A series of violent protests continue to shake the Serbian breakaway province of Kosovo-Metochia. This time it was an intra-Albanian conflict. Protests are organised by the opposition led by Ramush Haradinaj — former terrorist warlord, notorious war criminal, former PM of the separatist 'government', also a leader of the political party Alliance for the Future of Kosovo — together with Albin Kurti, relatively young leader of the more radical Self-Determination party which advocates formal unification of Kosovo-Metochia with Albania.

These protests are organised against one of the clauses of the so-called Brussels Agreement, the one that guaranties the formation of the Community of Serbian Municipalities in the NATO-occupied province. Although most of the Brussels Agreement is in favour of the separatists, the ethnic Albanian opposition sees this as a compromise with Belgrade and a defeat of the Albanian side, maybe actually having a point in that.

After the separatist authorities of Kossovo-Metochia and their sponsors failed to secure membership in UNESCO on 9 November, thanks to Russian in the first place, but also to Serbian diplomacy and successful lobbying, there is a sense of lost confidence among the separatist Albanians. It seems this was the point where things started to fall apart for the separatists.

The Government hasn't grasped the extent to which Western governments are so discredited

This looks simple enough then. We'll bomb the same people as Putin is bombing, in the same places, co-ordinated with Putin. But we won't actually be on the same side as Putin, and maybe we'll make that clear by painting gay rainbow flags on our bombs.

And we're backing Turkey - although we're not backing Turkey when they sneakily align with Isis against the Kurds, but that's easy to get round. We'll arrange a job share. Isis can have them on Mondays to Wednesdays, then we'll get them from Thursday until Saturday, and on Sundays they can have the day off or back someone else such as the Cornish nationalists.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond explained it clearly, when he answered Dennis Skinner's question "Is Turkey a reliable ally, given that it shot down a Russian jet, and has assisted Isis against the Kurds?" Hammond replied "I see that old habits die hard, and the Honourable Gentleman remains an apologist for Russian actions."

This must mean we are supporting Turkey, against Russia as well as on the days they're opposing Isis, though we're on Russia's side when they're against Isis so we could end up supporting and opposing Russia and Turkey against each other at the same time, causing us to fall through a break in space and we'll have to be rescued by Doctor Who.

To simplify matters even more, Hammond seems to suggest it's a disgrace to defend Russia's shameful action of its plane being shot down. Look at the litter they've caused, they could have crashed more tidily. Is it any wonder we're never on their side except for when we're on their side?

Within no more than five years, autonomous robots are to join the ranks of the Israeli military on its most dangerous combat missions in the air, under the water and on the ground, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general claims.

The Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv is looking forward to seeing unmanned logistics convoys, small autonomous underwater vehicles and gliders aiding Israeli soldiers during fighting and in peacetime. It is going to happen in the next five years, according to Brigadier-General Nir Halamish, head of the military research and development unit of the Ministry's MAFAT R&D Bureau. Halamish outlined Israel's blueprint for unmanned vehicles through 2025, Defense News reported.

It's already a matter of fact that robots operate on the ground and underground at the border with Gaza as guards, but their deployment is reportedly going to be broadened to other territories in the nearest future, perhaps within months. "These [UGVs] are the first at any event, which prevents our soldiers from coming into contact with the enemy at the outset," Halamish said.

He added that the ultimate goal of the Israeli military is to make systems of all kinds 90 percent autonomous within a decade. One key feature of the IDF's plans to autonomize land warfare is a so-called "robotic advance guard," which would accompany manned units in high-threat situations. "This advance guard is to be deployed hundreds of meters ahead of the manned force. We hope to get there in the coming years," Halamish explained.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has given the Chinese yuan, also known as the renminbi, a status of reserve currency, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a statement on Monday.

"The Executive Board's decision to include the RMB in the SDR [special drawing rights] basket is an important milestone in the integration of the Chinese economy into the global financial system," Lagarde said.

To meet the IMF's criteria, Beijing has recently instituted multiple reforms, including better access for foreigners to Chinese currency markets, more frequent debt issuance and expanded yuan trading hours, Reuters reported.

Lagarde said she expects the measures to continue. "The continuation and deepening of these efforts will bring about a more robust international monetary and financial system, which in turn will support the growth and stability of China and the global economy," she said in a statement.

The yuan's inclusion is a largely symbolic move, with few immediate implications for financial markets. The yuan is not set to officially become a reserve currency until September 2016. The Chinese currency is expected to contribute to the value of the special drawing right - a weighted average of the currencies - which the IMF uses to price its emergency loans.

Earlier in November, the IMF said that the renminbi should be considered an international currency alongside the US dollar and other major currencies. China has lobbied for the currency to be included in the list, which at present is made up of the US dollar, the euro, the pound and the Japanese yen. The list has not been altered since 2000, when the euro replaced the French franc and the German deutschmark.

Last set in 2010, the basket is currently 41.9% dollar, 37.4% euro, 11.3% sterling and 9.4% yen, Reuters reported.

Reports indicate that hordes of foreign nationals who had been asked to leave the Nordic country have simply gone missing, and police say there's little they can do about it.

Sweden, which had previously declared itself open to refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East, recently slammed the door firmly shut on new arrivals, extending the temporary border controls with other Schengen countries until December 11, after receiving more than 100,000 refugees from January 2015.

The country's Migration Agency told 21,748 people to leave Sweden a month ago, Aftonbladet reported on Friday, but now 14,140 of them have been listed as "departed" or "wanted," with no further information.

To understand what is happening on the geopolitical global scene today, you have to understand what has been happening on that same scene for the last 100 years, because it hasn't really changed much.

The US Empire has been the world's only (and 'greatest') superpower since at least the end of the Second World War. Once the Empire had achieved that position, it was determined to keep it. Russia was supposed to have been destroyed as a result of the 1939-45 war, but Russian ingenuity and hardiness, and Stalin's surprising independent streak, forced the Empire to accept a division of the world between 'East' and 'West'. As soon as the lines were drawn, however, the Empire sent its agents out to continue and complete the process of global conquest.

Apart from the few overt US military forays (Korea, Vietnam, the odd turkey shoot in Latin America) the Empire relied primarily on covert operations to expand its control. In Western Europe - a prized piece on the 'grand chessboard' - the US Empire established 'stay-behind' networks made up of paramilitary groups from various backgrounds and espousing right-wing, fascistic ideologies. The rationale for 'mining' Europe with weapons caches and nutjobs trained in sabotage and bloody mayhem was that, in the event of a Soviet invasion and occupation of Europe, 'resistance fighters' would form the West's front-line in the coming war with the Soviets.

These groups were created and funded as part of the Truman Doctrine, which pledged to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures". A Soviet invasion was never on the cards, of course, and thus this 'support' took the form of CIA funding, training and arming of minority groups that used extreme violence to 'correct' any European political or social drifts towards 'the left', or anything that opposed the Empire's interests. In their spare time, many of these groups involved themselves in arms- and drug-smuggling and other racketeering, much of it also under the control of the CIA and other Western intel agencies.

This aspect of the Truman Doctrine was the beginning, in earnest, of the US National Security State's covert foreign policy, which has comprised the bulk of all US foreign policy over the past 70 years. Most of the details of that foreign policy has not only been kept from the American people, but from most American politicians also. In December 1947, United States National Security Council (NSC) Directive 4-A "secretly authorised the CIA to conduct these officially non-existent programs and to administer them" in such a way that "removed the U.S. Congress and public from any debate over whether to undertake psychological warfare abroad."

"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like." ― William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice

Bottle up the champagne, pack away the noisemakers, and toss out the party hats.

There is no cause for celebration.

We have secured no major victories against tyranny.

We have achieved no great feat in pushing back against government overreach.

For all intents and purposes, the National Security Agency has supposedly ceased its bulk collection of metadata from Americans' phone calls, but read the fine print: nothing is going to change.

The USA Freedom Act, which claimed to put an end to the National Security Agency's controversial collection of metadata from Americans' phone calls, was just a placebo pill intended to make us feel better and let the politicians take credit for reforming mass surveillance.

In other words, it was a sham, a sleight-of-hand political gag pulled on a gullible public desperate to believe that we still live in a constitutional republic rather than a down-and-out, out-of-control, corporate-controlled, economically impoverished, corrupt, warring, militarized banana republic.

You cannot restrain the NSA. The beast has outgrown its chains.

You cannot reform the NSA. A government that lies, cheats, steals, sidesteps the law, and then absolves itself of wrongdoing does not voluntarily alter its behavior.

You cannot put an end to the NSA's "technotyranny." Presidents, politicians, and court rulings have come and gone over the course of the NSA's 60-year history, but none of them have managed to shut down the government's secret surveillance of Americans' phone calls, emails, text messages, transactions, communications and activities.

Indeed, the government has become an expert in finding ways to sidestep niggling, inconvenient laws aimed at ensuring accountability, bringing about government transparency and protecting citizen privacy.

It has mastered the art of stealth maneuvers and end-runs around the Constitution.

It knows all too well how to hide its nefarious, covert, clandestine activities behind the classified language of national security and terrorism. And when that doesn't suffice, it obfuscates, complicates, stymies or just plain bamboozles the public into remaining in the dark.

Case in point: the so-called end of the NSA's metadata collection of Americans' phone calls.

This, of course, is no end at all.

The Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has stated that Ukraine does not have enough stockpiles of coal for the winter. He demanded that an emergency plan of measures be worked out to solve the problem.


"According to the date which I have, it is clear that, as I warned three months ago, there is not a sufficient supply of coal. In order to avoid power outages as last year, I urgently demand an extraordinary plan of measures in order to pass the winter with a stable energy system in the country. This is now the topic of discussion," Yatsenyuk stated during a meeting with the anti-crisis energy headquarters.

According to him, the state has allocated necessary resources, and now needs to get down to business. The head of the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine, Vladimir Demchishin, said earlier on Friday that the coal reserves of Ukraine are sufficient for at least one month, "but in the longer term problems will arise."

According to Demchishin, at the present moment supplies of coal from Russia and Donbass to Ukraine are restricted.

This week, the Donetsk People's Republic suspended deliveries of coal to Kiev-controlled territories and has stated that it will not resume deliveries until Ukraine restores the power supply to Crimea.

Translated for Fort Russ by J. Arnoldski

The increase in nihilistic violence such as school shootings and Friday's lethal assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic, the frequent executions of poor people of color by police, and the rise of thuggish demagogues such as Donald Trump are symptoms of the collapse of our political and cultural institutions.

These institutions, which once made possible piecemeal and incremental reform, which sought to protect the weak from the tyranny of the majority and give them a voice, acted as a safety valve to ameliorate the excesses of capitalism and address the grievances of the underclass. They did not defy the system of capitalism. They colluded with the structures of privilege and white supremacy. But they provided some restraints on the worst abuse and exploitation. The capturing of major institutions by corporate power and the moral bankruptcy of our elites, especially members of our self-identified liberal class, have shattered this equilibrium.

A faux liberal class, epitomized by amoral politicians such as the Clintons and Barack Obama, has led many disenfranchised people, especially the white underclass, to direct a legitimate rage toward liberals and the supposed liberal values they represent. Racism, bigotry, religious intolerance, homophobia, sexism and vigilante violence, condemned by liberal, college-educated elites, are embraced by those who have been betrayed, those who now speak back to liberal elites in words, gestures and acts, sometimes violent, designed to denigrate the core values of a liberal democracy. The hatred is the product of a liberal class that did nothing to halt corporations from driving tens of millions of families into poverty and desperation as it mouthed empty platitudes about rights and economic advancement.

The Republican business elites, which declared war on the liberal class' call for cultural diversity, allied themselves with an array of protofascists in the Christian right, the tea party, groups such as the National Rifle Association and The Heritage Foundation, the neo-Confederate movement, the right-to-life movement and right-wing militias. The elites in the Republican Party, who needed an ideological veneer to mask their complicity in the corporate assault, saw these protofascists as useful idiots. They thought, naively, that by demonizing liberals, feminists, African-Americans, Muslims, abortion providers, undocumented workers, intellectuals and homosexuals they could redirect the growing rage of the masses, sending it against the vulnerable, as well as against the only institution that could curb corporate power, the government, while they greedily disemboweled the nation.

But what the Republican elites have done, as they now realize to their horror, is empower a huge swath of the public—largely white—that is gripped by magical thinking and fetishizes violence. It was only a matter of time before a demagogue whom these elites could not control would ride the wave of alienation and rage. If Trump fails in his bid to become the GOP presidential nominee, another demagogue will emerge to take his place. Trump is not making a political revolution. He is responding to one.

The United States Treasury will cut next year's bonds issuance to soften the possible negative consequences to the US economy stemming from the looming US Federal Reserve's hike in borrowing costs, still, the spread between the US and foreign bonds is bound to rise, further unbalancing the global economy.

Amidst improving US fiscal discipline and the narrowing budget deficit, the US Treasury is cutting its supply of government debt securities at an accelerated pace, pushing the price on Treasury notes higher and further widening the spread between overseas and US bonds. Although the main reason for such measures undertaken by the US Treasury is simply that the US does not need as much borrowed money as it did before, the entire situation is more complicated, potentially causing severe damage to the most fragile foreign economies.

In 2016, net issuance of US Treasury notes is expected to decline by 26% to $422 bln, the lowest volume of new debt taken since 2008, according to Treasury notes auctions data. This year, the US Treasury issued some $607 bln worth of bonds.