We're about to be plunged into a new oil war in the Middle East, this one with a possible nuclear dimension. Wars for control of oil have been instigated for more than a century since the dawn of the petroleum era around the time of the First World War. This war for control of oil, however, promises to be of a scale that will change world politics in a spectacular and highly destructive manner. It is on one level, a Saudi war to redraw the national borders of the infamous Anglo-French Sykes-Picot carve up of the bankrupt Ottoman Turkish Empire of 1916. This war has as its foolish goal bringing the oil fields and pipeline routes of Iraq and Syria, and perhaps more of the region, under direct Saudi control, with Qatar and Erdogan's Turkey as Riyadh's partners in crime. Unfortunately, as in all wars, there will be no winners.

The EU will be a major loser as will the present citizens of Iraq and Syria, as well as the Kurdish Turkish population for starters. Erdogan's Turkish "sultanate" will be destroyed at a great cost, as will King Salman's pre-feudal Kingdom as an influence in world power games.

It's necessary to look more closely at the elements and key players preparing this new war, a war which it is likely will not last beyond perhaps the summer of 2016.

CCTV images showing main suspect behind deadly Paris attacks in November have been released by French BFM TV. Salah Abdeslam captured by cameras the next day after the assaults, looks relaxed, with his hands in his pockets.

The pictures of prime terror suspect were taken at a petrol station on the Belgium border at 9:30am local time on November 14, just a day after one of the deadliest attacks in France.

Both Abdeslam and his friend Hamza Attou look at ease, the images show. Attou was later detained and charged for "assisting in terrorist activity" for driving Abdeslam to Belgium.

Their relaxed mood can be explained by the fact that media hadn't yet released the photos of Abdeslam and he had not been named the major suspect in the Paris attacks. The pair might have also been high, as Attou's lawyer said that they had smoked a cannabis joint.

It didn't take long for IS (Islamic State) to find a new cartoon-style villain to fill the shoes of Mohammed "Jihadi John" Emwazi. The masked villain often appeared in high-value productions, narrating them with a perfect British accent, as the enemies of IS were slain in increasingly elaborate and equally gruesome manners.

Just as Jihadi John's villainy reached a crescendo, the US claimed it targeted and killed him in a drone strike. Nothing resembling actual confirmation was produced afterward, and many questioned the value or impact of eliminating what was for all intents and purposes merely a figurehead.

Instead of actually identifying and dismantling IS on the battlefield, the US appears to be faux-fighting the organization in a public relations campaign mimicking the simplistic narratives children might see during a G.I Joe episode on Saturday morning:

"The bad guy died, we are winning."

Russia will not renew a contract for electricity supplies to the Ukraine after their refusal to allow the purchase of Ukrainian energy for Crimea, wrote the newspaper "Kommersant" on Tuesday, with reference to the representatives of the Russian Ministry of Energy.

A one-year contract for supplies of Russian electricity to Ukraine entered into force on 30 December 2014. The parties also agreed to ensure an uninterrupted power supply of Crimea. Both contracts — for the supply of electricity from Ukraine to Crimea from Russia to Ukraine terminated on 1st January 2016.

"Russia will not negotiate for the supply of electricity from Russia to Ukraine. It will not renew it, as initially it was linked to the contract for the supply of electricity from Ukraine in Crimea", — quotes the site from the representative of the Ministry of Energy.

The contract with Kiev on the supply of electricity in the Crimea expired on 31 December 2015. Meanwhile, Russia has not agreed to the proposal of Kiev to include in the new contract wording that Crimea is the territory of Ukraine. A specially conducted poll suggested 93% of Crimeans are against such a text. The "Kommersant" source in the industry explained that after the publication of the survey results, the government decided not to raise the issue of a contract extension.

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ

Via RIA

Denmark has moved forward with a controversial plan to seize refugees' cash and jewelry in return for living in asylum centers. The bill has gained a parliamentary majority, implying it should win in an upcoming vote despite heavy criticism by the UN.

"We want to limit the inflow," Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, whose right-wing Venstre party is behind the plan, told reporters on Tuesday.

The country's far-right Danish People's Party (DPP), the Liberal Alliance, and the Conservative People's Party have reached an agreement on the bill, meaning it enjoys the support of the majority of the parties in the Danish parliament.

Three smaller left-wing parties - the Red Green Alliance, the Socialist People's Party and The Alternative - have maintained their opposition to the draft.

With two weeks left until a January 26 vote, the Parliament will begin a series of debates on the bill on Wednesday.

Proposed in late 2015, the bill would allow Danish authorities to strip migrants of cash and any individual items whose combined value exceeds 10,000 kroner (1,340 euros, $1,450). Lawmakers have raised the limit to $1,450 since its last consideration in mid-December, bringing it in line with Denmark's existing law, which requires Danes to sell all of their valuables in order to apply for unemployment benefits.

Incarceration rates don't necessarily correlate with corruption, but they do reflect the extent to which a given nation's government is (by means of its laws and its enforcement of those laws) at war against its own population; and, so, technically speaking, it's supposed to reflect the prevalence of law-breaking within that nation. After all, by definition, people are presumed to be in prison for law-breaking, irrespective of whether the given nation's laws are just - and, if they're not just, then this fact reflects even more strongly that the nation itself is corrupt. So, a high incarceration-rate does strongly tend to go along with a nation's being highly corrupt, in more than merely a technical sense.

Out of the world's 223 countries, the US has the world's second-highest incarceration rate: 698 per 100,000, just behind #1 Seychelles, with 799 per 100,000. Seychelles doesn't even have as many as 100,000 people (but only 90,024 - as many people as are in the city of Temple Texas). By contrast, the US has 322,369,319; so, the US is surely the global leader in imprisonment. And, furthermore, #3, St. Kitts and Nevis, with an incarceration-rate of 607 per 100,000, has only 54,961 people (as many people as are in the city of Columbus Indiana). The only other country that might actually be close to the US in imprisoning its own people is North Korea, which could even beat out the US there, but wouldn't likely beat tiny Seychelles: North Korea is estimated to have "600-800 people incarcerated per 100,000", and a total population of 24,895,000.

Western federal governments, transnational corporations and the globalist agenda behind them have coalesced its reign of terror into one monolithically centralized authoritarian power that since 9/11 has obliterated centuries old constitutions that in the US all federal, military and law enforcement personnel took sworn oaths to protect and defend. What we now have are power hungry, oath-betraying despots dispersed around the globe who've demonstrated by their earthly misdeeds to be out-and-out traitors for failing to comply with both their oath - a criminal US offense in and of itself - as well as their national constitutions. But even more treasonous, they've failed to protect and defend their nations and people from enemies both foreign and domestic. But clearly it is they who pose the most dangerous threat to the United States and every other sovereign nation since they've only demonstrated that they are in fact the domestic enemy of every betrayed nation's people. In their bloodthirsty lust for absolute tyrannical control, the international powers-that-shouldn't-be have been systematically criminalizing every group and person perceived to stand in the way or oppose the traitors' horrendous abuse of power.

This weekend a Reuters article made the MSM case that a growing number of disgruntled current and former federal employees are unhappy with how the Department of Justice and FBI have not come down hard or quickly enough on the Bundy boys starting with their April 2014 Nevada case when rancher Cliven Bundy refused to pay grazing fees to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The Reuters piece reflects the apparent perception of many government insiders that the feds are only demonstrating weakness by their reluctance and delay to prosecute the guilty that in turn only sends the message to embolden "lawbreaking rightwing militants" personified by the two younger Bundy sons to defiantly act out even more. They believe the lack of response to the 2014 Nevada case has spurred on the Bundy's and their angry rightwing citizen activists to currently spearhead the rural Oregon standoff where armed protestors have taken over an isolated federal wildlife refuge building.

In 1959, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to reduce America's atomic firepower by as much as 50% on the grounds that its stock alone was enough to wipe-out the entire human species and then some.

Eisenhower was aware of US plans to kill millions of civilians in Russia in the event of a nuclear war. Documents revealed recently by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration confirms the "systematic destruction" in major cities, including 179 in Moscow, 145 in Leningrad and 91 in East Berlin. The targets are referred to as DGZs or "Designated Ground Zeros." While many are industrial facilities, government buildings and the like, one for each city is simply designated "Population." In other words, America had atomic weapons targeted on mass population areas to kill as many civilians as possible in the event of a conflict with Russia.

Matthew G. McKinzie, the director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council also confirmed "The heart of deterrence is the threat to destroy the adversary's cities, even today."

Two small US craft in the Persian Gulf were taken in custody by Iran after they appeared in Iranian waters. The crews are to be released shortly, according to various US officials.

"We have been in contact with Iran and have received assurances that the crew and the vessels will be returned promptly," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told AP.

The crews, which total 10 Navy sailors, are being held at Farsi Island, a highly restricted island between Bahrain and Kuwait, where Iran has a naval base. US officials are saying it is unclear how the crew members ended up in Iranian waters, though Secretary of State John Kerry has kept phone contact with Iranian officials in Tehran, urging for a release. A senior official told NBC News the Iranians understand a mistake was made and have agreed to a release to come in hours.

On New Year's Eve, 3,000 emails from Hillary Clinton's private email server were released.

One of them confirms - an email dated April 2, 2011 to Clinton from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal - that:

Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver.

This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French. franc (CFA).

(Source Comment [This is in the original declassified email, and is not a comment added by us]: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:

1. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
2. Increase French influence in North Africa,
3. Improve his internal political situation in France,
4. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
5. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa)

This may confirm what some of us have been saying for years.