Turkey's "incursion" into Iraq is a cold, calculated move. And once again, the name of the game is - what else? - Divide and Rule.

Turkey sent to Iraqi Kurdistan - which is part of the state of Iraq - no less than a 400-strong battalion supported by 25 M-60A3 tanks. Now the Turkish boots on the ground at Bashiqa camp, northeast of Mosul, have reportedly reached a total of around 600.

The short breakdown: this is not a "training camp"- as Ankara is spinning. It's a full-blown, perhaps permanent, military base.

The dodgy deal was struck between the ultra-corrupt Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and then-Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu in Erbil last month.

Torrents of Turkish spin swear this is only about "training" Peshmergas to fight ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

Absolute nonsense. The crucial fact is that Ankara is terrified of the "4+1" alliance fighting Islamic State, which unites Iran, Iraqi Shiites and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), as well as Hezbollah, with Russia.

In Syria, Ankara is virtually paralyzed, after the "stab in the back" downing of the Su-24; the Russian revelations of complicity between Turkey's first family and stolen Syrian oil (Bilal Erdogan, a.k.a. Erdogan 'Mini Me', denies everything); and the Russian Air Force relentless pounding of Turkey's fifth column Turkmen. Not to mention the deployment of S-400s and even a third-generation submarine complete with Kalibr cruise missiles.

So Ankara now switches the attention to Iraq with a "counter-alliance", made up of Turkey; the KRG (which - illegally - sells oil to Turkey); and Sunnis in northern Iraq under the supposed leadership of the sprawling Nuceyfi tribe in Mosul.

The United States and the European Union agreed to further intensify work on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal in 2016 during talks in Brussels, according to a joint US-EU statement issued on Friday.

US Trade Representative Michael Froman and European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom released the statement following the talks.

"At our meeting today, we agreed to further intensify our work during 2016 to help negotiations move forward rapidly, including through enhanced intersessional work, frequent formal negotiating rounds, and increased Minister level consultations," the statement said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said he would not consider leaving Syria under any circumstances in an interview with Spanish media.

On Thursday, a three-day conference aimed at unifying Syrian opposition parties' stances ahead of the next round of Syrian peace talks with international mediators concluded in Riyadh. The participants of the conference in Riyadh demand that Syria's President Bashar Assad steps down in the start of the transitional period.

"I never thought about leaving Syria under any circumstances, in any situation, something I never put in my mind, like the Americans say "plan B" or "plan C." Actually, no," Assad said, as quoted by the EFE news agency.

On Monday, Donald Trump, the billionaire candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" following the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. This is only the latest in a series of increasingly fascistic and violent demands from the Republican frontrunner.

Although he went farther than other members of the US political establishment, Trump's call was in line with remarks by other politicians, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who called for a ban on Muslim, but not Christian, refugees from Syria last month, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who said he had ordered state police to place mosques under surveillance.

David Bowers, the Democratic Party mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, last month approvingly invoked America's history of interning Japanese Americans in concentration camps during the Second World War. "It appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then," Bowers declared.

Turkey will be fenced off from Syria courtesy of a four-meter high wall, reports Ino TV with reference to the Lebanese channel Al Mayadeen.

The decision came from the Turkish authorities, who want to fence off the border provinces of Kilis and Gaziantep from the Syrian area of Aleppo, which is controlled by insurgents from "Islamic State". The total length of the construction will be 82 km.

The Islamic State is a terrorist organization whose activity in Russia is prohibited.

Representatives of Turkey's largest opposition parties have slammed the government's decision to allow NATO to expand its presence at the Incirlik airbase, saying that it is a violation of the constitution, and the country's status as a parliamentary democracy, Today's Zaman reports.

Speaking to the newspaper, Aytun Ciray, a lawmaker from the Republican People's Party, Turkey's largest opposition party, said that Ankara's decision to grant NATO countries other than the US the right to use its base represented a violation of the country's constitution. Furthermore, he noted that even if NATO countries do not require a formal memorandum to use the bases, the decision should still have been debated in parliament.

"Unfortunately," Ciray said, "the president has [been] circumventing parliament for a long time now. We cannot make decisions on national issues following debate. We are devoid of a Western-style parliamentary democracy at the moment."

Officially, Turkey is a secular, democratic, parliamentary representative republic. However, critics say that the anti-Kemalist reforms carried out by Recep Erdogan in recent years have challenged that status.

Fukushima nuclear power plant is still experiencing major contamination issues nearly five years after the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent meltdown.

A new declassified report from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, written on March 18, 2011 just days after the disaster, sheds light on just how bad it was.

We now know that "100% of the total spent fuel was released to the atmosphere from unit 4."

According to nuclear expert and whistleblower Arnie Gundersen in an interview with WBAI in New York, unit four contained more cesium "than in all 800 nuclear bombs exploded above ground".

Cesium has been linked to thyroid cancer, which is on the increase in the Fukushima area since the tsunami, according to the US National Library of Medicine.

The son of late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, Hannibal, has been kidnapped in Lebanese capital of Beirut, security sources say.

Gaddafi, "who was in Lebanon, was kidnapped Friday by an armed group", a security source told AFP. According to reports on Twitter, Hannibal Gaddafi was seized by members of the Lebanese Amal Movement.

Hannibal, 40, is the fifth son of Colonel Gaddafi and his second wife, Safia Farkash.

He was the first consultant to the Management Committee of the General National Maritime Transport Company (GNMTC) of Libya before his father was killed in an uprising that was backed by a NATO air campaign.

After the rebels took the Libyan capital of Tripoli in August 2011, Hannibal fled to Algeria with the rest of the Gaddafi family members and was later granted a political asylum in Oman.

Colonel Gaddafi, who had been the leader of Libya for four decades, had seven sons and two daughters of his own, also allegedly adopting two more children. He was removed from power and killed on August 23, 2011.

Global developments in finance and geopolitics are prompting a rethinking of the structure of banking and of the nature of money itself. Among other interesting news items:

• In Russia, vulnerability to Western sanctions has led to proposals for a banking system that is not only independent of the West but is based on different design principles.

• In Iceland, the booms and busts culminating in the banking crisis of 2008-09 have prompted lawmakers to consider a plan to remove the power to create money from private banks.

• In Ireland, Iceland and the UK, a recession-induced shortage of local credit has prompted proposals for a system of public interest banks on the model of the Sparkassen of Germany.

• In Ecuador, the central bank is responding to a shortage of US dollars (the official Ecuadorian currency) by issuing digital dollars through accounts to which everyone has access, effectively making it a bank of the people.

Developments in Russia

In a November 2015 article titled "Russia Debates Unorthodox Orthodox Financial Alternative," William Engdahl writes:

A significant debate is underway in Russia since imposition of western financial sanctions on Russian banks and corporations in 2014. It's about a proposal presented by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church. The proposal, which resembles Islamic interest-free banking models in many respects, was first unveiled in December 2014 at the depth of the Ruble crisis and oil price free-fall. This August, the idea received a huge boost from the endorsement of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It could change history for the better depending on what is done and where it further leads.

Engdahl notes that the financial sanctions launched by the US Treasury in 2014 have forced a critical rethinking among Russian intellectuals and officials. Like China, Russia has developed an internal Russian version of SWIFT Interbank payments; and it is now considering a plan to restructure Russia's banking system. Engdahl writes:

Much as with Islamic banking models that ban usury, the Orthodox Financial System would not allow interest charges on loans. Participants of the system share risks, profits and losses. Speculative behavior is prohibited . . . . There would be a new low-risk bank or credit organization that controls all transactions, and investment funds or companies that source investors and mediate project financing. . . . Priority would be ensuring financing of the real sector of the economy . . . .

Why is a hate campaign being waged against Muslims?

Why are Muslims increasingly categorized as terrorists?

Why is this hate campaign part of the US presidential election campaign?

Why is Donald Trump calling for police state measures directed against American Muslims?

Why are Muslims the object of ethnic profiling and job discrimination?

Why has France's president Francois Hollande suspended civil rights coupled with a hate campaign directed against France's Muslims, which represent 7.5 percent of the country's population?

Why is the West waging a war against Muslim countries?

Why is Islam regarded as evil?