There is today a lot of indignation in "western" media over the Russian air campaign in Syria. One, two, three ... hospitals were bombed! And schools! An the rebels lost more villages! Barrel bombs! Cluster bombs! One must ask how many of these "hospitals" were really hospitals and not just quarters for Jihadi "rebels". From the videos that were published I could identify only one destroyed building that might have been a real hospital. But as ever, no medical equipment was visible in the debris. Could this probably arranged media assault be the preparation for some new false flag stunt or some other planned escalation?

Hardly any mentions was made today about continued Turkish shelling of Kurdish towns in Syria. As soon as the Syrian artillery will be near the border, in a week or so, such shelling will be answered and the situation will then escalate very fast.

The Russians promised that the The "Gates of hell" will be open in the coming months in Syria. The current massive Russian bombing is the beginning of that campaign. "Rebels" running away from a town due to bombing are not able to kill the Syrian soldiers that then enter that town. Houses and infrastructure can be rebuilt but dead soldiers cannot be resurrected. That is the simple rule that now guides the Syrian government campaigns. There are no hints yet of how exactly the liberation of Aleppo province, rebel-held parts of Aleppo city and in Idleb will proceed. There is a bigger campaign plan behind it but it is not yet visible.

Visible though is the Syrian plan of the Race to Raqqa against the Islamic State.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Russia's Chechen Republic, has said that the latest actions by pro-Western military forces in Syria show that in reality they do not intend to fully destroy ISIS and return power to the legitimate government of the country.

Kadyrov issued the comment Monday, soon after news agencies reported about planned military exercises by the Saudi-led anti-terrorist coalition, which includes over 20 Muslim nations. "We cannot exclude the possibility that by these exercises they are preparing themselves for active operations in Syria," the Chechen leader said in an Instagram post.

"But the [real] goals and tasks of this coalition lie on the surface. They want to prevent the full defeat of the 'Iblis State' and the restoration of peace in the region," Kadyrov said. He used the expression "Iblis State," or "Devil State," referring to the Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIL and ISIS. Such a replacement has been proposed and promoted by Russian imams, who noted that using the word "Islamic" to describe terrorists was insulting to their faith.

"The plans of the authors of Middle Eastern wars and overthrows do not include the full liquidation of IS and the strengthening of Bashar Assad's power," Kadyrov wrote. "But they will have to put up with the fact that the rules of the game are now dictated not by the West and not by the United States."

The investigation conducted by police to investigate claims of sexual abuse by high-profile establishment figures does not have enough evidence to prosecute any of the alleged offenders, the Guardian reports.

However, the operation still believes that its central witness, known only as 'Nick', is still credible and says it has found evidence to back up his claims, the newspaper states.

Nick's testimony relates to the years between 1975 and 1984, and has implicated well-known members of the establishment, including Lords Bramall and Brittan, who were not charged but whose reputations suffered from being part of the scandal.

Information given to the police by Nick, who sparked an investigation almost 15 months ago, still has the potential to trigger new investigations, detectives say, and they believe more witnesses could come forward to help verify the claims.

Under the feudal mode of production, peasants were often allowed to cultivate plots of land for themselves on a rental basis. However, those tenant farmers rarely succeeded in becoming landowners in their own rights because a major share of what they harvested was taken away by landlords as rent, often leaving them with a bare subsistence amount of what they produced. When the harvest was poor, they incurred debt. If peasants were unable to pay off their debts, they could find themselves reduced to the condition of serfs or slaves.

Today, under conditions of market dominance by parasitic finance capital, a similar relationship can be detected between the powerful financial oligarchs (as feudal lords of our time), on the one hand, and the public at large (as peasant population of today), on the other. In the same manner as the landed aristocracy of times past extracted rent by virtue of monopolistic ownership of land, so today the financial oligarchy extracts interest and other financial charges by virtue of having concentrated the major bulk of national resources in their hands in the form of finance capital.

The Marxist term wage-slaves refers to those who, lacking capital or means of production, have only their labor power to sell to make a living. This describes the vast majority of people in today's capitalist societies whose sole means of subsistence is the sale of their capacity to work. "Just as the feudal-era serf had no choice but to enslave himself and his family to the manor-house lord, the modern-day serf must indenture himself to banks to own a car or home or buy a college education" [1].

In the latest edition of her book, Occupy Money, Professor Margrit Kennedy shows that today between 35 percent and 40 percent of all consumer spending is appropriated by the financial sector: bankers, insurance companies, non-bank lenders/financiers, bondholders, and the like [2]. Obviously, this means that, as Ellen Brown points out: "By taking banking back . . . governments could regain control of that very large slice (up to 40 per cent) of every public budget that currently goes to interest charged to finance investment programs through the private sector" [3].

A torrent of familiar propaganda has flooded the airwaves as the imminent collapse of Washington and its regional allies' proxy terrorist forces in Syria approaches. Predicated on "humanitarian concerns,"global audiences are reminded of the torrent of lies, fabrications, and deceit that preceded NATO's military intervention in Libya - a military intervention that has since left the North African nation utterly destroyed, perpetually divided, and large swaths of its territory under the control of Al Qaeda and the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS).

Virtually all headlines across the West now feature dramatic images of refugees, and children in particular, used for propaganda purposes to suggest the urgent need for Western military intervention.

Data has been published for the first time in Ukraine detailing the reactions of Ukrainian police and armed forces personnel stationed in Crimea at the time of the Maidan coup in February 2014 and the secession vote in Crimea one month later. The information was reported in the Ukrainian news outlet Interfax.com.ua on Feb 5, 2016.

Interfax reports the findings of a Rada (parliamentary) committee investigating the circumstances of the secession. The committee says that of the approximately 2,300 Ukrainian national police (SBU) personnel who were stationed in Crimea at the time, only 215 remained loyal to Kyiv.

Of the app. 20,320 armed forces members deployed in Crimea, 6,000 returned to Ukraine. The remainder, a large majority, pledged allegiance to the new, Republic of Crimea and the armed forces of Russia.

Crimea seceded from Ukraine and joined the Russian Federation after an overwhelming majority of the population (some 97 per cent of the 80 per cent who voted) approved the measure in a referendum on March 16, 2014.

The number of civilians killed or injured in Afghanistan in 2015 was the highest in the last seven years amid increased fighting between pro-government forces and insurgent groups, including the Taliban, the United Nations said in its annual report.

According to the UN's 2015 Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, the total number of civilian casualties recorded in the last year amounted to more than 11,000, including more than 3,500 deaths and almost 7,500 injuries.

"This report records yet another rise in the number of civilians hurt or killed. The harm done to civilians is totally unacceptable," Nicholas Haysom, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of the UNAMA, said in a press release.

The North Korean state is routinely mocked in the West for engaging in hyperbole and bombast. Ironically, the Western reaction to its latest satellite launch is a carnival of knee-jerk hysteria and hyperbole. But all the bluster has conveniently given Washington an opportunity to proceed with its global missile shield plans. That is far more destabilizing to international security than any alleged North Korean violation.

In an interview this week on CBS, US President Obama repeated denunciations of North Korea's rocket launch into outer space last Sunday, which Pyongyang claimed was for the purpose of putting an observation satellite into orbit.

Obama said: "I think we have been concerned about North Korea's behavior for a while. This is an authoritarian regime. It's provocative. It has repeatedly violated UN resolutions, tested and produced nuclear weapons and now they are trying to perfect their missile launch system".

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond lambasted North Korea, saying its actions "continue to present a threat to regional and international security".

Within hours of the satellite launch by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the US and its South Korean ally unveiled their plans to install the Pentagon's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system. The system is designed for intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as high as 200 kilometers. It is part of the global "missile shield" network that Washington is pushing elsewhere in Europe.

Original by Aleksandr Kots and Dmitriy Steshin published by Komsomolskaya Pravda; translation by J.Hawk

Aleppo is Syria's biggest city and its industrial heart. The proximity to Turkey and, of course, to sea ports, used to be a positive factor, but during the last five years it was the city's bitter misfortune. Contrary to rumors, the road between Damascus and Aleppo turned out to be comparatively safe, and these days it is under strict control. But one still had to make a few detours to bypass territory held by the al-Nusra front. One part of the route runs right along the frontline with ISIS, the Raqqa province.

The Islamic Republic declared that it is moving away from the US dollar for use in trades and that Tehran welcomes replacing dollar with other currencies.

According to Shana, Iran's official news agency, Safar-Ali Karamati, Deputy director of International Affairs for Marketing and Crude Oil Operation in the state-owned National Iranian Oil Co, stated that Iran's "top priority" is "to receive cash and oil demands in euro... Because of their [European Union] single monetary unit, European customers have no problem to pay for crude oil deals in euro". Two of the Iranian officials in the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Industries and Mines told me that Iran offers several other methods of payment, rather than the dollar, for its foreign trades, exports and imports.

What are the reasons behind such a significant monetary move? Why is Iran moving away from the US right after the nuclear deal was reached? And what are the implications of such actions?