Turkey shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border Nov. 24, aparenently after it violated Turkish airspace. Vladimir Putin said the Su-24 was hit by air-to-air missiles fired by Turkish F-16s while it was flying over Syrian territory. A military statement from Ankara said the plane violated Turkish airspace in Hatay province and was warned "10 times in five minutes." Reports indicate the plane crashed in Syrian territory, near Yamadi village of Latakia governorate. (Al Jazeera, BBC News) The two pilots reportedly survived the crash but were captured and summarily executed by members of a Turkmen rebel militia. (Reuters) There is some ambiguity about what actually constitutes the border in this area, as Turkey has established a military-controlled buffer zone in Latakia.

Internet partisans are at present avidly posting a story from conspiranoid website AntiMedia back in June noting reports that a former police commander from Tajikistan was featured in an ISIS video, where he "admitted" (boasted would be more like it) that he was trained by military contractor Blackwater under US State Department aegis. While AntiMedia says he was thusly trained "up until last year," the cited CNN report quotes him as saying the training was from 2003 to 2008. It apparently took place both in Tajikistan and at a Blackwater facility in North Carolina. (Blackwater, strictly speaking, has not existed since 2009, having twice reorganized and changed its name since then.) Gulmurod Khalimov, an ex-colonel of the Tajik Interior Ministry's OMON elite units, says in his ISIS promotional video: "Listen, you American pigs: I've been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims. You taught your soldiers how to surround and attack, in order to exterminate Islam and Muslims."

Media accounts Nov. 20 report that Glencore, the commodity trader with global mining operations, has secured a deal with Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) to broker the nation's crude. The agreement, initiated in September with an option to renew in December, covers 150,000 barrels a day, or roughly half the amount currently being exported. According to Reuters: "Under the arrangement...Glencore loads and finds buyers for all the Sarir and Messla crude oil exported from the Marsa el-Hariga port near the country's eastern border with Egypt." The reports portray the deal as uncontroversial. The Financial Times writes: "The National Oil Corporation, along with the central bank, is one of the few institutions still functioning in Libya, where a civil war has left the country divided between an internationally recognised government in the east and an Islamist militia in the west that controls the capital Tripoli." In fact, the NOC is also divided, with feuding branches controlled by the rival regimes. Marsa el-Hariga is just outside Tobruk, exiled seat of the recognized government. We can be certain that the Glencore deal will raise protests (at least) from Tripoli.

Residents of the ISIS-held northern Syrian town of Manbij, Aleppo governorate, have carried out unprecedented protests against jihadist rule, according to activists. Posts on the Manbij Mubasher Facebook page indicate that several small protest gatherings had taken place in the town on Nov. 12. "In response to the oppressive practices of ISIS against residents of the city of Manbij…tens of citizens came out to criticize the group last Thursday afternoon and called on it to leave the city," Manbij Mubasher reported. "Demonstrations took place on the Jarablus road and several streets [in the town] in the form of small gatherings, which the group met with gunfire and arrests."

Armed assailants seized the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, Mali, Nov. 20, taking some 170 hostages and sparking a confrontation with security troops and US and French special forces in which at least 27 people are dead. A group calling itself al-Mourabitoun claimed responsibility jointly with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Al-Mourabitoun is said to be the new outfit of Algerian Islamist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar—who was twice reported killed, once in a Chadian military operation in Mali in 2013 and then earlir this year in a US air-strike in Libya. In a statement posted on Twitter on June 19, just after the Libyan air-strike, the group said he was "still alive and well and he wanders and roams in the land of Allah, supporting his allies and vexing his enemies." (SMH, CNN, DNA)

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the centripetal tendency in world affairs seems to hold sway—a further Great Power convergence against ISIS. When the French nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle reaches its position off Syria's coast, it joins a Russian guided missile cruiser already there—and cooperation between the two powers appears imminent. "Under the Russian president's decree, the General Staff is working out joint anti-terrorism operations with the French Navy," said Col-Gen. Andrey Kartapolov, deputy chief of staff, according to Moscow's state news agency Tass. "With the arrival of the Charles de Gaulle warship to the Syrian shore we will organize joint military operations." Citing Kartapolov, Tass also claimed, "Russian warplanes have destroyed about 500 fuel tank trucks that were illegally transporting oil from Syria to Iraq for refining." While not stated, this presumably means ISIS oil. (NPR)

At least 32 people were killed and dozens more wounded in a Nov. 17 blast at a crowded vegetable market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Yola, capital of war-torn Adamawa state. Yola was also the scene of an Oct. 24 mosque bombing that left 27 dead. These are but the latest in a relentless campaign of terror attacks by Boko Haram that has left over 1,600 dead in Nigeria and neighboring Chad and Cameroon over the past four months. (Al Jazeera, Nov. 17) The new attack comes just as a Nigerian online activist has won acclaim in his country for calling out Facebook's double standards on which terrorist attacks warrant attention. Activst Jafaar Jafaar in a popular post noted the prodigious attention Facebook is devoting the Paris terrorist attacks that have left 130 dead—with a "Safety Check" feature for residents of the city, and a campaign by users to superimpose the French tricolor over their profile pictures. Jafaar especially made note of the January attack at the town of Baga, in Nigeria's northeastern Borno state, in which an estimated 2,000 were killed—eliciting no such response from Facebook. (News24, Nigeria, Nov. 17)

Well, we knew it was inevitable. And sure enough, the baseless and irreposnsible "false flag" theorizing about the Paris attacks is upon us. Sadly, the first entry is from the official Palestinian Authority  daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. This of course affords the Times of Israel and the right-wing Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) plenty of opportunity for gloating. The op-ed makes all the predictable noises: "The wise and correct thing is to look for who benefits... They need to search the last place reached by the octopus arms of the Mossad... It is clear that its 'Mossad' will burn Beirut and Paris in order to achieve Netanyahu's goals..." No evidence is offered, and the only stab at a motive is the fact that Europe is now moving to impose sanctions on "Israeli" imports in fact produced in the occupied West Bank. For good measure, it also blames "Israeli security services" for the bombing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai last month.