider debating it.The petition went on Parliament's e-petition website on Tuesday. It was posted in response to Mr Trump's call for a temporary halt on Muslims entering the United States. Chancellor George Osborne criticised Mr Trump's comments but rejected calls for him to be banned from the UK.A counter-petition, set up on Wednesday, saying Mr Trump should not be banned as it would be "totally illogical" has attracted more than 9,000 signatures. Any petition with more than 100,000 signatures is automatically considered for debate in Parliament.

In other developments: Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has stripped Mr Trump of his status as a business ambassador for Scotland. Aberdeen's Robert Gordon University has revoked Mr Trump's honorary degree, which he received in 2010 in recognition of his achievements as an entrepreneur and businessman. One of the Middle East's largest retail chains, Lifestyle, has withdrawn Donald Trump products from its shelves following his comments.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq the U.S vice consul Paul Bremer tried to install a handpicked Iraqi government.  The top Shia religious authority in Iraq, Grand Ajatollah Sistani, demanded a democratic vote. The issue was thereby decided. There was no way the U.S could have circumvented Sisitani's edict without a massive revolt by the 65% of Iraqis who are Shia and mostly follow his advice. Bremer had to fold. Now Ajatollah Sistani takes position against the Turkish invasion of Iraq: Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on the government on Friday to show "no tolerance" of any infringement of the country's sovereignty, after Turkey deployed heavily armed troops to northern Iraq. Sistani's spokesman, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi Karbala'i, did not explicitly name Turkey, but a row over the deployment has badly soured relations between Ankara and Baghdad, which denies having agreed to it. ... "The Iraqi government is responsible for protecting Iraq's sovereignty and must not tolerate and side that infringes upon on it, whatever the justifications and necessities," Karbalai'i said in a weekly sermon. The issue is thereby decided. Turkish troops will have to leave or will have to decisively defeat all Shia of Iraq (and Iran). If Erdogan were smart he would now order the Turkish troops stationed near Mosul to leave Iraq.

The Russian President Putin also increased pressure on Turkey: President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered Russia's armed forces to act in an "extremely tough way" in Syria to protect Russian forces striking Islamic State targets there. "Any targets threatening our (military) group or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed," Putin said, speaking at a Defence Ministry event. Note to Erdogan: Beware of funny ideas...

There was some Syrian opposition conference yesterday in Saudi Arabia were the Saudis tried to bribe everyone to agree on a common position. But the conference failed. Some 116 delegates took part under "international guidance" of their various sponsors. A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda aligned Ahrar al Sham, which closely cooperates with the al-Qaeda entity Jabhat al Nusra in Syria, also took part. No women were present. The conference resulted in the decision to hold another conference. The 116 delegates at the conference decided to select 33 delegates for a conference which would decide on 15 delegates to confer and maybe take part in some negotiations with the Syrian government side. The NYT's Ben Hubbard, who was there, tweeted: Ben Hubbard @NYTBen ...The meeting created yet another new opposition body, a high commission, meant to oversee negotiations. There was debate about how large it should be and what proportion should represent armed groups. Final was 32, changed after meetings to 33. Those 33 now tasked with choosing a 15 person negotiating team. So, yeah, umbrella groups making a new umbrella.

Americans have long lived in a nation made up primarily of middle-class families, neither rich nor poor, but comfortable enough. This year, that changed, according to the Pew Research Center. A just-released analysis of government data shows that as of 2015, middle-income households have become the minority. The trend is so firmly established that it may well continue; Americans have experienced "a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point," Pew researchers concluded Wednesday. Thanks to factory closings and other economic factors, the country now has 120.8 million adults living in middle-income households, the study found. That compares with the 121.3 million who are living in either upper- or lower-income households.

"The hollowing of the middle has proceeded steadily for the past four decades," Pew concluded. And middle-income Americans not only have shrunk as a share of the population but have fallen further behind financially, with their median income down 4 percent compared with the year 2000, Pew said.

s Mayor Rahm Emanuel was apologizing Wednesday for the broken system of police accountability exposed by the Laquan McDonald case, city attorneys argued before a federal judge that footage of an officer fatally shooting a 17-year-old carjacking suspect nearly three years ago should be kept from public view.Lawyers for Cedrick Chatman's family allege the videos of his January 2013 killing contradict statements from police that Chatman had turned and pointed a dark object at police as he ran, prompting Officer Kevin Fry to fire in fear of his life. City attorneys argue releasing the footage — which they described as low-quality and incomplete — could inflame the public and jeopardize a fair trial.At a brief hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said the records should stay sealed for the time being. But the judge said he would likely lift the protective order next month if he was going to be asked to consider the videos in any pretrial rulings, a move that would automatically make them part of the public record.

"If it's likely going to come out through pretrial motions, then there really is no reason to wait," said Gettleman, who set a hearing on the issue for Jan. 14.Gettleman's ruling came three weeks after police dash-cam video of 17-year-old McDonald being shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke went viral, sparking protests and leading to the resignations of both police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Scott Ando, who headed the Independent Police Review Authority, which has drawn criticism for its lax enforcement on excessive-force complaints.

Earlier this year, Lorenzo Davis, the IPRA supervisor who headed up the Chatman probe, filed a federal lawsuit alleging he was fired by Ando for concluding that officers in several shootings — including Chatman's — were not justified in using lethal force.Davis, who viewed the surveillance video as part of the IPRA inquiry, told the Tribune last month he did not see Chatman aim at or turn toward the officers."Cedrick was just running as the shots were fired," Davis said. "You're taught that deadly force is a last resort and that you should do everything in your power to apprehend the person before you use deadly force. I did not see where deadly force was called for at that time."An investigator on Davis' team alleged that Fry violated the department's deadly force policy, but that claim was ruled "unfounded" in the final IPRA report.

If we want to curb terrorism in the United States, we must stop drone attacks in the Middle East.

It’s a sick myth that Islamic extremists attack the United States or other nations because they “hate our freedom.” They attack us for our foreign policy. In 2006, the United States National Intelligence Estimate reported that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq made the problem of terrorism worse by creating a new generation of terrorists. And since then, top ranking military and counter-terrorism authorities such as General Stanley McChrystal, General Mike Flynn and George W. Bush’s counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke say that drone strikes in particular are creating more terrorists than they’re killing. If we want to stop terrorist attacks, we should stop the barbaric blind bombings that are fueling radicalization.

“The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates,” Gen. McChrystal, who led the US counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, said in 2013. “They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.” <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=defenseone-instream;sz=600x300;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=defenseone-instream;sz=600x300;tile=4;"/> </a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-tablet;sz=700x350;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-tablet;sz=700x350;tile=5;"/> </a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-mobile;sz=300x150;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-mobile;sz=300x150;tile=6;"/> </a> Gen. Flynn, who until recently was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and has become a harsh critic of President Obama’s strategy in the Middle East, has said, “When you drop a bomb from a drone … you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good.” Flynn, who has actually backs a more muscular military approach, doesn’t think it should include drones. Clarke has said that when we use unmanned drones to drop bombs which, no matter how hard we try otherwise, inevitably kill innocent people: [Y]ou cause enemies for the United States that will last for generations. All of these innocent people that you kill have brothers and sisters and tribe—tribal relations. Many of them were not opposed to the United States prior to some one of their friends or relatives being killed. And then, sometimes, they cross over, not only to being opposed to the United States, but by being willing to pick up arms and become a terrorist against the United States. So you may actually be creating terrorists, rather than eliminating them,

Tony Blair went to war in Iraq despite a report by South African experts with unique knowledge of the country that showed it did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to a book published on Sunday.

God, Spies and Lies, by South African journalist John Matisonn, describes how then president Thabo Mbeki tried in vain to convince both Blair and President George W Bush that toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 would be a terrible mistake. Mbeki’s predecessor, Nelson Mandela, also tried to convince the American leader, but was left fuming that “President Bush doesn’t know how to think”. The claim was this week supported by Mbeki’s office, which confirmed that he pleaded with both leaders to heed the WMD experts and even offered to become their intermediary with Saddam in a bid to maintain peace. South Africa had a special insight into Iraq’s potential for WMD because the apartheid government’s own biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s led the countries to collaborate. The programme was abandoned after the end of white minority rule in 1994 but the expert team, known as Project Coast, was put back together by Mbeki to investigate the US and UK assertion that Saddam had WMD – the central premise for mounting an invasion.

Mbeki, who enjoyed positive relations with both Blair and Saddam, asked for the team to be granted access. “Saddam agreed, and gave the South African team the freedom to roam unfettered throughout Iraq,” writes Matisonn, who says he drew on sources in Whitehall and the South African cabinet. “They had access to UN intelligence on possible WMD sites. The US, UK and UN were kept informed of the mission and its progress.” The experts put their prior knowledge of the facilities to good use, Matisonn writes. “They already knew the terrain, because they had travelled there as welcome guests of Saddam when both countries were building WMD.” On their return, they reported that there were no WMDs in Iraq. “They knew where the sites in Iraq had been, and what they needed to look like. But there were now none in Iraq.”

Wells Fargo is facing a probe by the Officer of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank (SFFR) into their allegedly unethical business practices.

Back in May Wells Fargo was sued by employees (current and former) and customers all across the nation for setting up “unwanted accounts, unwarranted fees”. This lawsuit “contends the largest California-based bank violated state and federal laws by misusing confidential information and failing to notify customers when personal information was breached.” Using “aggressive tactics” to coerce new customers, WF made it “difficult to correct the mistakes” made by WF and return fees to customers because of “high-pressure sales culture set unrealistic quotas, spurring employees to engage in fraudulent conduct to keep their jobs and boost the company’s profits.” Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said: “In its push for growth, Wells Fargo often elevated its profits over the legal rights of its customers.”

For 2 years, Feuer has been investigating how WF “staffers, fearing disciplinary action from managers, begged friends and family members to open ghost accounts” and forged signatures “and falsified phone numbers” of customers who did not want to open an account. This practice drove WF success with an estimated “26% of the company’s revenue was from fee income, including those from credit and debit card accounts, trusts and investments.” WF not only stole money from customers but “also damage their credit scores” and put some into collections to garner fees “for unauthorized accounts went unpaid”. According to the 19-page complaint, WF would “sandbag” their customers; meaning “failing to open accounts when requested by customers, and instead accumulating a number of account applications to be opened at a later date.” Another devious tactic WF employed was “bundling” or “incorrectly informing customers that certain products are available only in packages with other products such as additional accounts, insurance, annuities, and retirement plans.”

The first (and thus far only) roll-back of post-9/11 surveillance authorities was implemented over the weekend: The National Security Agency shuttered its program for collecting and holding the metadata of Americans’ phone calls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. While bulk collection under Section 215 has ended, the government can obtain access to this information under the procedures specified in the USA Freedom Act. Indeed, some experts have argued that the Agency likely has access to more metadata because its earlier dragnet didn’t cover cell phones or Internet calling. In addition, the metadata of calls made by an individual in the United States to someone overseas and vice versa can still be collected in bulk — this takes place abroad under Executive Order 12333. No doubt the NSA wishes that this was the end of the surveillance reform story and the Paris attacks initially gave them an opening. John Brennan, the Director of the CIA, implied that the attacks were somehow related to “hand wringing” about spying and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill to delay the shut down of the 215 program. Opponents of encryption were quick to say: “I told you so.”

But the facts that have emerged thus far tell a different story. It appears that much of the planning took place IRL (that’s “in real life” for those of you who don’t have teenagers). The attackers, several of whom were on law enforcement’s radar, communicated openly over the Internet. If France ever has a 9/11 Commission-type inquiry, it could well conclude that the Paris attacks were a failure of the intelligence agencies rather than a failure of intelligence authorities. Despite the passage of the USA Freedom Act, US surveillance authorities have remained largely intact. Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act — which is the basis of programs like PRISM and the NSA’s Upstream collection of information from Internet cables — sunsets in the summer of 2017. While it’s difficult to predict the political environment that far out, meaningful reform of Section 702 faces significant obstacles. Unlike the Section 215 program, which was clearly aimed at Americans, Section 702 is sUpposedly targeted at foreigners and only picks Up information about Americans “incidentally.” The NSA has refused to provide an estimate of how many Americans’ information it collects under Section 702, despite repeated requests from lawmakers and most recently a large cohort of advocates. The Section 215 program was held illegal by two federal courts (here and here), but civil attempts to challenge Section 702 have run into standing barriers. Finally, while two review panels concluded that the Section 215 program provided little counterterrorism benefit (here and here), they found that the Section 702 program had been useful.

There is, nonetheless, some pressure to narrow the reach of Section 702. The recent decision by the European Court of Justice in the safe harbor case suggests that data flows between Europe and the US may be restricted unless the PRISM program is modified to protect the information of Europeans (see here, here, and here for discussion of the decision and reform options). Pressure from Internet companies whose business is suffering — estimates run to the tune of $35 to 180 billion — as a result of disclosures about NSA spying may also nudge lawmakers towards reform. One of the courts currently considering criminal cases which rely on evidence derived from Section 702 surveillance may hold the program unconstitutional either on the basis of the Fourth Amendment or Article III for the reasons set out in this Brennan Center report. A federal district court in Colorado recently rejected such a challenge, although as explained in Steve’s post, the decision did not seriously explore the issues. Further litigation in the European courts too could have an impact on the debate.

Russian Su-34 bombers, additionally equipped with air-to-air missiles, have set out on their first mission in Syria, said Igor Klimov, spokesman for the Russian Air Force.

“Today, Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers have made their first sortie equipped not only with high explosive aviation bombs and hollow charge bombs, but also with short- and medium-range air-to-air missiles," Klimov said."The planes are equipped with missiles for defensive purposes," he added.The missiles have target-seeking devices and are “capable of hitting air targets within a 60km radius,” he said.

In the wake of the downing, President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed a decree imposing a package of economic sanctions against Turkey. The measures include banning several Turkish organizations and the import of certain goods. Under the sanctions, the visa-free regime for Turkish nationals traveling to Russia will be suspended starting next year. The Russian government has also been tasked with introducing a ban on charter flights between Russia and Turkey and to enhance security control at Russian ports on the Sea of Azov and Black Sea.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia's long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad's future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria's civil war. "The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change," Kerry told reporters in the Russian capital after meeting President Vladimir Putin. A major international conference on Syria would take place later this week in New York, Kerry announced. Kerry reiterated the U.S. position that Assad, accused by the West of massive human rights violations and chemical weapons attacks, won't be able to steer Syria out of more than four years of conflict. But after a day of discussions with Assad's key international backer, Kerry said the focus now is "not on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad." Rather, it is on facilitating a peace process in which "Syrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria." Kerry's declarations crystallized the evolution in U.S. policy on Assad over the last several months, as the Islamic State group's growing influence in the Middle East has taken priority.

President Barack Obama first called on Assad to leave power in the summer of 2011, with "Assad must go" being a consistent rallying cry. Later, American officials allowed that he wouldn't have to resign on "Day One" of a transition. Now, no one can say when Assad might step down. Russia, by contrast, has remained consistent in its view that no foreign government could demand Assad's departure and that Syrians would have to negotiate matters of leadership among themselves. Since late September, it has been bombing terrorist and rebel targets in Syria as part of what the West says is an effort to prop up Assad's government. "No one should be forced to choose between a dictator and being plagued by terrorists," Kerry said. However, he described the Syrian opposition's demand that Assad must leave as soon as peace talks begin as a "nonstarting position, obviously."

Earlier Tuesday in the Kremlin, Putin noted several "outstanding issues" between Russia and its former Cold War foe. Beyond Assad, these include which rebel groups in Syria should be allowed to participate in the transition process and which should be deemed terrorists, and like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida, combatted by all. Jordan is working on finalizing the list of terrorist vs. legitimate opposition forces. Representatives of Syria's opposition themselves hope this week to finalize their negotiating team for talks with Assad's government. The U.S., Russia and others hope those talks will begin early next year. Appearing beside Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hailed what he described as a "big negotiating day," saying the sides advanced efforts to define what a Syrian transition process might look like.

The Western Press doesn’t have much to say about the military operations in Syria, except to affirm, without the slightest proof, that the Coalition is successfully bombing Daesh jihadists while the Russians continue to kill innocent civilians. It is in fact difficult to form a reasonable idea of the current situation, particularly since each side is readying its weapons in preparation for a wider conflict. Thierry Meyssan describes what is going on. The silence surrounding the military operations in Iraq and Syria does not mean that the war has ground to a halt, but that the different protagonists are preparing for a new round of hostilities.

The Coalition forces On the imperial side, there reigns a state of total confusion. With regard to the contradictory declarations by US leaders, it is impossible to understand Washington’s objectives, if indeed there are any. At the very best, it would seem that the United States are allowing France to take certain initiatives at the head of one part of the Coalition, but even there, we do not know their real objectives. Of course, France declares that it wants to destroy Daesh in retaliation for the attacks of the 13th November in Paris, but it was already saying so before these attacks took place. Their earlier declarations were the stuff of public relations, not reality. For example, the Mecid Aslanov, property of Necmettin Bilal Erdoğan’s BMZ Group, left the French port of Fos-sur-Mer on the 9th November 2015, having just delivered, in total impunity, a cargo of oil which it claimed had been extracted in Israël, but which in reality had been stolen by Daesh in Syria. There is nothing to indicate that the situation is any different today, or that we should begin taking the official declarations seriously. French President François Hollande and his Minister of Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian visited the aircraft-carrier Charles-De-Gaulle, off the coast of Syria, on the 4th December. They announced a change of mission, but gave no explanation. As Army Chief of Staff General Pierre de Villiers had previously stated, the ship was diverted to the Persian Gulf.

The aeronaval Group constituted around the Charles-De-Gaulle is composed of its on-board aerial Group (eighteenRafale Marine, eight modernised Super Etendard, two Hawkeye, two Dauphin and one Alouette III), the aerial defence frigateChevalier Paul, the anti-submarine frigate La Motte-Picquet, the command flagship Marne, the Belgian frigate Léopold Ier and the German frigate Augsburg, and also, although the Minister of Defence denies it, a nuclear attack submarine. Attached to this group, the stealth light frigate Courbet remained in the western Mediterranean. The European forces have been integrated into Task Force 50 of the USNavCent, in other words the US Central Command fleet. This unit now comprises about sixty ships. The French authorities have announced that rear-admiral René-Jean Crignola has taken command of this international force, without mentioning that he is placed under the authority of the commander of the 5th Fleet, rear-admiral Kevin Donegan, who is himself under the authority of General Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of CentCom. It is in truth an absolute rule of the Empire that the command of operations always falls to US officers, and that the Allies only occupy auxiliary positions. In fact, apart from the relative promotion of the French rear-admiral, we find ourselves in the same position as last February. We have an international Coalition which is supposed to be fighting Daesh, and which – for an entire year – has certainly multiplied its reconnaissance flights and destroyed Chinese oil installations, but without having the slightest effect on its official objective, Daesh. Here too, there is no indication that anything will change.

As part of a plan to rein in carbon emissions, Oslo's new city council announced this week that the city's center would be car-free by 2019. Ars Technica reports that the move, which aims to help the city halve greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels, "will make Oslo the first European capital where cars are permanently banned, plus it's a strong indicator that similar bans may be enacted in other major cities across the continent." To make the shift, the Norwegian capital will boost its investment into public transportation and add roughly 37 miles (60 kilometers) of bike lanes, Reuters reports 

The new coalition running the city, made up of the Labor Party, the Socialist Left, and the Greens, additionally said that it would divest its pension fund from fossil fuels.  "Divestment," Nguyen Berg added, "sends a strong message to the world prior to the Climate Change Conference in Paris that we need a strong agreement that will ensure that we avoid dangerous global warming."

Hillary Clinton has received more money from arms and military service companies than any other candidate during the 2016 presidential campaign, data from Open Secrets shows. All but one of the world’s 10 biggest arms producers have contributed to Clinton’s previous campaigns, giving her — along with the top Republican receiver Ted Cruz — a significant margin over the other candidates. The numbers, collected by the Federal Election Commission and compiled by Open Secrets, also reveal that Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders make the list of top 20 senators and top six presidential candidates to receive money from arms and defense companies. Most of the funding is channeled through Political Action Committees, which have no limits to how much they donate. About 18 percent comes from individual contributions, totaling almost US$10 million between all of the companies.

A report released Sunday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed that while U.S. arms sales have slowed, U.S.-based Lockheed Martin’s profits soared in 2014. Overall sales rose steadily until the financial crisis of 2008, when they mostly stabilized. Sunday’s report also indicates that the U.S. accounts for a staggering 54 percent market share of the global arms market. The United Kingdom has the second largest market share, with 10.4 percent. Russia has a market share of 10.2 percent, while France has a market share of 5.6 percent. The world’s top 10 arms companies are based in the U.S. and Western Europe, according to the report. Among these are Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems, who make up the top three companies in terms of global market share.

Here is the full readout of Vice President Biden’s Call With Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi The Vice President spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi yesterday following his December 14 call with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The Vice President noted the recent deployment of Turkish forces into northern Iraq had occurred without the prior consent of the Iraqi government. Both leaders welcomed initial indications of the withdrawal of some Turkish forces and agreed this should continue, reiterating that any foreign forces can only be present in Iraq with the coordination and permission of the Iraqi government. The Vice President reaffirmed the United States' commitment to Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity and called on Turkey to do the same by withdrawing any military forces from Iraqi territory that have not been authorized by the Iraqi government. The Vice President encouraged continued dialogue between Iraq and Turkey to address any outstanding grievances in the spirit of mutual cooperation. Both leaders reaffirmed their continued commitment to the fight against ISIL in Iraq. So first the US backtracks on its core long-running demand that "Assad must go", and now it has just turned its back on a key NATO-member ally and what is allegedly the biggest provider of funding and supplies (including Ford F250 pick up trucks) to the Islamic State, Turkey.

Britain is preparing to deploy up to 1,000 troops and Special Forces to LibyaFears remain over growing expansion of ISIS presence in and around Sirte  A small team of soldiers will be deployed to carry out 'scoping' missionsBritish military personnel would contribute to a 6,000-strong Italian-led mission to train and support local forces 

Members of the US Navy Seals brutally beat detainees in Afghanistan but escaped punishment after the abuse was reported, according to reports. US soldiers told their superiors they witnessed three Seals dropping heavy stones on detainees chests, kicking and stepping on their heads, firing weapons during an interrogation, and employing a variation of waterboarding. The Navy Seals are an elite special operations force perhaps best known for carrying out the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

When the men were released later that afternoon they were bloodied and hobbling. One, Muhammad Hashem, 24, was unable to walk. He died later the same day. Specialist Walker and three fellow soldiers decided to report the incident. “It just comes down to what’s wrong and what’s right,” he told the New York Times. “You can’t squint hard enough to make this gray.” A Navy lawyer recommended that the Seals be charged with assault, and potentially face a court martial. Instead, the charges were processed in a closed disciplinary process more commonly used for minor infractions, and the men were moved to different units but faced no further punishment.

The beatings by the Seals and members of an Afghan militia were so severe that one man died hours later and another has lasting injuries from the 2012 incident. The interrogations followed an explosion at an Afghan Local Police (ALP) checkpoint in the village of Kalach which killed a member of the ALP militia. The militiamen, who were trained by the Seals, rounded up approximately six suspects and brought them to a US base, beating them with rifles and antennae along the way. What happened next shocked Specialist David Walker, an Army medic, and other witnesses. Instead of ending the beatings and reprimanding the ALP members, they say the three Seals joined in and even intensified the abuse.

A French court has ordered IMF boss Christine Lagarde to face trial over the part she played in the Tapie Affair, regarding a €400m (£291m, $433m) transfer to French business tycoon and entrepreneur Bernard Tapie.In September, France's main prosecutor recommended magistrates at the Cour de Justice de la Republique, which deals with crime allegations against government officials, drop the investigation. The magistrates were probing Lagarde's alleged negligence in regards to the affair when she was finance minister of the country.Why advertise with usIn 2008, when Lagarde served under Nicolas Sarkozy's government, she approved a three member arbitration panel that awarded the payment from the taxpayers' pockets. Lagarde and Sarkozy have both been under fire since then for approving the panel.The payment followed Tapie's accusation that French bank Credit Lyonnais defrauded him when it handled the businessman's sale of his majority stake in German sports retailer Adidas in 1993. Tapie alleged the bank of deliberately undervaluing the company after it sold the stake for a higher sum.

Because the now bust Credit Lyonnais was partly state owned, at least some of the money came from French taxpayers. Tapie sold his Adidas shares to become a cabinet minister. He backed and supported Sarkozy in his bid for presidency in 2007.

The case has been brought up numerous times throughout the years, but some have accused current president Francois Hollande of playing politics. While others say that Lagarde and Sarkozy approved the payment because the influential Tapie backed their government.Tapie used to be popular among the French, as an entrepreneur and 'rags to riches' success story. Apart from Adidas, he has owned cycling team and Tour de France winner La Vie Claire and French football club Olympique Marseille.

The EU says it may retaliate if the US goes ahead with plans to impose visas for some members of the bloc who are currently part of the Visa Waiver Program. Brussels says it will not increase security and that US nationals may require visas to enter the EU. A letter signed by 28 European member state ambassadors to the US was published in The Hill after Europe reacted furiously and with disbelief to plans by Washington to tighten-up the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), which currently lets millions of citizens from the bloc travel to the US each year without a visa.

Last week, the US House of Representatives adopted a bill to reform the visa program that would ban certain EU nationals from entering the US without a visa if they had visited Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan after March 2011. Some US politicians want the legislation introduced to tighten security following the November 13 Paris terror attacks. “A blanket restriction on those who have visited Syria or Iraq, for example, would most likely only affect legitimate travel by businesspeople, journalists, humanitarian or medical workers while doing little to detect those who travel by more clandestine means overland,” the letter signed by the 28 ambassadors stated. 

At present, 23 of the EU’s 28 member states enjoy visa-free travel to the US, with the remaining five nations keen to join the VWP. The bloc says it is imperative to keep the visa waiver program intact for business and tourism purposes, while the current system does not mean that it is “a license to enter the US with nothing more than the wave of a passport of an allied country.” The EU is also worried its citizens with dual nationality of the proscribed countries would be “disproportionately and unfairly affected.” It believes the added checks would do nothing to combat terrorism, but would instead hurt trade and could trigger “legally-mandated reciprocal measures.”“What we want to see is intensified cooperation, and consequently greater security, for both the United States and its allies.  We want to work with the US to improve information exchange regarding individuals subject of course to the appropriate constitutional protection,” the statement continued. Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, a respected American-Iranian writer and independent researcher, told RT the bill “is a sort of bigotry” and accused the House of Representatives of “trying to follow in Donald Trump’s footsteps,” after the Republican candidate said all Muslim’s should be banned from entering the US. 

Am I the only person who still remembers how Pentagon officials spoke of the major military bases already on the drawing boards as the invasion of Iraq ended in April 2003? It was taboo back then to refer to those future installations as “permanent bases.” No one wanted to mouth anything that had such an ugly (yet truthful) ring to it when it came to the desires of the Bush administration to occupy and dominate the Greater Middle East for generations to come. Charmingly enough, however, those Pentagon types sometimes spoke instead of “enduring camps,” as if a summer frolic in the countryside was at hand. Later, those enormous installations -- Balad Air Base, the size of a small American town, had its own Pizza Hut, Subway, and Popeye's franchises, "an ersatz Starbucks," a 24-hour Burger King, two post exchanges, and four mess halls -- would be relabeled "contingency operating bases." They were meant to be Washington’s ziggurats, its permanent memorials to its own power in the region. With rare exceptions, American reporters would nonetheless pay almost no attention to them or to the obvious desire embedded in their very construction to control Iraq and the rest of the Greater Middle East.

In all, from the massive Camp Victory outside Baghdad to tiny outposts in the hinterlands, not to speak of the three-quarters-of-a-billion dollar citadel Washington built in Baghdad’s green zone to house an embassy meant to be the central command post for a future Pax Americana in the region, the Pentagon built 505 bases in Iraq. In other words, Washington went on a base-building bender there. And lest you imagine this as some kind of anomaly, consider the 800 or more bases and outposts (depending on how you counted them) that the U.S. built in Afghanistan. Eight years later, all 505 of the Iraqi bases had been abandoned, as most of the Afghan ones would be.  (A few of the Iraqi bases have since been reoccupied by American advisers sent in to fight the Islamic State.)

Nonetheless, as Chalmers Johnson pointed out long ago (and TomDispatch regular David Vine has made so clear recently), this was the U.S. version of empire building. And in this century, despite the loss of those Iraqi bases and most of the Afghan ones, Washington has continued its global base-building extravaganza in a big way. It has constructed, expanded, or reconfigured a staggering set of bases in the Greater Middle East and on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and has been building drone bases around the world. Then there's the remaining European bases that came out of World War II, were expanded in the Cold War years, and have, in this century, been driven deep into the former Eastern European imperial possessions of the old Soviet Union.  Add in another structure of bases in Asia that also came out of World War II and that are once again added to, reconfigured, and pivoted toward. Toss in as well the 60 or so small bases, baselets, sites, storage areas, and the like that, in recent years, the U.S. military has been constructing across Africa. Throw in some bases still in Latin America and the Caribbean, including most infamously Guantánamo in Cuba, and you have a structure for the imperial ages.