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The drumbeat for war has been carefully worked out to prepare public opinion in the United States and internationally for a dramatic escalation in military operations in the region, including the direct and open targeting of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The neocons say the next step in President Obama's bombing raids inside Syria must be to move from attacking the terrorist Islamic State to destroying Syria's air force and air defenses, all the better to achieve the neocons' long-sought "regime change," reports Robert Parry.
I am not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but there's one I have. I call it ...
By Paul Craig Roberts
German Journalist Reveals That The CIA Has Compromised The Western Media Always there have been media, reporters, and columnists who published false information in order to help the CIA advance undeclared agendas. The difference is that today the CIA's influence is pervasive. Unfortunately, objective reporting is a thing of the past.
By John Whitehead
America's Dirty Little Secret: Sex Trafficking Is Big Business With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that's going away anytime soon.
Putin's plan to turn into lemonade the lemon that Obama handed him in Ukraine in February.
As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems-- the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, and the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval.
By Dave Lindorff
Freedom's just another word: US Launches Wars and Backs Coups in the Name of Democracy, but Won't Back Real Democracy 
The US, quick to bomb, subvert and meddle in countries in the name of defending democracy, remains silent as police assault activists in Hong Kong demanding that Beijing honor a pledge to allow popular election of the city's chief executive in 2017, writes TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff, a veteran correspondent from Hong Kong.
MailOnline, the world's biggest English language newspaper website, today announced that Piers Morgan has joined the website as Editor-at-Large (US). Piers, one of the best known journalistic faces on both sides of the Atlantic, joins MailOnline from CNN where he was host of Piers Morgan Live from 2011 until 2014. He will write several times each week, bringing his own experience and perspective to bear on the big US stories of the moment.
New England Fall Foliage, via aerial photography
Fall foliage in Shrewsbury, Vermont. Taken with a quadcopter and GoPro camera, John Geery has captured the essence of fall in New England, imho. If you're into New England beauty, and particularly that of Vermont, you may want to watch this one more than once. And Google "Early Light Photography Vermont" to see some amazing stills in a variety of genres.
A serious case has been made repeatedly by unknown scholars and globally celebrated geniuses for well over a century that a likely step toward abolishing war would be instituting some form of global government. Yet the peace movement barely mentions the idea.
By Suzana Megles
Unbelievable Cruelty to Man's Best Friend Reading about animal cruelty can be very painful. We wonder how could such cruel people ever exist? But then on the opposite of the coin - thankfully, we find there are good and kind people as well who will do all they can to make up for the cruel ones.
Sizzle, Sizzle, Fossil Fuels and Trouble: Study Confirms Climate Change Drove Extreme Heat Waves
A new study has added to body of evidence linking human-caused climate change with extreme heat events.
The Gorification of Neil deGrasse Tyson:The people over at The Federalist are on a mission from Koch. They are out to destroy Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Secret to raising well behaved teens? Maximize their zzzzz's -- ScienceDaily
While American pediatricians warn sleep deprivation can stack the deck against teenagers, a new study reveals youth's irritability and laziness aren't down to attitude problems but lack of sleep. This paper exposes the negative consequences of sleep deprivation caused by early school bells, and shows that altering education times not only perks up teens' mood, but also enhances learning and health.
Julian Assange continues to reside in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but he found time to make a public appearance for an interview about his book When Google Met WikiLeaks. How, you ask? Well, he appeared by hologram. "Appearing as a hologram" is now something that 2Pac, Michael Jackson, and Julian Assange have in common.
Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday significantly expanding New York City's living wage law, covering thousands of previously exempt workers and raising the hourly wage itself, to $13.13 from $11.90, for workers who do not receive benefits. If Mr. de Blasio succeeds in matching the minimum wage to the living wage, all hourly workers in the city would earn more than $15 by 2019, according to the city's projections.
Where our national POV needs to be focused
There ARE politicians worth going to the polls for in this election, though they may not be from the two main political parties.
Bad news for voters in the Buckeye State. Good news for partisan Republicans who prefer to win elections by making it more difficult for voters to vote.
By David Swanson
A Good End Date for the New War Is Today Here's my basic contention: Congress knows how to compromise. We don't have to pre-compromise for them.
Even as President Obama launches a new war against Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq, the politics of Official Washington won't allow for pressure on Israel to end one of the principal drivers of that extremism, oppression of the Palestinians, as shown in the case of Tariq Khdeir, described by Marjorie Cohn.
Time and history sometimes intertwine in ways more poetic than linear, such as the multiple crimes associated with the date September 11 and the legacy of bearing witness to suffering that led journalist James Foley to his death in Syria, as Martin Espada explained to Dennis J Bernstein.
By Tom Engelhardt
Engelhardt: Entering the Intelligence Labyrinth Think of the world of the "U.S. Intelligence Community," or IC, as a near-perfect closed system and rare success story in twenty-first-century Washington. In a capital riven by fierce political disagreements, just about everyone agrees on the absolute, total, and ultimate importance of that "community" and whatever its top officials might decide in order to keep this country safe and secure.
By Michael Roberts
Fear-Mongering, Ignorance And Jingoism Subjective Defining Of Terrorism Depends on Whose Side You're On
Seems like everything is slow in Ferguson, except the trigger fingers. It took the chief a month to apologize for taking so long to remove their dead son's body in the street, where the shooter -- Darren Wilson -- paraded around the corpse for hours (as documented on multiple mobile videos). Sickening.
Latest Articles
The U.N. is an Apologist for False Climate Solutions| Jill Stein Interview
A day before the People's Climate March drove 400,000 people into the streets of New York City, Jill Stein sat down with Dennis Trainor, Jr of Acronym TV and outlined what she sees as the coming green revolution. "The U.N. has sold us out," says Stein "The UN has become the apologists for false solutions (like) nuclear power, fracking, and so-called clean coal," says Stein. "The U.N. has sold us out, and it is really...
I have a few questions about all of this. President Obama has told us that we must participate because we are the "indispensible" nation. We have the most powerful armed forces and the best led military "that the World has ever known". He says that it is up to us to lead the way. I'm wondering why Turkey, a nation with the largest military in NATO, doesn't get involved?
The typical response by Israeli attorneys: "You are focusing on immaterial procedural details..." If it didn't look like the defendant was going to end up in prison, it would be funny...
Wide segments of the people of the United States today hold that the US Constitution was voided. The implementation of invalid fraudulent IT systems in the US courts was a key event in establishing current conditions. It is corruption, which was centrally implemented throughout the court system. The current regime engages in robbing the people in collusion with financial institutions and large corporations.
When We're All Musteites
We won't necessarily know what a Musteite is, but I'm inclined to think it would help if we did. I'm using the word to mean "having a certain affinity for the politics of A.J. Muste."
The Bush administration sold us the need for the invasion that created the instability and now we are being sold the fable that the problems in the Mideast are caused by religious extremism. If we think critically about this we will see that, although religious extremism is the apparent reason, it is a symptom of much deeper issues.
Why didn't we think of this before? Most Americans are aware that Washington D.C. is full of war hawks whose thirst for perpetual war is insatiable. So, because of their great love for military action it's time to create a new Special Forces Group, let's call it the War Hawk Battalion that can play a leading role in the current fight against the ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria?
We in Liberal America are now embattled. America has been in kindred battles before, and on those occasions to which we look to see our finest American ideals expressed and embodied, great American leaders have shown the way: "See the evil. Call it out. Press the battle." But in this crisis, in this battle, Liberal America is falling far short of our nation's finest ideals. Why is that?
William deBuys: Love Affair in the Back Country
Like the Civil Rights Act, the Wilderness Act legislated justice. I don't mean to equate the two laws -- no one went to jail or was attacked by police dogs or shot or killed to get the Wilderness Act passed, but it did embody a revolutionary act of justice, nevertheless. It legislated compassion toward the planet by insisting that we humans must stop and leave certain lands alone and not take anything more from them.  Best News Links from the Web
The Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria - The Intercept
As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the "homeland." A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval. The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded "The Khorasan Group."
Robert Reich (Back to School, and to Widening Inequality)
""American kids are getting ready to head back to school. But the schools they're heading back to differ dramatically by family income.Thirty years ago, the average gap on SAT-type tests between children of families in the richest 10% and bottom 10% was about 90 points on an 800-point scale. Today it's 125 points.The gap in the mathematical abilities of American kids, by income, is one of widest among the 65 countries participating in the Program for International Student Achievement. On reading skills, children from high-income families score 110 points higher, on average, than those from poor families. Because property taxes supply about 42% of school funding, schools in poor neighborhoods never have the resources of SCHOLS in affluent communities."The wealthiest highest-spending districts are now providing about twice as much funding per student as are the lowest-spending districts
The man who jumped the White House fence this month and sprinted through the front door made it much farther into the building than previously known, overpowering one Secret Service officer and running through much of the main floor. After barrelling past the guard immediately inside the door, Gonzalez, who was carrying a knife, dashed past the stairway leading a half-flight up to the first family's living quarters. He then ran into the 80-foot-long East Room, an ornate space often used for receptions or presidential addresses.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed her extreme regret over several of the current Court's rulings in a wide-ranging interview published in The New Republic Sunday evening, including their rejecting the commerce clause of President Barack Obama's health care law, and issuing a huge blow to the Voting Rights Act in their Shelby County v. Holder decision. But the first Supreme Court ruling Ginsburg would send to the guillotine would be the Court's decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, giving corporations and unions the green light to give and spend unlimited sums of money on independent political activity. "If there was one decision I would overrule," Ginsburg told The New Republic, it would be Citizens United.
Rotten to the Core: How an Apple mega-deal cost Los Angeles classrooms $1 billion;Katheleen Sharp Salon
DON'T MISS THIS ONE! Technology companies may soon be getting muddied from a long-running scandal at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the nation's 2nd largest system. A year after the district signed a $1 billion contract with Apple to purchase iPads for every student, the once-ballyhooed deal has blown up. As the U.S. starts implementing federal Common Core, teachers and administrators are being driven to adopt technology as never before. That has set off a scramble in Silicon Valley to grab as much of the $9 billion K-12 market as possible. Deasy and the LAUSD have given us ringside seats. The pricey curriculum software, wasn't complete...no keyboards & they were sold iPad 4s ( since discontinued) but Apple had locked the district into paying high prices for the old models. LAUSD had not checked with its teachers or students to see what they needed or wanted,
Thousands of people flooded the streets of Hong Kong this weekend in student-led protests against city authorities. The New York Times reports that local police intensified efforts to suppress the the ongoing demonstrations, bringing a bevy of less-lethal equipment like tear gas grenades, pepper spray, long-barreled guns and riot shields and truncheons. On Sunday, several student groups dispersed after rumors began to circulate that the police would use rubber bullets. The new crackdown has led to 34 injuries and 78 arrests.
Afghanistan inaugurated its first new president in a decade on Monday, swearing in technocrat Ashraf Ghani to head a power-sharing government just as the withdrawal of most foreign troops presents a crucial test. Illustrating the problems facing the new president, a suicide bomber killed seven people at a security checkpoint near Kabul airport just before Ghani was sworn in, a government official said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
The Feds Bypass the State and Come Directly to Districts Asking Them To Commit To Federal Goals
The reality of what is occurring In the 15,880 schools districts- here is Missouri: The Feds Bypass the State and Come Directly to Districts Asking Them To Commit To Federal Goals. these questions are raised: why doesn't the U.S. Department of Education know about the tenth amendment to the Constitution? Why, under Arne Duncan, is the DOE unaware of federalism? Why is the DOE constantly overstepping its bounds, trying to impose its ideas not only on states but on districts? Don't the leaders and lawyers know that they are breaking the law? The law is clear: no employee of the U.S. government is supposed to influence, control or direct the curriculum or instruction in the nation's public schools. Democrats and Republicans agreed on that provision; neither wanted the other to interfere in what is a state and local responsibility....
In a "60 Minutes" interview Sunday night, President Barack Obama placed blame squarely at the foot of the US intelligence community for the rise of the Islamic State, the extremist group also known as ISIS. Citing comments from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Obama said the intelligence community had "underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," referring to the rise of ISIS militants in the country's northeast. But American spies, experts, and journalists who have been watching the progress of ISIS, the extremist offshoot of Al Qaeda, immediately pushed back against the president's assessment.
Finally, the Truth About the A.I.G. Bailout ; By NOAM SCHEIBER NYTimes
"TODAY is the start of the trial in Starr International Co. Inc. v. United States, the case alleging that the government's 2008 bailout of A.I.G. amounted to an unconstitutional plunder of the company's shareholders. It saw the government grab almost 80 percent of its common stock amid the bailout.Among Starr's key claims is that a chunk of the roughly $180 billion the government eventually poured into A.I.G. was unnecessary, at least if the point was to save the insurance giant. In practice, tens of billions went out the door to other financial institutions, like Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, whose risky mortgage securities A.I.G. had foolishly insured in the run-up to the crisis. At the heart of the controversy- the government has never provided a plausible explanation for why the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which had enormous leverage over banks didn't lean on them to accept
The Wilds of Education - by Frank Bruni; NYTimes
during Banned Books Week, proponents of unfettered speech and intellectual freedom draw attention to instances in which debate is circumscribed and the universe sanitized. As if on cue, a dispute over such censorship erupted in the affluent Dallas-area community of Highland Park, where students pushed back at a decision by administrators to suspend the teaching of 7 books . Some parents had complained about the books....This echoed moves years earlier by officials at some schools to prune standardized tests of words that might distress students, either by summoning life's harshness, reminding them of their deprivation or making them feel excluded. "Poverty," "slavery," "divorce," "hurricanes" and "birthdays" were on a list by New York City educator; these efforts overlap in their impulse to edit the world to the comfort of students...troubling in this day when...
Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly's idea for a global, paid "mercenary army" to combat terrorism was rebutted by some in the media but he says he has at least one person in his corner: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He said he recently spoke with Kissinger about it. "He told me that my idea of a world-wide anti-terror force, paid for by coalition nations, under the supervision of [the U.S.] Congress ... simpatico," O'Reilly said.
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