Euro zone manufacturing is in decline. US manufacturing declined. GM is channel stuffing once again to boost sales. US construction is down, showing housing is imploding on itself. First time home buyers collapsed to a 27 year low. Spain wants to impose a Google tax. Those who purchased a policy last year from Obamacare do not want to signup again because of the higher premiums. Canada is banning visas from West Africa. FEMA drill scheduled for Nov for Ebola. Morocco on high alert over terrorist attacks from al-Qaeda. Central bankers pushing Ukraine back into war with the South Eastern people. The Islamic State flowing into Lebanon which allows the US to bomb in this region.

Regardless of the outcome of today's U.S. mid-term elections, there are some things that won't change one iota. While most of America has finally come to realize what a disaster Obama's presidency has really been in real-world terms, there are at least five other disasters looming in America's near future. And neither Republicans nor Democrats have any real plan to deal with these issues... especially when it's so much easier to get elected by slandering your opponent rather than proposing practical solutions.

So here's my warning on the five biggest threats still facing America in the years ahead. Don't hold your breath thinking anyone in Washington D.C. is willing to address any of these. After all, they are the ones who created most of these problems in the first place.

The US is considering bombing pipelines in Syria, which it claims is in an attempt to cut off the huge profits being made by ISIS from captured oilfields.

The Independent quotes Julieta Valls Noyes, the deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs during a visit to London, that ISIS was making $2 million a day off oil sales and that the US would consider airstrikes as well as “kinetic strikes against some pipelines” and “actual physical action to stop the flow”.

The trouble with this justification for destroying Syria’s oil pipelines, is that ISIS does not have the capability to use the pipelines to transfer oil. ISIS transports the stolen oil on the back of trucks, and sells it on the black market in Turkey.

What is Washington's strategy against the Islamic State? Is the Islamic State a creation of the United States? Is the war on terror really a war on Islam? Will the US make amends with Iran in order to defeat the jihadist militants? What is Washington's endgame? CrossTalking with Ken O'Keefe, Majid Rafizadeh, and Peter van Buren.

Former mayor of London Ken Livingstone believes that since as far back as the First World War, the United States, with Britain’s help, has intervened on numerous occasions all over the Middle East just to control the flow of oil.

If you follow Middle East history since this period, then the West has propped up corrupt regimes and overthrown democratically elected ones, Ken Livingstone told RT.

It seems lately that every war the United States gets itself into can’t just be another war, it has to be an open-ended clash of civilizations. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel set out that assessment fairly straightforwardly in his recent comments at the Washington Ideas Festival.

The 9/11 attacks on the United States undoubtedly benefited a number of actors, including the American military-intelligence complex, Israel, and most definitely, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Cold War-era, the area of responsibility for which had long been confined to Europe and North America, used the provisions of Article 5 of the NATO Charter – which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all – to extend NATO’s power deep into Eurasia, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

After engaging in out-of-area invasions and occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, and Syria and, again in Iraq, against the «Islamic State,» the «North Atlantic» military bloc has transformed itself from a Cold War defensive alliance into a global offensive axis of nations that acts with or without United Nations authorization.

Each of us must manage individually or in groups within the sad and irrevocable decay of the world we knew. It's decline accelerates with every passing day. As that progresses, conditions worsen. It will come to pass that many will find it no longer possible to live where they are, while at the same time, having waited too long, are no longer able to move away. Things can occur at a previously unimagined speed, while taking all kinds of frightening and unexpected turns. It stands to reason that the further away one is from the epicenters, the better ones chances are.

Nato aircraft have been scrambled to shadow Russian strategic bombers over the Atlantic and Black Sea and fighter planes over the Baltic in what the western alliance called an unusual burst of activity as tensions remain elevated because of the situation in Ukraine.

In all, Nato said, its jets intercepted four groups of Russian aircraft in about 24 hours since Tuesday and some were still on manoeuvres late on Wednesday afternoon.

“These sizeable Russian flights represent an unusual level of air activity over European air space,” the alliance said.

The “friendly fire” airstrike that killed five American soldiers in Afghanistan on June 9 is the first known case of a battlefield catastrophe that can be linked to automatic defense spending cuts that greatly curtailed prewar training.

This has just gotta have the military industrial complex/banking scum rejoicing?

These are the numbers for the US. When I get a hold of some Canadian figures I will put them here too!

Bankrupting a nation- debt enslaving it's people

Basil Zaharoff, 1849-1936, a Director of Rothschild-owned Vickers
that produced guns and armaments in two world wars.
"The Zaharoff System" involved selling arms to both sides in a conflict
and even instigating conflicts.

A 21-day quarantine for all military personnel serving in Ebola stricken areas of West Africa was approved by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Wednesday.

The new NATO chief says the alliance’s goal to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for terrorists has been accomplished. But Afghanistan has never been a terrorist hub argues defense consultant Moeen Raoff in his comments to RT.

The US Justice Department is investigating export and import procedures at Honeywell International Inc after the firm included Chinese parts in equipment it built for the F-35 fighter jet, Reuters reported.

The U.S. Air Force says it is not halting its use of Depleted Uranium weapons, has recently sent them to the Middle East, and is prepared to use them.

In the first sign that, just in time for winter, the tentative European jawboning alliance against Russia is collapsing (since the "costs", sanctions and other economic means inflicted upon the Kremlin ended up backfiring and pushing Europe into a triple-dip recession instead), earlier today Poland announced that it will move thousands of troops toward its eastern borders, i.e., Ukraine, in what AP dubbed a "historic realignment of a military structure built in the Cold War."

An anti-war leader says while the United States might be ending its traditional military occupations in Afghanistan, it has “new tactics” for occupying more nations around the world.

Up to 9,000 British soldiers who served Queen and country are homeless after leaving the military, a Sunday Mirror investigation revealed back in July 2013.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said on Sunday it's important not to rule out putting troops on the ground in Syria to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but smaller, more targeted steps are needed first.

For example, placing special capability soldiers among Syrian rebels will help them fight better, the Michigan Republican said on CBS' "Face the Nation." The U.S. also needs a better strategy for combating ISIL, Rogers said. After meeting with British officials, he said a lack of strategy in the U.S. is a glaring problem.

"I think what shocked our British friends is this lack of strategy," he said. "I think that they’ll be with us if we can put together a coherent strategy for Syria and Iraq. I really do believe that."

"If you think about what we’re doing, it’s really small pecks at a really big problem," Rogers added.

Several of you have noticed what can only be called a declaration of war on Russia by one of the top figures of the AngloZionist international capital, George Soros who has declared that "Russia is an existential threat to Europe". First, Khodorkovsky, now Soros - it is pretty clear who is gunning for Russia and how, and it is equally clear that what these financiers are really admitting by their bellicose statements is that Putin is an existential threat to them. In the latter statement, they are actually 100% correct (proving one more time that those who say that Putin is an oligarchic puppet are just useful and manipulated idiots).

The United States Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin have struck a deal worth about $4 billion, sources say.

The contract signed for an eight batch of 43 F-35 fighter jets will lower the cost of the radar-evading warplanes by 3 percent, the sources stated on Thursday.

Lockheed Martin will undertake to build jets for both the US and its allies.

Hundreds of Americans have flown to Liberia in the past few days. Thousands more are on the way.

Claims from Iranian officials that the US is secretly supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — even as it bombs the jihadists in both countries — are far from unusual. Since the US airstrikes began in early August, the Supreme Leader, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, and military commanders have all accused Washington of creating the Islamic State’s threat.

However, the deputy head of Iran’s armed forces, General Massoud Jazayeri (pictured), has found a way of enhancing the allegations — on Saturday, he effectively redrew the map of the region to prove the US perfidy.

Lebanese Army helicopter gunships blasted militant hideouts in north Lebanon Sunday as fighting between the military and jihadists in the city’s old souks intensified sharply overnight.

President Barack Obama's administration has reportedly suspended a program it enacted via executive action last month that would allow recipients of Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to join the U.S. military.

Russia is on the way up, America on the way down. Will Washington start a major new war in a desperate attempt to reverse its decline and deal a death blow to its increasingly confident competitor?

In an item on the US Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website, the US military is revealed to be dependent on a few select companies for the manufacture and distribution of White Phosphorus (WP) for use in 155MM M110A2 Smoke Projectiles, which are manufactured at Pine Bluff Arsenal (PBA).

Joint Base Langley, Eustis, Va. – Airmen from the 63rd Medical Group received a warm welcome home today after they returned from supporting humanitarian relief operations in Ebola-stricken African nations on Monday.

The Airmen set up an Expeditionary Medical Support System and trained workers on how to actually use the equipment in a 25-bed deployable hospital facility.

None of the Airmen worked with anyone who was infected with Ebola while they were deployed. They were segregated from the general population officials say.

When the Airmen arrived back at Langley, medical staff evaluated them. They have now been allowed to return home with their families.

As a society, we have been duped by the powers that be. We were told to chant the following …

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

*

Yet, the President of the United States promised CHANGE …. and yes, he kept his promise. Things have changed from bad to worse!

Are we expected to accept that?

I SAY NO!

The US State Department, led by the fumbling John Kerry, and flippant Jen Psaki and the even more flippant CIA sorority operative, Marie Harf, all seem to be Stuck on Stupid when it comes to Syria.

The tired old lie – that U.S. foreign assistance is spread around the world in the name of ‘peace and good will’, has finally been delivered the knock-out blow it needed to be put out of its banal misery this week…

Conservative radio host Michael Savage called veterans with PTSD a bunch of whiny, crybabies who are weak and only live for a government handout.

India and Pakistan have fought four wars since 1947 and had several crises that went to the brink of war. Both tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Now tensions are escalating between the two again.

Pentagon press secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby, on Monday dismissed constitutional concerns over the decision to deploy the military in response to the Ebola virus in the United States.

The hunt for foreign underwater activity near Stockholm entered its fourth day on Monday as Sweden’s armed forces vowed to keep searching “day and night” for what media reports suggest may be a damaged Russian vessel.

“The operation is continuing day and night with undiminished resource,” said military spokesman Dag Enander.

In the morning, the armed forces deployed military vessels and land troops in the Stockholm archipelago, from Möja in the north to Ornö in the south.

By midday, the HMS Stockholm corvette had made its way further south to Nåttarö. The military ordered civilian boats to stay at least ten kilometres away from the warship. It did not give a reason.

Swedish signals intelligence officials first heard an emergency call on Thursday evening, the newspaper said. Fourteen hours later, at around midday on Friday, a foreign vessel was spotted in the Stockholm archipelago.

Sweden intercepted further communications after it began its military operation in the waters off Stockholm, as encrypted messages were relayed between transmitters in the Stockholm archipelago and the Russian enclave Kaliningrad, SvD said.

The Swedish military said it could neither confirm nor deny the report.

An underwater craft in distress can be difficult to manoeuvre, which might explain why it was spotted above the waterline, the newspaper said.

Sweden intensified its search for a suspected submarine in the waters east of Stockholm Sunday, after an operation was launched due to a report of 'foreign underwater activity.' The search was initiated following a tip-off from what Swedish authorities have called a "credible source."

Troops from the 101st Airborne Division leading the military response to Ebola in West Africa will only need gloves and masks to protect themselves from the deadly virus, so said Gen. David Rodriguez at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday.

“They don’t need the whole suit – as such – because they’re not going to be in contact with any of the people,” the commander of U.S. troops in Africa said.

If any American soldiers in Liberia contract the deadly Ebola virus, they will be quarantined, stabilized, and evacuated to a medical facility for treatment, said the Ebola mission commander, adding that the U.S. military hospitals that will admit potentially infected troops have not yet been identified.

Hunter Biden, the youngest son of Vice President Joe Biden, has been kicked out of the military after testing positive for cocaine, two people familiar with the matter said Thursday.

Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was discharged from the Navy Reserve this year after testing positive for cocaine, according to people familiar with the matter.

President Obama has issued an executive order allowing the Pentagon to call up reserve troops to combat the Ebola crisis in Africa.

Obama notified Congress of his order Thursday. It reads: "I hereby determine that it is necessary to augment the active Armed Forces of the United States for the effective conduct of Operation United Assistance, which is providing support to civilian-led humanitarian assistance and consequence management support related to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa.

The Pentagon is identifying gaps that active-duty troops cannot fill, said a Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. Among the specialists that might be tapped: technical engineering, communication systems, logisticians, comptrollers and religious specialists.

All reservists called to duty will be given proper training and medical-threat briefings, the official said.

“This is not a time for us to rest on our laurels or think we can cut the defense budget and spend all that money on highways or whatever else we might want to spend it on,” he said. “We really need a strong leader, and we need somebody who can step up and remind the world what the United States is capable of and demonstrate the ability and the willingness to do that.”

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu accused the United States on Thursday of working on military "scenarios" near Russia's borders that he said were a source of grave concern.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that the next terrorist attack on the US will be far worse than 9/11 during a nearly two-hour interview. He also took pride in the use of waterboarding and in giving the National Security Agency free reign.

Senator John McCain has warned that the Islamic State (Isis) is winning in Iraq and Syria, and that the United States needs to deploy ground troops if it is to stave off defeat.

The Marine Corps is acknowledging that the retiring commandant, Gen. James Amos, did not attend the Corps’ officers training school, though he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a signed resume that he had graduated in 1972.

A Corps official told an inquiring congressman last week that Gen. Amos graduated from The Basic School (TBS) on Feb. 28, 1977, through a correspondence course.

Turkish F-16 and F-4 warplanes have bombed Kurdish PKK rebel targets near the Iraqi border, as their ceasefire comes under increasing strain.

The air strikes on Daglica were in response to PKK shelling of a military outpost, the armed forces said.

Both sides have been observing a truce and it is the first major air raid on the PKK since March 2013.

Kurds are furious at Turkey's inaction as Islamic State (IS) militants attack the Syrian border town of Kobane.

In its excitement to trumpet the coalition against the Islamic State, the U.S. is outing partners before they're ready to go steady.

Trials are set to begin this month for two men accused of conspiring to manufacture untraceable automatic-rifle silencers for a clandestine Navy office. The directorate is suspected of running a secret weapons program.

A little-known Navy intelligence office at the Pentagon called the Directorate for Plans, Policy, Oversight and Integration paid $1.6 million for 349 silencers from a hot-rod auto mechanic in California ? who is the brother of the directorate’s boss, according to charging documents. The untraceable weapons attachments cost only $10,000 in parts and labor to manufacture.

"So we're in a very dangerous period and I think it's more threatening than the period before 9/11," Cheney predicted. "I think 9/11 will turn out to be not nearly as bad as the next mass casualty attack against the United States--which, if and when it comes, will be with something far deadlier than [with] airline tickets and box cutters."

Firefights continued along the Line of Control between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir tonight, with Pakistan reporting 12 civilians slain in cross-border firing so far this month, and urging the United Nations to stop the growing clashes.

India’s Home Ministry reported the latest orders from Modi are “to ensure that Pakistan suffers deep and heavy losses” in the cross-border fighting, following up on Modi’s bragging about firing 1,000 mortars into Pakistani territory.

A US serviceman who took part in the recent joint military exercises has been tagged as a suspect in the killing of a transgender woman in Olongapo City over the weekend, the US embassy said in a statement Monday.

"The United States Embassy in Manila expresses its deepest condolences to the family and friends of Jeffrey Laude, who was found dead in Olongapo City on October 11," the statement said.

"A US Marine has been identified as a possible suspect in the ongoing investigation," the US Embassy statement added. "The United States will continue to fully cooperate with Philippine law enforcement authorities in every aspect of the investigation."

The nation's oldest Army armor unit at Fort Carson in Colorado remained in lockdown for a second day Friday, after the post began investigating "the unauthorized removal of government property," the military said.

The lockdown applies to the 1st Battalion 66th Armor Regiment "Iron Knights," an Army spokesman said.

"The 66th Armor Regiment is the oldest Armor unit in the United States Army, tracing it's lineage to the beginning of the Tank Service in February 1918," its Facebook page says.

Fort Carson chief of media Dani Johnson declined to elaborate Friday on the type of property allegedly removed.

Russia is moving tactical nuclear weapons systems into recently-annexed Crimea while the Obama administration is backing informal talks aimed at cutting U.S. tactical nuclear deployments in Europe.

Three senior House Republican leaders wrote to President Obama two weeks ago warning that Moscow will deploy nuclear missiles and bombers armed with long-range air launched cruise missiles into occupied Ukrainian territory.

“Locating nuclear weapons on the sovereign territory of another state without its permission is a devious and cynical action,” states the letter signed by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R., Calif.) and two subcommittee chairmen.

Two weeks ago, we revealed one part of the "Secret Deal" between the US and Saudi Arabia: namely what the US 'brought to the table' as part of its grand alliance strategy in the middle east, which proudly revealed Saudi Arabia to be "aligned" with the US against ISIS, when in reality John Kerry was merely doing Saudi Arabia's will when the WSJ reported that "the process gave the Saudis leverage to extract a fresh U.S. commitment to beef up training for rebels fighting Mr. Assad, whose demise the Saudis still see as a top priority."

As the United States expands its proxy war against Russia and the BRICS nations through a newly discovered secret deal with Saudi Arabia to force down global oil prices, Russia is firing back to this monetary attack against their currency and economy.

President Obama's comments on Wednesday that U.S. military spending is under threat of "draconian" cuts were met with immediate rebuke from analysts, who say the poor are bearing the brunt of austerity while the war budget remains largely untouched.

The South Texas Veterans Health Care System in San Antonio is notifying 4,000 Veterans whose personal information was compromised Wednesday.
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In an attempt to notify Veterans of the new federal rule of Hydrocodone combination, letters were inadvertently printed double-sided.

On the front page one unique Veteran’s information was printed and another unique Veteran’s information was printed on the back.

In a remarkable but under-reported address, Vice President Joe Biden recently acknowledged that the “immense” and “outsized” Jewish role in the US mass media and cultural life has been the single most important factor in shaping American attitudes over the past century, and in driving major cultural- political changes.

The barbarity of those beheadings combined with the online availability of ISIS's videos has made this war an easy sell for the U.S. and Canadian governments.

There is another group in the Middle East that uses beheadings as a preferred method of execution. That is the government of Saudi Arabia.

Canada is entering this latest war in the Middle East as part of a U.S.-led coalition of which Saudi Arabia is a member.

Sibyl Mikell has worked in the same New Orleans warehouse by the Mississippi River docks since 1980, one of dozens of blind workers who make the mess trays sent to U.S. military forces overseas — including her own son, who finished his second tour of duty in Afghanistan earlier this year.

This operation is an integral part of AbilityOne, a program that awards government contracts to nonprofits that employ blind and disabled people to produce basic products for the military. But Ms. Mikell and 42 coworkers were recently and abruptly laid off from their jobs at Lighthouse for the Blind in New Orleans because of a little-known change in federal procurement rules that encourages military forces in Afghanistan to buy from manufacturers and brokers in Central Asia.

"The proportion of civilian deaths and the methods for classifying deaths as civilian are debated, but civilian war deaths constitute 85% to 90% of casualties caused by war, with about 10 civilians dying for every combatant killed in battle."

An American analyst believes that recent suggestion by Leon Panetta, the former US defense secretary, about actions against Moscow would provoke "a hot war" between Russia and NATO.

Panetta said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s measures against his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin were not enough to stop him in Ukraine. "I would have taken some very tough positions with regards to Putin."

The former CIA director also proposed strong military options about the crisis in Ukraine, saying imposing further “sanctions” against Russia and providing “military aid to the Ukrainians” would be needed to resolve the crisis.

James George Jatras, former US Senate foreign policy analyst, said, “I think Mr. Panetta’s comments are very unfortunate.”

Calls increase for U.S. ground troops in Iraq, Syria as airstrikes fail to stop terrorists

President Barack Obama is heading to the Pentagon Wednesday afternoon for an update on the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), and he’s not going to like what he hears. The key Syrian town of Kobani is likely to fall to ISIS fighters in coming days, senior U.S. military officials will tell Obama—and there’s not a whole lot the U.S. and its allies can do to halt the ISIS victory or the expected bloodbath following its collapse.

In a move designed to amaze Americans and awe enemies and allies alike, the United States Military at last eased--gently, ever so gently--the now legendary F-22 wonder jet into 'combat.' The most sophisticated and expensive warplane in US history (which as of last week was still untested in combat) was inserted into a combat scenario that was essentially the military equivalent of taking on a newborn baby kitten: bombing ISIS training camps in Northern and Western Syria.

A Monday US airstrike against the ISIS-held town of Hit has killed at least 22 Iraqi civilians, and wounded many more, according to locals. The strikes hit a marketplace, along with apartments alongside the market.

Locals say they believe the intended target was a building containing ISIS fighters, just down the road, but the indications are that that building wasn’t hit, with locals saying it was likely a “mistake.”

Newspapers were the first vehicle that mainstream media (MSM) used to manipulate Americans into war. The Spanish-American War (1898) was fought over Cuba, which had been a colony of Spain since 1511. By the 19th century, Cuba had become the world’s wealthiest colony and largest sugar producer, and its assets were coveted by the Illuminist cabal, which also wanted Spain neutered as a world power. National City Bank, then America’s preeminent bank, controlled the McKinley White House, loaned the government $200 million to fight the war, and took control of Cuba’s sugar industry afterwards (see Ferdinand Lundberg’s classic 1937 book, America’s Sixty Families).

The airstrikes ordered by President Barack Obama have begun to degrade the Islamic State (ISIS), but will not be capable of eradicating the militant group unless Syrian President Bashar Assad is overthrown, say Arizona Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Believe nothing Obama says. His policies are polar opposite duplicitous rhetoric. Big Lies repeat one after another.

His word isn't his bond. His pledge to avoid more Middle East ground war is meaningless. All signs suggest it's coming.

With boots-on-the-ground heading to Liberia to help 'manage' the anarchic dystopia that a frightened nation has become, General David Rodriguez (Commander, US Africa Command) held a briefing today to explain US troops' role:

QUESTION: Will they be in contact with individuals or just specimens?
RODRIGUEZ: They come in contact with the individuals.

Of course this was followed by a stream of qualifiers that all protection possible will be taken (just like the nurses in Madrid?)

Poland on Monday urged NATO's new secretary general to push ahead with a missile shield system amid the West's worst standoff with Russia since the Cold War.

"We firmly support the creation of this (missile shield) system as a pan-NATO one because only this makes deep sense both politically and in terms of defence," Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski said at a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The Western defence alliance insists the role of the planned shield is a "purely defensive" response to external threats, notably from so-called "rogue states", and is in no way directed against Russia.

But Moscow has taken a dim view of the project, seeing it as a security threat on its very doorstep.

The escalation of tensions with Russia since January over its role in the Ukraine crisis has sounded the alarm on NATO's eastern flank in countries that were under Moscow's thumb during the Soviet era.

In an interview published Friday, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz addressed the prospect of a future war with Hezbollah by threatening to "take Lebanon and knock it back 70 or 80 years, in all areas."

Discussing how the next war would play out, Gantz also stated that it was possible the Israeli army would "need to capture Lebanese territory."

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has expressed its readiness to defend Turkey as a member state in the face of attacks from the ISIL Takfiri militants.

Speaking at a news conference in Poland’s capital city of Warsaw on Monday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg held the Western military alliance responsible for protecting Turkey’s “integrity” and its borders.

"Turkey should know that NATO will be there if there is any spillover, any attacks on Turkey as a consequence of the violence we see in Syria," Stoltenberg said.

US-led air strikes in northern Syria have failed to interrupt the advance of Islamic State (Isis) fighters closing in on a key city on the Turkish border, raising questions about the western strategy for defeating the jihadi movement.

New NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that the Western alliance could deploy its forces wherever it wants, apparently calling into question post-Cold War agreements that have been shaken by Russia's actions in Crimea and Ukraine.

Stoltenberg was visiting NATO member Poland to reassure it that NATO would provide the protection it sought against its former communist master, Russia, which in recent months has annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, and been accused by the West of sending troops and equipment to back pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Led by Lockheed Martin, the biggest US defence companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.

Two retired U.S. Army generals have blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to send U.S. troops to West Africa to battle the Ebola virus epidemic, saying the military is to fight wars, not disease.

Washington is releasing some US$26 million to Yemen in military aid and boosting funds to armies in five other nations, waiving sanctions imposed for recruiting child soldiers.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday fully waived sanctions and lifted bans on international military, education and training assistance to Yemen, Rwanda and Somalia applied under the Child Soldier Prevention Act, said deputy assistant secretary Michael Kozak.

Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan were also given partial waivers for specific military purposes, while sanctions were maintained on Myanmar, Sudan and Syria, found guilty of the widespread recruitment of children into their armies.

Americans should be braced for a long battle against the brutal terrorist group Islamic State that will test U.S. resolve — and the leadership of the commander in chief, says Leon Panetta, who headed the CIA and then the Pentagon as Al Qaeda was weakened and Osama bin Laden killed.

"I think we're looking at kind of a 30-year war," he says, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.

If there's one thing we should have learned over the past 13 years of war, it's that war is good business for those in the business of war. Unfortunately, while profits for the Pentagon's contractors increase, so does the cost to taxpayers in billions in waste, fraud, and abuse. As America embarks on yet another war in the Middle East, Congress needs to act now to stop this unjustified bonanza for the Pentagon's contractors.

The most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offer an ominous example about what can happen when the rush to war is met with sharp spending increases coupled with little to no oversight or fiscal restraint. The Commission on Wartime Contracting -- a bipartisan congressional body -- estimates that there was $30 to $60 billion in waste, fraud and abuse associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- a total of $12 million per day. Even worse, at least $6 billion is completely missing, never accounted for, gone forever.

The claim has recently been made that the Obama administration concocted not only the imminent attacks on U.S. soil by the al-Qaeda cell The Khorasan Group, but the group itself, in order to make a case for self-defense and justify the bombing of Syria.

As outlandish as it may first appear that America would create a fictitious attack to justify its own attack, there is a pattern of just such fictions stretching back to nearly the very beginning of America’s wars.

President James Polk led America into one of its first foreign wars when he informed the congress that Mexico had attacked a U.S. Army detachment on American soil. In 1848, Abraham Lincoln, then a congressman, would make one of his first appearances in American history by standing up on the floor and demanding that the President inform the House of the exact spot upon which the attack took place. Polk would not answer. That first fictitious attack would justify the war with Mexico.

Obama’s administration sinks in the quicksand of its liberal ambitions –few of its liberal foreign policy objectives have been met; not the closing down of Guantanamo’s prison, nor the tethering of an out-of-control surveillance apparatus, nor even the War on Terror in general. In fact, Obama has intensified the drone warfare in Yemen and Pakistan, and tethered itself to a resurgent Saudi Arabia on the back of Qatari withdrawal. To polish its carapace, the Obama administration has become a latter-day believer in gay rights on the world stage. Power went on Jay Leno’s program to talk about global LGBT rights and held a Google hangout with human rights activists where the issue of LGBT rights was center-stage (later, on twitter, Power mourned the loss of “Eric Ohena Lembembe, a courageous Cameroonian activist tortured to death last month”). But, to stay on the Uganda story, Power did not raise the issue of LGBT rights and Uganda.

The Pentagon is sending as many as 1,000 more troops to Africa to help fight the Ebola virus.

The troops are being sent on top of the 3,000 President Obama has already ordered to help efforts in West Africa.

President Obama has turned out to be another failed big government president, who put America into a new war, spied on its own citizens, and made a disastrous health care reform, Executive Director of the Libertarian Party Carla Howell told RT.

RT: The US strikes on ISIS have already cost it around $780-930 million, which is not pleasant news for the American taxpayers but makes a profit for the industries involved. Does President Obama even know about discontent among his citizens?

Carla Howell: I’m sure he is fully informed; he has got an enormous staff to keep him informed of what is going on. Clearly, what he is trying to do is take credit for ending the war in Iraq, and yet at the same time he is beholden to the military industrial complex in America, their special interests, that want more military funding regardless of whether our Generals even want it or not. So he is trying to walk that line.

I’m guessing most Americans imagine annihilation when they hear the word “defeat.” But it’s worth noting that when he talks about his plan to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, the president is not. And that, ultimately, gets to the heart of why the campaign against ISIS remains so worrying, and why Obama’s depiction of it when he’s speaking to the nation at large is still so reckless. As the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky argued weeks ago (while calling on the president to intervene), and as Obama himself has explained when speaking with journalists or experts, destroying ISIS is well outside U.S. capacity. It’s something people in the region will ultimately have to do for themselves.

To avoid being sucked into another doomed invasion and all-out war, that’s something Americans should’ve understood from the beginning. It’s something the president should have told them. He didn’t; they don’t; and the new poll from Fox may be just the beginning.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got into a heated argument with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday night, according to Israeli officials, over the planned UN investigation into Israel attacking UN sites in the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu had demanded Ban postpone the probe into the attacks indefinitely, pending Israel releasing its own inquiry results. He also accused Ban of “discriminating” against Israel by wanting to probe the attacks on UN sites full of civilians at all.

Now Obama’s advisers, no doubt led by the blood-thirsty National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, have come up with a new war. This is the War Against Ebola. On September 16, President Obama solemnly declared the war. He announced, to the surprise of most sane citizens, that he had ordered 3,000 American troops, the so-called “boots on the ground” that the Pentagon refuses to agree to in Syria, to wage a war against….a virus?

Turkish lawmakers voted Thursday to authorize military force against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, joining a growing international coalition against the Islamist militants as they continued to capture territory just south of Turkey's border.

The Turkish Parliament voted 298-98 to not only to let the country's military leave its borders to battle ISIS but to eliminate threats coming from any terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria, starting Saturday.

It is a big shift for Turkey, a NATO member, which until now offered only tacit support to a U.S.-led coalition of about 40 nations going after ISIS in Iraq and Syria in various capacities.

Russell Brand, who will join us on Saturday, says: Bombing won't work - it is going to make matters worse. It will lead to ground troops going in. That will make matters worse. These kind of operations always make things worse. These are the real lessons from history.

The railroad and tunnel shown in the pictures are located on the Turkish border side to Syria. ISIS terrorists have apparently the permission of Turkish authorities to use their border and conduct attacks on Kurds in Kobane. Eyewitnesses reported that the terrorists had been brought there before by a train.

Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's first Chief of Staff – who also served as Obama's Israeli Mossad handler – famously said: "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

Individuals, groups, whole industries, even nations sometimes take advantage of crises and catastrophes. Big bankers, for example, love war because it forces governments to borrow vast sums of money at compound interest. Arms manufacturers also make huge profits. And the big government always gets bigger during wartime as it confiscates people's wealth and scales back their rights.

I have received many emails regarding the various articles I have written about the problems with the current economic system of being forced to borrow all currency at interest from a privately-owned central bank. This is, of course, the very system of banking the United States fought a revolution to be free of, only to be sold back into said banker slavery not just once, but three times by corrupted congresses and corrupted presidents.

I have been asked to collect all those articles into a single page to make it easier for people to send to their friends, and this collection is the result.

Napoleon once famously remarked that “in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” In few cases does this seem more apt than in that of Vice-President Joe Biden, perennial lapdog to the ADL’s Abraham Foxman. Biden has recently added to last year’s faux pas by recently committing the egregious sin of using the word “Shylocks” to describe mortgage lenders. The slip came in a speech to the Legal Services Corporation, which provides lawyers to Americans who could not afford them otherwise. In his remarks, the Vice-President described the experience of his son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who was deployed for one year in Iraq:

People would come to him and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being — I mean, these Shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas.

In a resolution issued on the sidelines of the 69th annual session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday, foreign ministers of the Group of 77 plus China for the first time explicitly rejected as unacceptable the imposition of unilateral economic sanctions against Iran.

Such sanctions would have adverse consequences on the development of the Iranian nation, the resolution said, calling for the immediate removal of the bans.

The illegal US-engineered sanctions on Iran have been imposed based on the accusation that Tehran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

The US Marine Corps is preparing to deploy about 2,100 grunts to be based out of Kuwait in a new unit configuration designed to respond to crises in the region, according to Corps officials.