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“I’ve shown photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” Vladimir Putin told reporters earlier this month on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Antalya. Putin was of course referencing Islamic State’s illicit and highly lucrative oil trade, the ins and outs of which we’ve documented extensively over the past two weeks: The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection Turkey’s move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 warplane near the Syrian border afforded the Russian President all the motivation and PR cover he needed to expose Ankara’s alleged role in the trafficking of illegal crude from Iraq and Syria and in the aftermath of last Tuesday’s “incident,” Putin lambasted Erdogan. “Oil from Islamic State is being shipped to Turkey,” Putin said while in Jordan for a meeting with King Abdullah. In case that wasn’t clear enough, Putin added this: “Islamic State gets cash by selling oil to Turkey.”

To be sure, it’s impossible to track the path ISIS oil takes from extraction to market with any degree of precision. That said, it seems that Islamic State takes advantage of the same network of smugglers, traders, and shipping companies that the KRG uses to transport Kurdish crude from Kurdistan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. From there, the oil makes its way to Israel and other markets (depending on which story you believe) and if anyone needs to be thrown off the trail along the way, there’s a ship-to-ship transfer trick that can be executed off the coast of Malta. The maneuver allegedly makes the cargoes more difficult to track.  Some believe Erdogan’s son Bilal - who owns a marine transport company called BMZ Group - is heavily involved in the trafficking of Kurdish and ISIS crude. Most of the ships BMZ owns are Malta-flagged.  In light of the above, some have speculated that Turkey shot down the Su-24 in retaliation for Russia’s bombing campaign that recently has destroyed over 1,000 ISIS oil trucks. Here’s what Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoub said on Friday:

“All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company’s nerves. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well." Al-Zoub isn’t alone in his suspicions. In an interview with RT, Iraqi MP and former national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie - who personally led Saddam to the gallows - said ISIS is selling around $100 million of stolen crude each month in Turkey. Here are some excerpts:  “In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell ... $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold ...[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price."   "Now this either get consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market.”

For years, NATO has granted impunity to convoys packed with supplies bound for ISIS and Al Qaeda. Russian airstrikes have stopped them dead in their tracks. If a legitimate, well-documented aid convoy carrying humanitarian supplies bound for civilians inside Syria was truly destroyed by Russian airstrikes, it is likely the world would never have heard the end of it. Instead, much of the world has heard little at all about a supposed “aid” convoy destroyed near Azaz, Syria, at the very edge of the Afrin-Jarabulus corridor through which the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) and Al Qaeda’s remaining supply lines pass, and in which NATO has long-sought to create a “buffer zone” more accurately described as a Syrian-based, NATO-occupied springboard from which to launch terrorism deeper into Syrian territory. The Turkish-based newspaper Daily Sabah reported in its article, “Russian airstrikes target aid convoy in northwestern Syrian town of Azaz, 7 killed,” claims: At least seven people died, 10 got injured after an apparent airstrike, reportedly by Russian jets, targeted an aid convoy in northwestern Syrian town of Azaz near a border crossing with Turkey on Wednesday. Daily Sabah also reported: Speaking to Daily Sabah, Serkan Nergis from the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) said that the targeted area is located some 5 kilometers southwest of the Öncüpınar Border Crossing.  Nergis said that IHH has a civil defense unit in Azaz and they helped locals to extinguish the trucks. Trucks were probably carrying aid supplies or commercial materials, Nergis added.

Daily Sabah’s report also reveals that the Turkish-Syrian border crossing of Oncupinar is held by what it calls “rebels.” The border crossing of Oncupinar should be familiar to many as it was the scene of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s (DW) investigative report where DW camera crews videotaped hundreds of trucks waiting at the border, bound for ISIS territory, apparently with full approval of Ankara. The report was published in November of 2014, a full year ago, and revealed precisely how ISIS has been able to maintain its otherwise inexplicable and seemingly inexhaustible fighting capacity. The report titled, “‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey,” included a video and a description which read: Every day, trucks laden with food, clothing, and other supplies cross the border from Turkey to Syria. It is unclear who is picking up the goods. The haulers believe most of the cargo is going to the “Islamic State” militia. Oil, weapons, and soldiers are also being smuggled over the border, and Kurdish volunteers are now patrolling the area in a bid to stem the supplies. The report, and many others like it, left many around the world wondering why, if the US is willing to carry out risky military operations deep within Syrian territory to allegedly “fight ISIS,” the US and its allies don’t commit to a much less riskier strategy of securing the Turkish-Syrian border within Turkey’s territory itself – especially considering that the United States maintains an airbase, training camps, and intelligence outposts within Turkish territory and along the very border ISIS supply convoys are crossing over.

Ideally, NATO should have interdicted these supply convoys before they even crossed over into Syria – arresting the drivers and tracking those who filled the trucks back to their source and arresting them as well. Alternatively, the trucks should have been destroyed either at the border or at the very least, once they had entered into Syria and were clearly headed toward ISIS-occupied territory. That none of this took place left many to draw conclusions that the impunity granted to this overt logistical network was intentional and implicated NATO directly in the feeding of the very ISIS terrorists it claimed to be “fighting.”

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.

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

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

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

During secret proceedings in Washington, a key witness in undermining the $9.5 billion judgment Chevron faces in Ecuador repudiated much of his explosive testimony, transcripts made public today show.     Since agreeing to testify for the oil giant, Judge Alberto Guerra's fortunes have changed, and so have Chevron's.     Roughly two years ago, Guerra took to the witness stand in a New York federal courtroom and swore that lawyers for rainforest villagers bribed him to ghostwrite a multibillion-dollar Ecuadorean court judgment against Chevron for oil contamination to the Amazon jungle.     About a year before he made a deal with Chevron, Guerra had little more than $100 to his name. He also owed tens of thousands of dollars in debt and could not afford to visit his children living in the United States.     U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan had warned early on in proceedings that he did not "assume that anyone's hands in this are clean," yet he credited Guerra's testimony last year in ruling that the Ecuadoreans obtained their award "by corrupt means."     The Ecuadoreans have long attacked Guerra, who has a contract with Chevron for various perks, including at least $326,000, an immigration attorney and a car, as a "paid-for" participant in the oil giant's self-styled witness-protection program.     Kaplan's decision conceded that "Guerra's credibility is not impeccable," but found that his account was "corroborated extensively by independent evidence."

Both that credibility and the corroborating evidence came under withering attack this year during closed-door proceedings before an international arbitration tribunal.     Though the hearings took place without press or public access at the World Bank in Washington on April 23 and 24, the tribunal agreed to release transcripts of the proceedings in response to a Courthouse News request that the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press supported.     Courthouse News obtained advanced copies of more than 3,000 pages of transcripts, which were formally released on Monday.     They show Guerra putting a new twist on an old saying. "Money talks, gold screams," Guerra said in a June 25, 2012, meeting with Chevron representatives - a meeting Chevron recorded.     Testifying about this comment at the arbitration hearing, Guerra said Chevron showed him a safe filled with money. He recounted Chevron's representatives telling him: "Look, look, look what's down there. We have $20,000 there."     He remembered replying: "Oh, OK, very well, very well."     Guerra said he had only $146 in his bank account a year earlier, and owed tens of thousands more to finish the construction of his house. He said he could not scrape money for airfare to visit his children in the United States.

 Minutes from Guerra's meeting with Chevron that came to light during the tribunal proceedings showed that Chevron's lawyers hoped to find evidence that the Ecuadorean government had pressured the Guerra to rule against the company.     Guerra disappointed by saying that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa's administration "never butted in" to the process, the transcript shows.     "These guys are idiots, but the truth, the truth, I attest, damn, they never got involved," Guerra added, referring to Correa's government.     The remark appears to undercut the foundation of Chevron's arbitration case, which asks the tribunal to blame the Ecuadorean government for a miscarriage of justice.     Guerra stood by those comments on the arbitration panel's witness stand.      "My position is that the government did not intervene," Guerra said.     The only time an Ecuadorean government official tried to elbow into the case, Guerra testified, was under a prior administration. Correa's predecessors pushed to dismiss the case in Chevron's favor in 2003, he said.

Nope, a flag is not enough to make the moon a colony.

An event of cosmic proportions occurred on November 18 when the US congress passed the Space Act of 2015 into law. The legislation will give US space firms the rights to own and sell natural resources they mine from bodies in space, including asteroids. Although the act, passed with bipartisan support, still requires President Obama’s signature, it is already the most significant salvo that has been fired in the ideological battle over ownership of the cosmos. It goes against a number of treaties and international customary law which already apply to the entire universe. The new law is nothing but a classic rendition of the “he who dares wins” philosophy of the Wild West. The act will also allow the private sector to make space innovations without regulatory oversight during an eight-year period and protect spaceflight participants from financial ruin. Surely, this will see private firms begin to incorporate the mining of asteroids into their investment plans.

Supporters argue that the US Space Act is a bold statement that finally sets private spaceflight free from the heavy regulation of the US government. The misdiagnosis begins here. Space exploration is a universal activity and therefore requires international regulation. The act represents a full-frontal attack on settled principles of space law which are based on two basic principles: the right of states to scientific exploration of outer space and its celestial bodies and the prevention of unilateral and unbriddled commercial exploitation of outer-space resources. These principles are found in agreements including the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Agreement of 1979. The US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology denies there is anything in the act which violates the US’s international obligations. According to this body, the right to extract and use resources from celestial bodies “is affirmed by State practice and by the US State Department in Congressional testimony and written correspondence”. Crucially, there is no specific reference to international law in this statement. Simply relying on US legislation and policy statements to justify the plans is obviously insufficient.

In New York City, the police now maintain an unknown number of military-grade vans outfitted with X-ray radiation, enabling cops to look through the walls of buildings or the sides of trucks. The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Each X-ray van costs an estimated $729,000 to $825,000.The NYPD will not reveal when, where, or how often they are used.

Here are some specific questions that New York City refuses to answer:How is the NYPD ensuring that innocent New Yorkers are not subject to harmful X-ray radiation? How long is the NYPD keeping the images that it takes and who can look at them? Is the NYPD obtaining judicial authorization prior to taking images, and if so, what type of authorization? Is the technology funded by taxpayer money, and has the use of the vans justified the price tag? Those specifics are taken from a New York Civil Liberties Union court filing. The legal organization is seeking to assist a lawsuit filed by Pro Publica journalist Michael Grabell, who has been fighting New York City for answers about X-ray vans for 3 years.“ProPublica filed the request as part of its investigation into the proliferation of security equipment, including airport body scanners, that expose people to ionizing radiation, which can mutate DNA and increase the risk of cancer,” he explained. (For fear of a terrorist “dirty bomb,” America’s security apparatus is exposing its population to radiation as a matter of course.)

A state court has already ruled that the NYPD has to turn over policies, procedures, and training manuals that shape uses of X-rays; reports on past deployments; information on the costs of the X-ray devices and the number of vans purchased; and information on the health and safety effects of the technology. But New York City is fighting on appeal to suppress that information and more, as if it is some kind of spy agency rather than a municipal police department operating on domestic soil, ostensibly at the pleasure of city residents.Its insistence on extreme secrecy is part of an alarming trend. The people of New York City are effectively being denied the ability to decide how they want to be policed.

Several weeks ago, the Project On Government Oversight announced its cautious optimism upon learning the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) planned to conduct a close air support (CAS) fly-off between the proven A-10 and the yet-to-be proved F-35. The cautious aspect of that optimism has been proven to be warranted. Under questioning by Representative Martha McSally (R-AZ), a former A-10 pilot, F-35 program executive officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan (USAF) dismissed the idea of a comparative test as irrelevant. The exchange occurred during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on updates to the Joint Strike Fighter program. General Bogdan’s remarks echo earlier comments by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, who described the proposed test as a “silly exercise.” Dr. Michael Gilmore, Director of Operational Test & Evaluation, said in late August, “The comparison tests on the close-air support mission will reveal how well the F-35 performs and whether there are gaps, or improvements in capability, compared to the A-10.”

When asked by Rep. McSally to comment about the comparative tests, Lt. Gen. Bogdan acknowledged the F-35 would not do as well as the A-10 in such a test. He smugly compared the test to a decathlete competing against a champion sprinter in a 100 meter race. “I don’t have to run that race to know who is going to win it,” he said. “What I prefer to do is test the F-35 in its close air support role as the Air Force sees the requirements for that mission for the F-35,” the General said. The test envisioned by the Air Force would be conducted in the manner it wants to conduct close air support missions in the future, not in the way decades of experience has proven it must be conducted in order to be effective on the battlefield. The Air Force wants these missions to be conducted from high altitudes using digital communications and precision munitions. In other words, it wants to accomplish the mission only through high-tech means from a distance, rather than getting low to the ground where pilots and ground controllers are able to coordinate in a way which has been used to great effect for decades.

In a recent documentary, an A-10 pilot talked about the sensors available to help them correlate targets on the ground to ensure a precision strike. But in nearly the same breath, he described their shortcomings as well. “That will never replace just looking right, outside of my cockpit and looking at the battlespace. What am I seeing out there, big-picture?” That level of situational awareness only develops when a pilot is able to fly low and slow over the battlefield.  That will be lost by F-35 pilots who will be restricted to much higher altitudes and speed. They will be forced there because, as Michael Gilmore said while testifying at an earlier hearing, “The (F-35) has some vulnerabilities that you would expect a high performance aircraft to have. The A-10 is going to be able to, can take, hits an F-35 couldn’t take.” The United States has already been through this process before and learned painful and expensive lessons by ignoring proven methods of designing effective weapons systems. Pierre Sprey, a veteran of many bureaucratic battles while designing effective aircraft, says the correct approach to this process is to first understand the mission the system is to perform: you’ve “got to start with what really happens in combat,” Sprey said in a recent interview.

We will no doubt look back upon the current era as the “crime of the century” for so many different reasons. Actually, current times represent the worst financial crimes of ALL TIME! The various crimes and how they are operated are too numerous to list and would probably fill a three volume set of books, let’s concentrate on just one. Central to everything is the U.S. issuing the global reserve currency by fiat knowing full well it truly means “non payment”. The absolute cornerstone to the dollar retaining confidence and thus value has been the suppression of the price of gold. Before getting to specifically what I’d like to point out, let’s look at a couple common sense points which beg questions. How is it China has been importing 2,400 tons of gold over the past two and a half years without any upward push to the gold price? This amount equals almost EXACTLY the TOTAL amount of gold mined annually around the world! How is it possible that ALL production has been purchased by China and yet the price goes down? The answer of course is quite simple unless you purposely close your eyes or disingenuously “apologize”.

The argument from the apologists is that “traders” on COMEX and LBMA believe gold will go lower so they are sellers and this is where the downward pressure has come from. You as a reader already know that much of the “selling” is done at midnight (or off hours) in the U.S. which is the lunch break in Asia, China specifically. The massive selling (as much as total global production in less than two trading days) has usually taken place during off hours when the volume is lightest and price moves the most, especially with any significant volume. The result has been gold now trades at or very near the cost of production and silver well below production costs. None of this is new, only a refresher. The reaction in the actual physical markets is backwardation, premiums over spot prices and actual shortages. Put simply, low price has brought out additional physical demand. To the point, the following is a snapshot of inventory movement (or the lack of) within the COMEX gold vaults this month:

Yes, yes, the open interest ALWAYS collapses and delivery “always gets made”. But doesn’t it seem strange to you that a market with less than $200 million worth of inventory is the pricing to a $5 trillion monetary asset? In comparison, a single ranch in Texas just got sold for nearly 4 times the size of what COMEX claims they have available for delivery. It used to be the tail was wagging the dog. Now, COMEX inventory has been bled down so far it can be said just a few hairs on the tail is wagging the dog! Surely I will receive comments like “this will go on forever” or “don’t worry, nothing ever comes of these delivery months”. It should be pointed out, as it stands right now a single trade of 1,820 contracts represents the entire deliverable inventory and we have seen on multiple occasions where 3,000-6,000 contracts have been sold (in one trade) to collapse the price. I ask, how does COMEX keep this in the box when something very “REAL” happens? “Real” meaning a mere push of our financial system by China? Or a military shove by Russia? Or something as simple as a “truth bomb” being released on the American public? Can an inventory of less than $200 million fiat dollars make good and keep hidden the core crime to the crime of the century? Is this why China is moving toward a physical exchange? Once they “take it out …they will take it up”!

“We have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL,” Mr. Obama told reporters while on a trip to Turkey, using an acronym for the group. “The United States has built and led a broad coalition against ISIL of some 65 nations,” he said several days later.“The United States, France and our coalition of some 65 nations have been united in one mission — to destroy these ISIL terrorists,” he added a few days after that.The president has sought to evoke the sort of grand coalition the United States led in World War II. But when it comes to the war part of the war against the Islamic State, the 65-member coalition begins to shrink rapidly down to a coalition of just a handful.

As of Nov. 19, the United States had conducted 6,471 of the 8,289 airstrikes against the Islamic State, according to the Pentagon. American warplanes carried out about two-thirds of the strikes on Iraqi territory and 95 percent of those on Syrian territory. Australia, Canada, France and Jordan have conducted strikes in both countries. Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain have participated just in Iraq, while Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have participated just in Syria.That leaves more than 50 other coalition members that have never been directly involved in the air campaign. Some early participants, like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and the U.A.E., have not conducted a strike in months. While France has stepped up its strikes since the Paris attacks, Canada’s new prime minister is sticking to his vow to pull its six CF-18 fighter jets out of the bombing campaign, although Canadian surveillance and refueling aircraft may stay with the mission.

The Obama administration considers just 24 of the countries to be part of the core group that meets quarterly. The Italians are training Iraqi police officers, the Germans and Emiratis are working with 20 countries to stabilize war-torn areas, and 18 countries are training Iraqi and Kurdish military.But many others seem included in the membership rolls because they have adopted policies protecting their own security. Countries like Kuwait and Tunisia have broken up Islamist cells. Sweden is speeding up legislation to curb the abuse of Swedish passports and to criminalize foreign fighters. Albania approved a national strategy to combat violent extremism. Other members include Luxembourg, Montenegro, Iceland, Taiwan, Singapore, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, and Kosovo.

The National Security Agency will no longer be able to collect phone records in bulk starting Nov. 29, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement Friday.The program's closure was required by the USA Freedom Act, signed by President Barack Obama in early June. The program was allowed to continue since then as part of a six-month wind-down period, in which intelligence officials could create and test a new phone records program where the government can only obtain records connected to a specific entity like a person or device that is associated with a foreign power or terrorist group.Some Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, tried to delay the program’s official end this month in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks. But despite support from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the effort got no traction in Congress.

The NSA has requested that some officials continue to have access to data already collected by the agency for “technical” purposes — but not intelligence analysis— for another three months, according to ODNI. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is currently reviewing that request, ODNI said.A federal court issued an order earlier this month holding the program unconstitutional and barring the collection of phone metadata pertaining to one California attorney and his law practice. However, after authorities argued that implementing the order would require the early shutdown of the whole program, a federal appeals court stayed the ruling.

The head of an international medical charity whose hospital in northern Afghanistan was destroyed in a U.S. airstrike says the "extensive, quite precise destruction" of the bombing raid casts doubt on American military assertions that it was a mistake. The Oct. 3 attack on the compound in Kunduz city, which killed at least 22 patients and hospital staff, should be investigated as a possible war crime, said Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, which is also known by its French abbreviation MSF. The trauma hospital was bombed during a firefight between Taliban and government troops, as U.S. advisers were helping Afghan forces retake the city after the insurgents overran it and seized control on Sept. 28. Afghan authorities say they are now largely back in control of Kunduz.

According to Associated Press reporting, American special operations analysts were scrutinizing the Afghan hospital days before it was destroyed because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity. The analysts knew it was a medical facility, according to a former intelligence official who is familiar with some of the documents describing the site. It's unclear whether that information ever got to commanders who unleashed the AC-130 gunship on the hospital. "The hospital was repeatedly hit both at the front and the rear and extensively destroyed and damaged, even though we have provided all the coordinates and all the right information to all the parties in the conflict," Stokes said, standing in the burned-out main hospital building. "The extensive, quite precise destruction of this hospital ... doesn't indicate a mistake. The hospital was repeatedly hit," Stokes said. The bombing went on for more than an hour, despite calls to Afghan, U.S. and NATO to call if off, MSF has said.

tokes, who has called for an independent inquiry into the incident, told The Associated Press in an interview in the remains of the hospital on Friday that MSF wanted a "clear explanation because all indications point to a grave breach of international humanitarian law, and therefore a war crime." Afghan authorities have refused to comment before investigations are complete. President Ashraf Ghani's deputy spokesman, Zafar Hashemi, told reporters on Saturday that the Afghan government has "faith" in investigations being conducted by the U.S. military, and by a joint Afghan-NATO team. MSF has denied there were any armed Taliban on the hospital grounds at the time of the attack. "The compound was not entered by Taliban soldiers with weapons," Stokes said. "What we have understood from our staff and guards is that there was very strong, very good control of what was happening in and around the compound and they reported no firing in the hours preceding the destruction of the hospital." More than 70 staff members were on duty, tending to more than 100 patients at the time, he said. According to its policy, MSF treats government troops and insurgent combatants equally. Hospitals are regarded as protected sites in war.

It’s spy thriller stuff; no one is talking. But there are indications Russia would not announce a partial withdrawal from Syria right before the Geneva negotiations ramp up unless a grand bargain with Washington had been struck.Some sort of bargain is in play, of which we still don’t know the details; that's what the CIA itself is basically saying through their multiple US Think Tankland mouthpieces. And that's the real meaning hidden under a carefully timed Barack Obama interview that, although inviting suspension of disbelief, reads like a major policy change document. Obama invests in proverbial whitewashing, now admitting US intel did not specifically identify the Bashar al-Assad government as responsible for the Ghouta chemical attack. And then there are nuggets, such as Ukraine seen as not a vital interest of the US – something that clashes head on with the Brzezinski doctrine. Or Saudi Arabia as freeloaders of US foreign policy – something that provoked a fierce response from former Osama bin Laden pal and Saudi intel supremo Prince Turki.

Tradeoffs seem to be imminent. And that would imply a power shift has taken place above Obama — who is essentially a messenger, a paperboy. Still that does not mean that the bellicose agendas of both the Pentagon and the CIA are now contained.

Russian intel cannot possibly trust a US administration infested with warmongering neocon cells. Moreover, the Brzezinski doctrine has failed – but it’s not dead. Part of the Brzezinski plan was to flood oil markets with shut-in capacity in OPEC to destroy Russia. That caused damage, but the second part, which was to lure Russia into an war in Ukraine for which Ukrainians were to be the cannon fodder in the name of “democracy”, failed miserably. Then there was the wishful thinking that Syria would suck Russia into a quagmire of Dubya in Iraq proportions – but that also failed miserably with the current Russian time out. 

House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) leveled a serious allegation at former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  Jordan alleged that Jordan leaked classified information about the Trump-Russia investigation to CNN.  Clapper later became a CNN contributor.  I recently wrote a column about how Clapper ran out a statute of limitations for allegedly lying in testimony to Congress. Here is the statement on Fox News: REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): We learned two key things from the Republicans on the intelligence committee — their report. The first is they told us something we already know, namely, there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the election. The second thing they told us is something that we suspected, now they’ve confirmed, which is that Clapper actually was the guy leaking information. Specifically leaking information I believe, from that January 6th meeting where they briefed President Trump, then President-elect Trump on the dossier. Someone at CNN got information. We think it was Mr. Clapper who gave it to them. And then a few days later Buzzfeed prints the entire dossier.

Israel is trying to “suck America into” a war with Iran that could destabilize the Middle East and lead to a world war in much the way that the imperial rivalries in 1914 led to the First World War, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned in Washington last week. A war with Iran, he said, could “perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become.” But Israeli leaders want a war, and they are pushing one with the support of their American political friends, including Democrats like Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, whose overheated rhetoric about Iran recalls Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, Wilkerson said. Another pro-war faction are “warmed-over neoconservatives” who got us into the Iraq war. “I’ve been there, done that; I don’t need the tour,” he said. Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who now teaches government at Washington-area universities, served Powell during the runup to the Iraq war. He spoke last Friday at the annual Israel lobby conference at the National Press Club, sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Institute for Research: Middle East Policy. The conference aired on C-SPAN. I have transcribed his speech below. Wilkerson’s remarks are important because his analysis of the tail wagging the dog is so cogent and frightening at a time when the premier Israel lobby group AIPAC is pushing for action against Iran in Syria. Also for Wilkerson’s respectful take on Vladimir Putin; for his unvarnished opinion of the Israel lobby, so different from the tame piece he published in The New York Times a month ago; and for his comments about Israel attacking the USS Liberty in 1967 and stealing US uranium to build a nuclear weapon with LBJ’s knowledge.

Nir Hefetz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "spin doctor" and confidant, will hand over recordings of Netanyahu and his wife Sara as part of a deal with police to turn state's evidence in the bribery case involving the Bezeq telecom giant and the Walla news site. Netanyahu, currently in the U.S. for AIPAC and a meeting with Trump, received the news at the Blair House, where he is a guest of the White House. In return for testifying against Netanyahu, Hefetz will not stand trial, face prison time or be fined. While he testifies, he will be housed at an isolated installation.

According to assessments regarding the deal, Hefetz will also give information regarding the other cases against the prime minister and his wife. Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email* Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close Hefetz is the third Netanyahu confidant to turn against the prime minister in the ongoing corruption cases. Hefetz is suspected of receiving bribes and obstructing justice as part of what is called Case 4000. He is also a key figure in 1270, and is second fiddle in Case 2000. In Case 4000, Hefetz liaised between the Netanyahu couple and the Walla news website, owned by Bezeq. Hefetz arranged for flattering items on the couple and censorship of less flattering items, Haaretz's Gidi Weitz reported. In Case 1270, Hefetz allegedly served as the prime minister's confidant who sought to elucidate how Judge Hila Gerstl felt about closing a case against Sara Netanyahu. Allegedly a trial balloon was floated, hinting to Gerstl that she would be promoted to Israel's next attorney-general if she closed the case down. Hefetz claims that it all boiled down to idle chatter and hadn't been coordinated with the prime minister and his wife. In Case 2000, Hefetz had involvement on both sides of the coin. He was head of public relations for Netanyahu, before which he served as senior editor in the Yedioth Ahronoth group, owned by Arnon Mozes. In 2009, Mozes is suspected of agreeing to provide sweetheart coverage of Netanyahu, who in turn allegedly promised to get the rival (free) newspaper Israel Hayom to stop printing a weekend edition, which stood to hugely benefit Yedioth.

Channel 10 reports that Hefetz will be providing information on other cases – some of which the public hasn't even heard of yet.

Observing the presidential elections over the years has been a lot like watching a television series jump the shark. We've gotten to that point where you watch it for the same reason you can't help slowing down and staring as you pass a wreck on the highway. It's the Jerry Springerfication of politics. A morbid fascination with the decline of western civilization. I know. Some of you are on the train. Some of you are actually inspired by the smoke being blown up your collective backsides. I'm not here to burst your bubble. Not necessary. Reality will set in on its own time. No matter who gets inaugurated in January, the American public is going to come to their senses in a ditch, with a hangover and realize that they have no idea where their pants are. That's an ugly picture, but sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to realize you've got a problem. And there's never been a better time for a rude awakening. All around the world we are witnessing the early stages of a massive social and economic upheaval.

Reporter David Fahrenthold got a phone call around 11 a.m. Friday from a source with a tip about Donald Trump. The source asked: Would Fahrenthold be interested in seeing some previously unaired video of Trump? Fahrenthold didn’t hesitate. Within a few moments of watching an outtake of footage from a 2005 segment on “Access Hollywood,” the Washington Post reporter was on the phone, calling Trump’s campaign, “Access Hollywood” and NBC for reaction. By 4 p.m., his story was causing shock waves.

Fahrenthold’s story about the recording — which some observers said might deal a death blow to Trump’s presidential campaign — was the second major revelation, or “October surprise,” that came courtesy of an anonymous source. The New York Times last week revealed that Trump took a $916 million loss on his 1995 taxes, which could have relieved him from paying federal income taxes for as many as 18 years. The Times’ story was based on tax returns supplied by a source whose identity is unknown even to the Times. Fahrenthold, a 16-year veteran of The Post, said he knows who pointed him to the “Access Hollywood” video, but he will not reveal the identity because he promised anonymity to his tipster. But like many readers, he said he was surprised and shocked by what he saw on the tape.

As it happens, Fahrenthold was racing to produce his story in competition with “Access Hollywood” itself. The syndicated show, owned by NBC Universal, had found the Trump recording in its archives and was preparing its own story. NBC News, tipped by “Access Hollywood,” was also aware of the tape and was preparing a story, which it intended to broadcast after the entertainment show aired the recording. It was not clear, however, when “Access Hollywood” and NBC News were planning to go ahead with their stories.

“Last Wednesday, at a Deputies Committee meeting at the White House, officials from the State Department, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed limited military strikes against the (Assad) regime … One proposed way to get around the White House’s long-standing objection to striking the Assad regime without a U.N. Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment.” – Washington Post Call it stealth warfare, call it poking the bear, call it whatever you’d like. The fact is, the Syrian war has entered a new and more dangerous phase increasing the chances of a catastrophic confrontation between the US and Russia. This new chapter of the conflict is the brainchild of Pentagon warlord, Ash Carter, whose attack on a Syrian outpost at Deir Ezzor killed 62 Syrian regulars putting a swift end to the fragile ceasefire agreement. Carter and his generals opposed the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire deal because it would have required “military and intelligence cooperation with the Russians”. In other words, the US would have had to get the greenlight from Moscow for its bombing targets which would have undermined its ability to assist its jihadist fighters on the ground. That was a real deal-breaker for the Pentagon. But bombing Deir Ezzor fixed all that. It got the Pentagon out of the jam it was in, it torpedoed the ceasefire, and it allowed Carter to launch his own private shooting match without presidential authorization. Mission accomplished.

By M.K. Bhadrakumar October 5, 2016 9:54 AM (UTC+8) Share 0 Tweet Print Email Comment 0 Asia Times is not responsible for the opinions, facts or any media content presented by contributors. In case of abuse, click here to report. On Monday, the Barack Obama administration fulfilled its week-old threat to suspend bilateral talks with Russia over the Syrian crisis. Does this signal that the dogs of war are about to be unleashed? The thought may seem preposterous but tensions are palpable. US spy planes are spotted ever more frequently in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea over Russian bases, especially Tartus and Hmeimim in Syria.

Russia has deployed SA-23 Gladiator anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems in Syria, the first-ever such deployments outside Russia. Western analysts see it as a pre-emptive step to counter any American cruise missile attack. Russia is not taking any chances.

Moscow factors in that the US may use some rebel groups to ensure that Russian “body bags” are sent to Moscow, as threatened explicitly by US state department spokesman John Kirby last week. Moscow suspects American involvement in the missile attack on the Russian embassy in Damascus — “Brits and Ukrainians clumsily helped the Americans”, a Russian statement in New York said on Tuesday. Indeed, passions are running high. There could be several dozen western intelligence operatives trapped with the rebel groups in east Aleppo. Clearly, the turning point was reached when the US and western allies undertook a fierce air attack on the Syrian army base at Deir Ezzor lasting an hour and killing 62 government troops. The US explanation of that being an accident lost credibility, since within an hour of the airstrike, extremist groups of al-Qaida followed up with ground attack as if acting in tandem.