Mark Urban is the diplomatic and defence editor of BBC's Newsnight that goes by the strap-line "This is where the global struggle for peace and security gets incisive, informed, coverage"

He has just written and headlined with "US remains reluctantly tied to global security role" - categorized under US/Canada.

Urban's article starts with "America's military finds itself pulled in several directions - and even the $582bn (£403bn) defence budget rolled out earlier this month will not be enough to satisfy all of its needs. New challenges - from Russia and the so-called Islamic State (IS) group - are forcing the Pentagon to change its plans, and reopening old arguments about whether its allies are doing enough. One of the headlines to come out of the new budget was a quadrupling of spending on US military preparations to defend allies in Europe. When Nato boss, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, says the alliance is facing its "most challenging security environment in a generation", he is thinking principally of the challenge posed by a "newly assertive Russia".

A UN Security Council meeting is to be called at Russia's request on Friday to discuss Ankara's plans for a ground operation in Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said. Turkey's actions in the region are threatening Syrian sovereignty, Moscow said, adding it would table a resolution demanding its prevention. Moscow is concerned about the escalation of tensions on the Syrian-Turkish border, and "Turkey's announced plans to put boots on the ground in northern Syria," Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said on Friday, adding that the situation in the region is worrying because Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) fighters are entering Syria and creating terrorist bases there.

"It undercuts efforts to launch a political settlement in the Syrian Arab Republic," Zakharova said, announcing that Russia plans to call a Security Council meeting to discuss the situation. A draft resolution will include demands to "end any actions that undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria, that are at odds with UN Security Council resolution 2254, as well as [interfere] with the launch of the Syrian peace process." In December last year, the Security Council unanimously adopted the 2254 resolution that endorsed a road map for a peace process in the Middle Eastern country. The document, adopted by members of the International Syria Support Group, outlined a nationwide ceasefire to begin in the country in parallel with a political process.

Occupation is the greatest provocation, says Mustafa Barghouti, a human rights activist, Palestinian presidential candidate and Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

An Israeli soldier has been sentenced by a military court for torturing Palestinian prisoners with electric shocks. His actions were filmed on a cell phone. The Israeli Defense Force condemned the torture saying they're in violation of the IDF's code of conduct.

RT: Please give us your comment on this situation as a prominent defender of human rights.

Mustafa Barghouti: Unfortunately, during the last five months we've witnessed several crimes committed by the Israeli army, including the torture that has happened to this guy. This is not the first time torture has been practiced against Palestinian people. More than that, so many people have been killed in cold blood; they were assassinated in extrajudicial killings. Most of the 180 Palestinians who have been killed during the last five months have been killed in a format of extrajudicial killing and there is no justification for that.

The whole world watched two days ago how a young girl, no more than 15 years old, was shot and killed and was left on the ground bleeding to death, and when some people tried to approach her, they were attacked by the Israeli army - including a handicapped man who was thrown from his wheelchair. This is unacceptable behavior and torture is only one reflection of this racist and inhuman behavior of the Israeli army.

The head of Russia's Investigative Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, has called for the creation of an international coalition of states to fight the "dictatorship" imposed by the US on the rest of the world, and to reject the use the US dollar as a reserve currency.

Speaking at a roundtable in Moscow, Bastrykin said that the world urgently needed a new system of checks and balances that would allow equal representation of all nations on the international political arena.

He said an alliance of countries was needed which could act in concert as "a feasible pole to counter the dictatorship imposed by the Americans together with their Western allies," according to the minutes of the roundtable published on the Investigative Committee's website.

Bastrykin added that America's current geopolitical dominance is based on its financial might, which in turn can be explained by "the uncontrolled and non-guaranteed" emission of dollars and the "all-enveloping" expansion of the currency. As that's the case, Bastrykin believes the future coalition of nations should, as a primary measure, ensure the gradual removal of US dollars from their foreign currency reserves, followed by a total refusal to use the dollar as a reserve currency.

"It is against common logic to financially support the country that is using these same resources against our interests," he noted.

THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA, In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and the Merciful, (Illegible), MINISTRY OF DEFENSE, Chairmanship of the General Staff

Number:
Date: 6/5/1437 H
Enclosures:
SEAL: TOP SECRET

Armed Forces Committee for Intelligence and Security, (Coded letters)
Subject: Review of going to war in Syria

His Highness, Heir Apparent, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Minister of the Interior,

We are experts within the Saudi Armed Forces and because of our commitment to (our) responsibility for the faith, the king, and country, we inform Your Highness that "Operation Decisive Storm" has not accomplished all the goals desired because the Arab forces were unable to perform their tasks and, thus following up on that, taking into consideration the complicated situation in the region, sending forces to Syria is going to result in convulsing our national stability followed by extremely dangerous consequences. Thus, this will need more study. We hope Your Highness will adopt what you see as appropriate for the national interest.

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump wrote an Op-Ed in support of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques. It's not the first time he's spoken in favor of torture. While some fellow candidates agree with him, others do not.

Waterboarding was an "enhanced interrogation technique" employed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But the practice was eventually banned by the George W. Bush administration ‒ after it simulated drowning for its prisoners for years ‒ because waterboarding was deemed to be torture.

Most Republican candidates believe in some version of enhanced interrogation technique, while both Democratic candidates disagree.

On Monday, USA Today published an Op-Ed written by Trump about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which include practices such as electric shocks, dogs, nudity, hypothermia, mock executions and more. All of those techniques are specifically banned by the US Army Field Manual.

"Though the effectiveness of many of these methods may be in dispute, nothing should be taken off the table when American lives are at stake," Trump wrote. "The enemy is cutting off the heads of Christians and drowning them in cages, and yet we are too politically correct to respond in kind."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in a phone conversation called for resolving the crisis in Syria, the Kremlin press service said on Friday.

"During the conversation, interest was shown in resolving the crisis in Syria, ensuring stability and security in the entire Middle East region and Northern Africa," the press service said.

Putin confirmed the invitation for Saudi Arabia's king to "visit Russia any convenient time."

US warplanes hit an Islamic State camp in the Libyan city of Sabratha early on Friday, according to a US military spokesman. The airstrike killed as many as 40 people.

The mayor of Sabratha, Hussein al-Thwadi, told Reuters that the planes struck at 3:30am local time, hitting a building in the Qasr Talil district, where foreign workers were living. He said 41 people were killed and six others wounded.

Earlier a Western official told the NYT that the strike targeted a senior Tunisian operative linked to terrorist attacks in Tunisia last year. Intelligence officials are working to determine whether Noureddine Chouchane, a major Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) facilitator, was actually killed in the strike.

The Washington neocons have managed to muck things up in Syria blurring and confusing boundaries between who's who amongst warring factions in its now half decade old regime change proxy war that the US has been losing. With the US Empire's agenda to destabilize every potential threat to US-Israel hegemony in the region, the latest highly disturbing developments unfolding within this last week in Syria paint a very grim yet clear picture of America's revised regional strategy. The key lens by which to analyze and understand what the US Empire does geopolitically in the Middle East, North Africa or anywhere has everything to do with maintaining US-Israel regional hegemony and its obsessive, relentless strategy opposing the greatest threat to America's unipolar global hegemony - Russia, China and Iran. Underlying this neocon insanity behind US foreign policy's global agenda has been destabilization of the entire world through chaos and destruction militarily achieved through either direct Empire invasion-occupation war or more recently indirectly through the latest installment of Empire's manufactured war on terror deploying its created ISIS-al Qaeda terrorists as proxy war allies doing Empire's blood-soaked bidding by proxy. But when that strategy fails as it has in Syria recently, now the neocons are resorting to sending in its Islamic nation state puppets Turkey and Saudi Arabia as yet more proxy war allies to do yet more of their dirty work.

Consistent with control over the geopolitics chessboard is the imperialistic self-interest of controlling the earth's money, drug and oil supply also designed to promote war while isolating and weakening America's manufactured cold war 2 enemies of the East - Russia and Iran - that includes reversing a thwarted US Empire pipeline strategy. Assad's rejection in 2010 of Qatar's proposed gas pipeline through Syria to Turkey in an effort to supply Europe and seriously hamper Russia's export revenue made Assad vulnerable as declared enemy #1 in the Middle East to both the West and Arab Gulf States. Further making himself an even higher profile target was choosing the proposed gas pipeline that would be the largest in the region shared with its strongest ally and neighbor Iran and Iraq. Loyalty to Iran long deemed an outcast by the US-Israeli-Saudi axis-of-evil sealed Assad's fate for renewed Western targeted regime change skullduggery. The so called internal protests against the Assad government were quickly escalated into civil war in 2011 by US imperialistic interests further aggravated by US deploying an influx of foreign mercenary proxy terrorists.

While terrorists rage in Syria and beyond, with many countries trying to unite their efforts in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Ankara's blame game looks more like an untimely joke, Moscow says

"Mr. Davutoglu [Turkish Prime Minister], are you serious or is it just the way you joke? If it's a joke, then I think at a moment like this everyone, and especially Turkey, should be busy not with irony or sarcasm, but rather with concrete actions to stand against terrorism. I think that's what Turkish people are expecting from you,"Russia's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said at a Moscow briefing on Thursday.

"Statements by Turkish officials alleging that Russia secretly supports IS are absolutely unacceptable," she added.

Earlier this week, Turkey's PM Ahmet accused Moscow of "behaving like a terrorist organization" and put its anti-terror actions in Syria in one line with IS offensive in the region.