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Confirmed: Suspected Paris attack mastermind killed in police raid


RT
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 17:35 UTC
Abdelhamid Abaaoud
© Reuters
Abdelhamid Abaaoud
The alleged mastermind and sponsor of attacks in the French capital on Friday, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed during an anti-terrorist operation in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday, Paris prosecutor François Molins said.

His body was found under the wreckage of the building in Saint-Denis, which was stormed in Wednesday's raid.

"Abdel Hamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified and certified killed during the raid, after comparing fingerprints," the statement said. "It was the bullet-ridden body we discovered in the building," Paris persecutor François Molins said.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls praised the elimination of one of the masterminds behind the Paris attacks.

Following the deadly attacks that killed at least 129 people, reports emerged that Abaaoud, 27, an active Islamic State executioner in Syria, could be behind the massacre.

Comment: Dead men tell no tales.

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Bomb

Russia escalates air campaign against ISIS with new deployment of strategic bombers

Daniel Fielding
Russia Insider
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 17:09 UTC
The Islamic State and the other jihadi groups fighting alongside it in Syria are now experiencing bombing the like of which they have never known before or could probably even imagine.

al nusra depot destroyed russian airstrikes
© Dmitriy Vinogradov / RIA Novosti
Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber
On Tuesday Russia's military briefed Putin on the further escalation of the air campaign in Syria.

The new air forces deployed are of a power beyond anything seen before.

They all operate from bases deep inside Russia.

There is no plan apparently to send more aircraft to Syria itself.

The air base at Latakia is full to capacity. There is no room for more aircraft there.

Apparently there are no plans for the moment to establish another base in Syria. The Russians continue to rule out sending a ground force.

Comment: The US' idea of fighting ISIS is to send them lots of love, guns, and Toyota trucks. Russia's plan seems much more sensible.

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Chess

France needs to find compromise with Russia if Hollande wants to defeat ISIL


Sputnik News
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 14:44 UTC
Putin Hollande
© www.zimbio.com
Presidents Putin and Hollande
If French President Francois Hollande intends to effectively lead an international coalition against ISIL, involving Russia and the United States, he would have to be ready to make some political concessions, the French daily Le Temps reported.

On Monday, Hollande called for a broad coalition including the United States and Russia to tackle ISIL which had claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks on Friday. The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia and France's navies must develop a joint plan of action for their operations in Syria.

Hollande is scheduled to travel to Moscow on November 26 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during which the two leaders would negotiate an international anti-terrorism operation in Syria. Prior to meeting with Putin, the French President would also visit the United States to meet with Barack Obama.

First things first, the French government should be ready to share intelligence with both the Russians and the Americans to coordinate their military actions. It's going to be tough, because right now Russian, US and French planes prefer not to come close to each other, Le Temps said.

Secondly, in order to get meaningful support from Russia, Hollande will have to be ready to compromise on certain issues, namely the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is a Russian ally.

Comment: Shake-ups seem to be in the wind. How will these re-alignments play out? Are these moves independent or choreographed? Considering the possibility of Russia and the US uniting, is France dreaming? Many questions await answers.

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Laptop

NATO stages largest ever cyberdrill in Estonia


ABC News
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 09:42 UTC
cyberattack
Thirty-three countries are attending NATO's largest ever cyberdrill in Estonia, focusing on malware in tablets and how infected devices may compromise data privacy for staff of the world's biggest military alliance.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Robert Hoar, who heads the drill, on Thursday said scenarios do not include "attacking or defending;" participants have instead been provided realistic "storylines" that must be solved.

The five-day Cyber Coalition 2015 exercise, held at the alliance's cyber exercise range in Estonia's second city, Tartu, mainly aims at enhancing NATO nations' ability to work together in a crisis situation.

NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence — a think-thank and training facility — is based in Tallinn, the Estonian capital. It is the third time that the small Baltic nation is hosting such an event.

Comment: Almost a year ago Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency warned:
China and "probably one or two" other countries have the ability to invade and possibly shut down computer systems of U.S. power utilities, aviation networks and financial companies


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Airplane

Islamic State magazine claims British jet was targeted but changed to Russian plane


RT
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 16:54 UTC
Image
© Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters
Military investigators from Russia stand near the debris of a Russian airliner at the site of its crash at the Hassana area in Arish city, north Egypt, November 1, 2015.
Islamic State militants could have targeted a British passenger plane with homemade explosives, but at the last minute chose instead to attack a Russian plane in revenge for airstrikes in Syria, the extremist group's magazine suggests.

The terrorist group claimed responsibility for placing a bomb aboard Metrojet Airbus A321 on October 31. The plane crashed over Sinai, Egypt, killing all 224 people on board.

In the latest edition of Dabiq, the online magazine of Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL), militants claim they were prepared to launch the attack on any of the Western states backing US-led airstrikes, including Britain.

But after Russia began its bombing campaign, the terror group decided to hit a Russian plane instead, the magazine claims.

Comment: Right, so bring down a Russian airliner so Russia can drop more bombs on their heads. What were they thinking?

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No Entry

Moscow dismisses Plevneliev's allegations of waging hybrid wars in Balkans


Sputnik News
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 16:23 UTC
Plevneliev
© www.filmneweurope.com
Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev
Russia's Foreign Ministry dismissed Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev's claims that Russia is plotting "hybrid warfare" in the Balkans, urging Sofia to avoid unfounded accusations. The Bulgarian leader made his statements in a recent interview with The Independent:
Rosen Plevneliev accuses Moscow of launching massive cyber attacks on Bulgaria's government institutions and increasingly testing Bulgaria's airspace in the wake of the annexation last year of Crimea, on the other side of the Black Sea. "The very efficient and secure way for Russia to destabilise Europe is through the Balkans, so that is what Mr. Putin is focusing on." Pointing the finger firmly at Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, he said: "There are very few countries in the world that can organise such attacks."

Mr. Plevneliev said NATO senior partners were not being forceful enough in responding to Russia's "hybrid warfare" approach that, he says, is focused on the Balkans. "Everyone should be alerted to what happens in Syria because of a crush of global and regional powers, which Mr. Putin is saying is about the world moving to a new world order away from that of being dominated by one superpower." Mr Plevneliev accused Western leaders, and especially EU member states, of failing to act until a crisis had fully erupted.
"The president drew some strange conclusions, to put it mildly, that Russia is behind recent cyberattacks on Bulgarian government websites and the central election committee," Zakharova told reporters on Thursday. "An absolute shortage of argument is immediately noticeable when you look at this interview."

"We hope that in the future, the politicians of a country whose people share centuries of friendly relations with Russia, will refrain from such baseless, very loud, and very strange statements," she added.

Comment: Manipulated diversion? NATO-puppet? Central election committee hacks...where have we heard of this before? Did Plevneliev consider his formidable and cyber-sneaky Western pals as the organizers of the attacks? Most likely not. Plevneliev spent eight years working in Germany as a construction engineer and considers it his second home. He is a "want-to-be" Westerner - toe the line and get the pat on the head. Bulgaria has, in recent past, been a corruption-plagued country in need of reform, making it ripe fodder for Western influence, meddling and a democracy "make-over." Pres. Obama's cryptic words of encouragement at the 2012 NATO summit: "You are doing great, the latest data I received is spectacular and I wish you success." (in other words...who are you?)

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Megaphone

NATO actively invents enemies, Russia does not


RT
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 16:44 UTC
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
© Maxim Shemetov / Reuters
Russia has never invented enemies and never will, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told reporters, adding that it was "only natural" for nations to disagree, despite NATO's attempts to impose uniform opinions all over the world.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that we are not trying to look for enemies, we have never looked for them, and we never will," Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Radio Russia.

"Most nations that have their own positions on various issues...because uniform thinking on all issues is impossible. A harsh 'stick' approach to discipline is also impossible, even though they attempt to impose it in the North Atlantic Alliance [NATO] and, frankly, in the European Union as well. But they fail," the Russian Foreign Minister said. "Even the closest allies cannot have a 100-percent match in all of their interests and this is why diplomacy is needed - to search for a compromise," he added.

The top Russian diplomat noted that when Western nations operated with slogans such as "all those who are not with us are against us," this was in fact a tactic to turn whole countries into enemies.

Comment: The US has made it abundantly clear that Russia is the 'enemy' where in reality it is not. The US doesn't want any threats to its world dominance.

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Eye 1

Leaked NSA documents reveal it takes "sheer luck" to find useful info in sea of surveillance data


RT
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 16:32 UTC
world surveillance
The NSA didn't know it was already sitting on a "goldmine" of data on one of its targets until one of its analysts discovered it by "sheer luck," according to an internal newsletter entry leaked by Edward Snowden.

The article, dated March 23, 2011, was written by a signals development analyst in SIDtoday, an NSA in-house newsletter. He explains how he discovered the contact and personal information for over 10,000 people, as well as some 900 account login details, after "a ton of hard work," according to reports from The Intercept and teleSUR.

"By sheer luck, (and a ton of hard work) I discovered an important new access to an existing target and am working with TAO to leverage a new mission capability," the analyst wrote to colleagues. TAO refers to Tailored Access Operations, an NSA hacking team which had collected the 900 usernames and passcodes.

The "existing target" was Petróleos de Venezuela, a Venezuelan state oil company also referred to as PDVSA.

Comment: It should be clear to anyone paying attention that all the NSA surveillance being conducted is not about stopping terrorist attacks, but about controlling the population and eliminating any privacy that people ever enjoyed.

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Quenelle

Assad - 'Turkey is playing the worst part of our crisis'


Sputnik
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 15:18 UTC
Bashar al-Assad
© SANA / Reuters
Syrian President Bashar Assad believes that by passively supporting the al-Nusra Front and Islamic State terrorist groups, Turkey is playing a most destructive role in the Syrian crisis.

"Turkey is playing a most negative role in our crisis. That's related directly to [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan himself and [Prime Minister Ahmet] Davutoglu, because they both reflect the real ideology that they carry in their hearts, which is the Muslim Brotherhood ideology," Assad said in an interview with the French newsmagazine Valeurs Actuelles on Thursday.

The Syrian leader emphasized that, compared to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Ankara was playing the most dangerous role in general, by giving all possible assistance to the terrorists.

Comment: In 1996 an Israeli think tank published a paper titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." In this paper the authors, which included Richard Perle (of PNAC fame) and other staunch neoconservatives, advocated goals such as the destabilization of Syria through proxy warfare, and the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, in order to create greater 'security' for Israel. Earlier plans called for the use of Islamic fundamentalism to carry out this 'destabilization,' and established the rationale behind such a decision:
"[A] possibility, which could even be precipitated by [Islamic] fundamentalism, is what has late been fashionable to call 'Lebanonization.' Most of the states of the Middle East—Egypt is an obvious exception—are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common identity.... The state then disintegrates—as happened in Lebanon—into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions, and parties."
Given this context, and all that has played out on the world stage since, it is obvious that Turkey is playing a 'destructive role', but it is a role orchestrated by its stronger allies. What Turkey's goals are, in and of themselves, is a murky subject, but it looks like it's willing to remain the 'destabilization handmaiden' for some time to come. But, since Russia entered the picture, the situation is in a state of constant flux. It really seems that anything could happen.

Also read:

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Light Saber

Lavrov: Attack on Russian plane is attack on Russia itself and the country will exercise right to self-defense


RT
Wed, 18 Nov 2015 16:20 UTC
Image
© Leonhard Foeger / Reuters
An attack on the A321 plane is an attack on Russia, and the country's right to defend itself will be exercised in full, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated. The number of people killed, he said, elevated the attack to the national level.

The comments on the air tragedy over Sinai were voiced at a news conference with Lavrov's Lebanese counterpart in Moscow on Wednesday, and they come on the heels of an investigation that determined the cause of the crash to be an improvised explosive device.

They also follow President Putin's decision to pursue the issue on the basis of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which grants a sovereign state the right to collective self-defense in the event of an attack on it.

"The terrorist act in the Sinai Peninsula was an attack on Russian citizens, which is equivalent to an attack on the state," Lavrov told reporters.
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