Moscow

As you might have noticed over the past several days, the Russian ruble is in a veritable tailspin. The inexorable decline in crude has pressured the currency as have expectations of an uptick in year-end budget spending. 

The ruble fell to a record low against the dollar on Monday and depending on crude’s trajectory, could well fall further in the new year. 2015 will likely mark the third annual decline for the currency which is under pressure not only from low oil prices, but from biting economic sanctions tied to Moscow’s alleged role in Ukraine. 

There’s been some debate over the last two months about whether the concerted effort on Moscow’s part to release hundreds upon hundreds of MoD clips depicting airstrikes in Syria on the way to embarrassing Washington paints an accurate picture of what’s really going on. 

That is, if one simply compares the Russian footage to what we know or have seen with regard to America’s 15-month air campaign against Islamic State, it would be easy to conclude that the US simply hasn’t been trying very hard - or at least not compared to The Kremlin. 

Authored by Pepe Escobar, Op-Ed via RT.com,

In his seminal 'Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization,' Bryan Ward-Perkins writes, "Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue forever... They were wrong. We would be wise not to repeat their complacency.”

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the death of the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later when Boris Yeltsin courageously stood down the red army tanks in front of Moscow’s White House, a dark era in human history came to an end.

A suspected Russian airstrike east of Damascus has killed Jaysh al Islam chief Zahran Alloush, Retuers reports.

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (so, according to Rami Abdulrahman's on the ground sources), five other commanders were also killed when Moscow's warplanes targeted one of the group's meetings in Eastern Ghouta, the site of the infamous chemical attack of 2013 that nearly resulted in the launch of a US air campaign against the Assad government.