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Cartalucci is on a roll. The false flag sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria, didn't work because John Kerry stuck his foot in his mouth about Syria getting rid of all his chemical warfare agents and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Syrian President Assad offered to do just that. Trapped by Kerry's loose lips, Obama had to call off the U.S. missile strikes and bombing on Syria to rescue the miniscule "Free Syrian Army," Al Nusrah, and other jihadi mercenaries being paid for by the House of Saud and Qattar, So the Syrian government forces got to keep the mercenaries on the run. Flip to plan B: a new excuse for U.S. war against Syria. ISIL is created, including a cover story that it got its hundreds of millions of dollars by robbing banks. Then, it's arranged for the commanders of four Iraq Army divisions to depart when only 1,000 or so ISIL troops attacked Mosul. Left without commanders and softened up by massive psychological warfare operations broadcasting how ISIL was beheading Iraqi troops that they caught, and the four divisions of troops fled south, leaving even their heavy weapons behind.   Out of nowhere, a new Islamic menace is manufactured, spanning about a third each of Syria and Iraq. But Barack Obama to the rescue with the combined  propaganda power of the War Party and Israel Lobby, the U.S. bombers and drones are sent in on their humanitarian mission to rescue about 40,000 Yahidzi (sp?) trapped by ISIL (now the Islamic Caliphate) on a mountaintop.   Then the U.S. expands its bombing to win back the Mosul Dam because it's such a threat to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad if the dam breaks. Terrorized by the U.S. bombing, ISIL commanders are now said by the NYT and Wall St. J. to be retreating into Syria. Voila! Now the U.S. can send bombs and missiles to Syria ostensibly to kill ISIL leadership and troops, but in reality to bomb the heck out of the Syrian government forces. The road to Tehran still runs through Damascus, as a neocon would say.

This is the largest part of the real back story on John Kerry's feverish effort to negotiate a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine apartheid problem. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions ("BDS") movement against Israel is growing rapidly, nearly doubling the rate of growth of the former BDS movement that successfully ended apartheid government of South Africa.   Israel has become a pariah state diplomatically because of its war crimes against Palestinians and because of BDS, is increasingly becoming a pariah state economically. At the same time, Israel has illegally colonized Palestine to the extent that a 2-state solution is all but impossible, meaning that the most likely outcome is that Israel will cease being the "Jewish State" and be forced to grant equality to Palestinians as well in a new secular government. The situation became all the more dire for Israel as the "Jewish State" when the U.N. General Assembly granted Palestine observer state status, opening the way for Palestine to, e.g., pursue criminal prosecution of Israeli leaders for war crimes before the International Criminal Court.  That has dramatically increased the Palestinian Authority's leverage in negotiations. Kerry is on a rescue mission to see if he can coerce the Palestinian Authority to cede sufficient land and powers to Israel to make a 2-state solution credible. Kerry's leverage is that the U.S. has been underwriting the Palestinian Authority's expenses and can threaten to withdraw the financial support.  All of which brings it down to the question of Palestinian Authority leadership corruption. If the PA stands tall and refuses to accept Kerry's ridiculous demands, there will almost certainly be no 2-state solution, ever, because Israel continues to colonize Palestine and has locked up most of Palestine's water resources. Further colonization means still less water for an "independent" Palestine state. The Palestine Authority, on the other hand, suffered f

Wow. Criticism of Obama by a mainstream media organization that lays out the history of U.S. interference in the internal affairs of another nation.  By a U.S. foreign policy wonk, no less. 

The real story behind Benghazi, Syria and WWIII. excerpt: "Benghazi exposed .... It was shortly after the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi that I wrote in explicit detail the actual reason for that attack. Thanks to a highly placed source in the intelligence venue, readers learned the truth ten months before the corporate media finally acknowledged that the compound in Benghazi was the operations center for a large CIA weapons smugglin... where Libya was being used as a weaponsstorage depot to arm the anti-Assad "rebels." The attack at Benghazi was described by this administration and the Clinton State Department as a spontaneous protest over an internet video, although that narrative was proven to be a lie. It was a lie they continued to stick with to hide the fact that the U.S., in conjunction with other NATO allies, were actually doing the work of Saudi Arabia. But why - who benefits? To understand the answer to that question, we must look at what Saudi Arabia is and how the Saudi royals came to power. Much like the U.S., the nation of Saudi Arabia itself is a captured operation, established by a cabal of globalists for the sake of oil. It would be helpful to understand the role Aramco and other oil interests played in the establishment of the Saudi power structure. As the Obama regime continued forward to advance this Saudi-globalist agenda, Russia's Putin warned the U.S. that the insanity of destabilizing Syria was not in their best interests, and certainly not in ours. When the warnings were not heeded, proxy groups for Russia, Syria and Iran, in the form of Ansar al Sharia and AQIM launched a deadly assault on the CIA operations center in Benghazi. The continued pressure of possibly exposing the true nature of the activities in Benghazi, from the illegal arms trafficking in violation of international law to the attack itself, became a serious annoyance to the globalist planners and the Obama subjects to the Saudi royals. The assistanc

Another take on it from EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/europes-court-justice-nsa-surveilance Expected since the Court's Advocate General released an opinion last week, presaging today's opinion.  Very big bucks involved behind the scenes because removing U.S.-based internet companies from the scene in the E.U. would pave the way for growth of E.U.-based companies.  The way forward for the U.S. companies is even more dicey because of a case now pending in the U.S.  The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is about to decide a related case in which Microsoft was ordered by the lower court to produce email records stored on a server in Ireland. . Should the Second Circuit uphold the order and the Supreme Court deny review, then under the principles announced today by the Court in the E.U., no U.S.-based company could ever be allowed to have "possession, custody, or control" of the data of E.U. citizens. You can bet that the E.U. case will weigh heavily in the Second Circuit's deliberations.  The E.U. decision is by far and away the largest legal event yet flowing out of the Edward Snowden disclosures, tectonic in scale. Up to now, Congress has succeeded in confining all NSA reforms to apply only to U.S. citizens. But now the large U.S. internet companies, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc., face the loss of all Europe as a market. Congress *will* be forced by their lobbying power to extend privacy protections to "non-U.S. persons."  Thank you again, Edward Snowden.

My advice to Obama: tell John Kerry  to change Netanyahu's visa to impose travel restrictions, allowing him to travel only  to New York City  (where the U.N. is located). within the U.S. The U.S. did that routinely with Soviet Union officials during the Cold War days. That will teach Netanyahu a lesson he will remember, that  in the U.S. the Executive Branch has control of diplomatic relations. Netanyahu has already faced heavy criticism in Israel for straining relations with Obama. He's currently facing heavy criticism for forcing his way  into the Charlie Hebdo march in Paris after President Hollande had specifically requested that he not take part and for having the idocy to tell French Jews that they could never have a home if they did not emigrate to Israel. If  the Obama Administration makes a public issue out of Netanyahu's latest affront, it might well cost Netanyahu re-eloection as Prime Minister next month. That decision lies in the hands of a single Israeli official who will choose which party is to try to form a new ruling coalition of parties. Mr. Netanyahu's Likud Party has no guarantee of getting that nod.  

Note that this article's original is behind a paywall in Haaretz, one of Israel's market-leading newspapers.  There can be no questioning of the facts that: [i] the Palestinian Boycott, Divesment, and Sanctions ("BDS") movement is rapidly gaining strength globally; and [ii] that factor weighs heavily in the negotiations between Israel and Palestine for a two-state solution. Although not bluntly stated, the BSD movement's path runs directly to a single-state solution that would sweep Israel's present right-wing government from power and result in a secular state rather than a "Jewish state." And the E.U., Israel's largest export market, has promised to go even farther in sanctioning Israel than the considerable distance it has already gone if the negotiations do not result in a two state solution. Labeling all products produced wholly or in part in Israel-occupied Palestine territory is among the mildest of sanctions under discussion, a measure already adopted in two E.U. nations. The BSD Movement's success has also been marked by Israel attaining the pariah state status previously experienced by South Africa. Only the U.S., Canada, and a half-dozen or so tiny island nations closely aligned with the U.S. still vote in favor of Israel at the U.N. For example, the vote on granting Palestine U.N. observer state status was 138-9, with 41 abstentions.  The prospect of an end to the non-secular Jewish state has enormous ramifications for U.S. foreign policy, not the least of which is the influence of the Israel lobby in the U.S. that has thus far led the U.S. to three Treasury-draining wars in Southwest Asia and Northern Africa and host of minor military actions in other area nations, as well as a near-war in Syria, averted mainly via Russian diplomacy that outfoxed Secretary of State John Kerry. Time will tell whether the diplomatic outreach by Iran will succeed in averting war with the greatest military power remaining in the Mideast after Israel itself. "Protectin

High comedy from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The USTR's press release is here along with a link to its report. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/USTR-Targets-Telecommunications-Trade-Barriers The USTR is upset because the E.U. is aiming to build a digital communications network that does not route internal digital traffic outside the E.U., to limit the NSA's ability to surveil Europeans' communications. Part of the plan is to build an E.U.-centric cloud that is not susceptible to U.S. court orders. This plan does not, of course, sit well with U.S.-based cloud service providers.  Where the comedy comes in is that the USTR is making threats to go to the World Trade organization to block the E.U. move under the authority of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). But that treaty provides, in article XIV, that:  "Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where like conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on trade in services, nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any Member of measures: ... (c)      necessary to secure compliance with laws or regulations which are not inconsistent with the provisions of this Agreement including those relating to:   ... (ii)     the protection of the privacy of individuals in relation to the processing and dissemination of personal data and the protection of confidentiality of individual records and accounts[.]" http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/26-gats_01_e.htm#articleXIV   The E.U., in its Treaty on Human Rights, has very strong privacy protections for digital communications. The USTR undoubtedly knows all this, and that the WTO Appellate Panel's judges are of the European mold, sticklers for protection of human rights and most likely do not appreciate being subjects o

Germany, and other European nations whose economies are interdependent on Russia's, are beginning to feel the pain from U.S. efforts to blockade BRICS nations from doing business with Europe. That's what U.S. meddling in Ukraine is about, another of the key U.S. initiatives in the the new Iron Curtain being constructed between BRICS and the U.S.-led Bankster Empire. I suspect that the sanctions will prove to be a dumb move. The BRICS nations will develop new industry to replace the goods it had been buying from Europe, all paid for without U.S. dollars. A pinch in the beginning, but longer term economic growth because the BRICS nations will also sell their new products to developing nations eager to hop off the U.S. dollar. That's when the new BRICS development bank counterpart to the IMF comes to the fore. That's the handwriting on the wall that the U.S. is painting for Germany and the rest of the E.U. Will Germany take that kind of economic hit out of loyalty to the U.S. and love of the sinking value of the dollar? The only end in sight for the dollar's sinking value is the inevitable crash. Or does Germany part ways with the dollar and hitch its wagon to the rising star of the BRICS nations' economy? Because Germany is the island of prosperity in the Eurozone, as goes Germany, so goes the future of the E.U. and NATO. Meanwhile, the Fed manipulates the gold market to keep the price artificially low and thus prop up the dollar a bit longer. But that keeps the price of gold low for China too. The drama of gangster capitalism's demise. http://goo.gl/DGfEq6

"America Is Exhibiting All of the Signs of a Failing Empire Posted on October 10, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog The American Empire Is Quickly Declining Consummate insider Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson - former chief of staff to Colin Powell, and now distinguished adjunct professor of Government and Public Policy at William & Mary - notes that the U.S. is exhibiting all of the signs of a failing empire, including: Relying on massive military force (and using gigantic complexes to support it) as the be-all and end-all of power, and belittling diplomacy Maintaining standing armies, instead of disbanding military forces between wars Using more mercenary forces than citizen troops Spending disproportionately large amounts of blood and treasure in order to counter threats on the status quo … which simply exacerbates the threat against the empire Going ethically and morally bankrupt Ending up up having bankers and financiers end up running the real power Suffering great hiccups in finance and trade The leaders no longer really believe in or follow the ideals of the founders"

The 1 hour-25 minute video talk is well worth listening to. Col. Wilkerson is now a professor who has deeply studied the decline of empires. He speaks from deep knowledge both as a former insider and as a scholar about the state of the American Empire. But notice that the linked page has two copies of the same talk embedded. Don't bother watching both unless you want to hear it twice. :-)

"On Tuesday, President Barack Obama stated that "Over [the] last eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland." Talk about something actually deserving of being labeled as "fake news." Obama's statement obscures the reality that the U.S. has faced 66 Islamist terrorist plots against the U.S. homeland during Obama's time in office, 13 of which were successful. When President George W. Bush left office, the U.S. had faced 28 Islamist plots after 9/11, only one of which was successful. Now there have been 93 Islamist plots since 9/11, and 14 successful attacks. Obama's statement is technically accurate since none of these attacks were planned and directed from abroad. Instead, the vast majority of the terror plots and all of the successful attacks since 9/11 have involved homegrown terrorists-that is, terrorists who radicalized and plotted here in the U.S. While preventing such foreign orchestrated plots is vital, it is no longer enough. The threat has morphed and the U.S. must now do more to counter homegrown and lone wolf Islamist terrorists. Obama's comment obscures the truth that in his eight years in office, as shown by the sharp increase in the number of Islamist plots and successful attacks, the homeland has been less safe. Claiming victory while the U.S. is in the most active period of terrorist activity since 9/11 is not only pushing a false narrative, but it risks diverting our attention from what needs to be done to defend the U.S. homeland."

Amen, Brother Greenwald. Amen!

Let's see if I've got this straight. Our previous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in massive recruitment by "terrorists" who now threat our shores once again. Therefore, we should launch a third war in Iraq or at least raining Hellfire missiles on Iraq from drones. This logic seems to ignore the immutable fact that it is U.S. violence in the region that converts peaceful Arab citizens into "terrorists." The message is clear: end our military involvement in the Mideast and northern Africa. But that message seems to fall on deaf ears in Washington, D.C. That is because this is not about terrorists at all. It is about control of Pipelinestan and profits in the military-industrial complex.   

Words fail me.

This is about Obama trying to convince nations bordering Russia that the U.S. still has their backs despite his unwillingness to send U.S. troops into Ukraine. It is not about a serious threat of a military strike into Russia. Russian nuclear missiles stand as a deterrent to such an action that the U.S. is not ready to overcome before its anti-ballistic missile sites are fully deployed, enabling a U.S. first strike. And Russia has responded by beginning to deploy its own missile shield, using weapons far more advanced than those used in the U.S. ABM shield. That was the entirely predictable response; escalation in weapon capability throughout history has resulted in opponents adopting the same or superior weapons. Advanced weaponry is only an advantage against those who lack the preparedness or resources to respond accordingly. So why did the U.S. waste big bucks on that first-strike capability project anyway?  More seriously, fielding a first strike capability was a major setback for nuclear disarmament efforts, which had been proceeding very well. 

If you haven't been following the Syrian War in the last couple of weeks, you'd have missed that the U.S. government has gone bats**t crazy lately, since the ceasefire agreement Kerry negotiated with Lavrov fell apart because the U.S. couldn't deliver its fundamental promise to separate the "moderate" Syrian opposition from Al-Nusrah and ISIL The U.S. problem was two-fold: [i] the Pentagon mutinied and ended all talk of intelligence sharing with Russia by bombing a Syrian Army unit, killing over 60 and wounding over 100, followed within minutes by a coordinated Al-Nusra ground attack; and [ii] all the "moderate Syrian opposition groups refused the U.S. instruction to separate from the head-choppers, saying that ISIL and Al-Nusrah were their brothers-in-arms. (In fact, there are no "moderate" Syrian rebels; just agents of ISIL and Al-Nusrah who fly a different flag when it's time to pick up their supplies and ammunition from the U.S.) What's the Empire of Chaos to do when the mercenaries refuse to obey orders? So with all major elements of al-Nurah surrounded in an East Aleppo noose with the knot rapidly tightening (Aleppo will be taken before Hillary takes her throne), it's up to Obama to decide whether to unleash the Pentagon to save the CIA's al-Nusrah from destruction. He can't kick that can down the road to Hillary (or Donald). MSM is flooding its viewership with anti-Putin propaganda of the most vituperative kind as well as horror stories about all those poor freedom fighters and their kids being ruthlessly killed by Russia in East Aleppo. James Clapper dutifully trotted out an announcement of sorts blaming the Russian government for attempting to hack the U.S. election process, so Hillary could red-bait Donald's "I'd get along with Putin" position in the last debate. The choice must be painful for Obama. Does he want his legacy to be the President who lost the Middle East or the President who waged a war of aggression to protect al-Qaeda from destructio