Mr. Putin is tackling corruption, whereas his predecessor embodied it. But you wouldn't know it from the Western press

I love Russia, but let's not sugarcoat things.

After the widespread sociopathy of the 1990s—when people had to break all rules just to feed their families, and it was not unknown even for priests to steal from their flocks—a too-high proportion of the Russian population remains in a state of going through each day with little thought other than how to cheat and defraud its fellow man. Yet it is also a fact that you cannot lock up everyone (Всех не посадишь, as the Russians say) or you would have no country left.

The Kremlin's solution has been to make conspicuous examples of some, while creating parallel structures to work around corrupt or incompetent state bodies and officials.

Probably the most prominent example of such a structure is the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, commonly known by its Russian initials, SK or SK RF, or less commonly by the acronym, Sledkom.

The SK traces its history to 2007—when authority to make criminal charges was taken away from Russia's Prosecutor General—and has existed in its current form since early 2011.

Today, the Office of the Prosecutor General is responsible for prosecutions only. It is the SK that investigates crimes and decides whom to bring to trial and on what charges.

Since it was brought out from under the Prosecutor General and made into an independent body reporting only to the President, the SK has been at the very center of the Kremlin's anticorruption drive.

But why was the authority to indict—representing the most fundamental procedure in the exercise of any state's power—taken away from the Prosecutor General? What's the use in a prosecutor who can't bring charges?

To illustrate the answers, we borrow from the renowned Russian opposition figure, Aleksei Naval'nyi (commonly spelled Navalny in the U.S.), and his Foundation for the Fight Against Corruption.

Russia's Defense Ministry will unveil data to mass media outlets next week about the weapons and training Syrian gunmen in Turkey, the head of the Russian National Defense Management Center said on Wednesday.

"We will provide you with the information on the amount of weapons, components of explosive substances and the training of gunmen on Turkey's territory next week," Mikhail Mizintsev said.

According to the official, about 2,000 militants, more than 120 metric tons of ammunition and some 250 vehicles have been redeployed from Turkish territory to Syria over the past week.

Saudi Arabia has used cluster bombs many times before, but this is the first time that it is using it against its own population in a desprate move to stop the huge advances made by the Yemeni forces inside the kingdom in recent days.

The Yemeni army and popular forces have frequently crossed the border captured the Saudi military bases and outposts, ruined the military sites and returned home in the last few months and after the Riyadh-led coalition refrained from stopping its air raids on residential areas in Yemen's cities.

But, after months of coalition intensified air raids on civilian areas, the Yemeni forces changed strategy and warned that they would start ground assaults on Saudi territories to force Riyadh [to] stop the massacre.

The new strategy was put into effect on Sunday, when Yemen's army and popular forces crossed the border and captured several key military bases in three provinces in Southern Saudi Arabia near the border.

The Russian Defense Ministry has followed through with their promise to release evidence of Turkey's involvement with funding ISIS via the illegal oil trade. Video and graphics below.

Moscow is satisfied by Bashar Assad's government and opposition forces a conditional ceasefire agreement under UN aegis in al-Waer, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Moscow is satisfied with a ceasefire agreement between the Syrian government and opposition fighters in one of the districts of Homs, Syria's third largest city, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Bashar Assad's government and opposition forces have reportedly reached a conditional ceasefire agreement under UN aegis in al-Waer, a Homs city district that has been under government siege since 2012.

"Moscow welcomes reports of the [ceasefire] agreement in al-Waer district in Homs," the ministry said in a statement.

"We believe that such steps may herald a comprehensive truce in Syria with active role played by the United Nations, as well as promote sustainable peace dialogue between the government and the opposition, including its armed wing that opposes terrorism," the statement said.

At least 120 natives of Kosovo have returned home during the last few years after taking part in the ongoing hostilities in Syria on the side of Daesh (ISIL), according to local police reports.

Milovan Drecun, chairman of the Serbian parliamentary Committee on Kosovo-Metohija, told Sputnik that these former militants may establish ties with local political extremists, thus further exacerbating the current volatile situation in Pristina. He pointed out that ties already exist between the jihadists and certain Albanian organized crime groups, as well as former militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) - a terrorist group that was officially disbanded but still exists.

"These ties were established back in the 1990s, after Osama bin Laden visited Albania," Drecun said. "In the meantime, radical Islamists strengthened their position in Kosovo, even gaining a certain degree of independence. We know about their contacts with the former commanders of the KLA and Kosovo Protection Corps as well as with members of Drenica Group (Drenicka grupa), a criminal organization run by Hashim Thaci."

Drecun added that on numerous occasions, he has warned about the existence of a well-organized, trained and supplied 'base' of radical Islamism, jihadism and terrorism in the Balkans. So far, however, this 'base' was mostly used as a source of recruits for the terrorist groups.

"The presence of former Daesh militants in Balkans is a potential security threat and hints at the possibility of terrorist attacks and suicide bombings," Drecun said.

I often think about how it must have been for those that resisted in the past, wondering if they also felt as if revolution was at their door. That they were on the peak of something different, closer to the freedom they so desperately wanted.

I impatiently wait for liberation, becoming more nihilistic with every co-optation and fizzled-out uprising, dreaming of the day when taking the streets is an every day norm where escalated tactics are more than just a cat and mouse game with cops. For selfish reasons I feel like things are moving too slow, I want this burden of fear to be freed from my soul, and I want it now.

As the state continues to build it's arsenal against the resistance and create more authoritarian agencies to stalk us. I wonder how long it is going to take for us to move away from a position of defense towards a more proactive stance against an increasingly more powerful fascistic state.

I find myself debating with people often on whether or not what we're living under is even really Fascism, "we still have a free press" they say, "you're not locked up in jail or murdered for your political ideas" they say, "how can this be fascism?" they ask. Now insert some WWI or WWII historical fact here and if one cannot prove that America is doing that exact thing, in this exact way, then we are not of course living under a fascist regime. Despite however the fact that in this country we are more surveilled than the populace in Nazi Germany, that America, after the war, recruited and adopted many of the Nazi's all-star players, many of them top scientists and researchers.

And sure, I haven't been imprisoned for the things I write or say - yet, but the state is carefully collecting and storing everything from phone calls to emails for later use. We've already seen cases of people being arrested for their Facebook or Twitter statuses - free speech ain't so free after all. Let's be clear though, the media is owned by a rich minority that is used as a complete propaganda tool for the state. The function of the state at this point is to serve corporate white supremacist interests both here and abroad. To do this they need Fascism and the force of the police state.

Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, urged the Iraqi government to take robust action to stop the recruitment and use of children by all parties in the current armed conflict and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice.

Close to 1,400 boys and girls were abducted by Islamist militants in Iraq over the past four years, with hundreds more killed and maimed in ongoing hostilities, a UN children's rights envoy said Wednesday.

Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, said in a statement that militants from Islamic State (ISIL, or Daesh in the Arab world) - a terror group outlawed in many countries, including Russia - used kidnapped children as soldiers and sex slaves.

The UN documented more than 3,000 child casualties between January, 1 2011 and June, 30 2015, the envoy said, adding that attacks by ISIL and al-Qaeda accounted for over a half of those casualties.

Since the start of international involvement in Iraq in 2014, the UN began to receive worrisome reports of children being maimed and killed in airstrikes and shelling, Zerrougui's statement continued.

Ever since the U.S. bombing campaign over Syria that allegedly targeted ISIS began months ago, many Americans have been increasingly confused by the American impotence against the terrorist organization while the Russians have managed to decimate the jihadists after only a few weeks of steady bombing.

Since the United States has demonstrated time and time again its ability to bomb an entire country into the Stone Age, the capabilities of the U.S. Air Force should not be in question. Thus, either ISIS is a congerie of Supermen and special forces fighters (disproven by the effectiveness of Russian bombing) or the ineffectiveness of the US airstrikes are intentional.

This American malfeasance, however, is more than mere incompetence or laziness. As I have written on a number of occasions, the American bombing campaign, for what it's worth, has been focused on Syrian civilian and Syrian military infrastructure.

A special clean-up operation from November 26 to 28 against Boko Haram fighters in the border area with Nigeria neutralized more than 100 jihadists of Boko Haram, according to Cameroon's Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo.

Cameroon forces have killed over 100 members of the Boko Haram radical Islamist group, while releasing almost 900 hostages, Cameroon's Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said Wednesday.

"A special clean-up operation from November 26 to 28 against Boko Haram fighters in the border area with Nigeria neutralized more than 100 jihadists," Assomo said on national radio, according to South Africa's The Citizen newspaper.

A number of weapons, munitions and Islamic State (ISIL, or Daesh in Arabic) flags were seized during the operation, the defense minister added. The sweep took place in a few towns along the border with Nigeria.

Boko Haram, which operates mainly in northern Nigeria, has also been active in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon. All of these West African states have waged a counter-terrorist campaign against the group. The extremist group pledged allegiance to ISIL, outlawed in Russia, in March. Nigeria has been identified as a primary location for extremism by the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). Cameroon has been added to GTI's list of countries that experienced at least 500 terror-related deaths in 2015.