On September 10, the Fars News Agency reported that the US sent two convoys consisting of ten trucks loaded with logistics and military equipment to the country's al-Susah base in the eastern part of Deir ez-Zor province, controlled by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The media platform said, citing local sources that Washington had also sent another convoy consisting of 100 trucks loaded with military equipment from Iraq to unspecified Syrian territories controlled by the SDF, via the Simalka border crossing.

Task & Purpose previously reported that the US had sent over 100 US Marines to reinforce the military base in al-Tanf, Syria. Newly deployed forces will take part in live ammunition military drills, which are being conducted to demonstrate the "capability to deploy rapidly, assault a target and conduct rapid exfiltration," according to US Central Command (CENTCOM).

Tucker Carlson just blew the cover off the 2016 election influence charade, after he read an internal email on Monday night's show from a senior Google employee who admitted to using company resources to make a "silent donation" to a liberal group that was creating ads and donating funds to bus Latinos to voting stations during the 2016 election in key swing states, in an effort to help Hillary Clinton win.

The email was sent by the former head of Google's multicultural marketing department, Eliana Mario, on November 9, 2016.

Since plans for LinkNYC were first unveiled, journalists, residents, and civil liberties experts have raised concerns that the internet kiosks might be storing sensitive data about its users and possibly tracking their movements. For the last two years, the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a small but vocal group of activists — including ReThink LinkNYC, a grassroots anti-surveillance group, and the anonymous Stop LinkNYC coalition — have highlighted the kiosk’s potential to track locations, collect personal information, and fuel mass surveillance.

Now an undergraduate researcher has discovered indications in LinkNYC code — accidentally made public on the internet — that LinkNYC may be actively planning to track users’ locations.

All across the country, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is hard at work convincing cities to lower their speed limits from 30 MPH to 25 MPH.

The national effort to lower speed limits in cities is known as "Vision-Zero."

To date, the NHTSA, NSC and the IIHS have convinced more than thirty cities to lower their speed limits.

Last month the IIHS published a controversial report titled "Lowering the speed limit from 30 to 25 mph in Boston: effects on vehicle speeds." (To learn more about Boston's Vision-Zero program, click here.)

Why is it controversial?

The Newspaper, recently interviewed the National Motorists Association who pointed how the IIHS cherry-picked data to convince the public that lowering speed limit 5 MPH saves lives.

Emails obtained by Lucy Parsons Labs reveal that Geofeedia touted social media surveillance of middle and high school students by its suburban Chicago police customers in an effort to sell their services to Evanston police.

Geofeedia provides law enforcement with tools to monitor social media use by mapping location and other data. It has received funding from the investment arm of the CIA, In-Q-Tel.

The company became infamous after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a report in 2016 on the use of their products by police to monitor demonstrations against police violence.

Geofeedia’s courting of the Evanston Police Department (EPD) goes back to 2013, and as emails show, the company developed a relationship with police at a time when the sale of surveillance technology to law enforcement became ubiquitous.

A California jury found on Friday Plains All American Pipeline guilty on criminal charges over the 2015 oil spill near Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County that saw more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil spilled and birds, fish, marine mammals, and other wildlife killed.

In May 2015, the Line 901 pipeline owned and operated by Plains All America Pipeline ruptured near Refugio State Beach, spilling more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil, much of which ran down a storm drain and into a ravine under the freeway, entering the Pacific Ocean.

The California Farm Bureau has agreed to a toothless version of "right to repair" that was written by tractor manufacturers.

Farmers have been some of the strongest allies in the ongoing battle to make it easier for everyone to fix their electronics. This week, though, a powerful organization that’s supposed to lobby on behalf of farmers in California has sold them out by reaching a watered-down agreement that will allow companies like John Deere to further cement their repair monopolies.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has said it will “continue to do its work undeterred,” after US National Security Advisor John Bolton threatened sanctions if the tribunal investigates alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.
The Hague-based court investigates genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes and is backed by 123 countries - but not by China and the US.

“The ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its work undeterred, in accordance with those principles and the overarching idea of the rule of law,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The tribunal’s remarks came in response to a scathing verbal attack launched by Bolton in Washington DC on Monday during a speech to the conservative Federalist Society.

“Today, on the eve of September 11th, I want to deliver a clear and unambiguous message on behalf of the president,” Bolton began, before launching into the blistering offensive against the ICC.

Kenneth Starr considered seeking an indictment against Hillary Clinton for perjury while he was investigating her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, the former independent counsel writes in his new memoir.

Starr eventually abandoned any thought of indicting the former First Lady even though he believed she was lying when testifying about the suicide of former White House advisor Vince Foster.

“Now the Taliban will pay a price” vowed President George W. Bush, as American and British fighter planes unleashed missile attacks against major cities in Afghanistan. The US Administration claims that Osama bin Laden is behind the tragic events of the 11th of September. A major war supposedly “against international terrorism” has been launched [October 2001], yet the evidence amply confirms that agencies of the US government have since the Cold War harbored the “Islamic Militant Network” as part of Washington’s foreign policy agenda. In a bitter irony, the US Air Force is targeting the training camps established in the 1980s by the CIA.

Col. Larry Wilkerson says that it was the plan of John Bolton and the neocons to take Iraq, then Syria, and then Iran. These false flag operations are all about maintaining the perpetual war in the region

As the European Parliament prepares for tomorrow's vote on the new Copyright Directive with its provisions requiring mass-scale filtering of all public communications to check for copyright infringement (Article 13) and its provisions requiring paid permission to link to the news if you include as little as two words from the headline in your link text (Article 11), a dismaying number of "creators groups" are supporting it, telling their members that this will be good for them and their flagging financial fortunes.

The real incomes of real creators are really important (disclosure: my primary income source comes from writing science fiction novels for Tor Books, a division of Macmillan). Improving the incomes of the creators who enliven our days, inform, shock, delight and frighten us is a genuine Good Thing.

A number of security apps for the Apple Mac, offered via Apple's curated Mac App Store, have been taken down after it was found that they were spying on users' web browsing habits.

Apps by the name of Dr Unarchiver, Dr Cleaner, Adware Medic, Adware Doctor and App Uninstall have all be removed - with the finger of blame for some of them being pointed at security giant Trend Micro. The apps were some of the most popular apps available in the Mac App Store, too, with Adware Doctor also available as a paid-for version for $4.99.

All the apps work in much the same way: first, they trick the user into giving them MacOS home directory access with virus scanning and clear cache options. Once granted, the apps abuse these access privileges to gather browser-history data from Chrome, Firefox and Safari and covertly send them back to a server in China.

France is headed to the European Court of Justice to establish whether it can force companies such as Google to de-list search results globally.

France’s data regulator is seeking clarification on whether material removed under the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) law should only be removed within France or if it should be de-listed on every Google domain.

Google poses a dire threat to democracy and online freedom, according to President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale.

In a USA Today op-ed, Parscale laid out point-by-point how Google and other tech giants operate as the “gatekeepers” of online information and as political instruments of the left.

“As the internet has become an increasingly central part of modern life, Big Tech giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have increasingly sought to become the gatekeepers of the internet and political discourse,” Parscale wrote Monday.

“Without any sort of democratic mandate, these companies have appointed themselves the arbiters of acceptable thought, discussion and searches online.”

A number of Syrian state and media-linked YouTube accounts have gone dark, as the battle for Idlib looms amid Russia’s warnings of an imminent false-flag chemical attack and Western preparations for retaliatory strikes.

On Saturday afternoon, the channels belonging to the Syrian presidency, the country’s Ministry of Defense, and SANA news all showed a message saying: “This account has been terminated due to a legal complaint,” or “This account has been terminated for a violation of YouTube's Terms of Service.”

The Damascus-based Sana TV's channel on YouTube also appeared to be taken down, with a message reading: “This page isn't available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.”

For the first time ever, the FBI is training political candidates in Colorado how to spot people who may want to hijack their identity and spread misinformation.

Fliers featuring Alex Jones are now being used to smear him as a “Anti-semitic nazi sympathizer”. Alex breaks down how this tactic can be used to possibly blame patriots for a future false flag.

Last week, I urged the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to stop protecting al-Qaeda in Syria by demanding that the Syrian government leave Idlib under al-Qaeda control. While it may seem hard to believe that the US government is helping al-Qaeda in Syria, it’s not as strange as it may seem: our interventionist foreign policy increasingly requires Washington to partner up with “bad guys” in pursuit of its dangerous and aggressive foreign policy goals.

Does the Trump Administration actually support al-Qaeda and ISIS? Of course not. But the “experts” who run Trump’s foreign policy have determined that a de facto alliance with these two extremist groups is for the time being necessary to facilitate the more long-term goals in the Middle East. And what are those goals? Regime change for Iran.

Let’s have a look at the areas where the US is turning a blind eye to al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Footage, meant to serve as proof that the Syrian government has conducted a chemical weapons attack in Idlib, Syria, is to be handed to global news outlets by the end of Tuesday, the Russian military claims.

Several Middle East TV channels and a US news channel have been sent to Jisr al-Shughur in Syria’s Idlib Governorate to produce the footage needed for the provocation, a statement by the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation said. It added the intelligence came from local residents of Jisr al-Shughur.

“All the footage of the staged provocation in Jisr al-Shughur is to be delivered to the newsrooms of TV channels, which are to broadcast it after its publication on social media,” the statement claimed.

The most telling point made in Buckley’s narrative however is the following, “This city of 390,000 (Hetan) underwent a Muslim revival about a decade ago. Most Uighurs have adhered to relatively relaxed forms of Sunni Islam, and a significant number are secular. But budding prosperity and growing interaction with the Middle East fueled interest in stricter Islamic traditions. Men grew long beards, while women wore hijabs that were not a part of traditional Uighur dress.”

Buckley writes as if those develops are insignificant, but if truth be told they are an indication of the spread of Salafist (radical jihadist) ideology within segments of the Uighur population. This is part of a push by Uighur separatists, supported and funded by the US Congress, to foment discord in Xinjiang in order to destabilize China to the advantage of US imperialism’s goal of fragmenting China and preventing its continued rise.

Russian state media channels, in a near simultaneous blitz of information, have issued breaking alerts this morning that anti-Assad insurgents in Idlib have begun filming "fake footage of chemical attacks" based on Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) statements. The Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation says the "fake footage of chemical attacks" is expected to be delivered to various TV channels and Western journalists before the end of the day Tuesday.

Russia's Sputnik News indicates based on official Moscow sources:

According to the information received from inhabitants of Idlib province, militants are now filming a staged provocation in the city of Jisr al-Shugur, where "chemical weapons" are depicted as being used by the Syrian army against civilians. The film crews of several Middle Eastern TV channels arrived in Jisr al-Shugur in the morning, as well as the regional affiliate of one of the main American television news networks", the Reconciliation Center said.

The Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces have continued intense airstrikes on militant targets in the provinces of Idlib and Latakia. According to local sources, a major part of the SAF strikes were delivered on militant positions near Khan Shaykhun, Kafr Zita, al-Latamih and the nearby areas. Syrian Army artillery guns and rocket launchers have also engaged militant targets along the contact line.

The situation remains tense. However, government forces have kicked off no ground offensive yet despite claims by some pro-government media outlets that it’s already ongoing.

The US-led coalition used phosphorous bombs to deliver a strike on the settlement of the ISIS-held village of Hajin in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor on September 8, chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties Vladimir Savchenko said on September 10. According to the statement, the strike were delivered by two F-15 warplanes of the US Air Force.

An online tool created by search giant Google was launched to help Syrian rebels bring down the Syrian regime, in partnership with Qatari-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s server show.

A Benghazi hero said he’d like to “choke” former President Barack Obama after the Democrat noted during his headline-grabbing Friday speech that Republican outrage over the deadly 2012 attack was the result of “wild conspiracy theories.”

Kris Paronto — a former U.S. Army Ranger and CIA contractor who was guarding the Benghazi compound during the coordinated terror attack that took four American lives, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens — didn’t hide his anger at Obama during a Fox News interview Sunday.

YouTube has banned a number of Syrian state-run and pro-government channels, including ones belonging to the Syrian Presidency, the Syrian Defense Ministry and the news agency SANA. The reason provided was that these accounts allegedly violate “YouTube’s Terms of Service”.

This move can be considered as another attempt to suppress non-mainstream reporting on the ongoing conflict. Some Syrian experts even claimed that these were another sign of preparations for a staged chemical attack in Idlib and then a US-led military strike on Syrian government forces.

Obama then attacked Republican members of Congress, accusing them of embracing "wild conspiracy theories like those surrounding Benghazi."

Shortly after Obama made his remarks, Kris Paronto, a former Army Ranger who was a private security contractor working for the CIA at the CIA annex in Benghazi, slammed Obama.

Paronto, who is credited with saving approximately 20 people during the attack, wrote on Twitter:

Update: Trump's national security advisor John Bolton indicated during a speech on Monday that the United States, Britain, and France have agreed that another use of chemical weapons by Syria would be taken "very seriously" and will require a much "stronger" and harsher response.

Dion Nissenbaum
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@DionNissenbaum

Trump’s NSC head John Bolton warns Syria that US, France and Britain will hit Assad harder than last two times if he uses chemical weapons in looming battle for last major rebel stronghold in Idlib.

His remarks came during what's being described as his first major speech since joining the Trump administration at an event hosted by the conservative Federalist Society at a Washington, D.C., hotel.

Meanwhile Turkey has also weighed in regarding the ongoing Russian and Syrian allied assault on Al Qaeda-held Idlib, which began days ago when Russia initiated a bombing campaign ahead of an imminent and massive Syrian Army ground offensive.

US national security adviser John Bolton has warned that the US, France and UK will launch a ‘much stronger’ response to any chemical weapons attack in Syria, as the US bolsters its regional military presence in preparation.

"We've tried to convey the message in recent days that if there's a third use of chemical weapons, the response will be much stronger," Bolton told reporters on Monday.

September 9, 2018

*

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: Moscow Has Upped the Ante in Syria

Mr. President:

We are concerned that you may not have been adequately briefed on the upsurge of hostilities in northwestern Syria, where Syrian armed forces with Russian support have launched a full-out campaign to take back the al-Nusra/al-Qaeda/ISIS-infested province of Idlib. The Syrians will almost certainly succeed, as they did in late 2016 in Aleppo. As in Aleppo, it will mean unspeakable carnage, unless someone finally tells the insurgents theirs is a lost cause.

1. The US Iran policy aims at nothing but conflict-building followed by economic, political and military violence

From all the remarks made by President Donald Trump and his senior officials, it is clear that the United States is trying to manufacture another regime change in the Middle East, this time in Iran.

It does so by making use of the tried and tested tactic of demonising Iranian rulers and the Iranian people and by finding false pretences and pretexts for implementing their destructive goals.

We have already had an inkling of these tactics by Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and his allegation that Iran has not been abiding by the terms of that deal, despite clear evidence of Iranian compliance provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is in charge of inspecting and certifying Iran’s compliance.

A typical example was on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday,” on September 8th, when the program-host Scott Simon interviewed the Obama Administration’s diplomat Robert Malley, in a segment titled “What’s Next In The Syrian War: Idlib”.

Simon’s introduction said:

“After this weekend, the last contested region of Syria may come under ferocious attack. After more than seven years of fighting, the end of the Syrian war may come down to Idlib province. … It holds more than 3 million people, many of whom have been displaced. It’s been essentially a kind of dumping ground for those opposed to Bashar al-Assad’s regime and ISIS.”

Actually, there’s a factual problem with Simon’s lead-in there. Though I have seen official estimates of the population of Idlib ranging from 1.5 million to 3 million, I haven’t seen any of “more than 3 million people.” Mr. Simon is always happy to please his CIA minders, and might simply have gotten carried away in this interview.

The reason given for the dramatic change in policy was the administration’s recent decision to “redefine” its goals in the Syrian conflict, resulting in the emergence of “the exit of all Iranian military and proxy forces from Syria” as the administration’s top priority, effectively overshadowing the U.S.’ long-stated goal of rooting out terror groups like Daesh (ISIS). The shift is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to target Iranian influence in the region while simultaneously attempting to provoke regime change in Iran through the use of aggressive sanctions and other covert means.

The US ambassador to Tel Aviv says Israel checks all settlement expansion plans in the occupied Palestinian territories with the United States which never challenges them.

In an interview published in Israel Hayom daily, David Friedman said Israel “shouldn’t have to ask permission from the US” to build settlements in the occupied West Bank.

According to Friedman, Israel is entitled to the possibility even though the Trump administration has never challenged an Israeli construction plan in the West Bank.

US newspapers have said Friedman is unfit to be ambassador to Israel, arguing that he has politicized his diplomatic office and misrepresented US policy on the conflict with Palestinians.

“In David Friedman, President Trump has nominated someone who lacks the necessary temperament to serve in such a crucial position,” the San Francisco Chronicle wrote last March.

The current protests in Iraq are the most serious seen in the country for years, and are taking place at the heart of some of the world’s largest oilfields. The Iraqi government headquarters in Basra was set ablaze, as were the offices of those parties and militias blamed by local people for their wretched living conditions. Protesters have blockaded and closed down Iraq’s main sea port at Umm Qasr, through which it imports most of its grain and other supplies. Mortar shells have been fired into the Green Zone in Baghdad for the first time in years. At least 10 people have been shot dead by security forces over the last four days in a failed effort to quell the unrest.

This month, the US Navy is conducting exercises it claims will guarantee freedom of movement through Persian Gulf and Red Sea waterways, as Iran threatens to obstruct shopping through key maritime positions.

US 5th Fleet Theater Counter Mine and Maritime Security Exercise Commander Scott A. Stearney recently told reporters in Manama that the exercises, which involve both regional and global allies, "illustrate that the US and our partners stand ready to ensure the freedom of navigation and free flow of commerce wherever international law allows," Bloomberg reported Sunday.

One of the US Navy exercises is occurring in Djibouti, a known choke point for global shipping at the southern end of the Red Sea.

In early July, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) held large-scale military drills in the Persian Gulf. The IRGC said at the time that they were ready to disrupt other countries' oil shipments through the strait if Iran's own exports were impeded.

Two workers at Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) have been killed after a militant attack on the company’s headquarters in Tripoli on Monday, according to local law enforcement. They say two of the attackers were also killed.
"The death toll so far is two killed from NOC staff and two attackers," Ahmed Ben Salim, a spokesman for the Special Deterrence Force, told Reuters.

Earlier on Monday, witnesses reported hearing explosions and gunfire, with smoke rising from close to the NOC offices. Security officials said they were attempting to deal with militants attacking the building.

Security forces took up positions around the offices in central Tripoli, while surrounding roads were cordoned off. Witnesses said they saw ambulances leaving the site. A member of staff from a hotel next to the NOC offices said that he had heard around five blasts.

The White Helmets organization is planning to use family members as hostages of militants who were willing to reconcile with the Syrian government in a staging of chemical weapons attack, Ammar Jamal, a renowned human rights activist, has claimed.

According to Ammar Jamal, the Al-Qaeda affiliated White Helmets intend to use in their operation families of militants who want to move to the side of the Syrian government.

“Members of the White Helmets are preparing a staging an attack with chemical weapons using families of [militants] who have been willing to move to the [Syrian] government side. After the preparation of video material, the White Helmets will bring the families of captive former Daesh [ISIS] members willing to reconcile with the government,” said the activist, noting that the provocation will be held very soon.

At the request of Damascus, Russia assisted Syrian forces in launching several airstrikes across the territory in the northern Al-Ghab plain starting Saturday morning and continuing through Sunday afternoon.

The Syrian Army successfully destroyed an ammunition depot and armored vehicle belonging to the Al-Ezza brigades in the Kafr Zita countryside as they struck various hideouts and locations of Jabhat al-Nusra and their allies Sunday. According to Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), a state media news agency, the army unit also successfully destroyed shelling launching pads belonging to the brigade, where terrorists would launch shells towards residential areas.

After it was revealed in a weekend New York Times piece that the Trump administration held multiple meetings with "rebellious officers" inside Venezuela's army to consider launching a military coup against the country's socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, we cited a former Latin America diplomatic official quoted in the Times who aptly described, “This is going to land like a bomb” in the region.

The astounding revelation — though perhaps familiar-sounding when considering the historical string of coups and CIA covert interventions across the 20th century from Cuba to Nicaragua to Chile — comes just over a month after a bizarre assassination attempt involving two C-4 explosive laden drones which detonated near Maduro as he gave a televised speech during a military parade in Caracas.

In the aftermath of the story, Venezuela has announced plans to hold a massive march on Tuesday against Washington's now confirmed attempts to meddle in the country's internal affairs.

A pipeline spilled more than 8,000 gallons of jet fuel into an Indiana river, The Associated Press reported Sunday.

The affected river was St. Marys River in Decatur, which is a town of 9,500 people about 100 miles from Indianapolis.

Cleaning the spill could take weeks, Decatur Mayor Kenneth L. Meyer told the Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Journal Gazette.

The spill was first reported Friday night in a safety warning issued by the Decatur Police Department urging residents to avoid the area around the spill, local news outlet WANE reported Saturday.

Houston-based Buckeye Pipe Line Company, L.P., which owns the pipeline, confirmed the spill to WANE Saturday.

Company officials said there had been a failure Friday evening that had caused the spill.

"One of their workers discovered a pressure drop, went immediately to check on it and immediately shut it down," Allen County Homeland Security Director Bernie Beier told The Journal Gazette.

A notorious commander and expert of Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at (the Levant Liberation Board or the Al-Nusra Front) terrorist group's chemical warfare has left Idlib province for Turkey as the terrorist group and pro-militant White Helmets are preparing to stage a fake chemical attack in the province, a media outlet reported on Sunday.

At this point there's not even so much as feigning surprise or suspense in the now sadly all-too-familiar Syria script out of Washington.

The Wall Street Journal has just published a bombshell on Sunday evening as Russian and Syrian warplanes continue bombing raids over al-Qaeda held Idlib, citing unnamed US officials who claim "President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has approved the use of chlorine gas in an offensive against the country’s last major rebel stronghold."

And perhaps more alarming is that the report details that Trump is undecided over whether new retaliatory strikes could entail expanding the attack to hit Assad allies Russia and Iran this time around.

Less than a week since U.S. President Donald Trump attacked social media giants (on social media) for being anti-conservative—or, more to the point, anti-Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been scheduled to meet with state attorneys general later this month to discuss those concerns.

“The Attorney General has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms,” the DoJ said in a statement.

Whoever cries “free speech” the loudest in this battle wins. And this is where media ceases to be media and becomes strictly partisan, with both sides playing the “free speech” card. It’s a battle that no one can win and still live to see the tenets of democracy remain in place.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is expected to shutter the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington and threaten punitive measures against any anti-Israeli action by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

US National Security Adviser John Bolton is scheduled to make the announcement in his speech, “Protecting American Constitutionalism and Sovereignty from International Threats,” to the conservative group Federalist Society on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night.

“The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” national security adviser John Bolton plans to say, according a draft of his prepared remarks reviewed by the WSJ.

“The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel,” Bolton would say

In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States set out to destroy Al Qaeda. President George W. Bush vowed to “starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest.”

Seventeen years later, Al Qaeda may be stronger than ever. Far from vanquishing the extremist group and its associated “franchises,” critics say, U.S. policies in the Mideast appear to have encouraged its spread.

American warplanes reportedly drop phosphorous bombs on a village in the eastern Syria province of Dayr al-Zawr.

Vladimir Savchenko, the chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties in Syria, announced the development on Sunday, Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency reported.

"On September 8, 2018, two F-15 warplanes of the US air force delivered airstrikes on the settlement of Hajin with the use of phosphorous bombs. The airstrikes caused heavy fires. Information about casualties and damages is being verified," he said.

“The Russian reconciliations center warned that the use of munitions containing yellow phosphorus is prohibited by an additional protocol to the Geneva Convention of 1949,” the agency added.

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano says Iran is living up to all its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.

"Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA)," Amano said in his introductory statement to the IAEA's Board of Governors in Vienna on Monday, emphasizing that it was essential that Iran continued to fully implement those commitments.

President of the United States Donald Trump withdrew Washington in May from the landmark Iran nuclear agreement, reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries in 2015, and decided to re-impose unilateral sanctions against Tehran.

Under the deal, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions.

WASHINGTON—President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has approved the use of chlorine gas in an offensive against the country’s last major rebel stronghold, U.S. officials said, raising the prospects for another retaliatory U.S. military strike as thousands try to escape what could be a decisive battle in the seven-year-old war.

Syrian state YouTube channels have been shut down this morning just as the Syrian Army's ground offensive has officially begun.

This includes the following now terminated Syrian state and pro-government channels: Syrian Presidency, Syria MoD (Ministry of Defense), SANA, and Sama TV. This follows YouTube reportedly closing Syria's Ortas News last week.

A number of Syrian state and media-linked YouTube accounts have gone dark, as the battle for Idlib looms amid Russia’s warnings of an imminent false-flag chemical attack and Western preparations for retaliatory strikes.

On Saturday afternoon, the channels belonging to the Syrian presidency, the country’s Ministry of Defense, and SANA news all showed a message saying: “This account has been terminated due to a legal complaint,” or “This account has been terminated for a violation of YouTube's Terms of Service.”

The time that “Boshirov and Petrov” were allegedly in Salisbury carrying out the attack is all entirely within the period the Skripals were universally reported to have left their home with their mobile phones switched off.

A key hole in the British government’s account of the Salisbury poisonings has been plugged – the lack of any actual suspects. And it has been plugged in a way that appears broadly convincing – these two men do appear to have traveled to Salisbury at the right time to have been involved.

But what has not been established is the men’s identity and that they are agents of the Russian state, or just what they did in Salisbury. If they are Russian agents, they are remarkably amateur assassins. Meanwhile the new evidence throws the previously reported timelines into confusion – and demolishes the theories put out by “experts” as to why the Novichok dose was not fatal.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The American Empire doesn’t handle failure well, and their repeated failures to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad have driven them into a frenzy where good judgment and logic are a thing of the past. Russian military intelligence predicts a false-flag chemical attack in Idlib which will be pinned on the Assad regime and used to justify “retaliation” orders of magnitude greater than April’s Tomahawk tantrum. This time, if the words of the Wicked Witch of the UN are any indication, Iran and Russia will also be blamed. While the US has mostly abandoned hope for regime change in Syria, it will not look a gift horse in the mouth, and is gathering aircraft carriers and bombers to the region while pumping out tear-jerking propaganda about Idlib residents fearing for their lives. If the false flag fails, they can always send those bombers to Iran...