George Szamuely is a Hungarian-born scholar and Senior Research Fellow at London's Global Policy Institute. He lives in New York City. I spoke to him about escalating hostilities on Russia's Ukrainian and Black Sea borders and about Exercise Trident Juncture, NATO's massive military exercise on Russian borders which ended just as the latest hostilities began.

Ann Garrison: George, the hostilities between Ukraine, NATO, and Russia continue to escalate in the Sea of Azov, the Kerch Strait, and the Black Sea. What do you think the latest odds of a shooting war between NATO and Russia are, if one hasn't started by the time this is published?

George Szamuely: Several weeks ago, when we first talked about this, I said 60 percent. Now I'd say, maybe 70 percent. The problem is that Trump seems determined to be the anti-Obama. Obama, in Trump's telling, "allowed" Russia to take Crimea and to "invade" Ukraine. Therefore, it will be up to Trump to reverse this. Just as he, Trump, reversed Obama's policy on Iran by walking away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. So expect ever-increasing US involvement in Ukraine.

AG: NATO's Supreme Commander US General Curtis M. Scaparrotti is reported to have been on the phone with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko "offering his full support." Thoughts on that?

GS: There has been a proxy war within Ukraine since 2014, with NATO backing Poroshenko's Ukrainian government and Russia backing the dissidents and armed separatists who speak Russian and identify as Russian in Ukraine's southeastern Donbass region. But in the Kerch Strait the hostilities are between Russia and Ukraine, with NATO behind Ukraine.

A shooting war will begin if it escalates to where NATO soldiers shoot and kill Russian soldiers or vice versa. Whoever shoots first, the other side will feel compelled to respond, and then there'll be a war between Russia and NATO or Russia and a NATO nation.

We don't know whether NATO would feel compelled to respond as one if Russians fired on soldiers of individual NATO nations-most likely UK soldiers since the UK is sending more of its Special Forces and already has the largest NATO military presence in Ukraine. Russia could defeat the UK, but if the US gets involved, all bets are off.

Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz has asked SaraACarter.com to post her letter to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in support of her friend and colleague retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who will be sentenced on Dec. 18. The Special Counsel's Office has requested that Flynn not serve any jail time due to his cooperation with Robert Mueller's office. Based on new information contained in a memorandum submitted to the court this week by Flynn's attorney, Sullivan has ordered Mueller's office to turn over all exculpatory evidence and government documents on Flynn's case by mid-day Friday. Sullivan is also requesting any documentation regarding the first interviews conducted by former anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka -known by the FBI as 302s- which were found to be dated more than seven months after the interviews were conducted on Jan. 24, 2017, a violation of FBI policy, say current and former FBI officials familiar with the process. According to information contained in Flynn's memorandum, the interviews were dated Aug. 22, 2017.

Letter from Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Griz

The Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan. December 5, 2018 U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
333 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20001

Re: Sentencing of Lt. General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.)

Dear Judge Sullivan:

I am submitting my letter directly since Mike Flynn's attorney has refused to submit it as well as letters submitted by other individuals. I feel you need to hear from someone who was an FBI Special Agent who not only worked with Mike, but also has personally witnessed and reported unethical & sometimes illegal tactics used to coerce targets of investigations externally and internally.

About Myself and FBI Career

For 16 years, I proudly served the American people as a Special Agent working diligently on significant terrorism cases which earned noteworthy results and fostered substantial interagency cooperation. Prior to serving in the FBI I was a Juvenile Probation Officer in Camden, NJ. Currently, I am a Senior Information Security Metrics and Reporting Analyst with Discover Financial Services in the Chicago Metro area. I have recently been named as a Senior Fellow to the London Center for Policy Research.

Washington has absolutely no say in the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline deal, and pressuring Germany into dumping the project equates to meddling in other nations' domestic affairs, Senator Konstantin Kosachev said.

The calls for Berlin to halt the pipeline's construction are "blatant and brazen interference into the affairs of its sovereign partners," something Washington "has no right to do," the lawmaker wrote on social media on Sunday.

The Nord Stream 2 project is designed to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The US Department of State earlier urged Berlin "to heed the concerns of the many neighbors whose security will be damaged by this pipeline."

The BBC is desperate in its quest to 'find' the dreaded Kremlin hand behind the French protests, messages obtained by Russian media indicate. They reveal attempts by one of its journalists to find any trace of Russian involvement.

A series of screenshots, purporting to show a conversation between BBC Russia journalist Olga Ivshina and a stringer working in France, was published by RIA Novosti on Sunday.

In it, the journalist first asks about Moscow's general involvement in the protests, but the stringer replied that no Russians were actually seen during the demonstrations. Ivshina, however, did not give up, since uncovering even the slightest Russian involvement would apparently do the trick. The journalist was bursting with ideas, one of the screenshots suggests.

For 5 years Ukraine has bamboozled supporters by using "independent" researchers like Bellingcat that work with Ukraine's Intel to fabricate its innocence.

On November 25th, the Kerch incident happened, worsening the West's relationship with Russia ahead of the G-20 Meeting in Argentina.

Seemingly right on cue, Russian planners couldn't find anything better to do than cause another major international incident right in front of the entire world. They did this even as Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump. The formal meeting that never happened was canceled because of Ukraine's hyper histrionics.

Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt Volker, wasted no time getting on Ukraine's already crashing wagon by citing Bellingcat's conclusion that the Ukrainian ships "may have been" fired on in international waters. Bellingcat suspects the Russian ships may have been 500 yards outside of their territory. This flaccid statement by Bellingcat is all Volker and Ukraine found to stand behind. Volker is undeterred even though the Bellingcat report's only value is to spin another nut into Ukraine's InfoWar machine.

Bellingcat is a western based arm of Ukrainian Intel and InfoWar. Bellingcat OSINT school attendance can be cross-referenced against people from Ukraine and the various Diasporas supporting a nationalist Ukraine or Syria. When Ukrainian supporters at the seminars are multiplied by a per seat value, we can know exactly who built Bellingcat's reputation and how Bellingcat receives financing.

When Bellingcat's OSINT results are looked at against Ukrainian Intel, Bellingcat is anti-American, anti-Democracy, against Christianity, against free-speech, support Ukraine's Bandera nationalists and ISIS.

When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.

But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation's oil industry.

In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country's largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.

The campaign's main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards - that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation - clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.

"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration's proposed rules incorporate similar logic.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday China should free two Canadian citizens who were detained this week after authorities in Canada arrested a senior Chinese technology executive on a U.S. extradition warrant.

Pompeo's comments were the first by a senior U.S. official on the arrests, which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said could escalate a growing trade conflict between China and the United States.

"The unlawful detention of two Canadian citizens is unacceptable," Pompeo told reporters after talks in Washington with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. "They ought to be returned ... We ask all nations of the world to treat other citizens properly."

Canadian officials were granted consular access on Friday to one of the two detainees in China and were still trying to contact the second, the Foreign Ministry said.

China detained the two - businessman Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat and an adviser with the International Crisis Group (ICG) - after Canadian police arrested Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, on Dec 1.

A particularly scurrilous op-ed appeared in the pages of the Washington Post accusing the Syrian government of detaining, torturing, then executing an American citizen, Layla Shweikani.

Considering US attempts to establish various pretexts to justify its ongoing military occupation of Syria and its attacks on Syrian forces - such an accusation could dangerously escalate the conflict if not checked and exposed.

The Accusation

The op-ed titled, "Assad's regime killed an American - and no one seems to care," written by Jason Rezaian - arrested, tried, and convicted of espionage in Iran - begins by claiming:

Last month the U.S. government confirmed that an American citizen had died in Syrian captivity. Sources concluded that Layla Shweikani, a U.S. citizen with Syrian roots, had been tortured and then executed.

The article claims that the Syrian government's civil registry recorded her death in late 2016. Claims that she died in Syrian government custody come from James Jeffery, the US special envoy for Syria Engagement, but the factual basis of this claim was not provided in the article, nor during recent testimony (video) provided by Jeffery to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Palestinian and Israeli officials were oddly united in expressing bitter disappointment in Australia's 'half-way' decision to recognize West Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, and the move also faced criticism at home.

Canberra is to open a defense and trade office in Jerusalem after it formally recognized West Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Saturday. Relocating the country's embassy, however, will only take place after a two-state solution is reached. Until then, Australia will hold off on its decision to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister immediately rejected and condemned the decision, accusing Morrison of a "total bias" towards Israel and seeking to "appease the Zionist lobby" in Australia. "The recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel's capital must be accompanied by recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine," Riad al-Maliki said. The same sentiment was shared by PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi who accused the Australian leadership of "using Palestinian rights to bribe the Zionist lobby to gain its support in the election."

American spy planes often circulate along Syria's borders, especially close to Russia's Hmeymim air base and naval base in Tartus, which houses the Russian Navy and serves as a logistics centre.

A US P-8A Poseidon plane, developed to detect enemy ships and submarines, has been detected flying along the Syrian coast above waters that were closed for drills by the Russian Navy, according to an aviation enthusiast's data from radars.

The plane was circulating for about an hour 30 kilometres away from the Syrian coast, where Russia's Hmeymim airbase and naval base in Tartus are located.