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It looks like the Iranian government wasn’t the only one hiding critical details about the aftermath of the Islamic Revolutionary regime’s ‘retaliatory strike’ from the public.

According to several media reports, eleven US service members were flown out of Al Assad Air Base in Iraq and treated for concussion symptoms after Iran’s rocket attack targeting two American bases in Iraq.

A spokesman for the US Central Command made the revelation late Thursday evening, contradicting President Trump’s earlier claim that no Americans were injured by the strikes.

The strike victims are “still being assessed,” the High Command said. It is the policy of the American military to screen troops who were in the area of a blast.

“As a standard procedure, all personnel in the vicinity of a blast are screened for traumatic brain injury, and if deemed appropriate are transported to a higher level of care,” said Capt Urban. 

Offering an explanation of the discrepancy between Trump’s initial claims that “no Americans were harmed” and these new reports, the high command said the injured service members weren’t transferred to a hospital until days after the attack.

Out of an “abundance of caution”, some of those servicemembers were moved to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, while others were sent to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, for follow-on screening.

After being deemed fit for duty, the service members typically return to Iraq. The High Command declined to discuss the exact medical condition of the troops, saying “the health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual’s medical status.”

When asked by reporters why the US didn’t release this information sooner, since the high command appears to have known about the 11 troops for several days, Capt Urban replied that “We moved to correct the record as soon as able.”

As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed recently, many in the Pentagon feared Iran would kill American troops with its retaliation, something that Trump would have interpreted as a ‘red line’. Fortunately, it appears the attacks were merely designed to knock out the operating capacity of the American structures.

“I believe, based on what I saw and what I know, is that [the strikes] were intended to cause structural damage, destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft and to kill personnel. That’s my own personal assessment,” Gen Milley told reporters last week.

As images of the aftermath have shown, the explosions at Al Assad Air Base, about 110 miles west of Baghdad, destroyed concrete barriers and troop barracks, while leaving large craters in the missiles’ wake.

While it’s true the administration probably could have released this information sooner, it’s also worth clarifying that these injuries don’t appear to be very serious. In fact, it looks like most of the men who were transported off-base for treatment were only dealt with in that way because it’s standard operating procedure, not because they were truly seriously injured.

The retaliatory attack was launched as revenge for the killing of IRGC Quds Force leader Qasem Suleimani, a revered military figure in Iran. The regime has said its true retaliation will come in a more covert form, and will doubtlessly be more bloody than the last round of strikes.

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

It came as the biggest shock of the day on Wednesday. The Russian government resigned. The day before President Vladimir Putin gave his State of the Nation address and outlined a slate of constitutional changes.

That speech prompted an overhaul of Russia’s government.

Putin’s plan is to devolve some of the President’s overwhelming power to the legislature and the State Council, while beefing up the Constitutional Court’s ability to provide checks on legislation.

From TASS:

In Wednesday’s State of the Nation Address, Putin put forward a number of initiatives changing the framework of power structures at all levels, from municipal authorities to the president. The initiatives particularly stipulate that the powers of the legislative and judicial branches, including the Constitutional Court, will be expanded. The president also proposed to expand the role of the Russian State Council. Putin suggested giving the State Duma (the lower house of parliament) the right to approve the appointment of the country’s prime minister, deputy prime ministers and ministers.

The bigger shock was that in response to this Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev dissolved the current government willingly and resigned as Prime Minister.

Within hours Putin recommended Federal Tax Service chief, Mikhail Mishustin as Prime Minister. The State Duma approved Putin’s recommendation and Mishustin was sworn in by Putin all within a day.

While this came on suddenly it also shouldn’t be a surprise. These changes have been discussed for months leading up to Putin’s speech. And it’s been clear for the past few years that Putin has been engaged in the second phase of his long-term plan to first rebuild and then remake Russia during his time in office.

The first phase was rescuing Russia from economic, societal and demographic collapse. It was in serious danger of this when Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin.

It meant regaining control over strategic state resources, rebuilding Russia’s economy and defense, stabilizing its population, getting some semblance of political control within the Kremlin and bringing hope back to a country in desperate need of it.

Hostile analysts, both domestic and foreign, criticized Putin constantly for his tactics. Russia’s reliance on its base commodities sectors to revive its economy was seen as a structural weakness. But, an honest assessment of the situation begs the question, “How else was Putin going to back Russia away from the edge of that abyss?”

These same experts never seem to have an answer.

And when those critics were able to answer, since they were people connected to monied interests in the West who Putin stymied from continuing to loot Russia’s natural wealth, their answer was usually to keep doing that.

Don’t kid yourself, most of the so-called Russia experts out there are deeply back to Wall St. through one William Browder and his partner-in-crime Mikhail Khordokovsky.

Nearly all of them in the U.S. Senate are severely compromised or just garden variety neocons still hell-bent on subjugating Russia to their hegemonic plans.

Their voices should be discounted heavily since they are the same criminals actively destroying U.S. and European politics today.

In the West these events were spun to suggest Putin is consolidating power. The initial reports were that he would remove the restraint on Presidential service of two consecutive terms. And that this would pave the way to his staying in office after his current term expires in 2024.

That, as always when regarding Russia, is the opposite of the truth. Putin’s recommendation is to remove the word “consecutive” from the Constitution making it clear that a President can only ever serve two terms. Moreover, that president will have had to have lived in Russia for the previous 25 years.

No one will be allowed to rule Russia like he has after he departs the office. Because Putin understands that the Russian presidency under the current constitution is far too powerful and leaves the country vulnerable to a man who isn’t a patriot being corrupted by that power.

There are a number of issues that most commentators and analysts in the West do not understand about Putin. Their insistence on presenting Putin only in the worst possible terms is tired and nonsensical to anyone who spends even a cursory amount of time studying him.

These events of the past couple of days in Russia are the end result of years of work on Putin’s part to purge the Russian government and the Kremlin of what The Saker calls The Atlanticist Fifth Column.

And they have been dug in like ticks in a corrupt bureaucracy that has taken Putin the better part of twenty years to tame.

It’s been a long and difficult road that even I only understand the surface details of. But it’s clear that beginning in 2012 or so, Putin began making the shift towards the next phase of Russia’s strategic comeback.

And that second phase is about taking a stable Russia and elevating its institutions to a more sustainable model.

Once birth rates improved and demographic collapse was averted, the next thing to do was to reform an economy rightly criticized for being too heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues.

And that is a much tougher task.

It meant getting control over the Russian central bank and the financial sector. Putin was given that opportunity during the downturn in oil prices in 2014.

Using the crisis as an opportunity Putin began the decoupling of Russia’s economy from the West. During the early boom years of his Presidency oil revenue strengthened both the Russian state coffers and the so-called oligarchs who Putin was actively fighting for control.

He warned the CEO’s of Gazprom, Rosneft and Sberbank that they were too heavily exposed to the U.S. dollar this way in the years leading up to the crash in oil prices in 2014-16.

And when the U.S. sanctioned Russia in 2014 over the reunification with Crimea these firms all had to come to Putin for a bailout. Their dollar-denominated debt was swapped out for euro and ruble debt through the Bank of Russia and he instructed the central bank to allow the ruble to fall, to stop defending it.

Taking the inflationary hit was dangerous but necessary if Russia was to become a truly independent economic force.

Since then it’s been a tug of war with the IMF-trained bureaucracy within the Bank of Russia to set monetary policy in accordance with Russia’s needs not what the international community demanded.

That strong Presidency was a huge boon. But, now that the job is mostly done, it can be an albatross.

Putin understands that a Russia flush with too much oil money is a Russia ruled by that money and becomes lazy because of that money. Contrary to popular opinion, Putin doesn’t want to see oil prices back near $100 per barrel.

Because Russia’s comparative advantage in oil and gas is so high relative to everyone else on the world stage and to other domestic industries that money retards innovation and investment in new technologies and a broadening of the Russian domestic economy.

And this has been Putin’s focus for a while now. Oil and gas are geostrategic assets used to shore up Russia’s position as a regional power, building connections with its new partners while opening up new markets for Russian businesses.

But it isn’t the end of the Russian story of the future, rather the beginning.

And the slow privatization of those industries is happening, with companies like Gazprom and Rosneft selling off excess treasury shares to raise capital and put a larger share of them into public hands.

Again, this is all part of the next stage of Russia’s development and democratizing some of the President’s power has to happen if Russia is going to survive him leaving the stage.

Because it is one thing to have a man of uncommon ability and patriotism wielding that power responsibly. It’s another to believe Russia can get another man like Putin to take his place.

So, Putin is again showing his foresight and prudence in pushing for these changes now. It shows that he feels comfortable that this new structure will insulate Russia from external threats while strengthening the domestic political scene.

Gilbert Doctorow has an excellent early reaction to this dramatic turn by Putin which I encourage everyone to read in full. The subtle point he makes is:

To understand what comes next, you have to take into account a vitally important statement which Putin made a few moments before he set out his proposed constitutional reforms. He told his audience that his experience meeting with the leaders of the various Duma parties at regular intervals every few weeks showed that all were deeply patriotic and working for the good of the country. Accordingly, he said that all Duma parties should participate in the formation of the cabinet.

And so, we are likely to see in the coming days that candidates for a number of federal ministries in the new, post-Medvedev cabinet will be drawn precisely from parties other than United Russia. In effect, without introducing the word “coalition” into his vocabulary, Vladimir Putin has set the stage for the creation of a grand coalition to succeed the rule of one party, United Russia, over which Dimitri Medvedev was the nominal chairman.

The end result of this move to devolve the cabinet appointments to the whole of the Duma is to ensure that a strong President which Putin believes is best for Russia is tempered by a cabinet drawn from the whole of the electorate, including the Prime Minister.

That neither opens the door to dysfunctional European parliamentary systems nor closes it from a strong President leading Russia during crisis periods.

Once the amendments to the constitution are finalized Putin will put the whole package to a public vote.

This is the early stage of this much-needed overhaul of Russia’s constitutional order and the neocons in the West are likely stunned into silence knowing that they can no longer just wait Putin out and sink their hooks into his most likely successor.

Sometimes the most important changes occur right under our noses, right out in the open. Contrast that with the skullduggery and open hostility of the political circus in D.C. and you can which direction the two countries are headed.

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In a move that’s sure to restore a smidgen of Greta Thunberg’s childhood, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has finally hammered out a deal for Germany’s stalled exit from coal-fired power generation, after state leaders agreed to shut down the industry by 2038.

We would note that this falls outside the 12-year window of doom predicted by US climate expert Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but better late than never when environmental apocalypse is on the line.

Germany’s plan includes 40 billion euros ($44.6 billion) in compensation for impacted regions, according to Bloomberg. The country’s largest coal-fired power producer, RWE AG, will receive 2.6 billion euros according to an insider – sending the stock up 1.7% in mid-morning trade on Thursday. In eastern Germany, utility Lignite operators will receive 1.75 billion euros according to German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.

Merkel has been in a tight spot on the issue, facing pressure from environmentalists and miners alike. Climate tops voter concerns, and Germany will already miss its 2020 targets under the Paris Agreement. On the other hand, the poorer states in the former Communist East, where the bulk of the mines are, fear a growing gap to the West. Her predicament feeds into a broader political challenge, with the Greens party and the far-right Alternative for Germany gaining support on both sides of the political spectrum to squeeze Germany’s traditional mainstream parties, including her Christian Democrats. The AfD has been particularly strong in the eastern mining states.

“It was a long night — it lasted until 2 a.m. — but we were able to achieve a sensible agreement,” Armin Laschet, premier of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio. “The time frame that we’ve agreed on is ambitious, but realistic.” –Bloomberg (via Yahoo!)

According to Laschet, approximately 3,000 jobs will be lost to the closures, which will occur more quickly in west German states.

The biggest resistance to the plan comes from states in the former communist east, which heavily relies on coal and has a lower income per capita than in the west.

Under Thursday’s agreement, LEAG’s Jaenschwalde power plant will convert into a gas-fired unit to use some of that sweet, sweet, Russian gas thanks to Nordstream 2. The government will also pay to retrain workers affected by plant closures – possibly in coding.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

British police in Manchester failed to stop dozens of girls being sexually abused by a network of Pakistani men despite knowing it was happening due to fears over creating “community tensions.”

In yet another grooming scandal involving predominately Pakistani men sexually abusing mainly white girls, a new report reveals that Greater Manchester Police “failed to take appropriate action more than 15 years ago, despite getting details of nearly 100 “persons of interest” who were using takeout restaurants as a base to rape and abuse children in care between the ages of 11 and 17” and despite the fact that the culprits were operating “in plain sight.”

All the victims were “young white females” aged 11-17 while all the perpetrators were “almost exclusively Asian adult males, many of whom are associated via the Asian restaurant trade,” according to the report.

The police operation identified 57 girls who had been exploited, including one who died after being injected with heroin by her abuser, but the case was shut down in 2005 and “very few” offenders were brought to justice.

“The report includes shocking stories of how children told their carers of the abuse and pleaded to be removed from harm,” reports Fox News.

“One child is said to have begged her carers to get her away from Manchester as she was too involved with Asian men and that one “made her do things she didn’t want to.”

Another spoke of how she was taken to apartments with friends and was given vodka and cocaine and made to “do whatever they wanted us to do.” The report finds that the children were not protected by the appropriate agencies.”

One of the reasons why police failed to take adequate action was due to concerns over “sensitive community issues” because the men involved were “predominantly adult Asian men from local minority ethnic communities in the area.”

A separate unrelated case involving Kurdish people had also “created community tensions” and these factors “clearly had to be considered by the gold command group.”

“This week feminists shed more tears over a few rude headlines about Meghan Markle than they did over the sexual abuse of 57 working-class girls by Pakistani gangs in Manchester.”

Brendan O’Neill on the Manchester abuse scandal:https://t.co/UR4HzreQD1

— spiked (@spikedonline) January 15, 2020

Police were even ordered to try to find culprits who were white to hide the fact that the grooming gang issue was a Muslim/Pakistani problem.

“We were told to try and get other ethnicities,” said one officer.

In other words, police failed to come to the aid of child sex abuse victims despite knowing they were being trafficked because they didn’t want to be called racist or Islamophobic.

This mirrors other similar cases across the country where young white girls were abused and trafficked by Pakistani and Bangladeshi men, including in Rotherham where 1500 victims were raped and beaten but authorities ignored what was happening due to fears over “political correctness.”

Quilliam Foundation think tank statistics show that 84 per cent of convicted groomers in the UK are Muslim men.

Remember; Liberals claim that political correctness is “just being nice to people,” and yet valuing political correctness over the safety of young girls has, in numerous cases across Britain, resulted in the industrial-level sexual abuse of children.

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Despite losing a confidence vote in May that led to the collapse of Austria’s ruling coalition, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, the youngest Chancellor in Austria’s history, won a decisive re-election in September.

But instead of reviving his conservative People’s Party’s alliance with the ultra-conservative Freedom Party, Kurz has bounced back from a bribery scandal perpetrated by his former coalition partner and decided to try forming a new coalition with the center-left Green Party.

The marriage of conservative and liberal has led to some interesting policy priorities.

For example, in his first interview with the international press since officially taking office last week, Kurz told the FT that his new government’s top priorities will be fighting climate change and curbing immigration.

As Kurz explained, while protecting the environment is an important priority, fighting immigration is just as important. Because Austria’s Judeo-Christian identity will continue to be eroded if Europe doesn’t get its arms around illegal migration.

“It is important to protect our environment but it is also important to decide who will live in our country…if we do not fight against illegal migration, Europe will not be the same in five, 10 or 20 years,” he told the Financial Times. “If we do not control who is allowed to come we will not be able to live in security…and we will not be able to keep our identity.”

Kurz promised to continue pushing in Europe for tougher policing of illegal immigration in the Mediterranean. He criticized the current system as a “ticket to the European Union” that incentivized crossings and smugglers.

Sebastian Kurz

His government’s program also calls to make Austria carbon-neutral by 2040, along with a ban on women under the age of 14 wearing headscarves in schools.

Finally, Kurz is also calling for preventive detention of migrants suspected of extremism.

It was the government’s duty to “protect young girls,” he said, decrying “influence…from immigrants from different parts of the world which I think dangerous in many areas.” He said he was proud that Austria was a “Christian-dominated country” marked by its shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

Many in Europe are praising Kurz for his pact with the Greens, arguing that it could provide a modern template for conservatives hoping to govern in Europe. Kurz called it the “right coalition for the moment.”

Perhaps Angela Merkel’s flailing Christian Democratic Union can learn something from Kurz? Particularly as the party struggles to bolster its popularity after her long reign?

Via Southfront.org,

In early 2020, Libya became one of the main hot points in the Greater Middle East with stakes raised by Turkey’s decision to launch a military operation there…

On January 5, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey had sent troops to Libya to support the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). No Turkish soldiers will reportedly participate in direct fighting. Instead, they will create an operation center and coordinate operations. Erdogan pointed that “right now”, there will be “different units serving as a combatant force.” He didn’t say who exactly these troops would be, but it is apparent that these are members of Turkish-backed Syrian militant groups and Turkey-linked private military contractors.

Ankara started an active deployment of members of pro-Turkish Syrian militant groups in Libya in December 2019. So far, over 600 Turkish-backed Syrian fighters have arrived. According to media reports, the officially dispatched Turkish troops included military advisers, technicians, electronic warfare and air defense specialists. Their total number is estimated at around 40-60 personnel.

A day after the Erdogan announcement, on January 6, the defense of the GNA collapsed in Sirte and the GNA’s rival, the Libyan National Army (LNA), took control of the town. Several pro-GNA units from Sirte publicly defected to the LNA with weapons and military equipment, including at least 6 armoured vehicles. With the loss of Sirte, only two large cities – Tripoli and Misrata – formally remained in the hands of the GNA. Misrata and its Brigades in fact remain a semi-independent actor operating under the GNA banner.

From January 7 to January 12, when the sides agreed on a temporary ceasefire proposed in a joint statement of the Turkish and Russian presidents, the LNA continued offensive operations against GNA forces near Tripoli and west of Sirte capturing several positions there. The GNA once again demonstrated that it is unable to take an upper hand in the battle against forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

The GNA formally requested “air, ground and sea” military support from Turkey on December 26th, 2019, in the framework of the military cooperation deal signed by the sides in November. On January 2, 2020, the Turkish Parliament approved the bill allowing troop deployment in Libya. This move did not change the situation strategically. Even before the formal approval, Ankara already was engaged in the conflict. It sent large quantities of weapons and military equipment, including “BMC Kirpi” armoured vehicles, deployed Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles at airfields near Tripoli and Misrata, and sent operators and trainers in order to assist GNA forces.

Turkey could increase military supplies, deploy additional private military contractors, military advisers and special forces units, but it has no safe place to deploy own air group to provide the GNA with a direct air support like Russia did for pro-Assad forces in Syria. Approximately 90% of Libya is under the LNA control. Tripoli and Misrata airports are in a strike distance for the LNA. Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad and Sudan refuse to play any direct role in the conflict, while the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is still too far away. Egypt, alongside with the UAE and Russia, is a supporter of the LNA. Therefore, deployment there is out of question.

Turkey operates no aircraft carriers. Its TCG Anadolu amphibious assault ship can be configured as a light aircraft carrier, but the warship isn’t in service yet. It is unclear how Ankara will be able to provide the GNA with an extensive air support without endangering its own aircraft by deploying them close to the combat zone.

Turkey could deploy a naval task force to support the GNA. Nonetheless, this move is risky, if one takes into account the hostile political environment, with Egypt, Cyprus, the UAE and Greece are strictly against any such actions. Additionally, this deployment will go against the interests of other NATO member states such as France and Italy that see the expansion of the Turkish influence as a direct threat to their vital economic interests, especially in the oil business. Warships near the Libyan coast will be put in jeopardy from modern anti-ship measures. Yemen’s Houthis repeatedly proved that missiles could be quite an effective tool to combat a technologically advanced enemy. In the worst-case scenario, the Turkish Navy can suffer notable losses, and the risk of this is too real to tangible to overlook.

Another unlikely option is a large-scale ground operation that will require an amphibious landing. Turkey has several landing ships, the biggest of which are the two Bayraktar-class amphibious warfare ships (displacement – 7,254 tons). There are also the Osman Gazi-class landing ship (3,700 tons), two Sarucabey-class landing ships (2,600 tons). Other landing ships, albeit active, are outdated. With 5 modern landing ships, any landing operation will endanger Turkish forces involved, keeping in mind the complex diplomatic environment and the LNA that will use all means and measures that it has to prevent such a scenario.

In these conditions, the most likely scenario of Turkey’s military operation was the following:

• Deployment of a limited number of specialists;

• Public employment of private military contractors’

• Redeployment of members of pro-Turkish proxy groups from Syria to Libya;

• Diplomatic and media campaign to secure Ankara’s vital interests and find a political solution that would prevent the LNA’s final push to capture Tripoli. Turkey sees the Libyan foothold and the memorandum on maritime boundaries signed with the GNA as the core factors needed to secure own national interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.

This is exactly what Ankara did. On January 8, Turkish and Russian Presidents released a joint statement in which they called for reaching cease-fire in Libya by midnight of January 12. The joint statement emphasized the worsening situation in Libya and its negative impact on “the security and stability of Libya’s wider neighborhood, the entire Mediterranean region, as well as the African continent, triggering irregular migration, further spread of weapons, terrorism and other criminal activities including illicit trafficking,” and called for the resumption of a political dialogue to settle the conflict. The LNA initially rejected the ceasefire initiative, but then accepted it. This signals that key LNA supporters agreed on the format proposed by the Turkish and Russian leaders. On January 13, the delegations of the GNA, the LNA, and Turkey arrived in Moscow for talks on a wider ceasefire deal. The deal was not reached and clashes near Tripoli resumed on January 14.

Russian and Turkish interests are deeply implicated. Some experts speculated the contradictions within the Libyan conflict could become a stone that will destroy the glass friendship between Ankara and Moscow. However, the joint Russian-Turkish diplomatic efforts demonstrate that the sides found a kind of understanding and possibly agreed on the division of spheres of influence. If the Moscow negotiations format allows de-escalating the situation and putting an end to the terrorism threat and violence in Libya, it will become another success of the practical approach employed by the both powers in their cooperation regarding the Middle East questions.

The 2011 NATO intervention led by France, Italy and the United States destroyed the Libyan statehood in order to get control of the country’s energy resources. Now, Egypt, the UAE, Russia and Turkey are driving France, Italy and the US out of Libya in order to put an end to the created chaos and secure own interests.