Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Turkey withdrew troops Monday from a north Iraq camp, a lawmaker and witnesses said, after a deployment which Baghdad said went ahead without its permission and that sparked a diplomatic row.It was not immediately clear how many soldiers were removed from the camp, where Ankara sent troops and tanks on a deployment last week it said was routine and necessary to protect Turkish trainers working with Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State jihadist group.Baghdad has sharply criticized the deployment, terming it an "incursion" that violated the country's sovereignty, repeatedly demanding the forces be withdrawn and complaining to the United Nations Security Council."The Turkish army withdrew from Camp Zilkan at dawn today, and according to our information, only the trainers remain to train Hashad al-Watani forces," MP Salem al-Shabaki said, referring to anti-IS forces and the site where they were being trained."Witnesses confirmed that they saw the Turkish army withdrawing from Camp Zilkan... toward the Turkish border," Shabaki said.

A senior Turkish official said last week that between 150 and 300 soldiers and 20 tanks were deployed to protect Turkish military trainers at a camp near Mosul, the main IS hub in Iraq.

Along with philosophical qualms, McClintock said he has personal reasons to doubt the efficacy of the no-fly list. Turns out that when he was in the state Senate a decade ago, McClintock said, he discovered he couldn’t check into his flight.“When I asked why, I was told I was on this government list,” McClintock said, calling the whole experience “Kafkaesque.”“My first reaction was to ask, ‘Why am I on that list?’ ‘We can’t tell you that.’ ‘What are the criteria you use?’ I asked. ‘That’s classified.’ I said, ‘How can I get off this list?’ The answer was, ‘You can’t.’ ”He said it ended up being a case of mistaken identity with an Irish Republican Army activist the “British government was mad at.” McClintock said he soon learned that a fellow state senator also had been placed on the list, as well as the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy. McClintock said he at least had the state Senate sergeant-at-arms to work through to clear up the confusion – “something an ordinary American would not.”Still, he said it took months of working with officials and repeated petitions to the government to get his name removed. “The farce of it all was that I was advised in the meantime just to fly under my middle name, which I did without incident,” he added.

The recession may have officially ended in mid-2009, but millions of working Americans have seen their income remain frustratingly stagnant since the economy collapsed. New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau confirm that the median household income in the U.S. was $53,482 between 2010 and 2014, down from $56,568 between 2005 and 2009 when adjusted for inflation—a drop of 5%. By the same metric, just 1,038 of 3,142 counties have a higher median income than they did five years ago. The following map shades every county by its growth or decline in median income since 2009.

Data for 2009 comes from the American Community Survey’s five-year sample from 2005-2009 in 2009 dollars, while data for 2014 is from the ACS five-year survey for 2010-2014. (Five-year samples are necessary to get data for every county.) The 2009 figures in these maps and charts are adjusted up by 10% using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

Powerful Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim armed groups on Tuesday pledged to fight any U.S. forces deployed in the country after the United States said it was sending an elite special unit to help combat Islamic State.Defense Secretary Ash Carter offered few details on the new "expeditionary" group, but said it would be larger than the roughly 50 U.S. special operations troops being sent to Syria to fight the ultra-hardline Sunni militants there.A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new force will be based in Iraq."We will chase and fight any American force deployed in Iraq," said Jafaar Hussaini, a spokesman for one of the Shi'ite armed groups, Kata'ib Hezbollah. "Any such American force will become a primary target for our group. We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting."

Spokesmen for the Iranian-backed Badr Organisation and Asaib Ahl al-Haq made similar statements to Reuters, expressing their distrust of American forces since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and the subsequent occupation. The militias, grouped with volunteer fighters under a government-run umbrella, are seen as a bulwark in Iraq's battle against Islamic State, the biggest security threat to the oil-exporting country since Saddam's fall.Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who came to power more than a year ago with the backing of the United States and Iran, said on Tuesday that Iraq had no need for foreign ground troops and praised the role of his country's special forces and counter-terrorism apparatus in battling Islamic State."The Iraqi government stresses that any military operation or the deployment of any foreign forces - special or not - in any place in Iraq cannot happen without its approval and coordination and full respect of Iraqi sovereignty," Abadi said in a statement.

Warning of a further “dramatic” worsening of the humanitarian situation in Iraq, a senior United Nations relief official today urged increased international support to assist millions in need and to rebuild areas retaken from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) so people can return to their homes “voluntarily and safely.” “The human cost of the crisis is devastating. We are extremely worried that all indicators point to a dramatically worsening situation in the months ahead,” said the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kyung-wha Kang in a news release issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). According to the news release, Ms. Kang visited Baghdad and Erbil to discuss the humanitarian crisis, where she spoke with women “who had lost virtually everything.” She is currently on a visit to the region, which will include stops in Jordan and Turkey before wrapping up on Sunday, 6 December.

Ms. Kang stressed that responding to the basic needs of these people will require increased capacity, as well as improved access and security is of utmost importance, adding that insecurity “puts the whole aid operation in Iraq at risk.” Voicing concerns at the impact of economic crisis in the Kurdistan region and in Iraq, she urged the international community to step forward and provide urgent funding for lifesaving assistance, stating that “if this doesn’t happen, the impact will be terribly damaging.” “Funding is needed to keep programmes open and to help rebuild areas retaken from ISIL so that people can return voluntarily and safely to their homes,” Ms. Kang explained at the end of her two-day mission in Iraq. According to the UN, nearly 10 million people in Iraq are now in need of some form of humanitarian assistance and close to 3.2 million people are internally displaced since January 2014. Further, OCHA estimates indicate that the aid response efforts in the country are critically underfunded, forcing humanitarian partners to close scores of lifesaving programmes.

The administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the recently adopted EU directive on labeling goods from occupied Arab territories by suspending the Israeli – European Union dialog over the Israeli – Palestinian peace process. 

In November the EU adopted a directive that prescribes the labeling of Israeli products and goods from Israeli occupied Arab territories, which are, occupied territories in the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and the Israeli occupied Lebanese Sheba Farm area. The EU stressed that the adoption of the directive was not a hostile act against Israel. Instead, noted the EU, the directive aimed at providing consumers correct information about the origin of goods.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Cabinet plans reportedly to implement additional measures against six specific countries, which are Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta and Sweden. The measures are likely to include the suspension of cooperation with regard to rehabilitation projects in the Palestinian Gaza Strip and projects aimed at strengthening the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israeli forces operate in Syria from “time to time.” It is the first public recognition of Israel’s military involvement in its neighboring war-torn country. The Israeli leader said that forces carry out operations to prevent weapons transfers to Lebanon, where Iranian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah—which went to war with Israel in 2006—operates, and to stop southern Syria becoming a front against Israel. "We operate in Syria from time to time to prevent it from becoming a front against us, a second terror front against us," Netanyahu said at the Galilee Conference in the northern Israeli city of Acre, the Associated Press reported.

He added: "We are also acting of course to prevent the transfer of deadly weapons from Syria to Lebanon in particular and we will continue to do so.” Netanyahu did not elaborate further on Israeli operations in Syrian territory but Israeli forces have carried out airstrikes against a number of regime targets this year and have also attacked Hezbollah fighters—allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad— operating on its border. Israeli intelligence service Mossad has also been linked with the 2008 assassination of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mugniyah in Damascus. Other Israeli strikes in Syrian territory have been widely reported since the onset of the Syrian civil war in March 2011. The Israeli military acknowledged this year’s strikes but Israeli officials have never publicly admitted to the country’s involvement within Syrian territory.

According to the reports, about quater of the Turkey’s 1st Army is already located at the Syrian border. The Russian Air Force’s base in Latakia could be a target of the possible attack. On the other hand, relocation of troops is reported is authorized by the United States urging Turkey to deploy thousands of additional military personal along its border with Syria “to block the movement of ISIS terrorists”. “The game has changed. Enough is enough. The border needs to be sealed,” a senior US official said of Washington’s demand to Ankara. “This is an international threat, and it’s all coming out of Syria and it’s coming through Turkish territory.” US President Barack Obama recently ordered the deployment of dozens of Special Operations troops to Syria to “assist” militants operating on the ground. Earlier, Moscow deployed S-400 air defence systems at the Hmeymim air base where the Russian warplanes are located. Also, the cruiser Moskva armed with the Fort SAM system which is the naval version of the S-300, took up a position off the Latakia’s coast. In turn, Turkey sent to the border with Syria electronic warfare system KORAL (Radar Electronic Attack System) to counter the Russian air defences in the region.

Less than a week after the attacks in Paris — while the public and policymakers were still reeling, and the investigation had barely gotten off the ground — Cy Vance, Manhattan’s District Attorney, released a policy paper calling for legislation requiring companies to provide the government with backdoor access to their smartphones and other mobile devices. This is the first concrete proposal of this type since September 2014, when FBI Director James Comey reignited the “Crypto Wars” in response to Apple’s and Google’s decisions to use default encryption on their smartphones. Though Comey seized on Apple’s and Google’s decisions to encrypt their devices by default, his concerns are primarily related to end-to-end encryption, which protects communications that are in transit. Vance’s proposal, on the other hand, is only concerned with device encryption, which protects data stored on phones. It is still unclear whether encryption played any role in the Paris attacks, though we do know that the attackers were using unencrypted SMS text messages on the night of the attack, and that some of them were even known to intelligence agencies and had previously been under surveillance. But regardless of whether encryption was used at some point during the planning of the attacks, as I lay out below, prohibiting companies from selling encrypted devices would not prevent criminals or terrorists from being able to access unbreakable encryption. Vance’s primary complaint is that Apple’s and Google’s decisions to provide their customers with more secure devices through encryption interferes with criminal investigations. He claims encryption prevents law enforcement from accessing stored data like iMessages, photos and videos, Internet search histories, and third party app data. He makes several arguments to justify his proposal to build backdoors into encrypted smartphones, but none of them hold water.

Before addressing the major privacy, security, and implementation concerns that his proposal raises, it is worth noting that while an increase in use of fully encrypted devices could interfere with some law enforcement investigations, it will help prevent far more crimes — especially smartphone theft, and the consequent potential for identity theft. According to Consumer Reports, in 2014 there were more than two million victims of smartphone theft, and nearly two-thirds of all smartphone users either took no steps to secure their phones or their data or failed to implement passcode access for their phones. Default encryption could reduce instances of theft because perpetrators would no longer be able to break into the phone to steal the data.

Vance argues that creating a weakness in encryption to allow law enforcement to access data stored on devices does not raise serious concerns for security and privacy, since in order to exploit the vulnerability one would need access to the actual device. He considers this an acceptable risk, claiming it would not be the same as creating a widespread vulnerability in encryption protecting communications in transit (like emails), and that it would be cheap and easy for companies to implement. But Vance seems to be underestimating the risks involved with his plan. It is increasingly important that smartphones and other devices are protected by the strongest encryption possible. Our devices and the apps on them contain astonishing amounts of personal information, so much that an unprecedented level of harm could be caused if a smartphone or device with an exploitable vulnerability is stolen, not least in the forms of identity fraud and credit card theft. We bank on our phones, and have access to credit card payments with services like Apple Pay. Our contact lists are stored on our phones, including phone numbers, emails, social media accounts, and addresses. Passwords are often stored on people’s phones. And phones and apps are often full of personal details about their lives, from food diaries to logs of favorite places to personal photographs. Symantec conducted a study, where the company spread 50 “lost” phones in public to see what people who picked up the phones would do with them. The company found that 95 percent of those people tried to access the phone, and while nearly 90 percent tried to access private information stored on the phone or in other private accounts such as banking services and email, only 50 percent attempted contacting the owner.

On November 24, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber near the border of Turkey and Syria. In the immediate aftermath, officials from the two countries offered contradictory versions of what transpired: Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed that the plane was flying over Syrian territory when it was downed; Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan countered that it was inside Turkey’s border and had been warned ten times to alter its course. Hours later, President Obama threw his support behind Erdogan. “Turkey,” he said, “has a right to defend its territory and its airspace.” I asked Pierre Sprey, a longtime defense analyst and member of the team that developed the F-16, to examine what we know about the downing and determine what actually occurred that morning.

Looking at the detailed Russian timeline of what happened—as well as the much less detailed Turkish radar maps—I’d say the evidence looks pretty strong that the Turks were setting up an ambush. They certainly weren’t doing anything that would point to a routine air patrol along the border. Their actions in no way represented a routine, all day long type of patrol.

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.

The United Kingdom may soon begin bombing the Islamic State in Libya, following on from the recent decision to carry out air strikes against the group in Syria.A government source told the Daily Telegraph on Friday that the UK is “moving in the direction” of launching military action in war torn Libya, where IS has emerged out of a civil war that has paralysed the country since a revolution in 2011 overthrew long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi.“Things are moving in that direction. We are taking it one step at a time,” the source said.Ministers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told the Telegraph that they are “extremely concerned” by the rise of IS in Libya and want to intervene in the troubled North African country.Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said it is important “to keep an eye on Libya”, according to the Telegraph.Militants proclaiming affinity with IS have taken control in the central Libyan city of Sirte, and have carried out attacks across the country, including in the capital Tripoli and in the eastern town of Derna, where they have an ongoing presence.

Support for intervention in Libya is growing across Europe, with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Friday demanding that IS be confronted in Libya.“We are at war, we have an enemy, that we must fight and crush in Syria, in Iraq, and soon in Libya too,” he said.France has already sent reconnaissance plans over Libya to monitor militias battling on the ground for control of Africa’s largest oil reserves.The fear among Western officials is that IS may establish a presence along Libya’s Mediterranean coast in order to launch attacks against Europe.The group has already claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on European soil, including a string of massacres in Paris last month that saw 130 people killed.Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood recently told MPs: “We are working closely with international partners to develop our understanding of its (IS’s) presence and how to tackle it there.”But any intervention in Libya will be dependent on a national unity government being formed. At the moment there are two rival administrations – one in the east and the other in Tripoli – who are vying for control, backed by opposing military forces waging war on the ground.

“There needs to be a recognised government in place in Libya that can ask us for help,” the government source told the Telegraph. “Then we will do whatever we can to help them deal with IS.”The rival Libyan parliaments have committed to signing a UN-backed deal to form a unity government next week. However, there remains staunch opposition to the agreement in both camps, with analysts suggesting a rushed deal will do little to bring a sustainable end to Libya’s civil war.

In a seminal decision updating and consolidating its previous jurisprudence on surveillance, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights took a sideways swing at mass surveillance programs last week, reiterating the centrality of “reasonable suspicion” to the authorization process and the need to ensure interception warrants are targeted to an individual or premises. The decision in Zakharov v. Russia — coming on the heels of the European Court of Justice’s strongly-worded condemnation in Schrems of interception systems that provide States with “generalised access” to the content of communications — is another blow to governments across Europe and the United States that continue to argue for the legitimacy and lawfulness of bulk collection programs. It also provoked the ire of the Russian government, prompting an immediate legislative move to give the Russian constitution precedence over Strasbourg judgments. The Grand Chamber’s judgment in Zakharov is especially notable because its subject matter — the Russian SORM system of interception, which includes the installation of equipment on telecommunications networks that subsequently enables the State direct access to the communications transiting through those networks — is similar in many ways to the interception systems currently enjoying public and judicial scrutiny in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. Zakharov also provides a timely opportunity to compare the differences between UK and Russian law: Namely, Russian law requires prior independent authorization of interception measures, whereas neither the proposed UK law nor the existing legislative framework do.

The decision is lengthy and comprises a useful restatement and harmonization of the Court’s approach to standing (which it calls “victim status”) in surveillance cases, which is markedly different from that taken by the US Supreme Court. (Indeed, Judge Dedov’s separate but concurring opinion notes the contrast with Clapper v. Amnesty International.) It also addresses at length issues of supervision and oversight, as well as the role played by notification in ensuring the effectiveness of remedies. (Marko Milanovic discusses many of these issues here.) For the purpose of the ongoing debate around the legitimacy of bulk surveillance regimes under international human rights law, however, three particular conclusions of the Court are critical.

The Court took issue with legislation permitting the interception of communications for broad national, military, or economic security purposes (as well as for “ecological security” in the Russian case), absent any indication of the particular circumstances under which an individual’s communications may be intercepted. It said that such broadly worded statutes confer an “almost unlimited degree of discretion in determining which events or acts constitute such a threat and whether that threat is serious enough to justify secret surveillance” (para. 248). Such discretion cannot be unbounded. It can be limited through the requirement for prior judicial authorization of interception measures (para. 249). Non-judicial authorities may also be competent to authorize interception, provided they are sufficiently independent from the executive (para. 258). What is important, the Court said, is that the entity authorizing interception must be “capable of verifying the existence of a reasonable suspicion against the person concerned, in particular, whether there are factual indications for suspecting that person of planning, committing or having committed criminal acts or other acts that may give rise to secret surveillance measures, such as, for example, acts endangering national security” (para. 260). This finding clearly constitutes a significant threshold which a number of existing and pending European surveillance laws would not meet. For example, the existence of individualized reasonable suspicion runs contrary to the premise of signals intelligence programs where communications are intercepted in bulk; by definition, those programs collect information without any consideration of individualized suspicion. Yet the Court was clearly articulating the principle with national security-driven surveillance in mind, and with the knowledge that interception of communications in Russia is conducted by Russian intelligence on behalf of law enforcement agencies.

On December 8, the IMF’s Chief Spokesman Gerry Rice sent a note saying: “The IMF’s Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors. We will provide details on the scope and rationale for this policy change in the next day or so.” Since 1947 when it really started operations, the World Bank has acted as a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, from its first major chairman John J. McCloy through Robert McNamara to Robert Zoellick and neocon Paul Wolfowitz. From the outset, it has promoted U.S. exports – especially farm exports – by steering Third World countries to produce plantation crops rather than feeding their own populations. (They are to import U.S. grain.) But it has felt obliged to wrap its U.S. export promotion and support for the dollar area in an ostensibly internationalist rhetoric, as if what’s good for the United States is good for the world. The IMF has now been drawn into the U.S. Cold War orbit. On Tuesday it made a radical decision to dismantle the condition that had integrated the global financial system for the past half century. In the past, it has been able to take the lead in organizing bailout packages for governments by getting other creditor nations – headed by the United States, Germany and Japan – to participate. The creditor leverage that the IMF has used is that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan – and hence, for packages involving other governments. This has been the system by which the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. The beneficiaries have been creditors in US dollars.

But on Tuesday, the IMF joined the New Cold War. It has been lending money to Ukraine despite the Fund’s rules blocking it from lending to countries with no visible chance of paying (the “No More Argentinas” rule from 2001). With IMF head Christine Lagarde made the last IMF loan to Ukraine in the spring, she expressed the hope that there would be peace. But President Porochenko immediately announced that he would use the proceeds to step up his nation’s civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the East – the Donbass. That is the region where most IMF exports have been made – mainly to Russia. This market is now lost for the foreseeable future. It may be a long break, because the country is run by the U.S.-backed junta put in place after the right-wing coup of winter 2014. Ukraine has refused to pay not only private-sector bondholders, but the Russian Government as well. This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving further IMF aid. Refusal to pay for Ukrainian military belligerence in its New Cold War against Russia would have been a major step forcing peace, and also forcing a clean-up of the country’s endemic corruption. Instead, the IMF is backing Ukrainian policy, its kleptocracy and its Right Sector leading the attacks that recently cut off Crimea’s electricity. The only condition on which the IMF insists is continued austerity. Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, has fallen by a third this years, pensions have been slashed (largely as a result of being inflated away), while corruption continues unabated.

Despite this the IMF announced its intention to extend new loans to finance Ukraine’s dependency and payoffs to the oligarchs who are in control of its parliament and justice departments to block any real cleanup of corruption. For over half a year there was a semi-public discussion with U.S. Treasury advisors and Cold Warriors about how to stiff Russia on the $3 billion owed by Ukraine to Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. There was some talk of declaring this an “odious debt,” but it was decided that this ploy might backfire against U.S. supported dictatorships. In the end, the IMF simply lent Ukraine the money. By doing so, it announced its new policy: “We only enforce debts owed in US dollars to US allies.” This means that what was simmering as a Cold War against Russia has now turned into a full-blown division of the world into the Dollar Bloc (with its satellite Euro and other pro-U.S. currencies) and the BRICS or other countries not in the U.S. financial and military orbit. What should Russia do? For that matter, what should China and other BRICS countries do? The IMF and U.S. neocons have sent the world a message: you don’t have to honor debts to countries outside of the dollar area and its satellites. Why then should these non-dollarized countries remain in the IMF – or the World Bank, for that matter. The IMF move effectively splits the global system in half,between the BRICS and the US-European neoliberalized financial system.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Friday instructed the Foreign Ministry to lodge an official complaint to the UN Security Council over the deployment of Turkish troops in northern Iraq.A statement by Abadi's office said the incursion by Turkish troops "is blatant violation of the provisions and principles of the UN Charter and a violation to the sovereignty of the Iraqi state, which happened without the knowledge and consent of the Iraqi authorities."Iraq demands the UN Security Council "to shoulder its responsibilities and orders Turkey to withdraw its troops immediately, and to ensure unconditionally withdrawal to the internationally recognized border between the two countries," the statement said.

On Thursday, an Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman said that Iraq has contacted the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council for condemning Turkey's deployment of troops on Iraqi soil.He also said that Iraq demanded an Arab League extraordinary session to "discuss the consequences of the Turkish breach (to Iraqi sovereignty) and adopt an Arab stance against it."Iraq's latest move came a day after the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that withdrawing Turkish troops from Iraq is out of the question and that the Turkish soldiers are in Iraq as part of a training mission."Turkish troops in Mosul are not there as combatants; they are trainers. Their numbers may vary depending on the size of Kurdish Peshmerga troops. It is out of the question, for now, to pull them out," he said.The crisis between the two countries sparked last Friday when reports said a Turkish training battalion equipped with armored vehicles was deployed near the city of Mosul to train Iraqi paramilitary groups in fighting the ISIL terrorist group.Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, has been under ISIL control since June 2014.

Baghdad has insisted that the Turkish troops had no authorization from the Iraqi government and thus demanded their withdrawal, while Ankara called the troops only a routine rotation of the trainers.

Saudi Arabia has issued invitations to 65 Syrian opposition figures to attend a conference in Riyadh to try to unify their positions ahead of proposed Syrian peace talks, Saudi newspapers reported on Tuesday.Asharq Al Awsat and Al Hayat said no date has yet been set for the Riyadh meeting, but quoted unnamed sources as saying it could take place next week.Asharq Al Awsat quoted Ahmad Ramadan, a member of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) opposition group, as saying that the Saudi foreign ministry had “invited 65 figures to attend the conference in Riyadh”.He said 20 members of the coalition, which is based outside Syria, had been invited, along with seven from the National Coordination Body, an internal opposition group.Another 10 to 15 places were allocated to rebel leaders and 20 to 25 to independents, business leaders and religious figures, the paper quoted Ramadan as saying.

Saudi Arabia, a main supporter of opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar Al Assad, has said it was in contact with them about the conference, which comes after an international agreement to launch talks between the government and the opposition by January 1.The Riyadh meeting marks an attempt to bring together groups whose disunity has been a long-standing obstacle in seeking a peaceful solution to the nearly five-year conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced millions.US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks in Abu Dhabi with UAE officials and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir last week to discuss ways of bringing the opposition together.Al Hayat newspaper quoted NCB co-chairman, Hassan Abdul Azim, as saying he had sent a list of 22 nominees, including the head of the Kurdish Democratic Union, Saleh Muslim.Muslim had said earlier last month that Syrian Kurds need political and military representation at the opposition conference in Riyadh.

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.

Martin Shkreli, a boastful pharmaceutical executive who came under withering criticism for price gouging vital drugs, denied securities fraud charges on Thursday following an early morning arrest, and was freed on a $5 million bond. While the 32-year-old has earned a rare level of infamy for his brazenness in business and his personal life, what he was charged with had nothing to do with skyrocketing drug prices. He is accused of repeatedly losing money for investors and lying to them about it, illegally taking assets from one of his companies to pay off debtors in another. “Shkreli essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors from the prior company,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said at a press conference.

Evan Greebel, a New York lawyer, who is alleged in the federal indictment to have helped Shkreli in his schemes, was also arrested and charged. Like Shkreli, he pleaded not guilty, and he was freed on a $1 million bond. Both men and their lawyers declined to comment after their court appearance.

Read the full text of the indictment here In the federal indictment and a complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission, authorities say Shkreli began losing money and lying to investors from the time he began managing money. In his mid-20s, he got nine investors to place $3 million with him and at one point he had only $331. Securities fraud is hardly unheard of on Wall Streeet and the amounts involved here are nowhere near on the scale of Bernie Madoff. But Shkreli’s case has drawn such attention because of his defiant price-gouging and his own up-by-the-bootstraps history. The son of immigrants from Albania and Croatia who did janitorial work and raised him and his brothers in working-class Brooklyn, Shkreli seemed at first to embody the American dream and then to mock it. After dropping out of an elite Manhattan high school, he worked as an intern for Jim Cramer’s hedge fund as a 17-year-old and quickly impressed with his ability to call stocks. He created hedge funds, taught himself biology and, after earning a BA at Baruch College in New York City, began hedge funds investing in biotech.

Perhaps you’ve noticed. Some people and institutions are working feverishly to convince us that real social change is not possible. Their target is Bernie Sanders and the growing army of his supporters who are fed up with politics as usual and the grip of Wall Street and corporate America on our political, economic and social system. The theme is to desperately convince us that Sanders can’t win. They repeat it over and over, even though Sanders polls as well or better than Hillary Clinton does against every leading Republican candidate. Behind this effort is an alarmed corporate old guard that still runs the Democratic Party establishment and their allies in the corporate think tanks and the media, with a special nod to NBC/MSNBC, which is owned and operated by General Electric and Comcast.

In this scenario to blunt the Sanders’ surge, and what it represents for the millions of people who want to reverse income inequality, guarantee health care to everyone, break up the banks, carry out meaningful environmental justice and criminal justice reform, and all the other far reaching planks of Sanders’ campaign and the coalition supporting it. A thrust of their effort is to persuade Sanders supporters that he cannot win, in large part by using all the well-funded mechanisms in their control to retard wider exposure to the message of Sanders and his allies. The power elite form of turning down the gaslights. Here’s a small part of how the manipulation works. 

The Democratic National Committee slashes the number of debates and schedules debates on Saturday nights when far fewer people are watching, and pressures its elected officials and convention super delegates for an early endorsement in an effort to lock down a coronation of their preferred candidate. Meanwhile the media, in particular NBC/MSNBC which has the biggest network audience of presumed Democratic Party voters, limits coverage of Sanders while it’s parent company, GE, also directs its Hollywood subsidiaries, including Universal Studios (co-owned by Comcast) and its NBC shows, to line up its contracted celebrities to endorse the politics as usual campaign. Other national media, which also has a stake in the status quo, contributes as well. While Sanders has now drawn more than 400,000 people to his rallies – far more than any other candidate – he routinely receives less coverage than most of the other leading candidates. A report, circulated by Media Matters, found that on one network alone Donald Trump has been given 81 minutes of coverage compared to less than one minute for Sanders, even though, as The Nation’s John Nichols notes, Sanders has broader support among Democratic voters than Trump does among Republicans in the first voting state, Iowa.

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.