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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.

Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday said it was out of the question that Turkish troops would withdraw from Iraq after Baghdad accused Ankara of deploying soldiers there without permission.The row has badly soured relations between the two countries and saw the Turkish ambassador to Iraq summoned on Saturday to demand that Turkey immediately withdraw hundreds of troops deployed in recent days to northern Iraq, near the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul.Iraq's foreign ministry said Turkish forces had entered Iraqi territory without the knowledge of Baghdad, who view their presence as a "hostile act".Speaking at a press conference, Erdogan said that the troops were there for training Kurdish peshmerga fighters and not combat purposes. He also reiterated an earlier statement that they were deployed following an invitation by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi last year.

"The number of our soldiers (in northern Iraq) might increase or decreased depending on the number of peshmerga being trained," Erdogan stated. "Withdrawing our soldiers is out of the question for the moment."Erdogan said there would be a trilateral meeting between Turkey, the United States and Kurdish northern Iraqi authorities on Dec. 21 but made no mention of a possible meeting with Baghdad.Speaking to his counterpart earlier this week, the Turkish foreign minister emphasised Ankara's respect for Iraqi territorial integrity and said further troop deployments had been halted for now.

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

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

A military statement has ordered civilians to leave the "Islamic State"-held city, without giving further details. Some analysts believe a major US-led operation to retake the city is imminent.

Monday's statement was broadcast on Iraqi state TV, requesting that Ramadi civilians leave the city from its southern Himaira area. No further details were given. The announcement immediately fuelled speculation that a major operation by Iraqi forces to retake Ramadi from "Islamic State" ("IS") militants was about to begin. The statement followed three days of air strikes in Iraq and Syria by the US-led coalition fighting the jihadist group, and was issued after Iraqi forces cut the last "IS" supply line into the city by seizing a key bridge. IS militants were imposing a 5,500 euro ($6,000) levy for anyone who wanted to leave, the military said, adding that around 50,000 civilians have been prevented from traveling.

American and allied jets conducted seven strikes against "IS" positions around the city on Saturday and five on Sunday.

A year after his 700-page opus "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" stormed to the top of America's best-seller lists, Thomas Piketty is out with a new argument about income inequality. It may prove more controversial than his book, which continues to generate debate in political and economic circles. The new argument, which Piketty spelled out recently in the French newspaper Le Monde, is this: Inequality is a major driver of Middle Eastern terrorism, including the Islamic State attacks on Paris earlier this month — and Western nations have themselves largely to blame for that inequality. Piketty writes that the Middle East's political and social system has been made fragile by the high concentration of oil wealth into a few countries with relatively little population. If you look at the region between Egypt and Iran — which includes Syria — you find several oil monarchies controlling between 60 and 70 percent of wealth, while housing just a bit more than 10 percent of the 300 million people living in that area. (Piketty does not specify which countries he's talking about, but judging from a study he co-authored last year on Middle East inequality, it appears he means Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, Bahrain and Oman. By his numbers, they accounted for 16 percent of the region's population in 2012 and almost 60 percent of its gross domestic product.)

This concentration of so much wealth in countries with so small a share of the population, he says, makes the region "the most unequal on the planet." Within those monarchies, he continues, a small slice of people controls most of the wealth, while a large — including women and refugees — are kept in a state of "semi-slavery." Those economic conditions, he says, have become justifications for jihadists, along with the casualties of a series of wars in the region perpetuated by Western powers. His list starts with the first Gulf War, which he says resulted in allied forces returning oil "to the emirs." Though he does not spend much space connecting those ideas, the clear implication is that economic deprivation and the horrors of wars that benefited only a select few of the region's residents have, mixed together, become what he calls a "powder keg" for terrorism across the region.

Piketty is particularly scathing when he blames the inequality of the region, and the persistence of oil monarchies that perpetuate it, on the West: "These are the regimes that are militarily and politically supported by Western powers, all too happy to get some crumbs to fund their [soccer] clubs or sell some weapons. No wonder our lessons in social justice and democracy find little welcome among Middle Eastern youth." Terrorism that is rooted in inequality, Piketty continues, is best combated economically. To gain credibility with those who do not share in the region's wealth, Western countries should demonstrate that they are more concerned with the social development of the region than they are with their own financial interests and relationships with ruling families. The way to do this, he says, is to ensure that Middle eastern oil money funds "regional development," including far more education.

Michael Flynn, 56, served in the United States Army for more than 30 years, most recently as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was the nation's highest-ranking military intelligence officer. Previously, he served as assistant director of national intelligence inside the Obama administration. From 2004 to 2007, he was stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq, where, as commander of the US special forces, he hunted top al-Qaida terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the predecessors to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who today heads the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq. After Flynn's team located Zarqawi's whereabouts, the US killed the terrorist in an air strike in June 2006. In an interview, Flynn explains the rise of the Islamic State and how the blinding emotions of 9/11 led the United States in the wrong direction strategically.

we need the Arabs as partners, they must be the face of the mission -- but, today, they are neither capable of conducting nor leading this type of operation, only the United States can do this. And we don't want to invade or even own Syria. Our message must be that we want to help and that we will leave once the problems have been solved. The Arab nations must be on our side. And if we catch them financing, if they funnel money to IS, that's when sanctions and other actions have to kick in.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Islamic State wouldn't be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad. Do you regret ... Flynn: ... yes, absolutely ... SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... the Iraq war? Flynn: It was huge error. As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.

“We have received additional information confirming that the oil controlled by Islamic State militants (ISIS) enters Turkish territory on an industrial scale. We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure the security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers.” –Russian President Vladimir Putin, Paris, 11-30-15

In candid remarks to the Russian media, Putin implicated the US in the downing of the Su-24 stating that the US military was briefed on the warplane’s flight path and then immediately passed along that information to Turkey. Here’s what he said: “We told our US partners in advance where, when at what altitudes our pilots were going to operate. The US-led coalition, which includes Turkey, was aware of the time and place where our planes would operate. And this is exactly where and when we were attacked. Why did we share this information with the Americans? Either they don’t control their allies, or they just pass this information left and right without realizing what the consequences of such actions might be. We will have to have a serious talk with our US partners.” Putin’s damning remarks have not appeared in any of the western media. The censorship of this information is similar to the blackout of comments Putin made just two weeks earlier at the G-20 summit where he announced that “40 countries” are financing ISIS including members of the G-20.

Here’s an except of Putin’s bombshell announcement: “I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them,” Putin told the journalists. “I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products. The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems.” (Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members, RT)

Russia may freeze work on the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project for several years in retaliation against Ankara for the shooting down of a Russian air force jet, two sources at Russian gas giant Gazprom told Reuters. The Kremlin has imposed trade sanctions on Turkey over the jet incident last week but so far the measures have not affected the Russian energy exports to Turkey that are the core of their economic relationship. Freezing work on the pipeline - intended to pump Russian gas, via Turkey, into southeastern Europe while bypassing Ukraine - would have a more symbolic than practical effect because the project is already beset by delays and doubts over its viability. Any freeze would also not affect another Russian project to boost gas exports to the north of Europe. Gazprom is going ahead with plans to expand the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany despite resistance from several ex-communist states in eastern Europe.

Gazprom sources said no decision had been taken inside the company about changes to the Turkish Stream schedule in response to the row with Ankara, but said they were awaiting instructions from President Vladimir Putin. "We're expecting that the head of state, in all likelihood, could declare a freezing of Turkish Stream, or at least some kind of timeout should be announced," said one Gazprom source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the first time since the U.S. President Barack Obama announced an aerial campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) in Syria, the Anti-ISIS Coalition of predominately Arab states have struck a Syrian Arab Army (SAA) camp in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, killing 1 soldier and wounding half dozen others on Sunday evening. According to a military source from the Syrian Arab Army’s 104th Airborne Brigade of the Republican Guard, a U.S. warplane struck the military camp belonging to the SAA’s 137th Artillery Brigade (17th Reserve Division) in the village of ‘Ayyash, killing 1 soldier instantly and leaving 6 soldiers in critical condition – including an officer. The Syrian Arab Army’s 137th Brigade has been protecting the civilians in the village of ‘Ayyash from the swarming ISIS fighters that are attempting to break into the provincial capital of the Deir Ezzor Governorate from the northern flank; this airstrike only boosted ISIS’ positions inside this village and the nearby broadcast tower.

As of now; it is not clear who the U.S.-led Anti-ISIS Coalition aircraft meant to target, but it was clear to the Syrian Arab Army soldiers that the airstrikes were inaccurate and lacked logistical comprehension of the ground situation in the Deir Ezzor Governorate.

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.’”

Would you be willing to defend your country against a foreign invasion? That’s all Putin is doing in Syria. He’s just preempting the tidal wave of jihadis that’ll be coming his way once the current fracas is over.  He figures it’s better to exterminate these US-backed maniacs in Syria now than face them in Chechnya, St Petersburg and Moscow sometime in the future.  Can you blame him? After all, if Washington’s strategy works in Syria, then you can bet they’ll try the same thing in Beirut, Tehran and Moscow. So what choice does Putin have? None. He has no choice.  His back is against the wall. He has to fight.  No one in Washington seems to get this. They think Putin can throw in the towel and call it “quits” at the first sign of getting bogged down. But he can’t throw in the towel because Russia’s facing an existential crisis.  If he loses, then Russia’s going to wind up on the same scrap heap as Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. You can bet on it. So the only thing he can do is win. Period. Victory isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.

Of course they’ve noticed. Everyone’s noticed. Everyone knows Washington is on the warpath and its leaders have gone stark raving mad. How could they not notice? But all that’s done is focus the mind on the task at hand, and the task at hand is to whoop the tar out of the terrorists, put an end to Washington’s sick little jihadi game, and go home. That’s Russia’s plan in a nutshell.  No one is trying to cobble together the long-lost Soviet empire. That’s pure bunkum.  Russia just wants to clean up this nest of vipers and call it a day. There’s nothing more to it than that. But what if the going gets tough and Syria becomes a quagmire? That doesn’t change anything, because Russia still has to win. If that means sending ground troops to Syria, then that’s what Putin will do. If that means asymmetrical warfare, like arming the Kurds or the Yemenis, or the Taliban or even disparate anti-regime Shiites in Saudi Arabia, then he’ll do that too. Whatever it takes. This isn’t a game, it’s a fight for survival; Russia’s survival as a sovereign country. That’s what the stakes are. That’s not something Putin takes lightly.

The reason I ask this now is because, on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to attend an emergency meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss issues that are too sensitive to reveal to the public. There’s a lot of speculation about what the two men will talk about, but the urgency and the secrecy of the meeting suggests that the topic will be one of great importance. So allow me to make a guess about what the topic will be. When Kerry arrives in Moscow tomorrow he’ll be rushed to meeting room at the Kremlin where he’ll be joined by Lavrov, Putin, Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu and high-ranking members from military intelligence. Then, following the initial introductions, Kerry will be shown the evidence Russian intelligence has gathered on last Sunday’s attack on a Syrian military base east of Raqqa that killed three Syrian soldiers and wounded thirteen others. The Syrian government immediately condemned the attack and accused US warplanes of conducting the operation. Later in the day,  Putin delivered an uncharacteristically-harsh and threatening statement that left no doubt that he thought the attack was a grave violation of the accepted rules of engagement and, perhaps, a declaration of war.

Each day, the Turkish-back Islamist rebels lose large chunks of territory to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their allies in the Turkmen Mountains (Jabal Al-Turkmen) and the Kurdish Mountains (Jabal Al-Akrad) of northern Latakia. If this were to happen four months ago, the Turkish Armed Forces would have most certainly helped the Islamist rebels deter the Syrian Arab Army’s advance towards the border-crossing; however, Turkey is now at the mercy of the Russian Air Force’s fighter jets, who relentlessy target groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra (Syrian Al-Qaeda group) and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham along the Latakia-Turkey axis. .adslot_1 { width: 320px; height: 100px; } @media (min-width:500px) { .adslot_1 { width: 468px; height: 60px; } } @media (min-width:800px) { .adslot_1 { width: 336px; height: 280px; } } On Monday morning in northern Latakia, the Syrian Arab Army’s 103rd Brigade of the Republican Guard – backed by the National Defense Forces (NDF), the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), and Muqawama Souri (Syrian Resistance) – continued their significant push along the Turkish border by intensifying their assault on the Firlalaq Forest and the mountains to the east of Jabal Al-Zahiyah. The Syrian Arab Army’s 103rd Brigade and their allies were able to push further east towards the northern flank of Al-Rubayah (rebel stronghold), where they encountered heavy resistance from the Islamist rebels of Jabhat Al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) – fighting has resumed this morning. In the southern part of Jabal Al-Turkmen, the Syrian Arab Army’s 103rd Brigade pounded the Islamist rebels of Jabhat Al-Nusra at Jabal Al-Nuba; this attack led to a much needed advance for the Syrian Armed Forces and another defeat for Jabhat Al-Nusra and their allies.

srael's defence minister said on Tuesday there was not enough evidence to prosecute the suspects in a deadly arson attack on a Palestinian home in the occupied West Bank in July. Moshe Yaalon told army radio he considered the firebomb attack in the village of Duma - which killed a toddler and his parents and left another child severely burned - a "Jewish terrorist act".

He added, however, evidence was still lacking nearly five months after the July 31 firebombing, despite the recent arrests of suspects in the case.

"We know who is responsible for this terrorist act, but do not have enough proof yet to try them," Yaalon said. Israel has come under heavy pressure to try those responsible for the deadly firebombing, with rights groups questioning the slow pace of investigations and contrasting it to the swift reaction often following alleged Palestinian attacks. On December 3, Israeli authorities said they had arrested a number of Jewish suspects over the attack. They have not been publicly identified and there has been no indication they have been charged. "Indictments are a rarity when Israeli soldiers or settlers resort to violence against Palestinians and investigations can last for years before being closed, absolving perpetrators of any wrongdoing," Brad Parker, attorney and international advocacy officer at Defence for Children International - Palestine, told Al Jazeera after the arrests.

Global developments in finance and geopolitics are prompting a rethinking of the structure of banking and of the nature of money itself. Among other interesting news items: * In Russia, vulnerability to Western sanctions has led to proposals for a banking system that is not only independent of the West but is based on different design principles. * In Iceland, the booms and busts culminating in the banking crisis of 2008-09 have prompted lawmakers to consider a plan to remove the power to create money from private banks. * In Ireland, Iceland and the UK, a recession-induced shortage of local credit has prompted proposals for a system of public interest banks on the model of the Sparkassen of Germany. * In Ecuador, the central bank is responding to a shortage of US dollars (the official Ecuadorian currency) by issuing digital dollars through accounts to which everyone has access, effectively making it a bank of the people.

A major concern with stripping private banks of the power to create money as deposits when they make loans is that it will seriously reduce the availability of credit in an already sluggish economy. One solution is to make the banks, or some of them, public institutions. They would still be creating money when they made loans, but it would be as agents of the government; and the profits would be available for public use, on the model of the US Bank of North Dakota and the German Sparkassen (public savings banks). In Ireland, three political parties – Sinn Fein, the Green Party and Renua Ireland (a new party) — are now supporting initiatives for a network of local publicly-owned banks on the Sparkassen model. In the UK, the New Economy Foundation (NEF) is proposing that the failed Royal Bank of Scotland be transformed into a network of public interest banks on that model. And in Iceland, public banking is part of the platform of a new political party called the Dawn Party.

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

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

The United States is set to deploy troops on the ground in Syria for the first time to advise and assist rebel forces combating ISIS, the White House said Friday. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that the U.S. would be deploying "less than 50" Special Operations forces, who will be sent to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria. The American troops will help local Kurdish and Arab forces fighting ISIS with logistics and are planning to bolster their efforts.

The Special Ops troops will first be deployed to northern Syria to help coordinate local ground forces and U.S.-led coalition efforts to fight ISIS, the senior administration official said. The local forces in that area have been the most effective U.S. partners in confronting ISIS.

He was also careful to insist: "These forces do not have a combat mission."

Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantanamo Bay, was released on Friday after being detained without charge for almost 14 years.On September 25th, U.S. and U.K. authorities confirmed that Aamer was to be returned to the U.K. within days. The release comes after Aamer endured well over a decade of torture, detention without charge or trial, and solitary confinement. Aamer’s high profile case has highlighted everything that is wrong with the war on terror — detention without charge or trial, government complicity in torture and lack of accountability for war crimes, gross obstruction of justice, and the humiliating and dehumanising treatment of detainees.A keen community worker and U.K. resident, Aamer is married to a British woman and four British children living in London. He was volunteering for a charity in Afghanistan in 2001 when he was abducted and sold for a bounty to U.S. forces. He was tortured, eventually cracking and agreeing to his captors’ accusations against him. Satisfied with the confession of an abused and broken man, U.S. forces took him to Guantánamo Bay on Valentine’s Day 2002.In a September Daily Mail piece entitled “Torture and the man who could expose Britain’s dirtiest secrets,” journalist Peter Oborne said, “My view is that Mr Aamer may have paid the price for knowing too much. The CIA had very good reason to be terrified of what he might reveal when he emerged from jail.”

“One of the things that is exciting about this is, if we are able to identify any cases in which those mistakes were made, that hair should be under glass somewhere,” said Iowa State Public Defender Adam Gregg. "We could be able to use DNA technology in order to test those hairs and find out whether they got the right person, and if they didn’t, then we will have the post-conviction relief process in order to correct that mistake." About 100 cases involving hair comparison have been flagged for review. The Wrongful Conviction Division is part of the Office of the State Public Defender's Office. It will work with the Division of Criminal Investigation, the Iowa Innocence Project and the Midwest Innocence Project.

Governor Branstad announced he's launching a new division designed to help people who are wrongly convicted of crimes. “We also know in a system operated by humans, mistakes can be made including wrongful convictions,” Branstad said. The Wrongful Conviction Division will focus on hair comparison analysis. The FBI recently admitted to serious errors in testimony on those tests, many times overstating how close hair from a crime scene matched a defendant. The FBI trains the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation on hair analysis methods, so the Public Defender's Office wants to review cases where hair comparison analysis was used. They’re looking at cases from 1980-2000, which was a time when DNA analysis wasn't widely used.

“One of the things that is exciting about this is, if we are able to identify any cases in which those mistakes were made, that hair should be under glass somewhere,” said Iowa State Public Defender Adam Gregg. "We could be able to use DNA technology in order to test those hairs and find out whether they got the right person, and if they didn’t, then we will have the post-conviction relief process in order to correct that mistake."