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France and Germany on Wednesday announced moves intended to choke off cash flowing to the Islamic State, and said they would encourage the other 26 European Union nations to do the same when they meet next week.The French finance minister, Michel Sapin, said that in the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Mali, Egypt and Beirut, Lebanon, “we must act more quickly and more decisively.”The moves announced by Mr. Sapin included immediate efforts to speed up a crackdown on money laundering that had been scheduled to take effect in 2017. A faster and fuller exchange of banking data is needed in a world where even three hours’ notice could allow the authorities to foil a terrorist plot, Mr. Sapin said after talks with his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schäuble.

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

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

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

Sub Categories: » HOMEPAGE / WORLD/ MIDEASTSaturday,December 12 2015, Your time is 1:49:10 AMMIDEAST >Putin orders military to take tough action against threats in Syria MOSCOW - Agence France-PressePrint Page Send to friend » Share on FacebookRussian President Vladimir Putin addresses the audience during an annual meeting at the Defence Ministry in Moscow, Russia, December 11, 2015. REUTERS PhotoPresident Vladimir Putin on Dec. 11 ordered his forces in Syria to take tough action against any threats, speaking two weeks after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in the war-torn country."I order you to act as tough as possible," he told a defence meeting in televised remarks.     "Any targets threatening the Russian grouping or our land infrastructure should be immediately destroyed."   "I would like to warn those who would once again try to organise some sort of provocations against our servicemen," he said in a thinly veiled threat to Ankara.

Putin's call for a tougher military response is also likely to cause concern among monitors who have repeatedly accused Russia of conducting an indiscriminate bombing campaign and killing civilians in Syria.   Russia has been carrying out air strikes in the war-ravaged nation at the request of President Bashar al-Assad since the end of September, while a US-led coalition is conducting its own campaign targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).      Earlier this week Russia said it hit IS targets with missiles fired from a submarine in the Mediterranean for the first time since launching the campaign on September 30.     Putin rejected claims that Russia is using the Syrian campaign, which also saw the military fire off cruise missiles from warships in the Caspean Sea, to showcase its top weapons to the West.   "Our actions there are not guided by some unclear abstract geopolitical interests, nor are they guided by a desire to practice and test new weapons systems which is of course important in itself," Putin said at the defence meeting.   "The most important thing is not this. The most important thing is to prevent the threat to Russia itself."   Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, for his part, said ISIL jihadists now control 70 percent of Syrian territory, putting their number at 60,000.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq the U.S vice consul Paul Bremer tried to install a handpicked Iraqi government.  The top Shia religious authority in Iraq, Grand Ajatollah Sistani, demanded a democratic vote. The issue was thereby decided. There was no way the U.S could have circumvented Sisitani's edict without a massive revolt by the 65% of Iraqis who are Shia and mostly follow his advice. Bremer had to fold. Now Ajatollah Sistani takes position against the Turkish invasion of Iraq: Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on the government on Friday to show "no tolerance" of any infringement of the country's sovereignty, after Turkey deployed heavily armed troops to northern Iraq. Sistani's spokesman, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi Karbala'i, did not explicitly name Turkey, but a row over the deployment has badly soured relations between Ankara and Baghdad, which denies having agreed to it. ... "The Iraqi government is responsible for protecting Iraq's sovereignty and must not tolerate and side that infringes upon on it, whatever the justifications and necessities," Karbalai'i said in a weekly sermon. The issue is thereby decided. Turkish troops will have to leave or will have to decisively defeat all Shia of Iraq (and Iran). If Erdogan were smart he would now order the Turkish troops stationed near Mosul to leave Iraq.

The Russian President Putin also increased pressure on Turkey: President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered Russia's armed forces to act in an "extremely tough way" in Syria to protect Russian forces striking Islamic State targets there. "Any targets threatening our (military) group or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed," Putin said, speaking at a Defence Ministry event. Note to Erdogan: Beware of funny ideas...

There was some Syrian opposition conference yesterday in Saudi Arabia were the Saudis tried to bribe everyone to agree on a common position. But the conference failed. Some 116 delegates took part under "international guidance" of their various sponsors. A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda aligned Ahrar al Sham, which closely cooperates with the al-Qaeda entity Jabhat al Nusra in Syria, also took part. No women were present. The conference resulted in the decision to hold another conference. The 116 delegates at the conference decided to select 33 delegates for a conference which would decide on 15 delegates to confer and maybe take part in some negotiations with the Syrian government side. The NYT's Ben Hubbard, who was there, tweeted: Ben Hubbard @NYTBen ...The meeting created yet another new opposition body, a high commission, meant to oversee negotiations. There was debate about how large it should be and what proportion should represent armed groups. Final was 32, changed after meetings to 33. Those 33 now tasked with choosing a 15 person negotiating team. So, yeah, umbrella groups making a new umbrella.

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.

Turkey has told the Reuters news agency that Russia has stopped work on its nuclear power plants.  In reality, the Turks are exaggerating.  The Russians haven’t really stopped—they have really only slowed down. It is another piece in the intensifying conflict that has enveloped Russia and Turkey over the downing of a Russian AU-24 slow moving bomber by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet. The nuclear deal began in 2013. The Turks promised to pay $20 billion and the Russian nuclear company Rosatom promised to build four 1,200 megawatt nuclear electrical power plants in Turkey. The first plant was scheduled to be opened in 2019, but from the very outset things have not run on schedule.  One reason is that the project confronted international regulatory problems.

The Russians have done this before—only with Iran.  They slowed down on the original proposal, Iran took the Russians to the World Court, and sued them. They wanted their nuclear plants.

Now, because of their experience with Iran, Russia realizes that stopping entirely would prove costly. Huge disincentives and penalties are built into the contract.  And Turkey has already started shopping around for someone else to finish the nuclear job. Good luck. Here is the crux of the problem and why Turkey can never win in this conflict with Russia. Turkey is almost totally dependent on imported energy. They have been counting on these nuclear plants and should be conducting back-door diplomatic negotiations to resurrect the deal , but they do not appear to be doing that. Tensions between the Turks and Russians do not seem to be dissipating. So much so that Russia has also stopped importing Turkish fruits and vegetables. The reason they give is poor Turkish sanitation and hygiene, but the real reason is because the jet shot down the bomber. This isn’t  just a case of no more Turkish pistachio nuts or dates. Turkish fruits and vegetables account for 20 percentof Russia’s total fruit and vegetable consumption. This is a huge loss for the Turkish economy.  A $4 billion annual loss in fruit and vegetable revenue. Russia has said they will easily make up the loss by importing more from Iran and Israel.

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.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has used a secretive authority to compel Internet and telecommunications firms to hand over customer data including an individual’s complete web browsing history and records of all online purchases, a court filing released Monday shows.The documents are believed to be the first time the government has provided details of its so-called national security letters, which are used by the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance without the need for court approval.The filing made public Monday was the result of an 11-year-old legal battle waged by Nicholas Merrill, founder of Calyx Internet Access, a hosted service provider, who refused to comply with a national security letter (NSL) he received in 2004. Merrill told Reuters the release was significant “because the public deserves to know how the government is gathering information without warrants on Americans who are not even suspected of a crime.”

National security letters have been available as a law enforcement tool since the 1970s, but their frequency and breadth expanded dramatically under the USA Patriot Act, which was passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. They are almost always accompanied by an open-ended gag order barring companies from disclosing the contents of the demand for customer data.A federal court ruled earlier this year that the gag on Merrill’s NSL should be lifted. Merrill's challenge also disclosed that the FBI may use NSLs to gain IP addresses on everyone a suspect has corresponded with and cell-site location information. The FBI said in the court filings it no longer used NSLs for location information. The secretive orders have long drawn the ire of tech companies and privacy advocates, who argue NSLs allow the government to snoop on user content without appropriate judicial oversight or transparency.

Last year, the Obama administration announced it would permit Internet companies to disclose more about the number of NSLs they receive. But they can still only provide a range such as between 0 and 999 requests, or between 1,000 and 1,999. Twitter (TWTR.N) has sued in federal court seeking the ability to publish more details in its semi-annual transparency reports. Several thousand NSLs are now issued by the FBI every year, though the agency says it is unaware of the precise number. At one point that number eclipsed 50,000 letters annually. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

“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)

The Turkish army invaded the Syrian territory and took control of the hill Tal Ziyab. Troops crossed the border accompanied by bulldozers. After occupying the high ground (50 meters), the Turkish force built fortifications. Also, 3 battle tanks, 2 armored infantry fighting vehicles and several SUVs were deployed there. Considering the location of Tal Ziyab, Turkey wants to cover the smuggling route of the Syrian oil which is taken out of the ISIS-controlled Raqqa.

It seems that Ankara has decided to act much more aggresively after the Ministry of Defense of Russia were released pictures and videos of oil delivery convoys at the border between Syria and Turkey. We remember, on Nov. 24, the Turkish Air Force shot down Russian Su-24 in Syria. Discussing the incident Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the Su-24 was shot down by Turkey to protect oil deliveries of the ISIS terrorist group.

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.

The argument over the air strike on the Syrian military base in Deir az-Zor has taken a strange and worrying turn.The US has categorically denied that any of its aircraft were involved. It has admitted that its aircraft were in the area, but says that they carried out an air strike 55 km away.The Russians say that is true. However, they also say that it is not the whole truth.The Russians say that in addition to the US aircraft, two pairs of aircraft - in other words four aircraft in total - from two other countries that are also members of the US led coalition were also flying at the time of the air strike over Deir az-Zor.The Russians have not actually said it was these aircraft that carried out the air strike. However, they have pointed out that the US has failed to admit to the presence of these aircraft. They are asking why?

It is the broadest of hints, and it is difficult to believe that the Russians do not think that it was these aircraft that carried out the air strike.This information - if it is true - begs a host of questions.Firstly, the Syrian military base that was hit by the air strike was apparently the scene of a bitter battle between the Syrian military and the Islamic State.  It seems that shortly after the air strike - and most probably as a result of it - the Islamic State’s fighters were able to storm it.Inevitably, that begs the question of whether the aircraft that carried out the air strike were providing air support to the fighters of the Islamic State.  On the face of it, it looks like they were. After all, if what happened was simply a mistake, it might have been expected that the US and its allies would say as much.If so, it is an extremely serious and worrying development, suggesting that some members of the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition are actually in league with the Islamic State.

Secondly, Deir az-Zor is the area of Syria from which the Islamic State exports most of its oil. Again, this inevitably begs the question of whether the Islamic State attack on the base - and the air strike seemingly carried out in support of it - was in some way connected to the illegal oil trade, and might have been intended to protect it.Thirdly, there is the obvious question of which countries’ aircraft were involved. The Russians are not identifying these countries - at least for the moment - though they obviously know or think they know which they are.  The one thing however that the Russians are saying is that the aircraft of more than one country was involved.The Russians are also drawing attention to the US’ failure to admit to the presence of the aircraft of these countries, which strongly suggests that the US is protecting them, whichever countries they are.Lastly, it is interesting that the Russians seem to be so well informed about this incident.  If the Russians do indeed know how many aircraft from the US-led coalition were flying at any one time over Der az-Zor, and can identify the countries they belong to, then the inescapable conclusion is that their surveillance and intelligence operation in Syria is very effective indeed.

The Western Press doesn’t have much to say about the military operations in Syria, except to affirm, without the slightest proof, that the Coalition is successfully bombing Daesh jihadists while the Russians continue to kill innocent civilians. It is in fact difficult to form a reasonable idea of the current situation, particularly since each side is readying its weapons in preparation for a wider conflict. Thierry Meyssan describes what is going on. The silence surrounding the military operations in Iraq and Syria does not mean that the war has ground to a halt, but that the different protagonists are preparing for a new round of hostilities.

The Coalition forces On the imperial side, there reigns a state of total confusion. With regard to the contradictory declarations by US leaders, it is impossible to understand Washington’s objectives, if indeed there are any. At the very best, it would seem that the United States are allowing France to take certain initiatives at the head of one part of the Coalition, but even there, we do not know their real objectives. Of course, France declares that it wants to destroy Daesh in retaliation for the attacks of the 13th November in Paris, but it was already saying so before these attacks took place. Their earlier declarations were the stuff of public relations, not reality. For example, the Mecid Aslanov, property of Necmettin Bilal Erdoğan’s BMZ Group, left the French port of Fos-sur-Mer on the 9th November 2015, having just delivered, in total impunity, a cargo of oil which it claimed had been extracted in Israël, but which in reality had been stolen by Daesh in Syria. There is nothing to indicate that the situation is any different today, or that we should begin taking the official declarations seriously. French President François Hollande and his Minister of Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian visited the aircraft-carrier Charles-De-Gaulle, off the coast of Syria, on the 4th December. They announced a change of mission, but gave no explanation. As Army Chief of Staff General Pierre de Villiers had previously stated, the ship was diverted to the Persian Gulf.

The aeronaval Group constituted around the Charles-De-Gaulle is composed of its on-board aerial Group (eighteenRafale Marine, eight modernised Super Etendard, two Hawkeye, two Dauphin and one Alouette III), the aerial defence frigateChevalier Paul, the anti-submarine frigate La Motte-Picquet, the command flagship Marne, the Belgian frigate Léopold Ier and the German frigate Augsburg, and also, although the Minister of Defence denies it, a nuclear attack submarine. Attached to this group, the stealth light frigate Courbet remained in the western Mediterranean. The European forces have been integrated into Task Force 50 of the USNavCent, in other words the US Central Command fleet. This unit now comprises about sixty ships. The French authorities have announced that rear-admiral René-Jean Crignola has taken command of this international force, without mentioning that he is placed under the authority of the commander of the 5th Fleet, rear-admiral Kevin Donegan, who is himself under the authority of General Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of CentCom. It is in truth an absolute rule of the Empire that the command of operations always falls to US officers, and that the Allies only occupy auxiliary positions. In fact, apart from the relative promotion of the French rear-admiral, we find ourselves in the same position as last February. We have an international Coalition which is supposed to be fighting Daesh, and which – for an entire year – has certainly multiplied its reconnaissance flights and destroyed Chinese oil installations, but without having the slightest effect on its official objective, Daesh. Here too, there is no indication that anything will change.

Am I the only person who still remembers how Pentagon officials spoke of the major military bases already on the drawing boards as the invasion of Iraq ended in April 2003? It was taboo back then to refer to those future installations as “permanent bases.” No one wanted to mouth anything that had such an ugly (yet truthful) ring to it when it came to the desires of the Bush administration to occupy and dominate the Greater Middle East for generations to come. Charmingly enough, however, those Pentagon types sometimes spoke instead of “enduring camps,” as if a summer frolic in the countryside was at hand. Later, those enormous installations -- Balad Air Base, the size of a small American town, had its own Pizza Hut, Subway, and Popeye's franchises, "an ersatz Starbucks," a 24-hour Burger King, two post exchanges, and four mess halls -- would be relabeled "contingency operating bases." They were meant to be Washington’s ziggurats, its permanent memorials to its own power in the region. With rare exceptions, American reporters would nonetheless pay almost no attention to them or to the obvious desire embedded in their very construction to control Iraq and the rest of the Greater Middle East.

In all, from the massive Camp Victory outside Baghdad to tiny outposts in the hinterlands, not to speak of the three-quarters-of-a-billion dollar citadel Washington built in Baghdad’s green zone to house an embassy meant to be the central command post for a future Pax Americana in the region, the Pentagon built 505 bases in Iraq. In other words, Washington went on a base-building bender there. And lest you imagine this as some kind of anomaly, consider the 800 or more bases and outposts (depending on how you counted them) that the U.S. built in Afghanistan. Eight years later, all 505 of the Iraqi bases had been abandoned, as most of the Afghan ones would be.  (A few of the Iraqi bases have since been reoccupied by American advisers sent in to fight the Islamic State.)

Nonetheless, as Chalmers Johnson pointed out long ago (and TomDispatch regular David Vine has made so clear recently), this was the U.S. version of empire building. And in this century, despite the loss of those Iraqi bases and most of the Afghan ones, Washington has continued its global base-building extravaganza in a big way. It has constructed, expanded, or reconfigured a staggering set of bases in the Greater Middle East and on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and has been building drone bases around the world. Then there's the remaining European bases that came out of World War II, were expanded in the Cold War years, and have, in this century, been driven deep into the former Eastern European imperial possessions of the old Soviet Union.  Add in another structure of bases in Asia that also came out of World War II and that are once again added to, reconfigured, and pivoted toward. Toss in as well the 60 or so small bases, baselets, sites, storage areas, and the like that, in recent years, the U.S. military has been constructing across Africa. Throw in some bases still in Latin America and the Caribbean, including most infamously Guantánamo in Cuba, and you have a structure for the imperial ages.

HE INTERCEPT HAS OBTAINED a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. The document, thick with previously undisclosed information, also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States. The catalogue includes details on the Stingray, a well-known brand of surveillance gear, as well as Boeing “dirt boxes” and dozens of more obscure devices that can be mounted on vehicles, drones, and piloted aircraft. Some are designed to be used at static locations, while others can be discreetly carried by an individual. They have names like Cyberhawk, Yellowstone, Blackfin, Maximus, Cyclone, and Spartacus. Within the catalogue, the NSA is listed as the vendor of one device, while another was developed for use by the CIA, and another was developed for a special forces requirement. Nearly a third of the entries focus on equipment that seems to have never been described in public before.

The Intercept obtained the catalogue from a source within the intelligence community concerned about the militarization of domestic law enforcement. (The original is here.) A few of the devices can house a “target list” of as many as 10,000 unique phone identifiers. Most can be used to geolocate people, but the documents indicate that some have more advanced capabilities, like eavesdropping on calls and spying on SMS messages. Two systems, apparently designed for use on captured phones, are touted as having the ability to extract media files, address books, and notes, and one can retrieve deleted text messages. Above all, the catalogue represents a trove of details on surveillance devices developed for military and intelligence purposes but increasingly used by law enforcement agencies to spy on people and convict them of crimes. The mass shooting earlier this month in San Bernardino, California, which President Barack Obama has called “an act of terrorism,” prompted calls for state and local police forces to beef up their counterterrorism capabilities, a process that has historically involved adapting military technologies to civilian use. Meanwhile, civil liberties advocates and others are increasingly alarmed about how cellphone surveillance devices are used domestically and have called for a more open and informed debate about the trade-off between security and privacy — despite a virtual blackout by the federal government on any information about the specific capabilities of the gear.

ANY OF THE DEVICES in the catalogue, including the Stingrays and dirt boxes, are cell-site simulators, which operate by mimicking the towers of major telecom companies like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. When someone’s phone connects to the spoofed network, it transmits a unique identification code and, through the characteristics of its radio signals when they reach the receiver, information about the phone’s location. There are also indications that cell-site simulators may be able to monitor calls and text messages. In the catalogue, each device is listed with guidelines about how its use must be approved; the answer is usually via the “Ground Force Commander” or under one of two titles in the U.S. code governing military and intelligence operations, including covert action.

Russian planes in Syria "violated Turkish air space" the news agency currently tell us. But an earlier report shows that this claim may well be wrong and that the U.S. pushes Turkey to release such propaganda. Reuters (Mon Oct 5, 2015 7:54am BST): Turkey says Russian warplane violated its airspace A Russian warplane violated Turkish airspace near the Syrian border on Saturday, prompting the Air Force to scramble two F-16 jets to intercept it, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday. The Foreign Ministry summoned Moscow's ambassador to protest the violation, according to an e-mailed statement. Turkey urged Russia to avoid repeating such a violation, or it would be held "responsible for any undesired incident that may occur." AFP (10:20am · 5 Oct 2015): Turkey 'intercepts' Russian jet violating its air space Turkey said on Monday its F-16 jets had at the weekend intercepted a Russian fighter plane which violated Turkish air space near the Syrian border, forcing the aircraft to turn back. ... Turkey said on Monday its F-16 jets had at the weekend intercepted a Russian fighter plane which violated Turkish air space near the Syrian border, forcing the aircraft to turn back.

Here now what McClatchy reported on these air space violations in a longer piece several hours before Reuters and AFP reported the Turkish claim: ISTANBUL - A Russian warplane on a bombing run in Syria flew within five miles of the Turkish border and may have crossed into Turkey’s air space, Turkish and U.S. officials said Sunday. ... A Turkish security official said Turkish radar locked onto the Russian aircraft as it was bombing early Friday in al Yamdiyyah, a Syrian village directly on the Turkish border. He said Turkish fighter jets would have attacked had it crossed into Turkish airspace. But a U.S. military official suggested the incident had come close to sparking an armed confrontation. Reading from a report, he said the Russian aircraft had violated Turkish air space by five miles and that Turkish jets had scrambled, but that the Russian aircraft had returned to Syrian airspace before they could respond. The Turkish security official said he could not confirm that account.

So it is the U.S., not Turkey, which was first pushing the claims of air space violation and of scrambling fighters. The Turkish source would not confirm that. But how could it be a real air space violation when Russian planes "flew within five miles of the Turkish border and may have crossed into Turkey’s air space". The Russian planes were flying in Syrian airspace. They "may have crossed" is like saying that the earth "may be flat". Well maybe it is, right? Fact is the Russians fly ery near to the border and bomb position of some anti-Syrian fighters Turkey supports. They have good reasons to do so: The town, in a mountainous region of northern Latakia province, has been a prime route for smuggling people and goods between Turkey and Syria and reportedly has functioned as a key entry for weapons shipped to Syrian rebels by the U.S.-led Friends of Syria group of Western and Middle Eastern countries.

But while the reason behind the S-400 deployment was largely known to most, where Putin's press conference took an unexpected detour was what he said just around 20:30 in, when in not so many words, Putin effectively accused the US of leaking the coordinates of the Russian plane to Turkey, which was merely a hitman acting with the blessing of the Pentagon. This is what Putin 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. In other words, just like in the tragic bombing of the Kunduz hospital by US forces (which has now been attributed to human error), so this time the target was a Russian plane which the US knew about well in advance, was targeted however not by the US itself, but by a NATO and US-alliance member, Turkey.

And while the deployment of the Russian SAM missiles was already known, the real message from today's presser, the one that will be the topic of a private and "serious talk with Russia's US partners", is that Putin indirectly blames Obama for what happened on Tuesday realizing that Erdogan was merely the "executor", one who is simply motivated to protect his (and his son's) Islamic State oil routes. Full press conference below; the discussion of Russia's S-400 deployment begins 17:30 in:

Using the criterion cui bono (who benefits?) to the Paris outrage, one notes an apparent shortage of “bono” to ISIL, unless the thinking of the leadership runs to: “It would be an excellent idea to focus the fury of the West upon us here in Iraq instead of laying low and letting the West go along with the GCC/Turkish plan of quagmiring Russia in Syria.” Doesn’t make too much sense.  Which is why, in my opinion, is why you see a lot of metaphysical hand waving that the real motive for the attacks was to erase the Muslim “grey zone,” provoke a fatal over-reaction from the West, contribute to the agonies of the Syrian refugees in Europe, rend the time-space continuum and thereby bring the Crusaders to their knees, etc.

Media and analyst coverage appears determined to overlay a profitable traffic-building and mission-enhancing narrative of “Western civilization under attack by ISIL,” and ignore the factors that point to the attack as a murderous local initiative, not by ISIL or the mythical immigrant threat, but by alienated Muslim citizens of the EU.  The rhetoric of righteous, united fury against a monstrosity committed by the external “other,” perhaps, is easier to digest than the awkward theme of national minorities committing extreme acts of violence against societies they believe oppress and marginalize them. So we get lots about the horrors of ISIL and relatively little about the, to me, rather eye-opening statistic that while 8% of the population of France is Muslim, it is estimated that 70% of the prison population is.  I suppose it would be churlish to explore the issue of blowback from French penal and social policies at this juncture.  But there is some interesting data that places the alleged and now apparently deceased mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, in context concerning the degree of his allegiance to ISIL.

Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, in other words, was formed as a rather bloody piece of outreach by Libyan Islamists to share Libya experience in insurrection and revolution with Syria.  After IS arose and became a dominant military and financial force, the “KBL” threw in their lot with ISIS, and members of the brigade subsequently returned to Libya to establish an IS beachhead. A July 2015 study by Small Arms Survey confirms the autonomous character of Katibat al-Battar al-Libi. While the uncertain relationship between JAN and IS was being clarified, Libyans stayed ‘outside’ the fray, remaining in their own units and not integrating into other IS hierarchies or command structures. In Latakia for instance, Libyans kept their own separate battalion (The Daily Star, 2013). As the split between JAN and IS deepened, Libyans chose IS but remained apart, forming the Katibat al-Battar al-Libiya (KBL) (The Libyan al-Battar Brigade), under the auspices of IS. Since its formation, the KBL has been active in eastern Syria, notably in Al Hasakah and Deir az-Zor. The battalion maintained links with Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, an early and prominent supporter of IS. Ansar al-Sharia proved to be an excellent recruiting tool and played a role in the arrival of many Libyans in Syria prior to 2014. And who is Ansar al-Sharia in Libya?  Via The Telegraph:

Daniel Kaye, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, recently submitted a report to the General Assembly on the protection of whistleblowers and sources. The report highlights key elements of protections for whistleblowers, and is based in part on participation by 28 States as well as individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Among a host of best-practice protections featured in the report, the Special Rapporteur focuses particular attention on national security whistleblowers and sources, those whistleblowers who are often subject to criminal prosecution for exposing serious problems. Notably, the report recommended a public interest balancing test for disclosures in the national security field that could be used to claim protection from retaliation or as a defense when facing prosecution. This balancing test would promote disclosures where the public interest in the information outweighs any identifiable harm to a legitimate national security interest, and requires that the whistleblower disclose no more information than reasonably necessary to expose wrongdoing. A defense for blowing the whistle in the national security field would be a welcome one, as these whistleblowers often face prosecution under the Espionage act, which could mean years of costly litigation for simply trying to expose practices that make us less secure. This balancing test is similar to one proposed last year by Yochai Benkler, a law professor and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and supported by the Project On Government Oversight. The full report contains many best-practice recommendations that our Congress should consider to strengthen whistleblower protections domestically.