In the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, there are three important questions to ask.

1) Cui bono?

2) What country could surpass and thwart the sophisticated French intelligence and surveillance system?

3) Why are outcry and public outpourings of support and grief so muted or entirely absent when other countries are invaded or attacked by our forces?

France is on alert since the Charlie Hebdo and market attacks, with heightened security due to President Hollande attending a public sporting event. Who has the resources to wage a coordinated, well-armed, utterly secret attack across Paris and escape notice despite surveillance?

Salah Abdeslam has reportedly been in touch with friends on Skype, telling them he is hiding in the Brussels area and asking them for help in getting back to Syria.

The friends, who have spoken anonymously to ABC News, said that Abdeslam had called them on Tuesday evening and told them he was caught between the extensive police search and local Islamic State members who were "watching him", apparently unhappy that he had failed to detonate his suicide vest after the attacks in Paris.


According to ABC's report:

Abdeslam insisted he played only a minor role in the attacks, but his friends said they doubted his claim of innocence. His brother told ABC News that Abdeslam was "manipulated" by the attack mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, killed in a police raid Thursday in France. Abaaoud and Abdeslam were childhood friends and were arrested when caught in a robbery in 2010, according to an Abaaoud family attorney.

The claims appear to chime with a statement made earlier today by a lawyer for Hamza Attou, one of two suspects charged this week by Belgian authorities for allegedly helping Abdeslam return to the country after the attacks.

Republican and Democratic representatives in the US House of Representatives urged President Barack Obama to stop trying to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and focus all efforts on fighting the Islamic State (ISIL) terrorist group.

On Friday, Democrat Tulsi Gabbard and Republican Austin Scott introduced legislation to end an "illegal war" to overthrow Assad.

"Working to remove Assad at this stage is counter-productive to what I believe our primary mission should be," Austin was quoted as saying by AP.

"The US is waging two wars in Syria. The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The second war is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad," Gabbard said.

• Imposition of Islamophobic measures in workplaces, attack on freedom of conscience and religion
• Employers' new leverage to denounce workers to police who criticize decisions
• Workers subject to unprovoked search and seize, arrest as a security danger
• Constitutional amendment to authorize police state and Labor Code reform

The public statements of French employers federations, calling for using the powers granted by the state of emergency imposed after the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris to monitor and repress workers, constitute a sharp warning to the working class. The draconian powers the state is granting itself, supposedly in order to struggle against Islamist terrorist organizations, are in fact aimed squarely at the working class.

The vice president of the Medef (French employers federation), Geoffrey Roux de Bézieux, proposed yesterday to establish close coordination between business owners and intelligence services to pick out any workers with suspect ideas or behavior. If "someone has radical behavior, the duty of the CEO, as of any citizen, is to point out this behavior to the police. ... We have recommended to our member companies to be vigilant about radicalist excesses in the workplaces," he said.

This remark underscores that the extraordinary surveillance measures and repressive powers granted by the state of emergency are a direct threat to the working class.

Employers are terrified by the rising social anger against the Socialist Party (PS) government's austerity measures. They were horrified by the recent confrontation between Air France workers and the executives and union bosses who were preparing mass layoffs. Workers across France supported the employees who denounced company policy and tore the shirts of two top managers. The ruling class aims to use the police state that is now under construction in France, under cover of a so-called struggle against terror, to repress such working class opposition.

Having dealt a heavy blow to ISIL's military capabilities, Russian forces can now focus on destroying the group's economic potential by hitting where it hurts the most - the illegal oil business, political scientist Nikita Smagin told Radio Sputnik.

Massive airstrikes, according to the analyst, could seriously limit ISIL's ability to deliver stolen oil to the black market. Selling oil stolen from oilfields in Iraq and Syria has been a major source of income for the terrorism group. Militants are making as much as $2 million daily, according to different estimates

Prior to airstrike campaigns, the key approach to dealing with ISIL's illegal business activities involved exerting political pressure on the buyers.

UN General Assembly's Third Committee passed a Russia-proposed resolution condemning attempts to glorify Nazism ideology and denial of German Nazi war crimes. The US, Canada and Ukraine were the only countries to vote against it.

The resolution was passed on Friday by the committee, which is tasked with tackling social and humanitarian issues and human rights abuses, by 115 votes against three, with 55 nations abstaining, Tass news agency reported.

The document voiced concern over the rise of racism-driven crimes around the world and the influence that parties with extremist agendas are gaining.

It called for a universal adoption of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Many nations including the US, the UK, China and India, signed the convention but did not recognize a mechanism resolving individual complaints it establishes, which makes the convention unenforceable in their jurisdictions.

The resolution also decried attempts to whitewash Nazi collaborators by depicting them as fighters of nationalist resistance movements and honoring them as such.

It condemned any form of denial of Nazi war crimes, including the Jewish Holocaust.

Russia, which submitted the draft resolution, said it regretted that it could not be adopted unanimously.

The reports coming from Germany these days can be confusing: we hear stories about the staggering numbers of refugees pouring into the country, about refugees disappearing without a trace, about Germany being the only country actually living up to its responsibility to provide shelter for these people who fled the chaos that the West created with its perpetual war in the Middle East, wild theories that claim the "so-called refugee crisis" is entirely manufactured in order to "invade" Europe in general and Germany in particular, while providing a cheap labor force for the corporate elites, and even warnings of an impending civil war in Germany.

However, the most important thing people need to understand about the current situation in Germany is the widespread and increasing hatred towards refugees and Muslims that is infecting people's minds in the very country that gave rise to the Nazis and one of the darkest episodes in human history. Incidentally, in light of the Paris attacks that have propelled the "Muslim terrorist" narrative back into the headlines, we should all remember that one of the seminal events that led to the rise of the Nazis and their final solution for the Jews was the burning of the Reichstag by the Nazis that was then blamed on 'Communists'. As they say, history repeats - same song, different verse.

So what's the atmosphere on the ground in Germany? First, there are indeed large numbers of refugees in the country, which naturally poses a lot of logistical problems: where can they live, which government agencies are responsible, what about medical treatment, language barriers, registration, heating, food, etc.? What about all the legal procedures that are supposed to take place with asylum seekers (including deportation, which always has been subject of debate in Germany), when the numbers are so high and under conditions of general chaos?

These are obviously great challenges, and those tasked with facing those challenges report a lot of mismanagement of the situation. Tellingly, a lot of the work is actually done not by the government, but by the many volunteers who distribute clothes, provide language classes, help with bureaucracy and so on. Needless to say, with such a large group of people, along with the majority of peaceful and traumatized refugees, there will also be thugs, criminals and pathological types of all sorts. Naturally then, there are reports of crimes and violence committed by some of the refugees (notice however that many of the more horrific tales are based entirely on rumors fueled by racism, most of which turned out to be hoaxes). On the other hand, there are very frightening incidents of right-wing violence against the refugees, from beatings to setting fire to refugee camps.

Chinese security forces in the far western region of Xinjiang killed 28 "terrorists" from a group that carried out a deadly attack at a coal mine in September under the direction of "foreign extremists", the regional government said on Friday.

The news carried by the official Xinjiang Daily was the first official mention of the Sept. 18 attack at the Sogan colliery in Aksu, in which it said 16 people, including 5 police officers were killed, and another 18 people injured.

Radio Free Asia, which first reported the incident about two months ago, said at least 50 people had died.

Attackers fled into the mountains and authorities launched a manhunt with more than 10,000 people participating every day, forming an "inescapable dragnet", the Xinjiang Daily said.

"After 56 days of continuous fighting, Xinjiang destroyed a violent terrorist gang directly under the command of a foreign extremist group. Aside from one person who surrendered, 28 thugs were completely annihilated," the newspaper said.

China's government says it faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists in energy-rich Xinjiang, on the border of central Asia, where hundreds have died in violence in recent years.

US Africa Command has confirmed that two special operatives assisted Malian security forces during the hostage siege at the Raddison Blu hotel in Bamako on Friday. An al-Qaeda group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed least 20 people.

Terrorists stormed the luxury hotel in Mali's capital on Friday, taking some of the staff and guests hostage. About a dozen Americans were at the hotel for a conference at the time, including several employees of the US Embassy in Bamako, State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed.

International hacker group Anonymous should leave its cyberwar effort against ISIL to the authorities, who are better able to deal with the terrorists' internet activities, a NATO security official has said.

The war on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) declared by Anonymous is "good to some degree," NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, Dr Jamie Shea, told Euronews, RT reported.

Because of Anonymous' efforts, "ISIL sees that it is not just against the governments and organs of the state, but is against all of the values our population represents," Shea said.