Today Defense Minster Shoigu announced measures which went far beyond what I had hoped for. Specifically, Shoigu has announced that Russia will

1. Supply S-300 air defense systems (with a 250km range) to the Syrians in the next two weeks.
2. Russia will deliver advanced automated air defense management systems which will *dramatically* increase the Syrian air defense capabilities and prevent future "friendly fire" incidents.
3. Russia will use her electronic warfare capabilities to suppress satellite navigation, onboard radar systems and communications of warplanes attacking targets on Syrian territory in the regions over the waters of the Mediterranean Sea bordering with Syria.

This is a very flexible and elegant solution for the following reasons:

1. It establishes a de facto air exclusion zone over Syria, but not a de jure one. Thus, the Russians will have the flexibility to decide on a nation by nation and aircraft by aircraft basis which aircraft should be suppressed/engaged and which ones to only track and monitor. This will give Russia a very powerful negotiating position with all the actors of this war.
2. It goes without saying that while these new capabilities will be deployed in Syria in response to the Israeli actions, they will also dramatically boost the Syrian capabilities against any potential aggressors including the USA and US client states.
3. While the Russians have not indicated which automated air defense management system they plan to deliver to Syria, it is likely that this is one which is typically used to control the engagement of S-300 and Buk air defense systems, the Poliana D-4. The delivery of this system will dramatically increase the air defense capabilities of the Russian task force in Syria making it much harder for Neocon à la Bolton to target Russian forces.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who authorized the opening of Robert Mueller's 'Russiagate' investigation is resigning from his position, according to media reports.

Rosenstein verbally resigned to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Monday morning, Axios reported. Rosenstein's as-yet unconfirmed resignation came as he had been "expecting to be fired," claimed Axios' source.

The resignation also comes days after a New York Times report revealed that Rosenstein suggested secretly recording President Trump in the White House to build a case for invoking the 25th Amendment and removing Trump from office for being unfit. Rosenstein allegedly suggested the secret recording in April of last year, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Pakistan's leader Imran Khan warned India that his offer of friendship should not be seen as "weakness," while urging India to abandon "arrogance" to enable peace talks.

Pakistan's prime minister made the comments in response to what he branded India's "arrogant" decision on Friday to cancel a meeting between the countries' foreign ministers in New York on the sidelines of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

"I hope the Indian leadership will shun arrogance and hold (peace) talks with Pakistan," Khan said during his visit to the Indian city of Lahore.

He went on:

"Our offer of friendship should not be considered as our weakness. The friendship between Pakistan and India will help overcome poverty."

India had last week agreed to a meeting with Pakistan in the US capital after Khan wrote a letter to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi to ask him to resume talks for stability in the region.

But the Indian government U-turned on its decision on Friday over what is said was the "brutal" killing of three policemen in Kashmir at the hands of Hizbul Mujahideen militants.

Russia may take steps to prevent further incidents involving the Israeli Air Force jets and has all the capabilities to close Syrian airspace to Israeli military aircraft if it becomes necessary, a member of the Russian parliament's upper house's defense committee, Frants Klintsevich, told Sputnik on Sunday.

"The essence and meaning of our response is to completely eliminate the possibility of such incidents in the future. We, for example, have all the necessary resources to completely close the Syrian airspace for Israel, and this is only one of the options," Klintsevich said.

The evidence released by the Russian Defense Ministry on the circumstances of the Il-20 downing left no doubt that the Israeli Air Force was to blame for the tragedy, the lawmaker stressed, adding that it was impossible to challenge this conclusion "based on an impartial minute-by-minute analysis of the facts."

Italian Journalist Maurizio Blondet notes that France has adopted the Soviet Union's method of dealing with political dissidents.

Tyranny is institutionalized in the EU which has no regard for the opinions of the peoples whose governments signed away their liberties by submerging the identities of countries into a tyrannical European institution. Marine Le Pen opposes the decision of the French government to terminate the existence of France as a sovereign state by making France a mere province in a multinational state.

This is a liberation fight from the Soviet EU
by Maurizio Blondet

Certainly readers already know that the Prosecutor's Office of Nanterre has ordered that Marine Le Pen, secretary of the Rassemblement National (former FN) and parliamentary to the Assembly, be submitted to psychiatric examination. This, in the context of an indictment for "the dissemination of violent messages on the Internet, Article 706-47-1 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure". The MP committed the crime of posting photos of atrocities committed by ISIS Islamic terrorists: a Syrian soldier crushed by crawlers, the body of the beheaded journalist James Foley, a Jordanian pilot burned alive.

We must explain why. This happened in December 2015, when France was hit by the bloody attacks signed by Daesh. The journalist of the Jewish TV BFM-TV, Jean-Jacques Bourdin, dedicated the transmission to the following insinuation: the growth of the Front National is accompanied by the growth of jihadism, "the goal of Daesh is to push French society to the withdrawal of identity" and to vote for the Front.

Yesterday, there were two steps forward on the road to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. The lawyers for Christine Ford, she's the California woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of groping her at a party 37 years ago, and the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed that Ford would testify on Thursday. This represents a walk back for Chuck Grassley and makes one queasy at what else he may give away in order to propitiate the angry, hairy goddesses of #MeToo. The second item was that another person Ford had named as a witness, Leland Ingham Keyser, provided a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee. She said that a) she didn't know Brett Kavanaugh and b) she was never at a party like the one described by Ford. If you are keeping score, this makes four people-Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, Patrick Smyth, and Leland Keyser-who have denied this incident ever happened under penalty of perjury. The only person who has not made a statement under oath is...Christine Ford.

Now the Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel reports that the Washington Post knew of Keyser, they knew of her denial, and they refused to report it.

Robert Mueller's fishing crew was out trawling for Manafort, a blubbery swamp mammal valued for its lubricating oil when, by happenstance, a strange breed of porpoise called a Podesta got caught up in the net. Turns out it was a traveling companion of the Manafort. Back in 2014, the pair swam all the way to a little country called Ukraine via the Black Sea where the Podesta used some Manafort SuperLube on then-president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych.

The objective was to grease the wheel of NATO and the EU for Ukraine to become a member. But the operation went awry when Yanukovych got a better offer from the Eurasian Customs Union, a Russian-backed trade-and-security org. And the next thing you know, the US State Department and the CIA are all over the situation and, whaddaya know, the Maidan Square in Kiev fills up with screaming neo-Nazis and Mr. Yanukovych gets the bum's rush - and despite the major screw-up, the Manafort and the Podesta swim off with a cool few million in fees and return to the comforts of the swamp where they finally part ways.

A top Revolutionary Guards commander pledged the United States and Israel will see a "crushing and devastating response" to a military parade attack Tehran says they orchestrated last week.

The US and Israel are complicit in the deadly shooting at the military parade in the city of Ahvaz that claimed dozens of lives, Hossein Salami, deputy head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), said live on state television. The harsh statement came as bodies of those killed in the attack were laid to rest in Iran's southwestern city.

On September 22, Robert Bridge wrote about how an Israeli incursion into Syria that ended with the downing of a Russian IL-20 plane and fifteen crewmen was an incident that the Russian Federation's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said: "The actions of the Israeli military were not in keeping with the spirit of the Russian-Israeli partnership, so we reserve the right to respond."

And the Israelis are concerned, as they should be. After what they did, and their subsequent blame game, trying to pin the responsibility for this incident on the Syrian forces (which are backed by Russia), now the payback has arrived.

Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted on Monday she had misjudged her response to allegations of far-right sympathies against Germany's spymaster, after resolving a row over his redeployment that threatened to pull her government apart.

BfV intelligence agency head Hans-Georg Maassen's political views came under the microscope this month after he questioned the authenticity of video footage showing radicals hounding migrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz.

Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), their Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) sister party and the third coalition partner - the center-left Social Democracts (SPD) - agreed last week to transfer Maassen to a senior role in the Interior Ministry.