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Next, our small non-profit news outfit, WhoWhatWhy, which covers primarily international and national investigative stories, took the reporting to another level. Our story established that the owner of the house, Esam Ghazzawi, was a direct lieutenant to a powerful member of the Saudi royal family who’d learned to fly in Florida years earlier. Ghazzawi was director of the UK division of EIRAD Trading and Contracting Co. Ltd., which among other things, holds the Saudi franchise for many multinational brands including UPS. Ghazzawi’s boss, the chairman of EIRAD Holding Co. Ltd., is Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud.

A fighter pilot who also flew on a Space Shuttle mission, Prince Sultan is the son of the new Saudi king, Salman. WhoWhatWhy’s reporting raised serious questions about whether high-ranking Saudis were directly involved with the 9/11 operation, and whether the U.S. government covered up what it knew. WhoWhatWhy paid a major news distribution outfit to send our story to thousands of news outlets, major and minor, in the United States. Again, the silence was deafening. *** The debate about Moussaoui’s newly released testimony centers on whether he can be trusted. But there is no debate about the Sarasota evidence we uncovered. We’re still waiting for the Times, along with the rest of the mainstream media, to acknowledge that material. Whatever happened in Florida, whatever the veracity of Moussaoui’s claims, anyone with an open mind will smell enough smoke to wonder whose interests are being served by pretending there’s no fire in the Saudi-9/11 connection.

For more on the Bush family’s relationship to the Saudi royal family, see Russ Baker’s book, Family of Secrets.

One restricted document intended for those in army intelligence warned that “journalists and reporters representing all types of news media represent a potential threat to security”. It continued: “Of specific concern are ‘investigative journalists’ who specialise in defence-related exposés either for profit or what they deem to be of the public interest. “All classes of journalists and reporters may try either a formal approach or an informal approach, possibly with off-duty personnel, in their attempts to gain official information to which they are not entitled.” It goes on to caution “such approaches pose a real threat”, and tells staff they must be “immediately reported” to the chain-of-command.

GCHQ’s bulk surveillance of electronic communications has scooped up emails to and from journalists working for some of the US and UK’s largest media organisations, analysis of documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals. Emails from the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post were saved by GCHQ and shared on the agency’s intranet as part of a test exercise by the signals intelligence agency. The disclosure comes as the British government faces intense pressure to protect the confidential communications of reporters, MPs and lawyers from snooping.

British and most major corporate and State-funded Western media would focus on whether Emwazi’s claims were exaggerated or not; or whether the authorizations granted by the UK’s Counter-terrorism and Security Act violate the rights of citizens and contribute to radicalizing people rather than preventing terrorism. The questions almost all media shun are: Has MI5 used the above described or a similar method to force Emwazi into becoming cooperative? Has he been forced into the role of Jihadi John or is he a willing executioner / actor? Is he still handled by British or eventually NATO intelligence services? Are the revelations by the guardian a limited hangout to crate a new “legend” after inconsistencies in previous ISIS videos and “convenient timing” of executions had become too blatantly obvious?

his is the state of affairs NATO bequeathed to Libya, reversing the country’s trajectory as a stable, prosperous pan-African state that was a leading player in the African Union, and a thorn in the side of US and British attempts to re-establish military domination. And it is not only Libya that has suffered; the power vacuum resulting from NATO’s wholesale destruction of the Libyan state apparatus has dragged the whole region into the vortex. As Brendan O Neill has shown in detail, the daily horrors being perpetrated in Mali, Nigeria and now Cameroon are all a direct result of NATO’s bloodletting, as death squads from across the entire Sahel-Sahara region have been given free reign to set up training camps and loot weapons across the giant zone of lawlessness which NATO have sculpted out of Libya.

The result? African states that in 2010 were forging ahead economically, greatly benefitting from Chinese infrastructure and manufacturing investment, moving away from centuries of colonial and neo-colonial dependence on extortionate Western financial institutions, have been confronted with massive new terror threats from groups such as Boko Haram, flush with new weaponry and facilities courtesy of NATO’s humanitarianism. Algeria and Egypt, too, still governed by the same independent-minded movements which overthrew European colonialism, have seen their borders destabilised, setting the stage for ongoing debilitating attacks planned and executed from NATO’s new Libyan militocracy. This is the context in which Egypt is launching the regional fightback against NATO’s destabilisation strategy.

Over the past year in particular, Egyptians have witnessed their Western neighbour rapidly descending down the same path of ISIS takeover as Syria. In Syria, a civil war between a Western-sponsored insurgency and an elected secular government has seen the anti-government forces rapidly fall under the sway of ISIS, as the West’s supposed ‘moderates’ in the Free Syrian Army either join forces with ISIS (impressed by their military prowess, hi-tech weaponry, and massive funding) or find themselves overrun by them. In Libya, the same pattern is quickly developing. The latest phase in the Libyan disaster began last June when the militias who dominated the previous parliament (calling themselves the ‘Libya Dawn’ coalition) lost the election and refused to accept the results, torching the country’s airport and oil storage facilities as opening salvos in an ongoing civil war between them and the newly elected parliament. Both parliaments have the allegiance of various armed factions, and have set up their own rival governments, each controlling different parts of the country. But, starting in Derna last November, areas taken by the Libya Dawn faction have begun falling to ISIS. Last weekend’s capture of Sirte was the third major town to be taken by them, and there is no sign that it will be the last. This is the role that has consistently been played by the West’s proxies across the region – paving the way and laying the ground for ISIS takeover. Egyptian President Sisi’s intervention – airstrikes against ISIS targets in Libya - aims to reverse this trajectory before it reaches Iraqi-Syrian proportions.

The internationally-recognised Libyan government based in Tobruk – the one appointed by the House of Representatives that won the election last summer - has welcomed the Egyptian intervention. Not only, they hope, will it help prevent ISIS takeover, but will also cement Egyptian support for their side in the ongoing civil war with ‘Libya Dawn’. Indeed, Egypt could, with some justification, claim that winning the war against ISIS requires a unified Libyan government committed to this goal, and that the Dawn’s refusal to recognise the elected parliament , not to mention their ‘ambiguous’ attitude towards ISIS, is the major obstacle to achieving such an outcome. Does this mean that the Egyptian intervention will scupper the UN’s ‘Libya dialogue’ peace talks initiative? Not necessarily; in fact it could have the opposite effect. The first two rounds of the talks were boycotted by the General National Congress (GNC) - the Libya Dawn parliament- safe in the knowledge that they would continue to receive weapons and financing from NATO partners Qatar and Turkey whilst the internationally-recognised Tobruk government remained under an international arms embargo. As the UK’s envoy to the Libya Dialogue, Jonathan Powell, noted this week, the “sine qua non for a [peace] settlement” is a “mutually hurting stalemate”. By balancing up the scales in the civil war, Egyptian support military support for the Tobruk government may show the GNC that taking the talks seriously will be more in their interests than continuation of the fight.

Sisi’s call for the military support of the West in his intervention has effectively been rejected, as he very likely expected it to be. A joint statement by the US and Britain and their allies on Tuesday poured cold water on the idea, and no wonder – they did not go to all the bother of turning Libya into the centre of their regional destabilisation strategy only to then try to stabilise it just when it is starting to bear fruit. However, by forcing them to come out with such a statement, Sisi has called the West’s bluff. The US and Britain claim to be committed to the destruction of ISIS, a formation which is the product of the insurgency they have sponsored in Syria for the past four years, and Sisi is asking them to put their money where their mouth is. They have refused to do so. In the end, the Egyptian resolution to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday made no mention of calling for military intervention by other powers, and limited itself to calling for an end to the one-sided international arms embargo which prevents the arming of the elected government but does not seem to deter NATO’s regional partners from openly equipping the ‘Libya Dawn’ militias. Sisi has effectively forced the West to show its hand: their rejection of his proposal to support the intervention makes it clear to the world the two-faced nature of their supposed commitment to the destruction of ISIS.

There are, however, deep divisions on this issue in Europe. France is deepening its military presence in the Sahel-Sahara region, with 3000 troops based in Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali and a massive new base opened on the Libyan border in Niger last October, and would likely welcome a pretext to extend its operations to its historic protectorate in Southern Libya. Italy, likewise, is getting cold feet about the destabilisation it helped to unleash, having not only damaged a valuable trading partner, but increasingly being faced with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the horror and destitution that NATO has gifted the region. But neither are likely to do anything without UNSC approval, which is likely to continue to be blocked by the US and Britain, who are more than happy to see countries like Russian-allied Egypt and Chinese-funded Nigeria weakened and their development retarded by terror bombings. Sisi’s actions will, it is hoped, not only make abundantly clear the West’s acquiescence in the horrors it has created – but also pave the way for an effective fightback against them.

German foreign policy experts are united in their view of Breedlove as a hawk. "I would prefer that Breedlove's comments on political questions be intelligent and reserved," says Social Democrat parliamentarian Niels Annen, for example. "Instead, NATO in the past has always announced a new Russian offensive just as, from our point of view, the time had come for cautious optimism." Annen, who has long specialized in foreign policy, has also been frequently dissatisfied with the information provided by NATO headquarters. "We parliamentarians were often confused by information regarding alleged troop movements that were inconsistent with the information we had," he says. The pressure on Obama from the Republicans, but also from his own political camp, is intense. Should the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine not hold, it will likely be difficult to continue refusing Kiev's requests for shipments of so-called "defensive weapons." And that would represent a dramatic escalation of the crisis. Moscow has already begun issuing threats in anticipation of such deliveries. "Any weapons deliveries to Kiev will escalate the tensions and would unhinge European security," Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's national security council, told the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday.

The German government, meanwhile, is doing what it can to influence Breedlove. Sources in Berlin say that conversations to this end have taken place in recent weeks. But there are many at NATO headquarters in Brussels who are likewise concerned about Breedlove's statements. On Tuesday of last week, Breedlove's public appearances were an official item on the agenda of the North Atlantic Council's weekly lunch meeting. Several ambassadors present criticized Breedlove and expressed their incredulity at some of the commander's statements. The government in Berlin is concerned that Breedlove's statements could harm the West's credibility. The West can't counter Russian propaganda with its own propaganda, "rather it must use arguments that are worthy of a constitutional state." Berlin sources also say that it has become conspicuous that Breedlove's controversial statements are often made just as a step forward has been made in the difficult negotiations aimed at a political resolution. Berlin sources say that Germany should be able to depend on its allies to support its efforts at peace.

A mixture of political argumentation and military propaganda is necessary. But for months now, many in the Chancellery simply shake their heads each time NATO, under Breedlove's leadership, goes public with striking announcements about Russian troop or tank movements. To be sure, neither Berlin's Russia experts nor BND intelligence analysts doubt that Moscow is supporting the pro-Russian separatists. The BND even has proof of such support. But it is the tone of Breedlove's announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO -- and by extension, the entire West -- in danger of losing its credibility.

Although President Obama has decided for the time being to give European diplomacy a chance, hawks like Breedlove or Victoria Nuland are doing what they can to pave the way for weapons deliveries. "We can fight against the Europeans, fight against them rhetorically," Nuland said during a private meeting of American officials on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of February.

In reporting on the meeting later, the German tabloid Bild reported that Nuland referred to the chancellor's early February trip to Moscow for talks with Putin as "Merkel's Moscow stuff." No wonder, then, that people in Berlin have the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military's ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. "We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations," said one Berlin official.

uland, who is seen as a possible secretary of state should the Republicans win back the White House in next year's presidential election, is an important voice in US policy concerning Ukraine and Russia.

She is also very direct. She can be very keen and entertaining, but has been known to take on an undiplomatic tone -- and has not always been wrong to do so. Mykola Asarov, who was prime minister under toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, recalls that Nuland basically blackmailed Yanukovych in order to prevent greater bloodshed in Kiev during the Maidan protests. "No violence against the protesters or you'll fall," Nuland told him according to Asarov. She also, he said, threatened tough economic and political sanctions against both Ukraine and the country's leaders. According to Asarov, Nuland said that, were violence used against the protesters on Maidan Square, information about the money he and his cronies had taken out of the country would be made public.

Nuland has also been open -- at least internally -- about her contempt for European weakness and is famous for having said "Fuck the EU" during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014. Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus. When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to discuss their strategy for breaking Europe's resistance to arming Ukraine

On the seventh floor of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in the heart of Munich, it was Nuland who began coaching. "While talking to the Europeans this weekend, you need to make the case that Russia is putting in more and more offensive stuff while we want to help the Ukrainians defend against these systems," Nuland said. "It is defensive in nature although some of it has lethality."

Breedlove complemented that with the military details, saying that moderate weapons aid was inevitable -- otherwise neither sanctions nor diplomatic pressure would have any effect. "If we can increase the cost for Russia on the battlefield, the other tools will become more effective," he said. "That's what we should do here." In Berlin, top politicians have always considered a common position vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but the dispute is a fundamental one -- and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action. Additionally, the trans-Atlantic partners also have differing goals. Whereas the aim of the Franco-German initiative is to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, it is Russia that concerns hawks within the US administration. They want to drive back Moscow's influence in the region and destabilize Putin's power. For them, the dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow.

Germany’s public position at the Munich Security Conference flew in the face of US demands to get its European allies to militarize the conflict in Ukraine. While US Secretary of State John Kerry went out of his way at the gathering to reassure the media and the public that there was no rift between Washington and the Franco-German side, it was widely reported that the warmonger Senator John McCain lost his cool while he was in Bavaria. Reportedly, he called the Franco-German peace initiative “Moscow bullshit.” He would then criticize Angela Merkel in an interview with the German channel Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), which would prompt calls by German MP Peter Tauber, the secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), for an apology from Senator McCain.

After the Munich Security Conference it was actually revealed that clandestine arms shipments were already being made to Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin would let this be publicly known at a joint press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest when he said that weapons were already secretly being sent to the Kiev authorities. In the same month a report, named Preserving Ukraine’s Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression: What the United States and NATO Must Do, was released arguing for the need to send arms to Ukraine — ranging from spare parts and missiles to heavy personnel — as a means of ultimately fighting Russia. This report was authored by a triumvirate of leading US think-tanks, the Brookings Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs — the two former being from the detached ivory tower “think-tankistan” that is the Washington Beltway. This is the same clique that has advocated for the invasions of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran.

Watch out NATO! United EU military in the horizon? It is in the context of divisions between the EU and Washington that the calls for an EU military force are being made by both the European Commission and Germany.

The EU and Germans realize there is not much they can do to hamper Washington as long as it has a say in EU and European security. Both Berlin and a cross-section of the EU have been resentful of how Washington is using NATO to advance its interests and to influence the events inside Europe. If not a form of pressure in behind the door negotiations with Washington, the calls for an EU military are designed to reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and possibly make NATO defunct. An EU army that would cancel out NATO would have a heavy strategic cost for the US. In this context, Washington would lose its western perch in Eurasia. It “would automatically spell the end of America’s participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard,” in the words of former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The intelligentsias in the US are already alarmed at the risks that an EU military would pose to American influence. The American Jewish Committee’s influential Commentary Magazine, which is affiliated to the neo-cons in the Washington Beltway, has asked, as the title of the article by Seth Mandel illustrates, “Why Is Germany Undermining NATO?” This is while the Washington Examiner has asked, as the title of the article by Hoskingson says, “Whatever happened to US influence?” This is why Washington’s vassals in the EU — specifically Britain, Poland, and the three Baltic states — have all been very vocal in their opposition to the idea of a common EU military force. While Paris has been reluctant to join the calls for an EU army, French opposition politician Marine Le Pen has announced that the time has come for France to come out of the shadow of the United States.

here are some very important questions here. Are the calls for an EU military, meant to pressure the US or is there a real attempt to curb Washington’s influence inside Europe? And are moves being made by Berlin and its partners to evict Washington from Europe by deactivating NATO through a common EU military?

According to the reports, Cable & Wireless also appears to have helped GCHQ obtain data from a rival foreign communications company, India’s Reliance Communications, enabling the spies to sweep up communications sent by millions of internet users worldwide through a Reliance-owned cable that stretches from England across Asia and the Middle East. This so-called “access point” for GCHQ was named Nigella and located near an agency surveillance base in Bude, Cornwall (pictured above). Reliance did not respond to a request for comment. In July 2012, the multinational phone company Vodafone bought Cable & Wireless for about $1.5 billion. The documents indicate that the Nigella surveillance access point remained active as of April 2013. Vodafone said in a statement that it complies with the law and does not give “direct access” to its cables. The company says it is compelled to provide certain access to data based on warrants issued by the government.

Greece could jettison the sanctions based on genuinely ideological grounds — and if they do, a small anti-sanctions coalition in the EU could make itself known and ultimately veto any expansion of penalties against Russia — without the unpleasantness of being ‘the only one’.

Another possibility is that Greece will use Russia sanctions to trade favors with Angela Merkel. In other words: Give us some class of a debt write-down and we’ll give you your sanctions consensus. At that point, Germany would have to chose, what’s more important — doing everything it can to prevent a ‘Grexit’ by conceding to some Greek demands in return for a ‘yes’ vote from Greece on more sanctions — or sticking with the hard-line stance on Greece’s debt and letting the chips fall where they may when it comes to sanctions?

This scenario assumes of course that Greece would actually use Russia sanctions as a bartering tool, which is far from certain — especially given that the pro-Russia stance over Ukraine seems to be more about morals than about money.

While no statements were made about the possibility of arms sales, following a meet in Russia last summer, Putin announced that the two countries were close to penning a $3bn deal for Moscow to supply missiles and warplanes, including MiG-29 fighters and attack helicopters. However, Washington has since resumed its annual $1.5 bn in aid to Egypt, also delivering Apache helicopter gunships to fight militants in the Sinai.

In a further controversial move, the two countries have also suggested they may stop using the dollar in bilateral trade and instead use national currencies. “This measure will open up new prospects for trade and investment cooperation between our countries, reduce its dependence on the current trends in the world markets,” Putin told Egyptian state newspaper al-Ahram. “I should note that we already use national currencies for trade with a number of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) states, and China. This practice proves its worth; we are ready to adopt it in our relations with Egypt as well. This issue is being discussed in substance by relevant agencies of both countries.” Egypt offered to increase agricultural exports to Russia by 30 percent as Russia underwent Western economic sanctions last year for its part in occupying parts of Ukraine. 

Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), said the strengthening Egypt-Russian ties should come as no surprise. "Incorporating a Russia angle into one’s geostrategic toolbox appealed to many Middle Eastern states even before the current crisis, as Russia had been actively re-asserting itself in the region in recent years," he wrote on the ECFR website. "Which is not to say that the West’s Middle East allies really see in Russia a replacement option – rather that they see greater value in both doing some geo-strategic balancing and in being able to use a flirtation with Russia as part of their respective strategies for managing the West, deflecting any Western criticism and guaranteeing future Western assistance and arms sales." He also pointed out that Russia was now the number one source of tourists to Egypt, which has seen a drop-off in tourism as the security situation has deteriorated in the country.