Russia and China are kicking off a series of joint air defense exercises called Aerospace Security-2017, highlighting the growing strategic partnership between the two great powers. In recent years, Russia and China have more or less set aside their differences dating back to the Soviet-era to jointly push back against the American-led liberal institutional world order.

"In 2nd Aerospace Security 2017 Russian-Chinese Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) defence computer command post exercise (CPX) has kicked off in the Air and Missile Defence Research Institute of the Air Force Academy of the People's Liberation Army of China, in Beijing," reads a statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD). "In course of the exercise, the sides will practise cooperation of the Russian and Chinese Air and Missile Defence grouping to repel missile threats from third countries."

According to the Russian MOD, there "troops from operational and tactical levels are involved" in the exercise, which runs through December 16. The Chinese Ministry of Defense offered some additional details. "The militaries of China and Russia will hold a joint anti-missile drill based on computer simulations from Dec. 11 to 16 in Beijing," said Wu Qian, a Chinese Ministry of Defense spokesperson, said.

"There is no terrible regime - Columbia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile during the time of the colonels, Burma, Taiwan, Zaire, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone - there is not one that does not have a major military connection to Israel."
- Jeff Halper, 2003

If the details in this court report were allowed to be made public, it would no doubt be extremely embarrassing to the state of Israel, who relies on maintaining the status of eternal 'victim' in order to side-step dozens of UN resolutions regarding its illegal land annexations and human rights abuses against the native Palestinian population who have been under violent Israeli military occupation for over 50 years.

Question: why have the Israeli Courts ruled to cover-up these important details about Israel's own role in helping to facilitate a genocide in Africa?

Their answer: "The release of information would undermine state security and international relations."

According to reports, Israel's arms exports to Rwanda were in violation of international law.

Half a century ago, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the term "military-industrial complex" to describe the fascistic collusion between the Pentagon and America's burgeoning armaments industry. But in our day and age we are witnessing the rise of a new collusion, one between the Pentagon and the tech industry that it helped to seed, that is committed to waging a covert war against people the world over. Now, in the 21st century, it is time to give this new threat a name: the information-industrial complex.

Moore said in a Wednesday web video that late-counted ballots could change the results of the election.

Two days after losing Alabama's special Senate election, Republican nominee Roy Moore has yet to concede the race - and a small cheering section in conservative media is hoping that he never will.

Moore, who suggested on election night that the race would go to a recount, said in a Wednesday web video that late-counted ballots could change the results of the election.

"We have not received the final count to include military and provisional ballots," Moore said. "This has been a very close race, and we are awaiting certification by the secretary of state."

Following the revelation that 'Russia-linked accounts' (an extremely broad category) spent a massive £0.75 on Facebook advertisements related to the Brexit referendum in the UK, I was amused to read in the Globe and Mail this morning that 'Privacy officials in Britain and British Columbia are investigating how a Canadian technology company may have helped sway last year's Brexit vote.' There I was thinking that 'Putin dunnit', and it turns out it was Canada! Who'd have thought it?

All the recent hype about Russian hacking, Russian 'information warfare', Russian internet trolls, and the like makes it sound as if the Russians pretty much dominate the internet. At the very least, if the vast number of Russia-related stories are to be believed, Russians are certainly using the internet to exercise outsized influence on world politics. Supposedly, by manipulating online news, sending out adverts on Twitter and Facebook, and generally trolling web users, they have managed, it is said, to get Donald Trump elected; swing British voters in favour of Brexit; persuade the Dutch to support a referendum aimed at blocking Ukrainian entry into the EU; sow chaos and enhance racial tensions in American society; and influence elections in Germany and France, among other things. The internet, apparently, has been thoroughly 'weaponized' by Russia to enormous effect.

What then are we to make of a declaration yesterday by the British Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, that Russia could 'catastrophically' damage the British economy by severing underwater communiations cables and so cutting Britain off from the internet? According to the BBC, Peach 'said Nato had prioritised the protection of the cables "in response to the threat posed by the modernisation of the Russian navy, both nuclear and conventional submarines and ships".' The BBC then quotes Conservative MP Rishi Sunak as saying that an attack on the underwater cables would pose an 'existential threat to our security.'

Iran is joining the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). By early next year, February by this account, Iran will join the five founding members of the Union and open the door for Turkey to do so later in 2018. Between this and the end of the war in Syria, it's not hard to declare the Brzezinski Doctrine of U.S.-led Central Asian chaos as gasping its last breaths.

Iran finally joining the EAEU is a response to a number of factors, the most important of which is the continued belligerence by the U.S. Expanded economic sanctions on Iran and the EAEU's leader Russia has created the need for greater coordination of economic and foreign policy objectives between them.

And it is creating the new realities in the region that will reshape the world for the next hundred years.

The Nuclear Gambit

In the dying days of the Obama administration it looked like the goal was to placate Iran to stop its pivot towards Russia and China. I believe that was the driving force behind Obama's negotiating the controversial nuclear deal.

In effect, Obama tried to trade unfreezing Iran's hundreds of billions in assets held in Western banks for Iran to ignore our atomization of Syria and the creation of a complete mess there.

Julian Assange has exposed an apparent attempt by the US intelligence apparatus to undermine funding to WikiLeaks, using institutions he established for the express purpose of protecting potential donors from the authorities.

In a Twitter thread, posted Sunday, Assange alleges "politically induced financial censorship" that violates not only US donors' First Amendment rights but also their right to freedom of association. "US donors are the majority of our donor base," Assange wrote, as he nears the conclusion of what will be his eighth year of exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The Trump White House has set a record, as US troops deploy around the world in an ever-widening net of American outreach at the end of a gun barrel.

According to new data, US Special Operations troops, including Navy Seals and Army Green Berets, were deployed in 149 nations in 2017, a 150 percent jump from the administration of George W. Bush, and a modern record for shipping US military policy around the globe. "We operate and fight in every corner of the world," recently boasted chief of US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) General Raymond Thomas.

"Rather than a mere 'break-glass-in-case-of-war' force, we are now proactively engaged across the 'battlespace' of the Geographic Combatant Commands," Thomas enthused, adding that US forces were globally "providing key integrating and enabling capabilities to support [...] campaigns and operations," cited by The Nation.

But that worldwide scope has only spread thinner the assets of a country already to seen to be too involved in the doings of other nation-states, and Capitol Hill members are growing increasingly concerned. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing," stated a shocked Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), of the Senate Armed Services Committee in October, after four US Special Operations soldiers were killed in West Africa's Niger.

"Most Americans would be amazed to learn that US Special Operations Forces have been deployed to three quarters of the nations on the planet," declared the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, William Hartung, according to The Nation. "There is little or no transparency as to what they are doing in these countries," Hartung asserted, "and whether their efforts are promoting security or provoking further tension and conflict."

Government watchdog Judicial Watch, famous for breaking scandals wide open, has issued a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain the records of FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok.

Specifically, Judicial Watch is seeking the following:

Supervisor Peter Strzok to the special counsel's investigation led by former Director Robert Mueller

All records related to the reassignment of FBI Supervisor Peter Strzok from the special counsel's investigation to another position within the FBI.

All SF-50 and/or SF-52 employment forms, as well as all related records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the FBI and any other individual or entity.

The EU is taking Hungary to the European court of justice (ECJ) over Viktor Orbán's crackdown on political freedoms and a leading university, as Brussels steps up its fight to protect democratic values in central Europe.

The Hungarian government was referred on Thursday to the court in relation to a higher education law that could force the closure of Central European University (CEU), founded by the billionaire George Soros, who has been the subject of a demonisation campaign by Hungary's prime minister. The European commission said the legislation ran counter to academic freedom and the right to run a business under the EU's charter of fundamental rights.

Hungary is also being referred over a law that requires non-governmental organisations (NGOs) receiving foreign donations to label themselves as "supported from abroad".

Separately, Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic have been referred to the ECJ for refusing to take refugees under a mandatory quota system forced through by the EU at the height of the migration crisis in 2015.

The batch of announcements came as the commission published its monthly file of legal actions against member states breaking EU laws. The long list of violations ranges from Portugal's neglect of EU restrictions on single-use plastic bags to Italy's failure to ensure suppliers are paid on time.