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Iraq may increase oil output further in 2016, although less dramatically than this year, intensifying a battle for market share between OPEC members and non-OPEC rivals that has forced Baghdad to sell some crude grades for as little as $30 a barrel. Iraq's output in 2015 has jumped almost 500,000 barrels per day (bpd), or 13 percent, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That has made Iraq the world's fastest source of supply growth and a key driver of surging OPEC production. At most, that growth is likely to give way to a modest rise next year, easing downward...

Moscow, Russia – Suspicions grew over the official government story coming out of the Kremlin as Russian President Vladimir Putin and the FSB attempted to quell growing public anger and distrust in the wake of past false flag attacks. The FSB, a sinister security arm of the Russian regime, has a long history of carrying out shadowy attacks against its’ own citizenry in order to further their own military and geopolitical goals. One such series of attacks was the famed apartment bombings in Buynaksk, Moscow, & Volgodonsk of September 1999, which killed 307 Russian citizens, injured 1700 more, and was...

Published on Nov 18, 2015 Airstrike against an ISIS oil refueling plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EIwy2RoQo4 and Published on Nov 18, 2015 Elimination of tanker vehicle columns, which were transporting oil products in the interests of terrorist armed groups Julian Ropcke ‏@JulianRoepcke 20m20 minutes ago Where the heck do you find #hundreds of fuel tankers in the Syrian desert?ISIS logistics?! Looks quite real though!

The Russian air force just pulled off one of the biggest and most complex heavy bomber missions in modern history—sending no fewer than 25 Backfire, Bear, and Blackjack bombers on a coordinated, long-range air raid against alleged ISIS forces in Syria. The Tuesday mission, which launched under the cover of darkness from a base in Ossetia in southern Russia, signaled a significant escalation of Moscow’s air war in Syria—and heralded the rebirth of Russian heavy bomber squadrons that once had withered from a lack of funding. Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s general staff, announced the raid on Tuesday, calling...

The morning after the Islamic State attacks on Paris, Donald Trump approvingly retweeted the words of one of his supporters: “THE WORLD IS PLAYING EVERYTHING RIGHT FOR TRUMP! EVERY DAY HIS POINTS ARE PROVEN.” Long before the destruction and death in France last week, Trump’s presidential campaign was following the path of right-wing working class parties in Europe. Over the past decade, these parties have capitalized on animosity to immigration and the perceived threat it presents to Europe’s “autonomy, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” its “postwar economic model,” and its “Christian identity.” This movement appears to be growing in power, and...

Moscow’s brazen intervention in the Syrian civil war on behalf of the beleaguered Assad regime was laughed off by Western leaders as folly. In another effort to deflect from his myriad failures in the region, Barack Obama insisted that Putin had committed Russian soldiers and heavy weapons to a “quagmire.” American political commentators suggested that Russia might have stumbled into a second Afghanistan. Support for Putin’s regime would ebb, they said, as the Russian Federation bled itself white on Syria’s battlefields. These commentators forgot that Russia would only experience a second Afghanistan so long as the West was willing to...

Assad: Putin the ‘only defender of Christian civilization’ By Kellan Howell - The Washington Times - Wednesday, November 18, 2015 Syrian President Bashar Assad said he considers his long-time ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin as the “only defender of Christian civilization” one can trust, a comment made in an interview with a French magazine following the Paris attacks. “When I look at the present state of things in the world, I realize that Vladimir Putin is the sole defender of Christian civilization one can rely on,” Mr. Assad told French magazine Valeurs Actuelles,

Syrian President Bashar Assad considers Russia's Vladimir Putin as the "only defender of Christian civilization one can trust.""When I look at the present state of things in the world I realize that Vladimir Putin is the sole defender of Christian civilization one can rely on," Assad said in an interview with French magazine Valeurs Actuelles. The Syrian leader also said that he would step down only if asked to by the Syrian people and the Syrian parliament, adding that the issue of his possible resignation had not yet been raised on an international level. Syria will only share intelligence information...

Egyptian officials reportedly detained 17 airport employees Tuesday, hours after the head of Russia's security service said that the crash of a passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula last month that killed all 224 people on board was an act of terrorism. . . . "There's no statute of limitations for this, we need to know all of their names," Putin said. "We're going to look for them everywhere wherever they are hiding. We will find them in any place on Earth and punish them."

Turkish fans boo and Chant ALLAH AKBAR during the moment of silence for the victims of the Paris Terror Attacks, before the start of the Turkey vs Greece soccer game.

Environmental activism among college students has recently been channeled into a movement to pressure college endowments to divest their holdings of stock in companies that extract fossil fuels. Beginning at Swarthmore College, the fossil fuel divestment movement (FFDM) has already had an impact on some colleges and universities, including Stanford, Georgetown, and Oxford. Many activists hope the FFDM will help persuade governments to restrict the extraction and use of fossil fuels. Whatever the economic consequences for colleges and universities, widespread divestment, particularly if it leads to restrictions on fossil fuels, will do a great deal of harm without much benefit...

It’s a coin toss between China and Turkey for the title of least honest country, according to a new study. As part of a 15-nation honesty study, researchers from the University of East Anglia had the 1,500 subjects participate in a coin flip, telling them they’d get up to $5 every time it came up heads. The researchers theorized that if the percentage reporting heads was over 50 percent, participants were being dishonest, since heads statistically shows up only half the time. An estimated 70 percent of Chinese participants lied — the most dishonest of the bunch, according to the...

Donald Trump had it right on Vladimir Putin and ISIS; Chris Christie didn't have a clue By Paul Mulshine | The Star Ledger on November 17, 2015 at 7:46 AM, updated November 17, 2015 at 10:28 AM Chris Christie reacted to those terror attacks in Paris on Friday by trying to turn them to his political advantage at a campaign event in Florida on Saturday. "The world is desperate for a strong, secure, smart and tested American president," Christie said. "The hour is too late for people to be trained. We need a president who is ready to serve." We...

Vladimir Putin: from pariah to powerbroker in one year At the 2014 G20 summit in Brisbane, the Russian president was browbeaten by western leaders. But now they know they need him Simon Tisdall Tuesday 17 November 2015 07.58 EST What a difference a war makes. Twelve months ago, Vladimir Putin was on the menu at the G20 summit in Brisbane. Western leaders queued up hungrily for a piece of Russia’s president following his armed intervention in Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea. Barack Obama warned Putin he was isolated internationally; David Cameron said he did not trust the Russian leader;...

маяковский ‏@moscow_ghost 4h4 hours ago Reports #Russia sent a bunch of cruise missiles on #ISIS in #Raqqa and #Aleppo this morning #Syria Video capture from the Syrian ground: https://twitter.com/ValkryV/status/666579039214268417

Russia’s central bank recently warned about the growing financial risks to the Russian economy from Saudi Arabia encroaching upon its traditional export market for crude oil. Russia sends 70 percent of its oil to Europe, but Saudi Arabia has been making inroads in the European market amid the oil price downturn. The result is a heavier discount for Russia’s crude oil, the so-called Urals blend. Bloomberg reported that the Urals typically lands in Rotterdam, a major European destination, at a discount to Brent of around $2 or less. But the discount has widened to $3.50 lately due to increased competition...

Syrian rebel sources claimed Saturday night that they had killed Iranian al Qods chief, the commander of Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria, Gen. Qassem Soleiman, in the fighting east of Aleppo. This claim is not confirmed by any other sources. The rebels say they located the Iranian general’s movements by means of intelligence and struck his car with a TOW missile, killing him and three other Iranian commanders with him, Masoud Askari, Mahmud Dahakan and Ahmed Rajai. If this is confirmed it would count as a signal Syrian rebel feat.

Friends on Facebook and imposing the French Flag in "solidarity".

The Kremlin isn’t sending just any troops to prop up the Assad regime. It’s dispatching units that spearheaded Russia’s slow-rolling invasion of Ukraine.Reuters confirmed Wednesday what The Daily Beast first reported last week—not only have Russian troops been deployed to Syria but they are indeed taking part in active combat operations, although against which of the manifold enemies of the Assad regime remains unclear.U.S. government sources told the news agency that two tank landing ships, aircraft and naval infantry forces have arrived in Syria in the past 24 hours, with the largest buildup occurring in Latakia, the northwest coastal province...