Russia's Radio-Technical Troops will soon deploy radar units capable of detecting targets 1,500 kilometers away, the RTF's deputy commander said in a radio interview on Saturday.

"We already have radar units which can "see" targets 1,200 kilometers away and 150 kilometers high. We now want to have ones to detect targets 1,500 kilometers away and up to 600 kilometers above. In fact, we already have such units available to us," Colonel Vladimir Filippovich told Echo Moskvy radio on Saturday.

The Radio-Technical Troops (RTT) is a subdivision of the Russian Air Force. Their objective is to carry out radar reconnaissance of enemies in the air and report radar information to the command-and-control elements of the Air Force and parts of the Russian Armed Forces.

On August 1, 2015, the Russian Air Force, along with the Aerospace Defense Forces and the Air Defense Troops, was merged into a new branch of the Armed Forces - the Russian Aerospace Forces commanded by Col.-Gen. Viktor Bondarev.

On this week's episode of Behind the Headlines, we're speaking once again with James and JoAnne Moriarty, an American couple who witnessed first-hand the so-called 'Libyan Revolution' in 2011. Invited by an international NGO to participate in a fact-finding mission, and trusted by Libyan political and business leaders, the Moriartys travelled throughout Libya during NATO's massive bombardment of the country in 2011, observing and documenting events, and personally witnessing numerous unspeakable atrocities.

After barely escaping with their lives when the 'rebels' placed them on a kill-list, the Moriartys finally made it back to the US with bodies and evidence intact... only to discover that their troubles had barely begun. In this second interview with the Moriartys, we'll be asking them about the current political climate in the destroyed country, and discussing some of the myriad connections between the criminals brought into Libya to tear it apart and those brought into Syria to do same.

You can listen to our first interview with the Moriartys here or here. You can find extensive documentation for the Moriartys' claims on their website, http://libyanwarthetruth.com/, where you can also purchase their DVD, Escape from Al Qaeda.

Join your hosts this Sunday 13th December 2015 from 2-4pm EST / 11am-1pm PST / 7-9pm UTC / 8-10pm CET for what promises to be another horrifying but informative interview.

Running Time: 02:01:00

Download: MP3

A new report says mercenaries and military advisers from the infamous US security firm, formerly known as Blackwater, are replacing UAE troops in the Saudi war in Yemen.

The Beirut-based al-Akhbar newspaper said on Thursday UAE forces are being gradually replaced by recruits from the US-based private military contractor, which now goes by the name, Acamedi.

The move came after the UAE evacuated some of its military sites in Yemen following its failures in several operations, the Lebanese daily added.

The Russian Armed Forces could soon receive the first pre-production prototypes of the next-generation S-500 air defense system, defense expert Igor Korotchenko asserted.

Russia is paying particular attention to developing aerospace defense systems, he noted.

"We heard figures indicating that the Russian Aerospace Forces will soon receive more S-400 systems. The S-500 will soon finish state tests and enter service," Korotchenko said following the board meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry on Friday.

Turkey is buying oil from Daesh terrorists at half the price and resells it to third countries, a Polish member of the European parliament said Friday, adding that the US shows a great deal of interest in the oil supplied by the terrorists.

Janusz Korwin-Mikke said that the United States was "doing business" on buying stolen oil from Daesh terrorists using Turkey as a middleman.

"I have information from America. America is doing business. Turkey is buying oil from the Caliphate [Daesh] at half the price and America is showing a great deal of interest in this oil," the European MEP emphasized, adding that this information had been confirmed by top government officials in Lebanon.

Janusz Korwin-Mikke also said that Russia should step in and "undo such schemes."

Moscow has repeatedly stated that Ankara is the main consumer of illegal oil from Syria and Iraq, accusing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family of direct involvement in the oil business of the ISIL group, which is outlawed in Russia.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, ISIL earns around $2 billion annually selling oil from the occupied territories, spending these funds on hiring militants from around the world and equipping them with weapons.

The crew of the Russian "Smetlivy" destroyer was forced to use firearms on Sunday to prevent a collision with a Turkish fishing vessel in the northern part of the Aegean Sea, according to Russia's Ministry of Defense.

"On the 13 December 2015 the crew of the Russian patrol ship "Smetlivy" prevented a collision with a Turkish fishing vessel 22 kilometers [13.6 miles] from the Greek island of Limnos in the northern part of the Aegean Sea," Russia's Defense Ministry statement reads.

The destroyer's morning crew spotted an approaching Turkish ship at a distance of approximately one kilometer (0.6 miles). The fishing vessel did not get on the air for radio contact with the Russian ship and did not respond to signal lamps or flairs.

Shortly after Montenegro's bid to join the North Atlantic Alliance was given the green light, thousands flooded the streets of the capital to protest the upcoming membership and remind people of lives taken during the NATO invasion of 1999.

Former Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic and opposition leaders called the rally on Saturday in Montenegro's capital, Podgorica. They gathered at least 5,000 supporters outside the parliament, according to the local Vijesti newspaper. The protesters held national flags while patriotic and pro-Russian chants ringing out from the assembled crowd.

Bulatovic, who was also prime minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1998 to 2000, told the rally that joining NATO would mean "blood of innocent people on our hands," and emphasized his country had been against the alliance's wars until recently.

"What has Afghanistan done wrong, what has Iraq done wrong? Why has Libya been destroyed, what's happening today in Syria? Can we close our eyes to that?" he said.

My warning that the neoconservatives have resurrected the threat of nuclear Armageddon, which was removed by Reagan and Gorbachev, is also being given by Noam Chomsky, former US Secretary of Defense William Perry, and other sentient observers of the neoconservatives' aggressive policies toward Russia and China.

Daily we observe additional aggressive actions taken by Washington and its vassals against Russia and China. For example, Washington is pressuring Kiev not to implement the Minsk agreements designed to end the conflict between the puppet government in Kiev and the break-away Russian republics.

Washington refuses to cooperate with Russia in the war against ISIS. Washington continues to blame Russia for the destruction of MH-17, while preventing an honest investigation of the attack on the Malaysian airliner. Washington continues to force its European vassals to impose sanctions on Russia based on the false claim that the conflict in Ukraine was caused by a Russian invasion of Ukraine, not by Washington's coup in overthrowing a democratically elected government and installing a puppet answering to Washington.

The list is long. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), allegedly a neutral, non-political world organization, has been suborned into the fight against Russia. Under Washington's pressure, the IMF has abandoned its policy of refusing to lend to debtors who are in arrears in their loan payments to creditors. In the case of Ukraine's debt to Russia, this decision removes the enforcement mechanism that prevents countries (such as Greece) from defaulting on their debts. The IMF has announced that it will lend to Ukraine in order to pay the Ukraine's Western creditors despite the fact that Ukraine has renounced repayment of loans from Russia.

Michael Hudson believes, correctly in my view, that this new IMF policy will also be applied to those countries to whom China has made loans. The IMF's plan is to leave Russia and China as countries who lack the usual enforcement mechanism to collect from debtors, thus permitting debtors to default on the loans without penalty.

In other words, the IMF is presenting itself, although the financial media will not notice, as a tool of US foreign policy.

What this shows, and what should concern us, is that the institutions of Western civilization are in fact tools of American dominance. The institutions are not there for the noble reasons stated in their founding documents.

The bottom line is that Western Capitalism is simply a looting mechanism that has successfully suborned Western governments and all Western "do-good" institutions.

As in George Orwell's '1984', the IMF is dividing the world into warring factions — the West vs. the BRICS.

Donald and Daesh Join Forces Against the 'Gray Zone'

Since ISIS rose to conquest in Syria and Iraq, then turning its deadly attention westward, it (with the help of its government and media accomplices) has unleashed a fresh flood of terror, which the people of the West have, unresisting, let wash over them.

In America, Donald Trump has tapped that terror to fuel the flames of Islamophobic hate, which he hopes will propel his rise to Presidential power.

"When can we get rid of 'em?" asked a supporter at a rally before the Paris attacks. "We are going to be looking at a lot of different things," Trump assured him. After Paris, he told a reporter:

"We're going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule. (...) And so we're going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago."

The Nuclear End of the World never happened. When the Cold War finally ended, the whole world sighed in relief as the threat of total annihilation seemingly passed. And yet, 25 years later, both the US and Russia once again are pumping up their nuclear arsenal, and the Doomsday Clock shows it's just three minutes before midnight. Is nuclear destruction looming once again over humankind? And, even if no state is actually ready to press the button - could Atomic Armageddon happen by accident? We ask these and many other questions to a specialist on nuclear technology, a professor from MIT and a former adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations. Dr. Theodore Postol is on Sophie&Co.

Sophie Shevardnadze: Dr. Theodore Postol, former advisor to the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, a professor at MIT, nuclear technology expert, welcome to the show, it's great to have you with us - so, Ted, President Obama came into the White House calling for "Global Zero" - now, there are plans to spend a trillion dollars on an overall of entire nuclear arsenal. Why is this happening?

Dr. Theodore Postol: I think this is a consequence of the domestic politics. You can never understand the foreign policy of a country without understanding its domestic situation, and in this case, the domestic politics has caused Mr. Obama to decide - frankly, I think, incorrectly - that he has to modernize the U.S. arsenal in order to avoid being criticized for not being concerned about the defence of the country.