Kurdistan National Congress spokesman Selahattin Soro said that Turkey has plans for some military actions in neighboring countries.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was not complicit in carrying out the recent terror attack in Ankara, but the blast may be used by the Turkish government as a pretext for interfering in the foreign affairs of neighboring states, Kurdistan National Congress spokesman Selahattin Soro said Monday.

Turkish warplanes bombed camps belonging to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the north of Iraq early on Monday, Turkey's army has confirmed. The strikes come less than 24 hours after a car bomb in Ankara killed at least 37 people.

A total of 11 fighter jets were involved in the bombardment of the PKK positions. Some 18 targets were hit, including ammunition depots and shelters, the Turkish military said in a statement, as cited by Reuters.

I love this country. Not for what it's become, of course - a fascist police state with a rabidity and penchant for lashing out that can only be compared to the Third Reich. No, that's definitely my least favorite part about it. What I love is what it is conceptualized as, and what it ostensibly stands for: freedom, democracy, opportunity, a melting pot of cultures and civilizations.

Growing up, studying the history book version of America inspired me. Granted, we glazed over the Native American holocaust and lionized slave owners and oligarchs, but at the core there was an American mythos worth believing in: the right to be secure in our persons and property, the freedom to believe in and practice whatever religion we wanted, a 'free market' in which we could survive, thrive and prosper. In this America, we had the right to defend ourselves from violence, and to speak our minds when we thought there was something worth speaking about.

Sadly, that America doesn't exist, and worse - I doubt it ever did. Since its inception, America has been controlled by the money men. Those who have the most wealth also have the most power. They control and influence public opinion because they have the ability to talk louder than anyone else. They own the media. They buy politicians and legislation. Laws are selectively enforced based on whether or not the populace is aware that they've been violated, and even then this 'elite' usually get away with it. Bribery and corruption are nothing new - in fact, Citizens United legalized it to a whole new level by proclaiming that a corporation's ability to spend money on political campaigns could not be impugned because to do so is considered a 'violation of free speech' because, as everyone knows, corporations are the most important and privileged of all 'people'.

Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in Libya. Hillary Clinton's recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty.

The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a "victory lap."

"We came, we saw, he died!" she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature.

Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, "as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain."

US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring. As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, "the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as 'thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,' and 'kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant'."

Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world's largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.

But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with "the full spectrum of military operations required."

The Secretary of State's victory lap was indeed premature, if what we're talking about is the officially stated goal of humanitarian intervention. But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the Libyan war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.

With dozens of armed groups involved, the Russia-US brokered ceasefire in Syria was never going to be easy. But amazingly, the ceasefire is largely holding. Of course, there's always a few party poopers:

A Russia Defence Ministry center in Syria received reports on Saturday of Turkish shelling of Kurdish positions in Syria's Aleppo province, RIA news agency reported, while Turkey said it had been targeting Islamic State positions.

Were the "ISIS positions" in Turkey?

Britain has become the world's post-9/11 "mercenary kingpin" with hundreds of firms employing thousands of ex-military freebooters in a shadowy industry worth billions, a report by charity War on Want claims.

The report, titled 'Mercenaries Unleashed: The brave new world of private military and security companies,' examines the rise of the industry over the past 15 years. It argues that the time has come to ban mercenary firms and "end the privatization of war."

War on Want claims private military and security companies (PMSCs) are reaping massive profits from the war, instability and chaos which have accompanied the 'War on Terror.'

In a statement on the charity's website, executive director John Hillary said: "Private military contractors ran amok in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving a trail of human rights abuses in their wake."

Erdogan is playing a dangerous game in northern Syria

Russia has evidence that Turkish troops are on Syrian territory, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview broadcast on Sunday, accusing Turkey of a "creeping expansion" on its border with Syria.

The comments by Lavrov are the latest confrontation between Moscow and Ankara, after Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Turkish-Syrian border in November.

"Turkey has started to declare it has a sovereign right to create some safety zones on Syrian territory," Lavrov told Russian television channel Ren-TV. "According to our data, they have already 'dug themselves in' several hundred meters from the border in Syria. ... It's a sort of creeping expansion."

Lavrov also said that Russia would insist the United Nations invites Kurds to peace talks on the Syrian conflict despite Turkey's opposition.

Just as Reagan Learned to Love Big Government

Many promoters of peace, while not necessarily supporting him, do hope that a Donald Trump presidency would curb or maybe even end the hyper-active militancy of the American empire. They see glimmers of promise in Trump's foreign policy statements.

For example, while his Republican rivals vie with each other over who will most antagonize nuclear Russia, Trump talks about getting along with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump also veers off the GOP script when he characterizes the wars in Iraq and Libya as "yuge" mistakes (if not monumental crimes).

"Wouldn't it be nice if we could get along with the rest of the world?" he recently asked. Trump often sounds like an non-interventionist, and many hope he will govern like one too.

Of course it's all just campaign talk, which is never to be trusted. However, some of the cautiously hopeful seem to suspend skepticism in this case on the grounds that, unlike most peace-talking candidates, Trump is genuinely "anti-establishment," and so is more likely to chart an independent course as commander-in-chief.

Russia Defense Report: Russia's Anti-Missile Shield

Syrian Kurds are an important part of the country and should be allowed to express their opinion on the region's future at the Geneva talks, says Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy to Syria, adding that there is no 'plan B' if negotiations fail.

"The Syrian Kurds are an important component of the country, so we need to find a formula in which they are able to express an opinion on the constitution and the governance of the country," de Mistura told Swiss Le Temps newspaper on Saturday. He added that he has "a mandate to find the formulas ... that are as inclusive as possible."

In another interview published on Saturday, de Mistura said there is no 'plan B' if the peace negotiations fail in Geneva. "The plan B, as far as we can see, is just a continuation of a horrible conflict which will go on and on and on," de Mistura told Al Jazeera.

"And you know who will be the only victims? The Syrian people. And I don't think there is a real plan B except for pushing hard for this to go on into a successful outcome of a political solution according to the Geneva Communique."