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With some sharp words for the Obama administration, a federal judge on Tuesday declined to second-guess her earlier decision ordering the release of videos of a Guantánamo detainee being force-fed. While acknowledging that more appeals are on the way in the long-running case, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said in her nine-page decision that nothing has happened to change her mind about the videos. She first ordered their release in October 2014.

“What the government is really saying is that its classification system trumps the decisions of the federal courts as to the public’s access to official court records,” Kessler wrote. “In other words, the Executive Branch (in this case, the military) purports to be a law unto itself.” 11 hours: the prison camp videos the judge ordered redacted then released, a year ago Kessler added that “the government’s justifications for barring the American public from seeing the videotapes are not sufficiently rational and plausible to justify barring release of the videotapes.” Sixteen media organizations, including the New York Times, Associated Press and McClatchy, have joined in seeking release of the Guantánamo tapes to the public on First Amendment grounds.

The Air Force announced today the contract award of engineering and manufacturing development and early production for the Long Range Strike Bomber, or LRS-B, to Northrop Grumman Corp. 

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said the LRS-B is critical to national defense and is a top priority for the Air Force. “We face a complex security environment,” she said. “It’s imperative our Air Force invests in the right people, technology, capability, and training to defend the nation and its interests – at an affordable cost.” The future threat will evolve through the introduction of advanced air defense systems and development of more capable surface to air missile systems. The LRS-B is designed to replace the Air Force’s aging fleets of bombers – ranging in age from 50+ years for the B-52 to 17+ years for the B-2 – with a long range, highly survivable bomber capable of penetrating and operating in tomorrow’s anti-access, area denial environment. The LRS-B provides the strategic agility to launch from the United States and strike any target, any time around the globe. “The LRS-B will provide our nation tremendous flexibility as a dual-capable bomber and the strategic agility to respond and adapt faster than our potential adversaries,” said Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. “We have committed to the American people to provide security in the skies, balanced by our responsibility to affordably use taxpayer dollars in doing so. This program delivers both while ensuring we are poised to face emerging threats in an uncertain future.”

The Long Range Strike Bomber contract is composed of two parts. The contract for the Engineering and Manufacturing Development, or EMD, phase is a cost-reimbursable type contract with cost and performance incentives. The incentives minimize the contractor’s profit if they do not control cost and schedule appropriately. The independent estimate for the EMD phase is $21.4 billion in 2010 dollars. The second part of the contract is composed of options for the first 5 production lots, comprising 21 aircraft out of the total fleet of 100. They are fixed price options with incentives for cost.  Based on approved requirements, the Average Procurement Unit Cost (APUC) per aircraft is required to be equal to or less than $550 million per aircraft in 2010 dollars when procuring 100 LRS-B aircraft. The APUC from the independent estimate supporting today’s award is $511 million per aircraft, again in 2010 dollars.

As an ex-president, George H.W. Bush has generally maintained a respectful silence regarding later administrations. But now he's speaking out, criticizing some big names, and not in ways you might expect.  As revealed in the new Jon Meacham biography, "Destiny And Power: The American Odyssey Of George Herbert Walker Bush," the 41st president has some harsh words for the actions of his son's administration.  In particular, he objects to how Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reacted to 9/11. He feels they were too hawkish, taking a harsh, inflexible stance that tarnished America's reputation around the world.  "I don't know, he just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with," Bush told Meacham. "The reaction [to 9/11], what to do about the Middle East. Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything, use force to get our way in the Middle East ..." 

The elder Bush believes Cheney -- who had been his own defense secretary back when he held the White House -- acted too independently of his son. "The big mistake that was made was letting Cheney bring in kind of his own State Department," Bush said, apparently referring to the national security team that the vice president assembled in his office.  The 41st president suggested to Meacham that Cheney may even have been pushed toward a harder line by his conservative wife and daughter, Liz and Lynne. "You know, I've concluded that Lynne Cheney is a lot of the eminence grise here ... tough as nails, driving," Bush is quoted as saying.  Cheney laughs off that last claim, taking full responsibility for his actions. "We smile about it, we laugh about it," Cheney told Fox News. "Same with my daughter, with Liz. It's his view, perhaps, of what happened, but my family was not conspiring to somehow turn me into a tougher, more hardnosed individual. I got there all by myself."  Regarding the former president's "iron-ass" remark, Cheney says he takes that as a compliment. "I took it as a mark of pride," he says. "The attack on 9/11 was worse than Pearl Harbor, in terms of the number people killed, and the amount of damage done. I think a lot of people believed then, and still believe to this day that I was aggressive in defending, in carrying out what I thought were the right policies." 

Despite the criticism, Cheney says he still respects his former boss and enjoyed Meacham's book, which draws partly from audio diaries that Bush recorded during his presidency.  "The diary's fascinating, because you can see how he felt at various key moments of his life," Cheney said. "So I'm enjoying the book. I recommend it to my friends. And proud to be a part of it."  The elder Bush is even harder on Rumsfeld, saying, "I don't like what he did, and I think it hurt the President" -- his son, that is. "I've never been that close to him anyway. There's a lack of humility, a lack of seeing what the other guy thinks. He's more kick ass and take names, take numbers. I think he paid a price for that. Rumsfeld was an arrogant fellow ..."  Rumsfeld has declined to comment on the book. 

More important, Erdogan intends to use his landslide victory to persuade the Military High Command that he has a popular mandate for his foreign policy, a policy that has amassed thousands of Turkish troops, armored vehicles and tanks on the Syrian border for a possible invasion. Up to now, the military has resisted Erdogan on this matter, but now that Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, has been replaced as head of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) by the more compliant General Hulusi Akar, the plan to invade Syria and secure a so called “safety zone” along the Syrian side of the Turkish border, becomes much more probable. The plan to annex sovereign Syrian territory and use it to launch attacks on the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad dates back to 2012.  In 2015, however, the strategy was expanded upon by Brookings analyst Michael E. O’Hanlon in a piece  titled “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war”. Here’s an excerpt:

“…the only realistic path forward may be a plan that in effect deconstructs Syria….the international community should work to create pockets with more viable security and governance within Syria over time… The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via special forces. … Western forces themselves would remain in more secure positions in general—within the safe zones but back from the front lines—at least until the reliability of such defenses, and also local allied forces, made it practical to deploy and live in more forward locations. Creation of these sanctuaries would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad ….The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones… The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force….to make these zones defensible and governable,….and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.”  (Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Brookings Institute)

This is the Obama administration’s basic blueprint for toppling Assad and reducing Syria into an ungovernable failed state run by regional warlords, renegade militias and Islamic extremists. US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed our worst suspicions about this sinister plan in a speech he delivered to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace just last week.  Here’s part of what he said: “In northern Syria, the coalition and its partners have pushed Daesh (ISIS) out of more than 17,000 square kilometers of territory, and we have secured the Turkish-Syrian border east of the Euphrates River. That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest……. We’re also enhancing our air campaign in order to help drive Daesh, which once dominated the Syria-Turkey border, out of the last 70-mile stretch that it controls.” (U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the Future of U.S. Policy in the Middle East, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) Repeat: “That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest.”

Ehud Barak is being sued in the United States over his role in the 2010 slaying of Turkish American citizen Furkan Doğan by Israeli commandos who stormed a boat attempting to break the siege on Gaza. The former Israeli prime minister was served court documents when he was in Los Angeles, California, for a speaking event last month. Doğan, 19, was shot multiple times at point-blank range during the raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish boat in a flotilla sailing in international waters. His parents, Ahmet and Hikmet Doğan, filed the lawsuit against Barak.

Barak was defense minister when Israeli forces shot and killed eight Turkish nationals, in addition to Doğan. A tenth victim died from his injuries in May 2014.

Doğan’s family brings the case against Barak under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign nationals to use US courts in cases alleging violations of international law. “Ehud Barak is directly responsible for killing their son,” Hakan Camuz, a spokesperson for the family, told The Electronic Intifada. “Ehud Barak is responsible for killing [Doğan] when he was under the protection of international law when he was doing humanitarian work in the international high seas.”

For the first time in the four-year Syrian civil war, President Obama is beginning to execute a combined diplomatic and military approach to force President Bashar al-Assad to leave office and end the carnage. As 50 Special Operations troops arrive in Syria to bolster the most effective opposition groups, the administration is gambling that Secretary of State John Kerry will have more leverage to push Russia, Iran and other players toward two objectives: a cease-fire to limit the cycle of killing and the establishment of a timeline for a transition of power.But the task is enormous, given the number of nations and rebel groups operating at cross-purposes and the tiny size of the American force. Even senior members of the administration express doubts in private about whether the effort is sufficient.

Mr. Kerry will travel to Vienna this weekend, summoning many of Syria’s neighbors and European powers to turn a vague declaration of principles, settled on two weeks ago, into a plan for a political agreement. The talks, at least so far, have not included representatives of Mr. Assad’s government or the fractured rebel groups seeking to depose him, and Mr. Kerry is struggling to bring them to the negotiating room.But after years in which the Obama administration has been accused of largely sitting on the sidelines while a quarter-million Syrians died and millions more were displaced, Mr. Kerry seems buoyed by being at the center of the only diplomatic effort underway.

China’s western region of Xinjiang, a vast area home to some 21 million people, is one of several hubs of destabilization maintained by the US State Department and its vast network of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), covert programs, and overt political meddling. America’s “Xinjiang game” is part of a larger, long-term goal of encircling, containing, and undermining China in a bid to maintain American hegemony across Asia.

Were one to believe the rhetoric emanating from any of these NGOs or the US State Department itself, the majority of Xinjiang’s population groans under the unbearable, despotic, inhumane rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). US-based and funded NGOs claim that ethnic Uyghurs are regularly persecuted, discriminated against, and have their human rights consistently and unreasonably violated by Beijing. Of course, most of these claims are referred to by even the Western media as “allegations,” not documented facts, with the vast majority of these claims coming from a handful of Uyghur groups funded directly by the US State Department through its National Endowment for Democracy (NED). And most of these allegations are in regards to individuals and organizations directly linked to US efforts to destabilize the region. NED’s website even refers to China’s Xinjiang province parenthetically as “East Turkistan,” the name of the fictional state separatists seek to carve out of Chinese territory (with US backing).

Republican presidential candidates in the US have taken part in a new round of debates ahead of the party's primary elections due to be held next year.

The hopefuls on Tuesday evening sparred on domestic policy, as well as subjects including trade with China, climate change, and how to deal with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), at the event held in Milwaukee in the US state of Wisconsin. On foreign policy, billionaire TV personality Donald Trump, who has led opinion polls in the Republican race for months, said he supported Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to "knock the hell" out of the ISIL group by launching air strikes in Syria.

The comments earned the rebuke of the former Florida Governor Jeb Bush who said Russian military intervention in the country and its alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad resembled a "board game".

Interesting stuff today.  A major Russian TV channel just aired a report about Putin meeting with his top military commanders.  I don’t have the time to translate what Putin said word for word, but basically he said that the USA had refused every single Russian offer to negotiate about the US anti-missile system in Europe and that while the US had initially promised that the real target of this system was Iran, now that the Iranian nuclear issue had been solved, the US was still deploying the system.  Putin added that the US was clearly attempting to change the world’s military balance.  And then the Russian footage showed this:

According to the Kremlin was mistakenly leaked secret document.  And just to make sure that everybody got it, RT wrote a full article in English about this in an article entitled “‘Assured unacceptable damage’: Russian TV accidentally leaks secret ‘nuclear torpedo’ design“. According to RT The presentation slide titled “Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6” showed some drawings of a new nuclear submarine weapons system. It is apparently designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing missile defense systems, while also causing heavy damage to “important economic facilities” along the enemy’s coastal regions. The footnote to the slide stated that Status-6 is intended to cause “assured unacceptable damage” to an adversary force. Its detonation “in the area of the enemy coast” would result in “extensive zones of radioactive contamination” that would ensure that the region would not be used for “military, economic, business or other activity” for a “long time.” According to the blurred information provided in the slide, the system represents a massive torpedo, designated as “self-propelled underwater vehicle,” with a range of up to 10 thousand kilometers and capable of operating at a depth of up to 1,000 meters. Actually, such ideas are nothing new.  The late Andrei Sakharov had already proposed a similar idea to basically wipe out the entire US East Coast.  The Russians have also look into the possibility to detonate a nuclear device to set off the “Yellowstone Caldera” and basically destroy most of the USA in one shot.  While in the early years following WWII the Soviets did look into all sort of schemes to threaten the USA with destruction, the subsequent development of Soviet nuclear capabilities made the development of this type of “doomsday weapons” useless.  Personally, I don’t believe for one second that the Russians are now serious about developing such system as it would be literally a waste of resources.  So what is going on here?

This so-called “leak” of “secret documents” is, of course, no leak at all.  This is a completely deliberate action.  To imagine that a Russian journalist could, just by mistake, film a secret document (helpfully held up for him by a general) and then just walk away, get it passed his editor and air it is laughable.  Any footage taken in a meeting of the President with his senior generals would be checked many times over.  No, this was a deliberate way to remind the USA that if they really are hell-bent on spending billions of dollars in a futile quest to create some kind of anti-missile system Russia could easily develop a cheap weapon system to still threaten the USA with total annihilation.  Because, make no mistake, the kind of long range torpedo being suggested here would be rather cheap to build using only already existing technologies.  I would even add that rather than setting such a weapon off the US coast the system could also be designed to fire off a secondary missile (ballistic or cruise) which could then fly to any inland target.  Again, such technologies already exist in the Russian military and have even been deployed on a smaller scale. See for yourself:

The $8 billion upgrade to the US B61 nuclear bomb has been widely condemned as an awful lot of money to spend on an obsolete weapon. As an old fashioned ‘dumb’ bomb it has no role in US or NATO nuclear doctrine, but the upgrade has gone ahead anyway, in large part as a result of lobbying by the nuclear weapons laboratories. In non-proliferation terms however the only thing worse than a useless bomb is a ‘usable’ bomb. Apart from the stratospheric price, the most controversial element of the B61 upgrade is the replacement of the existing rigid tail with one that has moving fins that will make the bomb smarter and allow it to be guided more accurately to a target. Furthermore, the yield can be adjusted before launch, according to the target. The modifications are at the centre of a row between anti-proliferation advocates and the government over whether the new improved B61-12 bomb is in fact a new weapon, and therefore a violation of President Obama’s undertaking not to make new nuclear weapons. His administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review said life extension upgrades to the US arsenal would “not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.”

The issue has a particular significance for Europe where a stockpile of 180 B61’s is held in six bases in five countries. If there is no change in that deployment by the time the upgraded B61-12’s enter the stockpile in 2024, many of them will be flown out to the bases in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey. The row has had a semantic tone, revolving on what the definition of ‘new’ is, but arguably the only definition that counts is whether the generals and officials responsible for dropping bombs, view its role in a different light as a result of its refurbishment. Referring to the B61-12’s enhanced accuracy on a recent PBS Newshour television programme, the former head of US Strategic Command, General James Cartwright, made this striking remark: If I can drive down the yield, drive down, therefore, the likelihood of fallout, etc, does that make it more usable in the eyes of some — some president or national security decision-making process? And the answer is, it likely could be more usable.

In general, it is not a good thing to see the words ‘nuclear bomb’ and ‘usable’ anywhere near each other. Yet they seem to share space in the minds of some of America’s military leaders, as Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, points out. Cartwright’s confirmation follows General Norton Schwartz, the former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, who in 2014 assessed that the increased accuracy would have implications for how the military thinks about using the B61. “Without a doubt. Improved accuracy and lower yield is a desired military capability. Without a question,” he said. The great thing about nuclear weapons was that their use was supposed to be unthinkable and they were therefore a deterrent to contemplation of a new world war. Once they become ‘thinkable’ we are in a different, and much more dangerous, universe.

US fighter jets have been deployed in Turkey to protect slower American warplanes from potential Russian or Syrian attacks, a Pentagon official says.Six F-15C warplanes are tasked with providing cover for bomber, attack and cargo aircraft from threats posed by Syrian and Russian fighters, an unnamed US defense official told USA Today on Tuesday.The US Air Force B-1 bombers, A-10 and AC-130 attack planes, which are reportedly used in US-led strikes on Daesh (ISIL) positions in Syria, all fly at slow speeds and are vulnerable to attacks from enemy pilots, the official added.He added that cargo planes that are airdropping ammunition for US-backed militants will also be protected.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced Tuesday that the fighter jets, sent to Turkey’s Incirlik Airbase last week, will be protecting the Turkish airspace."At the request of the government of Turkey, the US Air Force F-15Cs that arrived last week will conduct combat air patrols to assist in defense of the Turkish airspace," Laura Seal, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday."We will be conducting these patrols at the request of the government of Turkey. Turkey faces increased instability along its border with Syria and Iraq and irresponsible behavior from actors in the region. This includes the incursions Russia made into Turkey's — and thereby NATO's — airspace in October," the statement noted.According to NATO officials, Russian Sukhoi SU-30 and SU-24 jets, based in Syria, entered the Turkish airspace early in October. Ankara scrambled two F-16s to intercept the planes.

In related news, Turkish news site, Yenis Afak, recently reported that a Spanish court has found Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and six other senior officials guilty of crimes against humanity for their role in the 2010 raid on Gaza-bound aid ship, Mavi Marmara. Nine activists were killed, including one Turkish-American, and dozens injured when Israeli commandos boarded the lead ship of a Gaza-bound flotilla, Mavi Marmara, when it attempted to breach the blockade of the Palestinian territory. Spanish activists were also on board the ships. The Madrid-based Supreme Court has ordered arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ex-foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, ex-defense minister Ehud Barak, then-deputy PMs Moshe Ya’alon and Eli Yishai, and then-state minister Benny Begin. Israel’s ex-Navy Commander Eliezer Marom is among the co-defendants found guilty by the Spanish judge.

According to a report by Algemeiner (November 11, 2015), Israel’s Air Force was involved in bombing inside Syria, hitting targets close to Damascus airport.  According to reports in Syrian media outlets affiliated with President Bashar Assad, Israel Air Force jets hit targets near the Damascus airport, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Wednesday evening. The report, a breaking story that interrupted the nightly news, was neither confirmed nor denied by Israeli authorities. Channel 2 military correspondent Roni Daniel said that Israel has made it clear it would not allow the transfer of weapons from Iran, via Damascus, to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is not the first time that air strikes in Syria have been attributed to Israel without confirmation from officials in the Jewish state. But this comes on the heels of meetings between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly held to coordinate operations in Syria — and ensure that there are no unwitting collisions between planes from their respective air forces. During a visit to the US this week, Netanyahu gave insight into Israel’s Syria policy. He told an audience at a gala for the American Enterprise Institute that he laid out Israel’s red lines in Syria to Putin in September.

“We will not allow Iran to set up a second front in the Golan, and we will act forcefully — and have acted forcefully — to prevent that. We will not allow the use of Syrian territory from which we’d be attacked by the Syrian army or anyone else and we have acted forcefully against that. And third, we will not allow the use of Syrian territory for the transfer of game-changing weapons into Lebanon into Hezbollah’s hands, and we have acted forcefully on that. I made it clear that we will continue to act like that,” he said. (Ruth Blum, Algemeiner, November 12, 2015) This report begs the question as to the ultimate objective of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. The Israeli delegation to Washington was also integrated by military and intelligence officials who no doubt had meetings with their counterparts at the Pentagon and Langley, not to mention the US Congress. A week prior to the Obama-Nentayahu “summit”,  Netanyahu dispatched his defense chief, Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, to Washington, “to help smooth the way for his own visit”. Was there an understanding that Israel would henceforth play a more active role in the war against Syria? In an earlier statement, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter intimated:

“It is a reasonable expectation that the defense relationship [with Israel] will be one of stability and endurance, …” (quoted by Defense One, November 3, 2015) Ya’alon was hosted in Washington  by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter who is credited for having stabilized the US-Israel relationship.  Were these talks between Carter and Ya’alon behind closed doors indicative of a shift in US-Israel military relations,  specifically with regard to Syria. Quoting Syrian opposition sources, the Israeli media dismissed the reports that the IDF was behind the air strikes: Syrian opposition activist Ahmed Yabrudi said: “Israeli warplanes entered from south Lebanon, arrived at Qalamoun and flew above the international airport in Damascus where they struck nearby military outposts.” He added that “the Israeli planes remained in Syria’s skies for a half hour, and there is no information about the outposts that were hit – except that they belonged to Hezbollah.” Official Syrian media failed to report on the air strikes attributed to Israel. [According to Algemeiner, it was announced on Syrian TV] Israeli defense officials also declined to comment on the foreign media reports. However, Israel did previously announce a strict-policy of intolerance towards threats to the state, such as weapons transfers to Hezbollah in Lebanon. (Jerusalem Post, November 12, 2015)

American businesses could be required to report requests by U.S. intelligence services for data on European online users under a trans-Atlantic data-transfer pact now being negotiated, according to the European Union’s justice commissioner.

Washington needs “boots on the ground” in Syria in addition to its air campaign against ISIS, which is not fruitful despite some progress. US Air Force secretary has admitted that “ground forces” is a must in order to “occupy” and “govern” parts of Syria. In her comments, Secretary Deborah Lee James stressed the importance of the US-led air campaign, but admitted that airstrikes need to be backed by ground forces.“Air power is extremely important. It can do a lot but it can't do everything,” James said, just two days after Secretary of Defense Ash Carter supported President Obama’s “willingness to do more” in terms of US troops on Syrian ground.“Ultimately it cannot occupy territory and very importantly it cannot govern territory,” James told reporters at the Dubai Airshow. “This is where we need to have boots on the ground. We do need to have ground forces in this campaign.”

When it comes to support, the US should assist the “Iraqi army, the Free Syrians and the Kurds” in the fight against Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL), James said.

Last week, Secretary Carter said that the US needed “much more than airstrikes” to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria. “I don't think it’s enough. I think we’re looking to do more. But the fundamental strategy in Iraq and Syria for dealing with ISIL and dealing a lasting defeat to ISIL is to identify then train, equip, and enable local forces that can keep the peace,” Carter said.On October 30 the White House announced that it is planning to send up no “more than 50 troops” [special forces] to advise “moderate opposition” in Syria on the ground.

Washington continues making an international fool of herself by her inability to effectively counter the impression around the world that Russia, spending less than 10% of the Pentagon annually on defense, has managed to do more against ISIS in Syria in six weeks than the mighty US Air Force bombing campaign has done in almost a year and half. One aspect that bears attention is the demonstration by the Russian military of new technologies that belie the widely-held Western notion that Russia is little more than a backward oil and raw material commodity exporter. Recent reorganization of the Russian state military industrial complex as well as reorganization of the Soviet-era armed forces under Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s term are visible in the success so far of Russia’s ISIS and other terror strikes across Syria. Clearly Russian military capabilities have undergone a sea-change since the Soviet Cold War era. In war there are never winners. Yet Russia has been in an unwanted war with Washington de facto since the George W. Bush Administration announced its lunatic plan to place what they euphemistically term “Ballistic Missile Defense” missiles and advanced radar in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Turkey after 2007. Without going into detail, BMD technologies are the opposite of defensive. They instead make a pre-emptive war highly likely. Of course the radioactive ash heap in such an exchange would be first and foremost the EU countries foolish enough to invite US BMD to their soil.

What the Russian General Staff has managed, since the precision air campaign began September 30, has stunned western defense planners with Russian technological feats not expected. Two specific technologies are worth looking at more closely: The Russian Sukoi SU-34 fighter-bomber and what is called the Bumblebee hyperbaric mortar weapon.

The plane responsible for some of the most damaging strikes on ISIS and other terror enclaves in Syria is manufactured by the Russian state aircraft industry under the name Sukhoi SU-34. As the Russian news agency RIA Novosti described the aircraft, “The Su-34 is meant to deliver a sufficiently large ordnance load to a predetermined area, hit the target accurately and take evasive action against pursuing enemy planes.” The plane is also designed to deal with enemy fighters in aerial combat such as the US F-16. The SU-34 made a first test flight in 1990 as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaos of the Yeltsin years caused many delays. Finally in 2010 the plane was in full production. According to a report in US Defense Industry Daily, among the SU-34 features are: • 8 ton ordnance load which can accommodate precision-guided weapons, as well as R-73/AA-11 Archer and R-77/AA-12 ‘AMRAAMSKI’ missiles and an internal 30mm GSh-301 gun. • Maximum speed of Mach 1.8 at altitude.

The G-20 summit of world political leaders being held in Turkey to discuss the economic issues impacting on the world economy has been turned into a council of war. The major imperialist powers are moving rapidly to escalate their military intervention in Syria in the wake of Friday night’s terror attack in Paris. Yesterday evening French fighter jets carried out their biggest raid on Syria. It was launched simultaneously from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, dropping 20 bombs on the Syrian city of Raqqa, reportedly targeting an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) command centre, a munitions depot and a training camp. The operation was carried out in coordination with US forces. Earlier, Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser, said he was confident that in the “coming days and weeks” the US and France would “intensify our strikes against [ISIS] … to make clear there is no safe haven for these terrorists.” Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rhodes said there would be an “intensification” of US military efforts and “what we are doing here at the G-20 is seeking to gain additional contributions from some of our partners so we can bring more force to bear on that effort.”

Demands are being brought forward from within the American military and political establishment for a major escalation in US action, regardless of the consequences. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican candidate for president, said that ISIS would “not be deterred by targeted air strikes with zero tolerance for civilian casualties, when the terrorists have such utter disregard for innocent life.” His call for vastly stepped-up US military action, without any regard for the consequences for the civilian population already devastated by the US-inspired civil war, were echoed by California Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It has become clear,” Feinstein said, “that limited air strikes and support for Iraqi forces and the Syrian opposition are not sufficient to protect our country and our allies.” Retired Navy admiral John Stavridis, who served as NATO’s top commander in Europe from 2009 to 2013, called for direct NATO intervention in Syria and Iraq. “Soft power and playing the long game matter in the Middle East, but there is a time for the ruthless application of hard power. This is that time, and NATO should respond militarily against the Islamic State with vigor,” Stavridis said.

The subsequent discussions between Obama and Putin at the G-20 were held as part of the US objective of sidelining, if not completely removing, Russian support for the Syrian regime of president Bashar al-Assad. Under the agreement, following a ceasefire, a process would be set in motion to establish “inclusive and non-sectarian” governance, the drafting of a new constitution and the holding of elections under UN supervision within 18 months. However, the crucial sticking point remains the future of Assad. In an interview on the eve of the G-20 summit, Putin said other nations had no right to demand that Assad leave office and that “only those who believe in their exceptionality [a thinly-veiled reference to the US] allow themselves to act in such a manner and impose their will on others.” The US has been waging a campaign since 2011 for the overturn of the Assad government as part of its regime-change operations in the Middle East, in order to bring the region under its control. Russia has backed Assad in order to protect its strategic interests in the region, including a naval facility in Syria. The US has made clear that as far as it is concerned there can be no resolution without Assad’s ouster—a position repeated by Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice. She said a “transition regime” had to come to power “and it’s very hard to envision how that could be accomplished with Assad still in power.”

Stop the presses! According to a new poll by Quinnipiac University on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) destroys Republican candidate Donald Trump in a general election by 13 percentage points. In this new poll, Sanders has 51 percent to Trump's 38 percent. If this margin held in a general election, Democrats would almost certainly regain control of the United States Senate and very possibly the House of Representatives.ADVERTISEMENTIt is high time and long overdue for television networks such as CNN to end their obsession with Trump and report the all-important fact that in most polls, both Hillary Clinton and Sanders would defeat Trump by landslide margins. In the new Quinnipiac poll, Clinton would defeat Trump by 7 percentage points, which is itself impressive and would qualify as a landslide, while the Sanders lead of 13 points would bring a landslide of epic proportions.It is noteworthy that in this Quinnipiac poll, Sanders runs so much stronger than Clinton against Trump. It is also noteworthy and important that both Sanders and Clinton run so far ahead of Trump in general election match-up polling. And it is profoundly important and revealing that Sanders would defeat Trump by such a huge margin — 13 points in this poll — that analysts would be talking about a national political realignment and new progressive era in American history if an enlightened candidate such as Sanders would defeat a retrograde race-baiting candidate such as Trump by a potentially epic and historic margin.

It is time for the mainstream media to end their obsession with Trump and their virtual news blackout of the Sanders campaign when discussing presidential campaign polling.

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.

On Monday, CNN released a poll indicating that 40 percent of Americans think the terrorists are winning the war on terror. It's a grim, weird finding that offers more questions about perceptions of terror than answers. Why are people in rural areas slightly more concerned about being killed in a terror attack than people in cities, as the poll finds? It doesn't make much sense, given where terrorists usually find their targets. The poll also had some good news for the White House: More than half of the country has a great deal or a moderate amount of confidence in the administration to protect the country from future terrorist acts. Among Democrats, 83 percent have confidence in the administration's ability to tackle terrorism, compared to only 17 percent of Republicans. That's pretty close to President Obama's Gallup approval ratings by party, with Republicans a bit more confident in Obama's ability to protect us than they approve of his job performance. The "who's winning the war on terror" question is similarly split on party lines, though less dramatically. Seventy-five percent of Democrats think that either the U.S. is winning or there's no clear winner, while more than half of Republicans think the terrorists are winning.

With big splits like that, it's little wonder, then, that even something like the imminent threat of a terror attack is viewed through a partisan lens. Among Democrats, 61 percent are not too worried about being killed in an attack, according to that CNN/ORC poll. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans are. And that almost certainly answers our rural/urban terror question. People in rural areas are probably worried about terror attacks because they're Republican, not because of where they live. Partisanship soaked in deep.