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Iran has been invited to join talks in Vienna this week with Russia, the United States and European nations on whether a political resolution is possible in the Syrian civil war. If Iran accepts, it will be the first time Secretary of State John Kerry will enter formal negotiations with Tehran on issues beyond the nuclear accord reached in July. Russia has been pressing to include Iran, the only other major power giving military support to President Bashar al-Assad in his effort to remain in power. Senior American officials have begun to acknowledge in recent weeks that no serious discussion of a possible political succession plan in Syria can happen without Tehran’s involvement.But the American denunciation of Iran’s activities in Syria, including its support for Mr. Assad’s forces and for terror groups like Hezbollah, has always prevented the United States from including Iran in formal talks about the Syrian crisis. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Turkey Confirms Strikes Against Kurdish Militias in SyriaOCT. 27, 2015 U.N. Rights Investigator Highly Critical of IranOCT. 27, 2015 Assad Makes Unannounced Trip to Moscow to Discuss Syria With PutinOCT. 21, 2015 The State Department spokesman, John Kirby, buried that policy at a briefing on Tuesday, before it was announced that Mr. Kerry would attend the meeting on Syria in Vienna on Thursday and Friday. “We anticipate that Iran will be invited to attend this upcoming meeting,” Mr. Kirby said.

Mr. Kirby added that the United States still opposed what he termed Iran’s “destabilizing activities” in Syria. But he said that the United States “recognized that at some point in the discussion, moving toward a political transition, we have to have a conversation and a dialogue with Iran.”The change is another example of how Russia’s military entry into the Syrian war has changed the power dynamic of the sporadic negotiations. For a long while the United States argued that Mr. Assad must go — as President Obama declared four years ago at the White House — before negotiations on a successor could begin. That position was altered recently to say that a political solution could be sought as long as it included an eventual transition of power, perhaps to another Alawite-dominated government.But the latest shift is a recognition that Russia and Iran may well be the two biggest voices in who succeeds Mr. Assad — if any political transition can be engineered — and that to leave the Iranians out of the conversation was “simply ignoring reality,” one senior American diplomat said.

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

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

The Pentagon’s top two leaders on Tuesday decried as “outrageous” an Army judge’s nine-month-old ban on female guards touching the five alleged 9/11 conspirators as they move them to and from court and legal meetings.Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, criticized the ban in response to a question from New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. Ayotte and two other GOP senators visited the prison Friday, and said they met with female guards upset by the restriction.

“I think it is counter to the way we treat service members, including women service members, and outrage is a very good word for it,” Carter said, incorrectly attributing the ban to a federal judge — not the chief of the war court judiciary, Army Col. James L. Pohl.The five alleged Sept. 11 plotters complained through their lawyers last year that Islamic and traditional doctrine require they have no physical contact with women other than family members. They claimed that, until a year ago, prison commanders had provided the religious accommodation of not being touched by female soldiers.

Pentagon-paid U.S. defense attorneys got Pohl to issue an emergency, temporary restraining order against the use of female guards in January, pending testimony and legal arguments on the subject.As it happens, Pohl has listed the ban on this week’s docket for pretrial hearings in the case of the five men facing a joint death-penalty trial as the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Whether it would actually be heard, however, was unclear because the majority of the current session’s 40-item agenda has been sidelined by one alleged plotter’s interest in functioning as his own defense attorney.

The Pentagon says Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, the Delta Force soldier who died last week in a hostage rescue mission in Iraq, was the first U.S. service member killed in action in the ISIS war. But Wheeler was not the first combat casualty. Five other service members have been “wounded in action” since the U.S. first sent troops back into Iraq last year, according to statistics from the Pentagon and interviews with officials in Iraq (PDF). But how and when they were injured, the Pentagon refuses to say.As the Obama administration holds to the increasingly dubious claim that U.S. troops are not engaged in combat against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Pentagon is withholding details about its wounded that would give key insights into the kind of fight American troops are facing in Iraq. Were any of the five shot by the Iraqi forces they are training? Did a mortar round shot at their base injure a soldier? Has ISIS wounded a U.S. service member?According to U.S. Central Command, which oversees military action in the region, the details of the wounded are not available, despite repeated requests for such basic information. The only specifics available are from a Washington Post story, which reported the first service member was wounded in March, just south of Baghdad, while in a guard tower. He was struck in the face by bullet fragments, according to the report, while coming under enemy fire.

In announcing that the U.S. would fight ISIS, Obama was adamant the U.S. could “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS without U.S. combat troops. But the number of troops has slowly increased since that September 2014 pronouncement, from a few hundreds advisers to thousands of troops, at least some of them conducting combat missions. During a June 2014 press conference, Obama stressed that Americans would not be at risk: “I think we always have to guard against mission creep, so let me repeat what I’ve said in the past: American combat troops are not going to be fighting in Iraq again.”

That the administration does not publicly admit that troops are in combat has stung many in uniform who feel such distinctions are insulting. That’s particularly true in the halls of the Pentagon, filled with war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the consensus is: “If I am being shot at by enemy forces, I am in combat.”On paper at least, the U.S. military treats the troops serving in Iraq as if they are in a war zone. American service members in Iraq receive hazardous-duty pay, a gun, and live ammunition—standard fare for troops in combat.

Barack Obama’s decision to send a US guided missile destroyer into disputed waters off the Spratly islands in the South China Sea on Tuesday has provoked predictable outpourings of rage and veiled threats from Beijing – but nothing, yet, in the way of a military response. The worry now is that the confrontation will catch fire, escalate and spread. Both China, which claims the Spratlys as its own, and the US, which does not recognise Beijing’s sovereignty, have boxed themselves into a rhetorical and tactical corner. With the Pentagon insisting it will repeat and extend such naval patrols at will, and with the People’s Liberation Army Navy determined to stop them, it is feared a head-on collision cannot be far away. China’s heated response to Tuesday’s manoeuvre by the USS Lassen off the Spratlys’ Mischief and Subi reefs, where Beijing is controversially building military airstrips and lighthouses on reclaimed land, left it little wiggle room. The American warship had been tracked and warned off, officials said, adding that what it termed an illegal incursion was a “threat to national sovereignty” and a deliberate provocation that could backfire.

Anticipating the US move earlier this month, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said: “China will never allow any country to violate China’s territorial waters and airspace in the South China Sea.” If ever a government has publicly laid down a red line, this is it. And Obama just crossed it. Having personally failed to find a compromise in White House talks with Xi Jinping, China’s president, last month, Obama has upped the ante. As is also the case with Xi, it is now all but impossible to envisage an American climbdown without enormous loss of face and prestige. By deploying a powerful warship, by declining to inform China in advance, and by insisting the US is upholding the universal principle of free navigation in international waters and will do so again whenever and wherever it wishes, Obama has deliberately challenged Beijing to do its worst.

China is in dispute over other South China Sea islands and reefs with several countries that are all more or less at one with the US on the issue, including the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia. Renewed trouble could flare up in any of these places. One possibility is the Scarborough Shoal, claimed by Manila, where clashes have continued on and off since 2012. Another obvious pressure point is the Senkaku islands (Diaoyu in Chinese) in the East China Sea, claimed by both Japan and China. In 2013 Beijing upped the ante, unilaterally declaring an air exclusion, or identification, zone in the area, which the US promptly breached with B52 bombers. This dispute forms part of the background to the military buildup ordered by Japan’s hawkish prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who set a record £27bn defence budget this year. (China’s military budget is roughly £90bn; that of the US is about £378bn).

Ambivalence, political twists and turns and the adoption of mutually exclusive decisions on Syria clearly show how completely lost the Saudi leaders are and their distinct lack of understanding of the fundamentals of modern foreign policy. The leaders of the wealthiest countries in the world, the leaders of the Arab and Muslim world have fully displayed their political inadequacy, inability to manoeuvre and adapt to the realities of the modern world. The once infinite riches are melting away rapidly, and soon ordinary Saudis will be faced with the issue of cost-cutting in their simple everyday problems.

The current policy which is so inconsistent and lacks any elementary logic was not only unsuccessful, but plunges Saudi Arabia ever deeper into an abyss of hardship and misery, setting new, complex problems before the King. Primarily, this concerns the economic and financial problems that the once wealthy Saudi society has not yet encountered. As the director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department of the IMF, Masood Ahmed, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the cumulative budget deficit of Middle Eastern oil-exporting countries in the next five years could reach $1 trillion. Moreover, the treasury of the regional leader, Saudi Arabia, is at risk of running dry, and the “kingdom of the welfare state” can expect bankruptcy. Up to now, financial holes – the budget deficit, which this year is projected to be 21.6 percent of GDP, has been covered by the earlier petrodollar savings. In particular, this summer the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency was forced to withdraw $70 billion from foreign investment funds assets. It can be assumed that this is only the beginning of the return of capital to their homeland, to tide over the emerging new outgoings. Otherwise, a sharp reduction in expenditure could lead to a social explosion in the Kingdom, whose citizens have become used to living a well-off life during the oil boom.

Saudi Arabia is currently exploring the possibility of higher energy prices for consumers within the country, as reported by the Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi. Responding to a question about whether the Kingdom is going to reduce energy subsidies in the near future, the Saudi official said: “Your question concerns whether we are considering such a possibility? Yes, we are considering it.” Energy prices in Saudi Arabia are among the lowest in the world. Saudi Arabia is in fact the leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Meanwhile, the Kingdom is losing out on potential revenue by selling oil on the domestic market at a much cheaper rate than on the foreign market. Currently, Saudi Arabia spends about 86 billion dollars a year in subsidies for oil producers.

Last week, the UK Guardian newspaper published the results of a 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic. Euphemistically titled ‘James Steele: America’s mystery man in Iraq‘, the video report presents fairly damning evidence that, in the immediate aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, the US Government and military began to assemble a 10,000 strong ‘Shia militia’ that, under US command, would be used to do three things: Kidnap, torture, murder and maim members of the Iraq resistance and those members of the Iraqi population that supported them. Plants bombs that targeted predominantly Sunni and Shia areas in an effort to divide the population and thereby any unified resistance to the US occupation. Create the impression of a ‘civil war’ in Iraq that could be used by the US and European governments and militaries to justify the continued occupation of Iraq for ‘peace-keeping’ purposes. While the 50 minute documentary is proof enough that Rumsfeld, Cheney, General Petraeus, and all the other NeoCon warhawks and CIA monsters consciously employed the services of former US Army Colonel James Steele in the organisation of death squads against the Iraqi grass-roots resistance (a tactic that he, Steele, had used against resistance movements in South America in the 1970s and 90′s), it panders to the official narrative that ‘sectarianism’ in Iraq was the root cause of the carnage that unfolded.

The so-called ‘Shia militia’ used by the American government (with the help and advice of British and Israeli counter-insurgency ‘experts’) were recruited directly by the CIA and people like James Steele to carry out extra-judicial murders of anyone they could loosely identify as ‘resistance’. In order to cloak this strategy, indiscriminate attacks on Iraqi civilians, Shia and Sunni alike, were carried out on a massive scale. Some of these individuals, in another setting, would be called ‘al-Qaeda’. Their usefulness in the employ of US warhawks in the Pentagon was doubly valuable because they both justified continued US occupation and provided ‘proof’ for the American War on Terror mythology, ex post facto, that the US was at war with the perpetrators of 9/11. Whereas before the invasion in 2003 there was absolutely nothing to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the creation of death squads (real) labelled ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ (fictitious) ‘made real’ the lie that America and all Western civilization was at war against hordes of irrational and violent Muslims, and became the template for instigating terrorism to suppress popular uprisings in Yemen, Mali and elsewhere. Once they have people violent, they can wear down and manage the national popular resistance, ensuring no opposition to the real strategic objectives (namely the control of Middle Eastern oil). The US forces of occupation, along with their British counterparts, had long experience in what actually happens when you militarily invade and occupy a sovereign nation: the people resist, and not just one ethnic or religious group, but more or less the whole population. There is nothing quite like a foreign occupation for uniting a country.

In Iraq, these US-controlled ‘Shia’ death squads have been operating in much the same way, and while the media is content to portray them as ordinary Shias motivated by religious bias, they are in fact hired thugs who value only the money they are paid by their US masters and the promise of positions of power in a future Iraqi government. Like the rank and file of the ‘Libyan rebels’ and the ‘Free Syrian Army’, these people form the dregs of Arab and Middle Eastern societies. Led by spellbinders who veil their barbaric actions with religious prose, secular leaders in the region, like Ghaddafi and Assad, and Nasser and Arafat before them, struggled in vain to keep them at bay. The reason for this is because the US, Britain, France and Israel have consistently supported – in the form of weapons, money, training and blatant lies – the extremists against the rational voices. Throughout the US occupation of Iraq, the main representative of Shias in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, has repeatedly called for unity among Shia and Sunni Iraqis in the face of foreign occupation and deception in the form of efforts to divide the resistance. These efforts included the bombing of bridges in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities in an effort to prevent communication between Iraqis, the use of widespread terror tactics to force Sunni and Shia Iraqis to flee their homes, and the bombing of religious shrines, either Shia or Sunni, in an effort to create the reality of ‘sectarian strife’. Iraq today is in ruins. The country has been ripped apart socially, mainly by way of the literal ripping apart of tens of thousands of civilians, with many being first brutally and systematically tortured by US-sponsored death squads. Hundreds of thousands more have been summarily murdered, either by the bombs of US aircraft, the bullets of US soldiers, or those ubiquitous and very effective ‘car bombs‘ planted by US and British operatives and their hired thugs.

“Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” reads UN General Assembly Resolution 3379. The measure was adopted 40 years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, and the majority of the international community backed it. 72 countries voted for the resolution, with just 35 opposed (and 32 abstentions). Although little-known in the US today (it is remarkable how effectively the US and its allies have rewritten history in their favor), UN GA Res. 3379, titled “Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” made an indelible imprint on history. The geographic distribution of the vote was telling. The countries that voted against the resolution were primarily colonial powers and/or their allies. The countries that voted for it were overwhelmingly formerly colonized and anti-imperialist nations.

The resolution also cited two other little-known measures passed by international organizations in the same year: the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity’s resolution 77, which ruled “that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regimes in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure”; and the Political Declaration and Strategy to Strengthen International Peace and Security and to Intensify Solidarity and Mutual Assistance among Non-Aligned Countries, which called Zionism a “racist and imperialist ideology.” When the resolution was passed, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog — who later became Israel’s sixth president, and the father of Isaac Herzog, the head of Israel’s opposition — famously tore up the text at the podium. Herzog claimed the measure was “based on hatred, falsehood, and arrogance,” insisting it was “devoid of any moral or legal value.” Still today, supporters of Israel argue UN GA Res. 3379 was an anomalous product of anti-Semitism. In reality, however, the resolution was the result of international condemnation of the illegal military occupation to which Palestinians had been subjected since 1967 and the apartheid-like conditions the indigenous Arab population had lived under as second-class citizens of an ethnocratic state since 1948.

In 1991, resolution 3379 was repealed for two primary reasons: One, the Soviet bloc, which helped pass the resolution, had collapsed; and two, Israel and the US demanded that it be revoked or they refused to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference. At the UN on Nov. 11, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry eulogized the late Herzog and forcefully condemned the resolution on its 40th anniversary. In his 2,500-word statement, Kerry mentioned Palestinians just once, and only then as an extension of Israelis. In her remarks, Power did not mention Palestinians at all.

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

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

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

Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos:

One thing you might have noticed of late is that Washington seems to be preparing the US public for the possibility that the Pentagon is going to put “boots on the ground” in Syria and by “boots on the ground,” we mean more than 50 “advisors.”  Indeed, it’s the same story in Iraq and as we noted after the release of helmet cam footage depicting an ISIS prison raid in the northern Iraqi town of Huwija late last month, releasing battlefield GoPro shots is probably i) an effort to convince whatever partners the US has left in the Mid-East that Washington is still effective at “fighting” terror, and ii) a prelude to stepped up ground ops.  That assessment was confirmed when the Pentagon suggested it would send Apache gunships and their crews to Baghdad. Of course Iraq poured cold water on that idea when spokesman Sa'ad al-Hadithi told NBC News that "this is an Iraqi affair and the government did not ask the U.S. Department of Defense to be involved in direct operations. We have enough soldiers on the ground." Yes, enough Iranian soldiers, and so, as we noted earlier this month, the US will either need to go through Erbil to get more US boots in Iraq or else just shift the focus to Syria where putting combat troops into battle risks lining up American soldiers to enter into direct combat with the Quds and Hezbollah and may even risk an “accident” whereby Russia bombs an American position because the Pentagon lied to The Kremlin and said the US wouldn’t be operating near Aleppo. 

Well, on Tuesday, we got the latest hint that a large scale (not to mention prolonged) ground operation is in the offing as the  U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told reporters that air power alone cannot “defeat ISIS.” Here’s Bloomberg:  The U.S.-led military coalition fighting Islamic State militants is weakening the group’s hold in Iraq and Syria even after Gulf Arab allies scaled back airstrikes, though ground forces are needed to retake territory, senior U.S. Air Force officials said.   The coalition’s air campaign has killed thousands of fighters, including key leaders, and pushed back militants by hitting control and training centers as well as equipment and storage areas, U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told reporters Tuesday. Occupying or governing land will require “boots on the ground” including the Iraqi army, Syrian opposition fighters and Kurdish forces, which the U.S. is trying to train and equip, she said.   "It’s going to take years" to fight Islamic State, James said at the Dubai Air Show. "Ultimately, this area requires a political solution as well."

"Ultimately it cannot occupy territory and very importantly it cannot govern territory," she told reporters at the Dubai Airshow. "This is where we need to have boots on the ground. We do need to have ground forces in this campaign." James cited the "Iraqi army, the Free Syrians and the Kurds" as forces to support in the fight against IS. Ok so first - and we're not going to go into the whole story here because we've covered it exhaustively - these two things are not compatible and someone in The Pentagon needs to explain the contradiction: The U.S. has moved A10 jets from Kuwait and tankers from Qatar to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base  James cited the "Iraqi army, the Free Syrians and the Kurds" You can't fly from Incirlik in support of troops fighting with the Kurds. It won't work. Erdogan will lose his mind. Someone in Washington needs to explain why the US thinks that's feasible.  But more importantly, note that James mentions "occupying [and] governing territory."  Who said anything about "occupying and governing"? Does the US now intend to "occupy and govern" Syria even as the Russians and Iranians expand their campaign?  Finally, what's this about "years"?  It seems to us that James is saying the US needs to invade Syria in an Iraq-style takeover bid. We're that will go splendidly, but again the silver lining is that starting World War III will be a boon for the MIC, which means the economy will rebound in short order.

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

There is a “high probability” that a bomb planted by an Islamic State supporter brought down the Russian airliner which crashed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula just over a week ago, according to Britain’s foreign secretary. Drawing one of the most explicit links yet between Isis and the incident, Philip Hammond said that this did not necessarily mean that the attack was directed from the group’s headquarters in Syria. Rather, he said: “It may have been an individual who was inspired by Isis who was self-radicalised by looking at Isis propaganda and was acting in the name of Isis without necessarily being directed.” Hammond’s comments, made during an interview with CNN, came as US sources reportedly suggested that Russian communications intercepted by US intelligence agencies show Russia also believes the plane to have been brought down by a bomb.

The intercepts are among pieces of evidence leading US officials to suspect that a device planted on Metrojet Flight 9268 exploded shortly after the Airbus A321 took off from the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, according to a report by Reuters. All 224 passengers and crew were killed when the plane crashed in the desert on 31 October on the way to St Petersburg, Russia. Egypt and Russia have yet to formally announce the cause of the disaster although both have publicly dismissed as premature US and British assessments that a bomb likely was responsible.

They provide a key source of ISIS income, millions of dollars through an illegal pipeline to Turkey where it’s sold, according to Turkish journalist Alptekin Dursunoglu, Sputnik News reported. America’s bombing campaign avoided striking ISIS-held Syrian oil fields so far. “This fact really makes (me) wonder, given that one of the steps of Obama’s plan to fight ISIL was the destruction of sources of the Islamic State’s income,” Dursunoglu noted. Drone and satellite spotted tanker trucks carrying ISIS oil are allowed to cross into Turkey freely. Did US tactics change? If so, why? According to The New York Times, US warplanes are attacking “oil fields that the Islamic State controls in eastern Syria…” Claiming it’s to “disrupt one of the terrorist group’s main sources of revenue,” according to unnamed US officials is rubbish. If Washington wanted this revenue source cut off, bombing the oil fields would have begun last year, disrupting them enough to halt production. So why now and why not the essential distribution network, the pipeline used and openly visible tanker trucks?

Weeks earlier, US warplanes attacked the Aleppo province 1,000 megawatt power plant and separate transformer complex, knocking out electricity for around 2.5 million residents – killing plant personnel and other civilians, not ISIS fighters, the terror attack ignored by US media scoundrels. Another power station and distribution transformer east of Aleppo was struck days earlier. Vladmir Putin commented, saying:  US warplanes “bombed out an electrical power plant and a transformer in Aleppo. Why have they done this? Whom have they punished there? What’s the point? Nobody knows.”  Infrastructure is targeted and destroyed as part of Washington’s strategy in all wars – systematically turning nations to rubble, harming noncombatant civilians most.  Attacking ISIS held Syrian oil fields now appears part of a plan to prevent their use by Damascus if its army regains control. They’ve been protected to provide income for America’s proxy terrorist foot soldiers.  Washington wants Assad deprived of an important revenue source. If his forces recapture ISIS held oil fields and facilities, they’ll likely find them turned to rubble.

The New York Times didn’t explain – saying nothing about Washington letting ISIS produce and transport Syrian oil freely so far, ignoring why tactics now may have changed, maintaining the fiction about America waging war on terrorism instead of informing readers about reality on the ground.  Amply documented, Washington created ISIS and similar groups, using them strategically as proxy foot soldiers.

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

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

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

The United Kingdom Supreme Court heard arguments this week in two critical cases concerning the UK’s role in the United States’ rendition, detention, and interrogation efforts in the years after 9/11. In both cases, the UK government is arguing that the claims cannot be considered by English courts. If the government succeeds, one potential practical implication would be to limit the extent to which individuals could seek redress for wrongs done against them, including torture, where the alleged wrongs involve other States. The first case, Belhaj & another v. Straw & others, involves one of the most controversial claims of rendition involving the UK. The government has appealed against the lower court’s ruling, which found against the government for its alleged role in the 2004 abduction of Libyan national, Abdul-Hakim Belhaj, and his wife, and their subsequent rendition to Libya and mistreatment at the hands of US and other foreign officials. In December 2013, the High Court dismissed a civil suit brought by Belhaj on the basis that it lacked jurisdiction because of the act of state doctrine (a rule of English law which prevents courts from considering claims where the court would have to examine the acts of a foreign state). But in October 2014, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the act of state doctrine did not preclude Belhaj’s claim against the British government, citing, among other reasons, the universal condemnation of torture and the “stark reality” that these allegations would escape judicial investigation unless the English courts were able to exercise jurisdiction over the case.

Specifically, the Court found that: [T]he present case falls within the established limitation on the act of state doctrine imposed by considerations of public policy on grounds of violations of human rights and international law and that there are compelling reasons requiring the exercise of jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal also rejected the government’s controversial attempt to invoke the domestic law on immunity of foreign states from domestic proceedings as a bar to any claim against the UK government whenever the conduct of foreign states may be called into question, a concept known as the doctrine of indirect impleader in state immunity.

The government’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s decision in Belhaj is being heard jointly with the appeal in another case, Ministry of Defense and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office v. Yunus Rahmatullah, involving a Pakistani citizen captured by British forces in Iraq. In 2004, Rahmatullah was transferred from UK to US custody in Iraq and thereafter rendered to Bagram air base in Afghanistan, with UK knowledge and in breach of Article 45 and Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Held by the US without trial for more than a decade, Rahmatullah was denied access to a lawyer and subjected to numerous acts of torture and mistreatment before being repatriated to Pakistan and released without charge in May 2014. He now seeks to sue the British government for damages. The main thrust of the UK government’s argument, in both cases, is that the litigation will most likely damage the UK’s relationship with the United States. If accepted by the Supreme Court, this argument may lead the Court to find that it lacks jurisdiction to hear the claims. The far-reaching implications of such a ruling would be to protect individual states and their institutions from the scrutiny of British courts in cases where it is alleged that they acted in concert with other states, even if their actions were unlawful. Such an expansive interpretation of a “but they did it too” excuse would constitute a notable limitation on British courts’ jurisdiction in the context of events arising from the so-called global war on terror. Since Belhaj and Rahmatullah, and others like them, are unlikely to secure redress directly in a US court, a ruling in favor of the government would essentially preclude them from securing redress in any forum. You can find the full Court of Appeal judgment here and below.   Belhaj v. Straw – Court of Appeal Judgment (30 Oct 2014) by Just Security

Following in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, November 13 and Moscow’s conclusion that the Russian Airbus 321 that crashed in Egypt’s North Sinai province on October 31; and following recent talks on Syria in Vienna and talks on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, the military dynamics pertaining Syria and the international fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State has changed, significantly. 

French President Francois Hollande and his administration responded to the attacks in Paris by declaring a three months state of emergency while deploying the French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle to the Mediterranean to upscale French participation in the fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, a.k.a. Daesh, ISIS or ISIL. Hollande announced that the carrier would leave port on September 19., adding that: “This is going to triple our military power [as part of the operation against the Islamic State]. I am not talking about deterring the IS but about eliminating it totally.” On Tuesday the Chief of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, announced that the crash of the Russian Kogalmavia (Metrojet) Airbus 321 in Egypt’s North Sinai on October 31 had been caused by a bomb on board the plane.

The of Flight KGL9268 claimed the lives of all 224 passengers and crew on board. The plane was brought down about one month after Russia launched its airstrikes against Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusrah and other insurgencies in Syria. President Putin has briefed the Russian military command on the deployment of the French aircraft carrier and instructed the Russian naval forces in the Mediterranean and the Russian air forces in Syria to cooperate with the French military and to coordinate their military operations.

According to data from Interpol and Serbian officials, at least one of the guns used in the November 13 terror attacks in Paris was purchased by Century International Arms and then re-exported to Europe. One of the largest arms dealers in the United States, Century Arms has close ties to the CIA and has faced accusations in America and Europe of involvement in illegal arms deals.

The UN brokered evacuation of about 2,000 Jihadi insurgents from the Syrian capital Damascus to Raqqa, the de facto capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, has been delayed after an air strike of the Syrian Air Force took out the commander of Jays al-Islam, Zahran Alloush. On August 21, 2013, Alloush, in his function as supreme commander of Liwa-al-Islam, gave to order to launch the chemical weapons attack on the East Ghouta suburb of Damascus.

The exterminated Zahran Alloush was, until he became the commander of Jaysh al-Islam the supreme commander of Liwa-al-Islam; a position he continued to hold until his death. An in depth investigative report published by nsnbc international in 2013 shows that Zahran Alloush was the field commander who, on August 21, 2013, gave the order to launch the chemical weapons attack against the East Ghouta suburb of Damascus. Zahran Alloush has been on the payroll of the Saudi intelligence service since the 1980s. Despite certain media reports to the contrary it must be noted that the air strike that ended the life of Zahran Alloush was carried out before a ceasefire that should allow the evacuation of the 2,000 insurgents to Raqqa came into effect. Jobar is of immense strategic importance for foreign backed insurgents’ logistic support from Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.

Liwa_al-Islam Commander and Chemical Weapon Expert Zahran Alloush has been working for Saudi Intelligence since the 1980s