Russian airstrikes have played a decisive role in aiding Syrian and Iraqi forces in their fight against ISIL, leaving the jihadist group with only several dozen bases in the two Arab countries, media reports said.

Syrian and Iraqi troops, supported by Russian air strikes in Syria, have continued to advance on Islamic State militants, leaving the jihadist group with just 34 bases in these two Arab countries, the Iranian news agency FARS quoted a media activist as saying.

"At present, ISIL only has 34 bases in Mosul, Raqqa, etc. which were many more in number," Mohammad Ali al-Hakim, Managing-Director of Iraq's al-Nakhil news agency, said.

According to him, the Islamic State may finally be destroyed in the foreseeable future. "The end of the ISIL which has been borne by the westerners is close," he said.

The argument that the U.S. and the west are finally undertaking the war Israel has been fighting for years is of course a major theme of pro-Israel commentary post Paris. Militant Israeli policies re Palestinian resistance are being offered as a role model to the west; and the Palestinian political party Hamas is being put on the same plane as ISIS - a longstanding propaganda claim of the Israeli prime minister, or as long as ISIS has been in the news.

Hillary Clinton echoed that point in her Council on Foreign Relations speech yesterday:

In September I laid out a comprehensive plan to counter Iranian influence across the region and its support for terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. We cannot view Iran and ISIS as separate challenges. Regional politics are too interwoven. Raising the confidence of our Arab partners and raising the costs to Iran for bad behavior will contribute to a more effective fight against ISIS.

And as we work out a broader regional approach, we should of course be closely consulting with Israel, our strongest ally in the Middle East

Clinton is surely mindful of the views of the big Democratic donor Haim Saban, who gave an interview yesterday saying Muslims must be subject to "more scrutiny," and that Clinton is "absolutely made of steel and she will take no baloney from no ISIS." Meanwhile on NPR, Andrea Bernstein defended Clinton's "cautiously hawkish" positions by saying that the Republicans are a lot more bellicose - so she can't be that bad.

If you're one of the millions of Americans who think Hillary Clinton would make a lousy president, then pat yourself on the back because she pretty much proved it yesterday. In a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton made it clear that if she's elected in 2016, she's going to drag the country straight to war. Invoking the same imagery as her ideological twin, George W. Bush, Clinton fulminated for more than an hour and a half on Syria, war, terrorism, war, no-fly zones, war, radical jihadism, war, and "metastasizing threats", whatever the heck those are. Oh, and did I mention war?

Seriously, while regretful Democrats can claim that they never thought Obama would turn out to be the disappointment he has been, the same can't be said about Clinton. Madame Secretary has a long pedigree and the bold print on the warning label is easy to read. There's simply no excuse for anyone to vote for a proven commodity like Hillary and then complain at some later date, that they didn't know what a scheming and hard-boiled harridan she really was. Clinton's hawkishness is part of the public record. It's right there for everyone to see. She voted for Iraq, she supported the Libya fiasco, and now she's gearing up for Syria. Her bloodthirsty foreign policy is just slightly to the left of John McCain and his looneybin sidekick, Lindsey Graham. Simply put: A vote for Clinton is a vote more-of-the-same death and destruction spread willy-nilly across the planet in the endless pursuit of imperial domination. It's that simple. Here's an excerpt from her speech:

"...let's be clear about what we're facing. Beyond Paris, in recent days, we've seen deadly terrorist attacks in Nigeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey, and a Russian civilian airline destroyed over the Sinai. At the heart of today's new landscape of terror is ISIS. They persecute religious and ethnic minorities, kidnap and behead civilians, murder children. They systematically enslave, torture, and rape women and girls. ISIS operates across three mutually reinforcing dimensions—a physical enclave in Iraq and Syria, an international terrorist network that includes affiliates across the region and beyond, and an ideological movement of radical jihadism. We have to target and defeat all three. And time is of the essence. ISIS is demonstrating new ambition, reach, and capabilities. We have to break the group's momentum, and then its back.".....

("A Conversation With Hillary Clinton", Council on Foreign Relations)

Close your eyes and think about "defenders of human rights". What image bubbles up from your subconscious? If you answered "Saudi Arabia", you probably represent one of the 115 countries that just passed a Saudi-proposed UN resolution condemning "Syrian human rights violations."

Yes, Saudi Arabia —the oasis of human dignity where Harry Potter fans (widely considered the greatest dangers to world peace) are dealt with accordingly — is leading the fight against Syrian violence caused by Saudi-funded terrorists. Here are the terrible details:

A resolution presented by Saudi Arabia was adopted by a vote of 115 to 15, with 51 abstentions.

China, Iran and Russia were among the countries that voted against the measure that now goes to the full General Assembly.

The resolution expresses "outrage" at the worsening violence that has left at least 250,000 dead and displaced more than 12 million people. It stressed the need for accountability and encouraged the UN Security Council to take action, noting that the International Criminal Court (ICC) could play a role. An attempt last year to refer Syria to the ICC for war crimes was blocked by Russia, Syria's ally, and China at the Security Council.

Presenting the resolution, Saudi Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi recalled images of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy who drowned during his family's flight from the war. "I appeal to you not to let Alan down. Do not kill him twice," said the Saudi ambassador to the assembly.

The debate over whether to allow Syrian refugees to settle in the US took a dark twist after a leading presidential candidate likened those fleeing the violence in the Middle East to "rabid dogs".

Republican Ben Carson told a campaign event in Mobile, Alabama, that allowing Syrian migrants into the US could put Americans at risk.

"If there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you're probably not going to assume something good about that dog," he said on Thursday, according to Reuters.

"By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly."


The US is riven by debate over whether or not to permit the entry of refugees fleeing Syria, which has suffered from the violence of more than four years of civil war.

A watchdog group found that 80 percent of Army contracts were for services already being provided by the government. The Navy and other agencies reported about 13 percent in contract services duplication, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In its November report, the GAO found that the Department of Defense (DOD), which is responsible for more than half of the federal government's discretionary spending, kept inaccurate records and duplicated government services when contracting.

Only federal employees can perform functions such as conducting criminal investigations, making policy and budget decisions, carrying out intelligence operations, making hiring decisions, and choosing supplies to be purchased, while contractors inherently support much of that work, the GAO said. The problem is that the Pentagon doesn't always adequately review which services are closely associated with government functions in order to mitigate risk and waste.

The GAO review began seven years ago following what the Office of Management and Budget called in 2011"uncontrolled growth under the prior administration [Bush Administration]," when one in six federal dollars was contracted out.

"[DOD] has continued to lack the means to reliably identify functions performed by contractors," the GAO report stated.

Similar to a heroin addict, Western nations have a destructive addiction which they are so dependent on, they appear unwilling to give it up. Funding radical terror organisations is the modus operandi of many prominent nations in NATO, with the US, UK and France, playing a prominent role. From the Afghan Mujahideen to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS), extremist groups have been used as geopolitical tools by the West for decades.

Over 120 people dead and hundreds injured, the tragic scenes in France have shocked many people in Europe. ISIS has claimed responsibility for terror attacks in other regions of the globe recently, including in Lebanon, where at least 44 people were brutally killed. Dabiq, the magazine of ISIS, has also just published a photo of parts of a homemade bomb that they claim was used in the atrocious terrorist attack on the Russian passenger plane in the Sinai Peninsula, which killed over 220 people.

The US' "war on terror" is a covert geopolitical project carried out under a fake counter-terrorism agenda, Canadian author Professor Michel Chossudovsky believes.

According to the renowned Canadian economist and author Michel Chossudovsky, Washington's widely-discussed "war on terror" is nothing less than a series of military and covert intelligence operations being undertaken simultaneously on different geographic locations.

"Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The US military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states," Professor Chossudovsky writes in his article for Global Research.

The Canadian author elaborates that the operations are carried out by the Western military alliance, while all the actions are coordinated "at the highest level of the military hierarchy."

This week on 'Behind the Headlines', we're interviewing former U.S. intelligence officer ‌Scott Rickard. Rickard is a linguist and veteran of the communications technology and national security industries. For three decades, he worked with national security and international service providers in Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Communications Security (COMSEC), and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), advising a number of governments and intelligence agencies on analyzing and prioritizing their intelligence collection efforts.

Rickard continues to monitor, corroborate, and communicate fact-based research and analysis of the international business environment, emerging technologies, and geopolitical developments. In recent years, he has been an outspoken critic of US foreign policy and blanket public surveillance, and has made a number of appearances on RT, Sputnik and PressTV.

Join us this Sunday 22 November 2015, from 2-4pm EST / 8-10pm CET for an insider's perspective on mass surveillance, the non-stop terror attacks, the stand-off between the U.S. and Russia, and more.

Running Time: 02:13:00

Download: MP3

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on Russia and the US to join their efforts to combat terrorism. He told the annual East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur that terrorists and ideology extremists must be "defeated in the name of humanity."

"In that regard, we need to unite. We need to show global solidarity to address the common enemy of ISIL, Daesh, some other extremists and terrorist groups," Ki-moon said, referring to Islamic State.

The UN Secretary-General stressed that he "highly commended the leadership of the Russian Federation together with the United States to address some of the root causes of terrorism," Reuters reported.

He said that the United Nations is currently assembling information and gathering ideas and experience from its member states. Early next year, the UN is going to present a "comprehensive plan of action to defeat violence and extremism," Ban said.