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A very big U.S. blink, given Assad's popularity in public polling and the likelihood that he would be reelected in any election mandated by a peace accord (which is why the U.S. and allies have been insisting that Assad step down as a negotiation pre-condition.  

Assange calls this the most important leaked Hillary email. It shows that Hillary was the driving force on the Libyan War, deliberately escalating past the civilian relief authorization of the UN Security Council resolution to accomplish regime change, thus turning the Libyan invasion into a war of aggression, the supreme war crime for which we hung Nazi and Japanese leaders.

Bankster hunter and economist Yves Smith has posted a collection of comments from William Lazonick, professor of economics and director of the UMass Center for Industrial Competitiveness. His book, "Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy? Business Organization and High-Tech Employment in the United States" (Upjohn Institute, 2009) won the 2010 Schumpeter Prize. Lazonick traces the history of US Corporations as they transitioned from their historical reliance on investing in the productive capacity of their employees to, the financial game of increasing their share prices. He class this the "financialization" of Corporate America. And it's been a disaster. The history looks like a very good read, but i really disagree with Lazonick's recommendations. Maybe the title of his book is a dead giveaway of where Lazonick's head is really at. He uses the word "sustainability". A word that has come to represent the tyranny of a new world order: Globalism. This is where the Banksters and Corporatist impose a tyranny of financial control using a mechanism of United Nations "Agenda 21" based socialism. Sustainability is the unifying themes linking the tyranny of UN Agenda 21 to pantheistic socialism and control of globalist Banksters and their Corporate cronies. So his remedies trouble me greatly. And what would i do? End all income tax (and the IRS), and levy an immediate 33% tariff on all imports. Of course, that will be difficult because the Globalist (Banksters, Corporatists, Pantheists and Agenda 21 types) all support open trade policies. Good read though.

Nice explanation of the Federal Reserve. Includes a list of Bankster Families and banks that actually own the FED, as well as how the FED makes incredible profits. There is also an interesting proposal explaining how we can repurchase the FED for $450 Million and quickly transition to a non interest bearing currency! Good stuff.

Greenwald asks a very good question about the U.S. government accusing the Chinese government of cyber-espionage and the government's finding that Chinese-manufactured ware pose a security risk. Was that intended to drive people to purchase hardware that comes equipped with NSA backdoors? The flip side, of course, is whether the world should be beating feet to purchase their hardware from the Chinese in order to escape the NSA backdoors. Then there is the question of how those backdoors might have made their way into the hardware devices without the acquiescence of their manufacturers, who surely would have realized that their businesses might take enormous financial hits if knowledge of the backdoors became public? Bribing key staff? The manufacturers named in the Der Spiegel article surely are going to face some hard questions and they may face some very unhappy shareholders if their stock prices take a dive. It would be fun to see a shareholder's derivative class action against one of these companies for having acquiesced to NSA implantation of backdoors, leading to the disclosure and the fall in stock price. Caption the case as Wall Street, Inc. v. National Security Agency, dba Seagate Technology, PLC, then watch the feathers and blood fly.  "Seagate is the company the world trusts to store our lives - our files and photos, our libraries and histories, our science and progress."   Yes, and your stockholders trusted you not to endanger their investment by adding NSA backdoors in your products.

Monetary policy of, by, and for banksters continues in the U.S. One irony is that banksters press for transition to an all digital currency so that savers can be penalized, a blatant "trickle-up"economic policy, whilst also pressing for more bank bailouts, wielding the thoroughly-discredited "trickle down" economic theory. But "trickle down" theory, in the context of bank bailouts, has not successfully trickled down and the only beneficiaries have been the few Americans who can still invest in the stock market, paying the highest dividends to the wealthiest among us. Has their ever been a time when the stock market's behavior has been so divorced from the well-being of the middle and lower economic classes? I doubt there has been at least in the last 50 years. Where would we be if the bank bail-out trillions had instead been mailed as checks to the middle and lower economic classes? "Trickle up" works and that is what built the American economy to its peak in inflation-adjusted dollars -- an affluent middle class. But do not expect leadership from Washington, D.C. in correcting income inquequality; only political rhetoric and a fight over extension of unemployment benefits, now lapsed. "According to the World Bank, the GINI coefficient "measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution." Therefore it is used as an indication of income inequality within countries. ... In the late 2000s, Chile had the highest GINI coefficient, after taxes and transfers, among OECD member countries. The United States, Turkey and Mexico came right before it. At the other end of the scale, Slovenia, Denmark and Norway led the ranking with the lowest levels of income inequality." http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/economic-data/11944-wealth-distribution-income-inequality.html#ixzz2pGpv4xGZ Higher minimum wages? How about instead abolishing the Feder

Paul Craig Roberts exposes Larry Summers formula for the banksters to grab money from everyone: eliminate all but electronic-currency and penalize savings. Not mentioned by Roberts, but much of the infrastructure for this is already in place. For example, late last year all recipients of Social Security and VA benefit checks were notified that after March 1, 2013, they would be in violation of the law if they continued to receive paper checks. They were required to enroll in approved electronic deposit programs, all of which are offered by banks. Until about two years ago, people could merely state in writing that they didn't want it and could continue receiving paper checks. But Congress closed that loophole.  (I remain out of compliance.) Debit card is now mandatory, although they have not yet enacted penalties for non-compliance.  So the banksters now get the "float" on virtually all federal SS and VA benefit payments until spent. That's as opposed to the prior Treasury Department drafts whose funds were not in the banking system.   More to the point, the web portal for the federal "Go Direct" program to sign up for direct deposit is in place and debugged. It wouldn't take much beyond a bigger data set to issue debit cards for everyone in the U.S. during a transition to a cashless economy.  The Constitution says gold and silver only for payment of debts; paper currency paved the way for financial abuse of the economy by banksters. Now Summers wants to do away with cash entirely in favor of digital currency with penalties for saving? My life savings must be surrendered to a bank so I can be penalized for saving? And of course moving to all-digital currency would give the spy agencies a much more detailed record of your purchases to work with. The location where you bought that last cup of coffee is instantly available to the NSA? Gimme a break!    

To say I am dubious is a gross understatement. From the publication of his first leaked document, the western military intelligence/industrial complex has been attempting to kill the messenger rather than address the message. The meme that he defected to the Russians has been making the rounds for months, but without any supporting allegations, ignoring that his stay in Russia while in transit to Ecuador was the result of the U.S. pulling his passport. Now we have a story in a British yellow-journalism tabloid fairly infamous for publishing hoaxes that meets that criticism, Suddenly, we are told by a former KGB officer that Russian intelligence maneuvered the U.S. into pulling Snowden's passport while Snowden was on layover in Moscow during his travel from Hong Kong to South America.  But the public opinion polls have been moving in the civil libertarians' direction so an escalation in the quality of attacks on Snowden has been entirely predictable. And of course the article ends with an ad hominem "treachery attack on Snowden attributed to GCHQ and an anonymous "senior Whitehall source."  It will be interesting to see what Snowden and Glenn Greenwald have to say about this. If you're interested in the background of the ex-KBG officer, the following Google query will get you lots of information: +kgb +"boris karpichkov" -Snowden  

Context: U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, holds the U.N. Security Council's rotating chair this month. Powers'  claims a right for the U.S. to wage war against ISIL in Syria on grounds of the collective security exception to the U.N. Charter's prohibition; that is, that the U.S. has a collective security agreement with the nation of Iraq, that makes it lawful for the U.S. to strike ISIL. True enough as a matter of international law, ignoring the fact that Obama has yet to obtain permission from the U.S. Congress, which the U.S. Constitution requires him to do. But ISIL is not the nation of Syria; hence to attack ISIL in Syria, an additional exception is necessary for both Iraq and the U.S. The only other recognized exception that might seem to do deals with the situation when a nation in which a private organization inflicting harm on another nation  is "unwilling or unable" to protect the second nation (Iraq) from the depradations of the private organization. And that is where Powers' legal analysis dissembles because the U.S. has been actively attempting to overthrow the Syrian government via proxy terrorist organizations including ISIL. So the U.S. lacks clean hands in claiming any lawful right to invade Syria on the theory that the Syrian government is unwilling or unable to put down the ISIL organization. The Syrian government is certainly willing and has been attempting to do so. But its inability to do so thus far is entirely due to the U.S., its Gulf Coast state allies, and its ally Turkey continuing to supply ISIL and other terrorist groups in Syria with weapons, training, and supplies, aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government. The doctrine of unclean hands has limited applicability in international law governing human rights. See Lisa LaPlante, The Law of Remedies and the Clean Hands Doctrine: Exclusionary Reparation Policies in Peru's Political Transition, 23 Am Univ Int Law Rev 50 (2007), https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cg

Epic hypocrisy. He bows to international law while waging multiple wars in direct defiance of it. And that's just in the first few paragraphs. It gets worse the farther he gets in his speech.