Three Turkish officers, involved in the inspection of an intelligence agency's weapons-filled trucks, allegedly destined for Syrian terror groups, have been arrested on treason and espionage charges. Meanwhile journalists who broke the news face similar charges. On Saturday, police detained Ankara Gendarmerie Regional Commander Major General Ibrahim Aydin, former Adana Gendarmerie Regional Commander Brigadier General Hamza Celepoglu and former Gendarmerie Criminal Laboratory Head Colonel Burhanettin Cihangiroglu. An Istanbul court ruled in favor of their arrest shortly after midnight, in the early hours of Monday morning, according to local media.

Security officials are facing "spying" charges over an incident in January 2014, when Gendarmerie intercepted trucks belonging to Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT). An inspection of the trucks exposed large quantities of munitions being transported to Syria. After opening a metal container bearing a 'FRAGILE' mark, the inspectors found munitions hidden in crates under boxes of medicine.

The information caught public attention in May 2015, when the website of the Cumhuriyet media outlet posted footage of MIT trucks being inspected by security officers. The paper reported that altogether, in that particular run, MIT trucks had been carrying over 80,000 rounds of ammunition of different calibers, some 1,000 mortar shells and hundreds of munitions for grenade launchers.

The German chancellor has expressed doubts that a meeting in Brussels between the EU and Turkey and another between the eight countries most affected by the migrant crisis represents the beginnings of a more united Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has for the first time publicly expressed doubts that the EU will survive in its current form, after a meeting between the eight countries most affected by the migrant crisis, and a summit between the EU and Turkey.

Merkel was asked whether the meeting of eight countries, led by Germany and backed by EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, represented a step towards a more united EU.

A couple of US senators are demanding that Washington deploy some 20,000 troops to Syria and Iraq. Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham called on Sunday for Washington to nearly triple the US military force levels in Iraq to 10,000, and send an equal number of troops to Syria to 'counter' Daesh (ISIL) terrorists in both countries. McCain and Graham also criticized President Barack Obama's Daesh strategy, which relies on airstrikes and modest support to what Washington deems as 'moderate' militants in Syria, stressing the need for greater US in the Middle East conflicts.

"The only way you can destroy the caliphate (Daesh) is with a ground component," said Graham who is seeking his party's presidential nomination. "The aerial campaign is not turning the tide of battle," Reuters reported.

McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently proposed intervention in Syria by a European and Arab ground force backed by 10,000 US military advisers and trainers. On Sunday, both senators told reporters during a visit to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, that US personnel could provide logistical and intelligence support to a proposed 100,000-strong force from countries like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Russia has banned sales of tour packages to Turkey, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Monday. All charter flights to Turkey are prohibited, regular air travel will be regulated, he added.

"All sales of the package tours to Turkey are stopped effective immideately. The charter flights to Turkey banned, except those used to retrive Russian tourists from there," Igor Suvalov said.

"Additional control will be provided on regular flights between the two countries to ensure the necessary security measures," he added.

Russian sanctions against Turkey will not affect contracts signed before December 31, 2015 and industrial products, the Deputy PM noted.

"Those [construction] contracts that are currently under operation and contracts that are signed before December 31 of this year, Turkish nationals may continue their labor activities on these construction projects. For new contracts [signed after January 1, 2016], there won't be such freedom and a special permit will need to be applied for from the government," Shuvalov told Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev during a Cabinet meeting.

"We are not excluding the possibility of using Turkish nationals on construction projects that are underway in the Russian Federation, but this will fall under very serious control," Shuvalov added.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has recognized George Soros's Open Society Institute and another affiliated organization as undesirable groups, banning Russian citizens and organizations from participation in any of their projects.

In a statement released on Monday, prosecutors said the activities of the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation were a threat to the foundations of Russia's Constitutional order and national security. They added that the Justice Ministry would be duly informed about these conclusions and would add the two groups to Russia's list of undesirable foreign organizations.

Prosecutors launched a probe into the activities of the two organizations - both sponsored by the well-known US financier George Soros - in July this year, after Russian senators approved the so-called "patriotic stop-list" of 12 groups that required immediate attention over their supposed anti-Russian activities. Other groups on the list included the National Endowment for Democracy; the International Republican Institute; the National Democratic Institute; the MacArthur Foundation and Freedom House.

There are some inside Hollywood, who are trying to wake up the world - Donald Sutherland is one of them.

The young people who see this film must recognize that for the future 'blind faith in their leaders,' as Bruce Springsteen said, 'will get you dead.'

Hollywood actor, Donald Sutherland just dropped a bombshell on the military industrial complex. Sutherland, who plays President Coriolanus Snow in the blockbuster movie series Hunger Games, was recently asked what the movie was really about - he held no punches in his answer.

If there's any question as to what it's an allegory for I will tell you.

It is the powers that be in the United States of America.

It's profiteers.

War is for profit. It's not "to save the world for democracy" or "for king and country."

No, bullshit.

It's for the profit of the top 10%, and the young people who see this film must recognize that, for the future, 'blind faith in your leaders,' as Bruce Springsteen said, 'will get you dead'.

The two-week COP21 open its doors only Monday but French law enforcement has already placed twenty-four environmental activists under house arrest in line with the country's emergency laws which were extended for three more months after the Paris atrocities.

After Hollande claimed a state of emergency in France, police don't need a judicial decision to put suspects under arrest, search homes and conduct raids at night.

But unsuspecting climate activists, who actively demonstrate every time France hosts environmental summits, were surprised to find themselves suspect after police officers came to arrest them. On Thursday, police handed Amelie and five her flat mates an order that restricts their liberty of movement in western city of Rennes until 12 of December, the same day the Paris summit will close its doors.

Terrorist group Islamic State earns millions of dollars selling oil on the black market in Turkey, Iraqi MP and former national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie told RT. He also revealed that wounded terrorists are being treated in Turkish hospitals.

"In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell ... $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold ...[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price," Mowaffak al Rubaie said in an interview with RT.

"Now this either get consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market."

"Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market is like the oxygen supply to ISIS and it's operation," he added. "Once you cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Foreign Ministry to suspend contacts with the EU over the Israel-Palestinian peace process because of the bloc's decision to label goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Netanyahu who was once also Foreign Minister, has ordered the holding of "a reassessment of the involvement of EU bodies in everything that is connected to the diplomatic process with the Palestinians", a ministry statement said Sunday.

"Until completion of the reassessment, the Prime Minister has ordered a suspension of diplomatic contacts with the EU and its representatives in this matter," the ministry added.

At the same time Israel's bilateral relations with EU individual states over the Israel-Palestine peace process will continue, Emmanuel Nahshon, the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, said, according to the Haaretz daily. However the newspaper stated that neither the timing of this decision nor its scope or difference from previous measures is clear at the moment.

All publicly available intelligence surrounding the deliberate and illegal shoot-down of the Russian SU-34 fighter-bomber over Syrian airspace on November 24 by planes of the Turkish Air Force indicate the action was pre-meditated and carefully so. The relevant question is by whom and for what end or ends? The Russian Prime Minister has pointed to Turkey's losses from the destruction by the Russian bombing campaign of the last days of the illegal oil ISIS terrorists were smuggling from seized oilfields in Mosul. That may be only the tip of a very big iceberg.

First it's important to look closely at Turkey's role in facilitating the illegal oil smuggling that is reportedly the major funding source for IS terror gangs in Syria and Iraq. In August in an article I wrote for this website I documented the fact that the Harvard-educated 35-year-old son of Turkish President Erdogan, Bilal Erdogan, was up to his eyeballs in smuggling stolen Iraqi oil via Turkey to select markets. That illegal oil finances the major activities of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, a point of which Russia's Putin gently reminded US President Obama and others at the recent Antalya, Turkey G-20 meeting. Fourteen months of alleged US bombings of ISIS targets never once went after the oil chain from Mosul and other ISIS occupied sites through Turkey onto tankers owned by Bilal Erdogan's tanker companies.