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A secret Defense Department program provides unfettered eavesdropping on the accused terrorists imprisoned at Guantánamo’s clandestine Camp 7 lockup, recently released war court documents show.Army Col. James L. Pohl, the judge in 9/11 trial, discovered the existence of the secret surveillance program during a recent war court hearing. Little is publicly known about the program, not even its unclassified two-word nickname.

The disclosure of pervasive eavesdropping at Guantánamo’s lockup for 14 former CIA prisoners comes in before-and-after documents released by the court from the recent Oct. 19-30 pretrial hearings in the death-penalty case of five men accused of orchestrating the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.At issue was accused 9/11 plotter Walid bin Attash’s request for guidance on how he could function as his own attorney. Bin Attash is a Yemeni in his mid-30s who is accused of training some of the hijackers. “You must assume anything you say in Camp 7 is not confidential and will be disclosed to the U.S. Government,” warns an Oct. 23 draft of the advisory, crafted after the judge was informed of the covert program. “Only when you are in Echo 2 will anything you say be covered by the attorney-client privilege.”An Oct. 20 draft of the advisory omits those lines.

This is not the first time in the proceedings that a surveillance program caught Pohl by surprise. In January 2013, he ordered the CIA to unplug a button that allowed an unseen observer to cut the court’s audio feed to the public. Perhaps ironically, the lone site the judge considers safe for consultative trial preparation — the Camp Echo compound of wooden huts, each containing a cell — at one time had covert recording devices that looked like smoke detectors. The judge ordered them disabled in February 2013.Attorney Dror Ladin of the American Civil Liberties Union, who was an observer at the Guantánamo hearings last month, said the apparent disclosure of “pervasive surveillance at Camp 7” is the latest issue to challenge the possibility of a fair trial.“It is shocking that for years neither defense counsel nor the judge were made aware that the government was capturing everything said aloud by the detainees there,” he said Thursday. It also adds to mounting questions of “how these military commissions can produce a fair result,” said Ladin, especially if one of the men represents himself. “These are detainees who really can’t see the evidence against them and simultaneously have been provided no rehabilitation services for the torture they suffered for years. It would be astonishing if any of them could craft a fair defense for capital charges.”

Propping Up the Derivatives Scheme Dodd-Frank states in its preamble that it will “protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts.” But it does this under Title II by imposing the losses of insolvent financial companies on their common and preferred stockholders, debtholders, and other unsecured creditors. That includes depositors, the largest class of unsecured creditor of any bank.

It now looks like the catastrophic Porter Ranch gas leak, which has spewed more than 83,000 metric tons of noxious methane for nearly three months, has spread across Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. On Wednesday, Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander called on the Southern California Gas Co. to extend residential relocation assistance to residents in Granada Hills, Chatsworth and Northridge who live near the Aliso Canyon gas leak above Porter Ranch. These residents reported symptoms related to the exposure of natural gas such as nausea, vomiting, headaches and respiratory problems.

This latest development compounds with a new analysis from Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET). The Cambridge-based nonprofit sent Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips and Bob Ackley of Gas Safety to take methane measurements around the San Fernando Valley for several days and their findings were disturbing. As the Los Angeles Daily News wrote, “the researchers recorded elevated levels of the main ingredient in natural gas—10 miles away from the nation’s largest gas leak.” “It’s not just in Porter Ranch, it’s going all the way across the [San Fernando] Valley,” Ackley told Inside Climate News. According to HEET, the researchers drove a high precision GIS-enabled natural gas analyzer down the roads around the gas leak to create a comprehensive map of the leak around San Fernando Valley. The red on the map indicates where they drove and the levels of methane they found is shown by the height of the peaks. Their monitors showed methane levels at 3.4 parts per billion, about twice the level of natural clean air, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. Another measurement showed 127 ppm, or an astounding 67 times above normal. “Whatever else may be in the gas—benzene, toluene, xylene—that is what people may be breathing,” Phillips told Inside Climate News. “Even though we’re not measuring things other than methane, there is a legitimate concern that there is that other nasty stuff in there.”

For hours on a Friday, a staff sergeant using the fake name “Jinx” testified in open court about her yearlong work here at a prison for suspected terrorists once considered the CIA’s prized war-on-terror captives.

The few reporters who went to court or watched on video feeds from Guantánamo to Fort Meade, Maryland, as well as a dozen legal observers and the mother and sister of a man killed in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, heard her say all that in open court. But as far as the public court record is concerned, those things were never said.

In a first for the war court, intelligence agencies scrubbed those and other facts — including questions asked by the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl — from a 379-page transcript of the Oct. 30 pretrial hearing in the 9/11 death-penalty case. A Miami Herald examination counted more than 130 pages with blacked out public testimony. Of them, 37 pages are completely redacted in the latest challenge to the remote war court’s motto, “Fairness, Transparency, Justice.”　Typically the court releases the transcripts “word for word with no redactions,” chief prosecutor Brig. Gen. Mark Martins told reporters Saturday, defending the “rare” exception of “ex-post redactions” as a security necessity.“I have not encountered it actually thus far for a transcript to be redacted. But there is a rule that enables that,” he said. “The government is fully entitled to look and say in the aftermath … ‘It ought to be protected, it could be damaging.’”

Turkey has consistently insisted on the need to engage in constructive dialogue to reduce tensions between the two countries. However, the Turkish government has not yet made any practical steps in this direction, Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov said.

Karlov outlined three conditions to restore normal relations between Moscow and Ankara after the deadly incident with the Russian Su-24 jet, Hurriyet Daily News reported. According to the diplomat, Turkey should apologize for the attack on the Russian Su-24 aircraft, which resulted in the death of two Russian servicemen. The Turkish authorities are also expected to find and punish those responsible for the incident as well as pay damage compensation to the Russian side. "If our expectations are not met, Turkey's other announcements will not pay off," the ambassador said, cited by the newspaper. 

According to Karlov, Ankara has repeatedly expressed its readiness to engage in dialogue, but at the same time made statements that contradict the announced approach. The diplomat also claimed that one of the Su-24's pilots was killed by Turkish citizen Alparslan Çelik after he ejected himself from the aircraft.

Russia’s diplomats have been as busy as Russia’s military.They have now obtained UN Security Council as well as Syrian government approval for Russia’s military campaign.They have also got the UN Security Council to scotch the myth of the “moderate jihadis” once and for all.Back in September, when it became clear the Russians were intending to act in Syria, Russia Insider predicted the Russians would try to get a Resolution from the UN Security Council to give additional legal cover for their military action.This is in contrast to the US, which avoids the Security Council whenever it can, and which usually prefers to act unilaterally without a UN Security Council mandate.Thus US bombing of the Islamic State in Syria was doubly illegal under international law because it was carried out without permission from either the UN Security Council or from the Syrian government.Russia's military action by contrast is completely legal. It has the permission of both the UN Security Council and the Syrian government for it.

It took weeks for the Russians to get their Security Council Resolution. This was because the US did everything it could to stand in the way. However, after weeks of hard work, Russia’s diplomats have finally got the Resolution Russia wanted.What changed the position was the terrorist outrage in Paris.  After the Paris attack the French backed Russia’s proposal for a UN Security Council Resolution. At that point the US could no longer block it. The US cannot veto a Resolution backed by its own ally France, especially in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack.Something that suggests some people in the US might be unhappy with this development is the absence from the Security Council table of one person who would normally be expected to be there for such an important vote.This was Samantha Power - the US’s UN ambassador - a hardline liberal interventionist and one of the most aggressive voices within the US administration calling for regime change in Syria and confrontation with Russia.  Her relations with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s exceptionally able UN ambassador, are said to be poisonous (see the photo at the top of this article).It looks as if voting for the Resolution was more than Samantha Power could bear. That probably explains why she stayed away.  In her absence it was left to her deputy, Michele Sison - a career diplomat - to speak and vote for the US.  

The full text of the Resolution - which is not limited to Syria - is below.  The UN has also released - along with the full text of the Resolution - a summary of the debate in the Security Council that preceded the vote.The key words in the Resolution are these:

A second federal judge has taken the rare step of allowing a group suing for records from Hillary Clinton's time as U.S. secretary of state to seek sworn testimony from officials, saying there was "evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith."The language in Judge Royce Lamberth's order undercut the Democratic presidential contender's assertion she was allowed to set up a private email server in her home for her work as the country's top diplomat and that the arrangement was not particularly unusual.He described Clinton's email arrangement as "extraordinary" in his order filed on Tuesday in federal district court in Washington.Referring to the State Department, Clinton and Clinton's aides, he said there had been "constantly shifting admissions by the Government and the former government officials."Spokesmen for Clinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is a civil matter, but the order adds to the legal uncertainty that has overshadowed Clinton's campaign to be the Democratic nominee in the Nov. 8 presidential election. The FBI is also conducting a criminal inquiry into the arrangement after it emerged that classified government secrets ended up in Clinton's unsecured email account. Clinton has said she does not think she will be charged with a crime. Lamberth's order granted the request by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group suing the department under open records laws, to gather evidence, including sworn testimony. The group has filed several lawsuits, including one seeking records about the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans."Where there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as here, limited discovery is appropriate, even though it is exceedingly rare in FOIA (freedom-of-information) cases," Lamberth noted in his order.The government is normally given the benefit of the doubt that it properly searched and produced records.

Since the email arrangement came to public knowledge a year ago, the State Department has found itself defending Clinton in scores of lawsuits from groups, individuals and news outlets who say they were wrongly denied access to Clinton's federal records. Clinton left the department in 2013, but did not return her email records to the government until nearly two years later. Last month, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing a separate Judicial Watch lawsuit over other Clinton-related records, allowed a similar motion for discovery.

euters has confirmed a bombshell report which first surfaced Tuesday in Lebanese media saying that a high level delegation of US intelligence officials made a secret visit to Damascus in June to meet with President Bashar al-Assad's most trusted senior advisor, Ali Mamlouk, who serves as Syria's top security chief.  The meeting, which took place near Damascus international airport, was first revealed by the Lebanese daily al-Akhbar, which reported it as lasting up to four hours and part of an ongoing secret back-channel dialogue. Such talks are unprecedented for the fact that the two countries haven't had such direct dealings since near the start of the conflict in 2011, and the United States and its allies have bombed Syrian government forces and locations multiple times over the past years. 

The Al-Akhbar report provided the following details regarding US demands, according to an English translation provided by Syriana Analysis: The American side made a clear and specific offer: The United States is ready to withdraw its troops completely from Syrian territory, including the Al-Tanf and Eastern Euphrates according to security arrangements supervised by the Russian and Syrian armies. In exchange for three US demands: First, Iran’s full withdrawal from the Syrian south. Second, to obtain written guarantees that give US companies a share of the oil sector in the regions of eastern Syria. Third, the Syrian side to provide the Americans with full data of the terrorist groups and their members, including the numbers of foreign fighter deaths of these groups and those who survived, and those may return to Western countries, considering that the terrorist threat is intercontinental. And what we can get, serve the international security And the Syrian delegation's response according to Reuters was as follows: "Mamlouk said Damascus would not cooperate with Washington on security issues until they had normalized ties and he also demanded a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, al-Akhbar reported."

Much is due to the fame of the White Helmets Syrians, if they're coming in a few days than 1.5 million signatures the petition on Avaaz  Protect Aleppo's children, now! Asking for no-fly zone (a successful workhorse for Avaaz also to time of Libya, on the basis of false information). And award-winning source doc The White Helmets or white helmets, autodefinitisi Syria Civil Defense, active in areas controlled Syrian armed opposition, have recently received the Right Livelihood Award , or "alternative Nobel", normally assigned since 1990 to people who have really helped mankind - the first to receive it were an Egyptian architect of the poor and organization solutions for the vegetable against world hunger. In the words of the founder, " the award is intended to help the North find a wisdom to match the science he possesses, and the South to find a science to match the ancient wisdom that has ." Good intentions. The White Helmets Syrians are the "source" credited with many of the news coming from Aleppo East - for example on the use of "barrel bomb" or the "deliberate shelling of hospitals" - days ago in a twitter have put together the two crimes talking about a cowardly "attack on a hospital with bomb barrels." To be believed on bombs and hospital nature of the affected buildings, the helmets do not need proof, just a few photos of rubble. Of course, what they fail to tell the same International Red Cross admitted to our question (we preserve their email): the 'hospitals' in opposition areas are in no way signaled, rather they are well hidden.

Those who support them and what they really do, they know a few. censored The White Helmets spread video in which always appear in the rubble with babies in their arms (parents, where are they?). But, nevertheless, their deeds are other videos that are real autodenunce, but that the world has chosen to ignore, or to censor. It 'just been cleared from the site of Change the petition that the anti-war activists network Syria Solidarity Movement had addressed to the organizers of the Nobel Prize (which have already been received from: Obama, Kissinger, pears, European Union ...). The petition was titled very clearly , " Do not give the Nobel Prize in 2016 to the Syrian White Helmets ". But a few days, if you try to type on the search engine, you will see this inscription: " The petition is not available ." The authors denounce the removal, stating : " He had collected 2,800 signatures and thousands of comments. This is a clear case of censorship . " So we summarize the news on the White Helmets contained in the aforesaid petition, supported with a video (more pictures can be found at the link above). Activists wrote: " Please watch the video of Steve Ezzedine Al Qaeda with a facelift  . The White Helmets will say neutral, independent, self-financed, exclusively civilian. It does not. Have received more than $ 40 million from USAID and the British Foreign Office, entities directly involved in the conflict in Syria. I am not helpless: there are photographs and films of the group members who support Al Nusra Front / Al Qaeda. More photos and video showing their 'activists' while attending the execution of civilians or while cheering on the bodies of dead soldiers. The White Helmets work only in areas controlled by armed extremist groups. Fomenting sectarianism in Syria, asking for example to set fire Kafarya and Foua two Shiite villages besieged by five years in the area of Idlib. They have repeatedly called for the no-fly zone in Libya, whose results are seen. " Added: the White Helmets or Syria Civil Defense are the highlight of the stated Maydayrescue , organization "humanitarian" founded by former British Colonel James Le Mesurier based in Dubai and Amsterdam, and training centers in Turkey and Jordan.

How did you do? One explanation for this world enchantment for a group to say the least objectionable? And 'the effect' chain of suffering. " In April their leader Raed Saleh had been invited to the United States to pick up a humanitarian award assigned by InterAction, a platform of 180 non-governmental organizations with development projects in all countries of the world "The voice united for global change with lay and religious members, small and large, engaged with the most vulnerable populations. " (For a mixup in communication, Saleh had been dismissed as a suspect of terrorism immigration Use on arrival. Then the US State Department had the face to say that this was not about the White Helmets). Interaction between members of perhaps counted on the fingers of one hand those that have to do with the Syrian armed opposition. There is, for example, the Syrian American Medical Association, specializes in the complaints of hospitals bombed. But all the other organizations that Syria do not know and do not mind (because maybe riforestano the Sahel, or dealing with the blind, or fair trade in Asia, Latin America or build latrines) they trust their sisters' informed ». And so, in one stroke, 180 NGOs all over the world take the White Helmets as heroes, they spread the word ...

Donald Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan is not an infrastructure plan and it won’t put $1 trillion of fiscal stimulus into the economy. It’s basically a scheme for handing over public assets to private corporations that will extract maximum profits via user fees and tolls. Because the plan is essentially a boondoggle, it will not lift the economy out of the doldrums, increase activity or boost growth.  Quite the contrary. When the details of how the program is going to be implemented are announced,  public confidence in the Trump administration is going to wither and stock prices are going to plunge.   This scenario cannot be avoided because the penny-pinching conservatives in the House and Senate have already said that they won’t support any plan that is not “revenue neutral” which means that any real $1 trillion spending package is a dead letter.  Thus, it’s only a matter of time before the Trump’s plan is exposed as a fraud and the sh** hits the fan.

Here are more of the details from an article at Slate: “Under Trump’s plan…the federal government would offer tax credits to private investors interested in funding large infrastructure projects, who would put down some of their own money up front, then borrow the rest on the private bond markets. They would eventually earn their profits on the back end from usage fees, such as highway and bridge tolls (if they built a highway or bridge) or higher water rates (if they fixed up some water mains). So instead of paying for their new roads at tax time, Americans would pay for them during their daily commute. And of course, all these private developers would earn a nice return at the end of the day.” (“Donald Trump’s Plan to Privatize America’s Roads and Bridges”, Slate) Normally, fiscal stimulus is financed by increasing the budget deficits, but Maestro Trump has something else up his sleeve.  He wants the big construction companies and private equity firms to stump up the seed money and start the work with the understanding that they’ll be able to impose user fees and tolls on roads and bridges when the work is completed.  For every dollar that corporations spend on rebuilding US infrastructure, they’ll get a dollar back via tax credits, which means that they’ll end up controlling valuable, revenue-generating assets for nothing. The whole thing is a flagrant ripoff that stinks to high heaven.   The corporations rake in hefty profits on sweetheart deals, while the American people get bupkis. Welcome to Trumpworld.  Here’s more background from Trump’s campaign website:

“American Energy and  Infrastructure Act Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral.” (Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter”) In practical terms, ‘revenue neutral’ means that every dollar of new spending has to be matched by cuts to other government programs.  So, if there are hidden costs to Trump’s plan, then they’ll have to be paid for by slashing funds for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps etc. But, keep in mind, these other programs are much more effective sources of stimulus since the money goes directly to the people who spend it immediately and help grow the economy. Trump’s infrastructure plan doesn’t work like that. A lot of the money will go towards management fees and operational costs leaving fewer dollars to trickle down to low-paid construction workers whose personal consumption drives the economy. Less money for workers means less spending, less activity and weaker growth.

On Wednesday, the US airlifted hundreds of mainly-Kurdish fighters to an area behind ISIS lines where they were dropped near the town of al-Tabqa. The troops– who are part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF– were accompanied by an undisclosed number of US Marines serving as advisors. Ostensibly, the deployment was intended to encircle ISIS positions and retake the area around the strategic Tabqa Dam. But the operation had the added effect of blocking the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) from advancing  along the main road towards Raqqa, the so called Capital of ISIS.  While the blocking move might have been coincidental, there’s a strong possibility that Washington is in the opening phase of a broader strategy to splinter the war-torn country and prevent the reemergence of a united secular Syria. According to Almasdar News: “The Coalition supported the offensive with air movement and logistical support, precision airstrikes, Apache helicopters in close air support, Marine artillery, and special operations advice and assistance to SDF leadership,” the US-led coalition said in a statement.” (AMN News) In a matter of weeks, Washington’s approach to the war in Syria has changed dramatically. While the US has reportedly ended its support for the Sunni militias that have torn the country apart and killed over 400,000 people, the US has increased its aid to the SDF that is making impressive territorial gains across the eastern corridor. The ultimate goal for the SDF fighters is an autonomous Kurdish homeland carved out of West Iraq and East Syria, while US objectives focus primarily on the breakup of the Syrian state, the removal of the elected government, the control over critical pipelines routes, and the redrawing of national borders to better serve the interests of the US and Israel.

The most recent adaptation of Yinon’s plan was articulated by Brookings Institute analyst Michael O’ Hanlon in a piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal titled “A Trump Strategy to End Syria’s Nightmare”.  In the article, O’ Hanlon states bluntly: “To achieve peace, Syria will need self-governance within a number of autonomous zones. One option is a confederal system by which the whole country is divided into such zones. A less desirable but minimally acceptable alternative could be several autonomous zones within an otherwise still-centralized state—similar to how Iraqi Kurdistan has functioned for a quarter-century…. Security in the Sunni Arab and Kurdish autonomous zones would be provided by local police and perhaps paramilitary forces raised, trained and equipped with the direct support of the international community. …(“A Trump Strategy to End Syria’s Nightmare”, Wall Street Journal) In an earlier piece, O’ Hanlon referred to his scheme as “Deconstructing Syria” a plan that “would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad or ISIL.” Many of the details in O’ Hanlon’s piece are identical to those in Trump’s plan which was announced by Secretary of State Tillerson just last week. The Brookings strategy appears to be the script from which the administration is operating.

In his presentation, Tillerson announced that US troops would not leave Iraq after the siege of Mosul was concluded which has led many to speculate that the same policy will be used in Syria. Here’s an excerpt from an article at the WSWS that explains this point: “US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared Washington’s intention to keep troops deployed more or less indefinitely in the territories now occupied by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in remarks delivered at the beginning of a two-day meeting of the US-organized anti-ISIS coalition in Washington. “The military power of the coalition will remain where this fraudulent caliphate has existed in order to set the conditions for a full recovery from the tyranny of ISIS,” he told an audience that included Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. He gave no indication of when, if ever, US troops could be withdrawn from a war zone extending across Iraq and Syria, where there has been fighting of greater or lesser intensity throughout the 14 years since the US first invaded Iraq.” (Tillerson pledges long-term US military role in Iraq and Syria, World Socialist web Site) US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis reinforced Tillerson’s comments adding that the US plans a indefinite occupation of Iraq (and, possibly, Syria) stating that it was in America’s “national interest.”

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.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin assured the Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad that Russia will continue assisting Syria in protection of the country’s sovereignty, unity and territory integrity, the Kremlin said. "In his message of greetings to the President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad, the President of Russia expressed hope that in 2018 the situation in Syria would continue changing for the better," the Kremlin said. "Mr Putin noted that defeating terrorists and rapidly bringing the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic back to normal would be in the best interests of the whole world and would improve security in the Middle East." "In addition, Mr Putin confirmed Russia’s commitment to assisting the Syrian Arab Republic in upholding its state sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, and promoting a political settlement and economic recovery," the Kremlin added.