The US military is set replace many of its aircraft with planes that cost substantially more to operate by the hour.

James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, noted in a recent cover story for the magazine that costly military projects of questionable worth are becoming increasingly spread throughout congressional districts across the country. This means that projects such as the astronomically expensive F-35 become too politically sensitive to ever cancel, even if the planes themselves aren't cost-effective once they make it to the air.

The following graphic, courtesy of The Atlantic, highlights the disparity in flight hour costs for various aircraft in the US fleet.

Three members of the Libyan parliament representing tribes that were brutally attacked by Islamic militia both during and after the coup that ousted Moammar Gadhafi charge Hillary Clinton is the “Butcher of Libya.”

China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), one of the “Top 10” military industry groups controlled directly by the central government, said on Sunday that the new radar system’s entangled photons had detected targets 100km away in a recent field test.

That’s five times the “potential range” of a laboratory prototype jointly developed by researchers from Canada, Germany, Britain and the United States last year.

With officials constantly looking for new ways to add even more spending to the Pentagon’s annual budget, all the while griping about the spending caps they never respect in the first place, the House Armed Services Committee is laying out a ridiculously expensive scheme to “reboot” the entire military.

Panel members insist that 15 years of non-stop war has, despite that same period being loaded with record budgets, pushed the military to its limit, and that the new plan is needed, which will take a decade and cost an addition $1 trillion, above and beyond the already massive amounts being spent.

Hawks on the panel insist that the massive new scheme is needed because the military is “unready” to fight a major war with either Russia or China, despite the $1 trillion by itself likely to be well more than either nation spends in that time.

Right now, the Obama administration has one priority and that is to stop eastern Aleppo from falling to Syrian government forces. Strategically, if the jihad terrorists lose eastern Aleppo strategically this war is over. The fighting may go on for a while, but that will be the tipping point in terms of who is going to win. They can dance around any way they want, but the bottom line is always going to be to try and stop the Syrian and Russian forces from decimating these jihadists and changing the outcome.

The Syrian government has announced a major new offensive against the Nusra Front-held half of the city of Aleppo today, urging locals to avoid areas where terrorists are located and announcing a number of areas through which civilians can flee the area.

The offensive was announced after the latest efforts to revive the already collapsed ceasefire failed. Syrian officials withdrew from the ceasefire on Monday, citing weekend violations. The announcement was vague on whether this offensive would include attempts to send ground forces into the area.

Aleppo has been contested for years, with districts regularly changing hands but no one ever getting control of the entire city. Nusra and the Syrian government have it roughly split down the middle now, with repeated attacks and counterattacks yielding large death tolls but limited territory changes.

With officials saying that the planned invasion of the city of Mosul could begin as soon as October, the Pentagon is once again requesting more US ground troops be deployed into the area around the city, The Pentagon has already deployed several hundred troops multiple times in the last two months on the same basis.

The Pentagon is seeking another 500 “permanent” US troops in Iraq, which would bring the official figure in the country to 4,900. In practice, the Pentagon already is believed to have in excess of 6,000 troops in Iraq, but labels many of them “temporary” and doesn’t count them, despite their deployments not having any specific end date.

Israel has opened a mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels, aiming to step up ties with the alliance led by the United States.

Israeli ambassador to the European Union Aharon Leshno-Yaar presented his credentials Friday to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Israel’s embassy said.

The diplomatic mission is expected to enhance Israel's contribution to the organization, the statement said.

Leshno-Yaar stated “the opening of a permanent office reflects Israel's role in promoting peace and stability in the region."

Speaking to the US Senate, the Pentagon’s leaders blamed Russia for the Aleppo aid convoy attack, but admitted they “had no facts.” Only US coalition planes should be allowed over Syria, they said, though that would require war against both Syria and Russia.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter and General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, faced the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday to report on the ongoing military operations and “national security challenges” faced by the US. They also asked the senators for more reliable funding, saying the uncertainty was hurting the defense industry.

“Not only our people – our defense industry partners, too, need stability and longer-term plans to be as efficient and cutting-edge as we need them to be,” Carter told the senators.

Syrian Social Nationalist Party representative Tarek Ahmad says that the war in Syria has reached a dead end, with the intervention of foreign powers turning the situation into a chaotic mess. Moreover, the politician says that Syria is just one front in a Third World War being waged by Washington and its allies.

It’s really quite embarrassing on a global scale when members of our own government seem to be deliberately trying to pick fights with people who aren’t interested in fighting with us. If you’ve traveled outside of the United States much, you probably know that we Americans have a rather negative reputation off of our own shores. Now, generally speaking, that isn’t our fault as individuals. You and I don’t create headlines that make waves throughout Europe and Asia.

While average Americans aren’t directly responsible for this, our federal officials are. I’ve written recently about President Obama doing things in Syria that are worsening the conflict there. I’ve also written about the fact that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are starting to butt heads. And finally, I’ve warned time and time again that war is upon us – and everyone knows but the US.

Michael Morell is the director of the CIA. Here’s a little blurb from Wikipedia about him.

With officials constantly looking for new ways to add even more spending to the Pentagon’s annual budget, all the while griping about the spending caps they never respect in the first place, the House Armed Services Committee is laying out a ridiculously expensive scheme to “reboot” the entire military.

Panel members insist that 15 years of non-stop war has, despite that same period being loaded with record budgets, pushed the military to its limit, and that the new plan is needed, which will take a decade and cost an addition $1 trillion, above and beyond the already massive amounts being spent.

Hawks on the panel insist that the massive new scheme is needed because the military is “unready” to fight a major war with either Russia or China, despite the $1 trillion by itself likely to be well more than either nation spends in that time.

Speaking to the US Senate, the Pentagon’s leaders blamed Russia for the Aleppo aid convoy attack, but admitted they “had no facts.” Only US coalition planes should be allowed over Syria, they said, though that would require war against both Syria and Russia.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter and General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, faced the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday to report on the ongoing military operations and “national security challenges”faced by the US. They also asked the senators for more reliable funding, saying the uncertainty was hurting the defense industry.

“Not only our people – our defense industry partners, too, need stability and longer-term plans to be as efficient and cutting-edge as we need them to be,” Carter told the senators.

On the International Day of Peace, Bolivian President Evo Morales condemned the imperialist and warmongering policies of Israel and the United States during his address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York Wednesday.

ISIS, like Al Qaeda before it, was a creation of the West. The City’s banking elites in particular funded modern “terrorism” in order to create an enemy for the West to fight against. (All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars.)

The UK Parliament just confirmed what the alternative media has been saying for years.

Specifically, a new report from the bipartisan House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee – based on interviews with all of the key British decision-makers, review of documents, and on-the-ground investigations in Africa – found that Libyan war was based on lies, that it destroyed the country, and that it spread terrorism far and wide.

The War Based On Bogus Intelligence … Like the Iraq War

US Peace Council Representatives CONFRONT a hostile American press after visiting Syria, and learning that the American people are being lied to, grossly lied to.

Rick Sterling debunks the so-called “White Helmets” propaganda and makes the case that Neocons and Clintonites have launched a major campaign for direct US military intervention against Syria, potentially leading to war with Iran and Russia.

“We have studied video footage from the scene from so-called ‘activists’ in detail and did not find any evidence that the convoy had been struck by ordnance”, commented Igor Konashenkov, a Ministry spokesman.

“There are no craters and the exterior of the vehicles do not have the kind of damage consistent with blasts caused by bombs dropped from the air.” His observations are hard to challenge, anyone who has studied the assaults of the “international community” on far away countries over the last decades knows what a bombed truck looks like - what fragments remains of it.

Photographs of the affected lorries show burned out vehicles, metal skeleton intact.

Konashenkov said that damage visible in footage was instead the result of cargo igniting - “oddly” occurring at the same time as militants (formerly Nusra Front) had started a big offensive in nearby Aleppo, backed by tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment.

Veteran German politician Willy Wimmer says that the US military bases in his country are long overdue for closure. Speaking to Sputnik, Wimmer emphasized that US bases installed during the Cold War no longer protect Europe; instead, they serve as a logistics hub for NATO's wars of aggression.

Yesterday’s apparently airstrikes against a UN aid convoy, destroying between 18-20 trucks and killing some 14 Red Crescent volunteers took multiple turns today, with the US claiming they believe that a pair of Russian warplanes attacked the convoy, potentially as “revenge” for the American attack on a Syrian military base the day before, which killed 83 soldiers.

The Russians are denying this, of course, but perhaps the even more unusual angle is that White House officials have subsequently come forward to insist that the US holds Russia responsible for what happened to the convoy, even if they didn’t actually do it.

Obama aide Ben Rhodes argued that because Russia had made a commitment to the ceasefire and to getting aid flowing in northern Syria, it was obviously their fault that something happened to the convoy, no matter what that actually was.

Weekend US airstrikes against a Syrian army base in Deir Ezzor, a protracted error which killed 83 Syrian soldiers and opened up the base for ISIS to overrun it, carried on longer than it should have, because when Russia made the call to warn the Americans, the guy who was supposed to answer it wasn’t there.

The Russian military called and asked to speak to this “point of contact” official at the coordinating center which is running the US-led bombing campaigns in Syria, and were told he wasn’t available. The Russians called back again and finally got somebody who understood that the US was bombing the wrong target.

The Pentagon dismissed concern about the lapse, saying the contact “wasn’t expecting a call” and therefore didn’t feel obliged to sit next to the phone. Yet as intense US airstrikes were ongoing, in the middle of a US-Russia negotiated ceasefire, it seems like it wasn’t a total shock that a call ended up made.

US Secretary of State John Kerry demanded on Wednesday that Russia force Bashar al-Assad's regime to ground its air force in order to revive hopes of a ceasefire in Syria's civil war.

Two U.S. Air force pilots ejected from a U-2 Spy plane early Tuesday morning around 9 am local time, just before the aircraft crashed in a rural area near Sacramento during a training mission, the U.S. Air Force said. According to a U.S. official, one pilot was killed while the other was injured.

When asked how the F-35 Lightning II would stack up against potential aggression from Moscow, NATO air chiefs said they're confident the fifth-generation jet would devalue Russian forces.

It used to be we used nuclear weapons only in retaliation. There was no first use, but the George W. Bush regime, the Neocons, changed our nuclear doctrine. It’s now a preemptive first strike. So, this tells both the Russians and Chinese they could get a preemptive first strike. Then, we tell the Russians we are putting missiles right on your border. You won’t have two minutes’ notice. They can’t accept that. It’s too much risk from a crazy country (U.S.) that won’t negotiate with them. . . . So, we’re headed for war. I think the only thing that would block it is if one or two of the European governments realize that they have nothing whatsoever to gain with a conflict with Russia. . . . The only thing they could do to prevent a nuclear war is to pull out of NATO.”

Kosovo has granted the rights to search for coal over one-third of its territory to a company linked to retired US General Wesley Clark, an investigation by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project partner the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has found.

The investigation found that Kosovo’s government granted the rights in August to Canadian firm Envidity Energy Inc., which is chaired by Clark, the commander of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that helped lead to Kosovo’s “independence” from Serbia.

I got to Donbass with my friend Jean-Josy Bousquet, attorney representing the League of the Rights of Man, for a brief one-week mission.

In these two departments, Donetsk and Luhansk, the Russian patriots, i.e. those whose language and culture have been Russian since forever, oppose themselves to the centralized Ukrainian forces, that are manipulated and organized backstage by Washington, intending to impose NATO, completing the NATO-ized cordon sanitaire which, from Turkey all the way to the Baltics, isolates Russia from Europe.

“On the evening of September 19, in that specific region, a drone belonging to the international condition, which had taken off from the Incirlik air base in Turkey, was flying at a height of 3,600 meters and traveling at around 200 kilometers per hour,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.

“The object was in the area around the town of Urm Al-Kubra, where the convoy was a few minutes before it caught fire,” Konashenkov added. “It left after about 30 minutes.”

In the wake of Pyongyang’s recent nuclear weapons tests, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter stated Monday that American forces in South Korea must adopt a stance of readiness as if they were going to “fight tonight.”

On September 9th the Washington Post featured a front page article describing how the Defense Department had used warplanes to attack targets and kill suspected militants in six countries over the Labor Day weekend. The article was celebratory, citing Pentagon officials who boasted of the ability to engage “multiple targets” anywhere in the world in what has become a “permanent war.” The article did not mention that the United States is not currently at war with any of the six target countries and made no attempt to make a case that the men and women who were killed actually threatened the U.S. or American citizens.

These testimonies by Syrian soldiers who are fighting the Islamic State rebels (ISIS-Daesh) confirm what we already know.

The United States of America is not fighting the terrorists in Syria.

The Obama administration, with the support of its allies including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, is supporting the Islamic State (ISIS Daesh)

Obama’s counterterrorism campaign in Syria and Iraq is bogus.

Read carefully:

The testimonies confirm the unspoken truth:

OBAMA IS PROTECTING THE TERRORISTS

- We [Syrian soldiers] first thought the aircraft are support to us after the first 2 shots, but we quickly found out that they are targeting our forces aggressively, while we were fighting IS terrorists. The aircraft used cluster bombs against us.

- A day before the airstrikes, the [US] drones were flying and scanning all the area

- The US air-strikes destroyed all our equipment and defense points.

The fragile ceasefire deal hammered out by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this month has been hanging in the balance, with the main threat coming from the Pentagon, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, told newspaper Vzglyad.

In a not-so-shocking revelation, largely unreported by the mainstream media, newly declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents have confirmed that “a broadening U.S. military presence overseas and outreach by Islamist ideologues” was behind an 11% increase in plotted terror attacks against the United States since 2006 — and those terror attacks were orchestrated by Americans, not foreign nationals.

According to an Intelligence Assessment of 57 terrorist plots against the United States and U.S. interests between 2001 and 2010 — carried out in 2011 by the Los Angeles Division of the FBI and the Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC) — “foreign nationals led anti-US targeting prior to 2006 plotting 52% of all terror attacks,” but sociologically- and religiously-diverse American nationals [read homegrown terrorists with no identifiable religious affiliation] plotted 70% of the terror attacks on their own land, beginning 2007.

The report states:

Russia could hinder US reinforcements headed to Europe in the event of a major war, warned the recently retired Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove. It’s well known Russian radars, missiles, and strike planes — “Anti-Access/Area Denial” systems — threaten ships and aircraft across wide swathes of the Black Sea, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic. But Gen. Breedlove’s worries are on a wider scale: He’s anxious about the Atlantic.

In the first three days after the vaunted littoral combat ship (LCS) USS Montgomery was commissioned the warship suffered two engine casualties threatening to delay a pinnacle component to America’s naval superiority strategy.

An electrical explosion occurred in the ship’s second main turbine generator (MTG) in June. While US military officials insist there was no fire, the incident was enough to fling debris into the turbine. One month later, a similar explosion occurred on the first MTG.

Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror

In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos:

Washington’s lie about seeking a genuine ceasefire in Syria is in danger of being exposed for the world to see. So, hilariously, a charade is being hurriedly orchestrated in order to hide this ignominy. As usual, the Syrian government is being scapegoated for the real cause of violence in the country. That real cause is Washington’s state-sponsored terrorist-fueled war for regime change.

After four days of continuing deadly breaches by US-backed «rebels» since the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire deal was implemented last Monday, Washington and the dutiful Western mainstream media are preparing the inevitable excuses.

Rather than focusing on ongoing «rebel» violence in contravention of the truce, US Secretary of State John Kerry fingered the Syrian government for preventing humanitarian access to insurgent-held eastern Aleppo as the reason for why the ceasefire is in danger of collapsing.

India accused Pakistan of being behind Sunday's separatist attack on an army base near their disputed frontier that killed 17 soldiers, in one of the most deadly attacks in Kashmir in a quarter-century-old insurgency.

Four commando-style gunmen, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and grenades, burst into the brigade headquarters in Uri at 5:30 a.m. (midnight GMT) and were killed after a three-hour gunfight, a senior Indian army officer said.

The incident sharply increased tensions between the bitter, nuclear-armed rivals and will raise fears of a potential military escalation. Indian and Pakistani troops are in close proximity in many places along one of the world's most heavily militarised frontiers, and exchanges of fire are not uncommon.

Reports out of the area around Qayara say that hundreds of additional US ground troops have arrived at the Qayara Air Base, to join several hundred troops already there. The troops are expected to provide “logistic support” for the Mosul invasion.

Iraqi troops “captured” the Qayara Air Base to much fanfare last month, and intend to use this as a base of operation in the attack on Mosul. The base had long since been abandoned by ISIS, stripped clean by ISIS forces that have controlled the area for the past two years.

A lot of effort is being pumped into repair the air base, which was rendered largely useless by heavy US airstrikes in recent years, and a new bridge to allow forces to cross the river and advance against the area south of Mosul.

Though the Pentagon has long warned that it is unlikely the Iraqi military is really ready to take the enormous city of Mosul, US officials have suggested that the invasion could begin as soon as October

The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)'s East China Sea Fleet has drawn attention in recent years over its growing number of modern destroyers. The destroyer flotilla, as part of the frontline group guarding the East China Sea, conducts regular patrol missions and provides strategic support in political and diplomatic disputes in the area.

Can they adapt to new developments brought by the strategic shifts facing the Chinese navy? The Global Times reporter visited the flotilla recently to hear its stories.

"As a combat troop, the fundamental mission is our ability to win. There is no doubt about our fighting strength," Xu Haihua, the captain of the flotilla, told the Global Times.

Chairman of NATO Military Committee General Petr Pavel has claimed at the alliance’s conference in Croatia that the Balkans are “far from stable,” saying that the region is both threatened by Islamic terrorism and Russian influence.

Pavel, who became the first committee chief from the former Eastern bloc, said that the military alliance should be able to deter opponents and defend the members of NATO, Croatian HINA news agency reported.

"NATO must have the ability, strength and resources to distract opponents and defend its members against any threat," he said at a press briefing in Split on Saturday following a conference of the Military Committee of NATO.

The U.S.

refuses to publish the details of the agreement with Russia about the ceasefire in Syria
has done nothing over the last days to separate, as promised, the "moderate rebels" it supports in Syria from al-Qaeda
today bombed a Syrian army position in support of an Islamic State attack in Deir Ezzor.

The US’ sudden attempt to “help” the Syrian army fighting ISIS in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, which resulted in a strike that killed and injured dozens of soldiers, does not look like an honest mistake, Russia’s UN envoy told journalists at the UNSC meeting.
“It is highly suspicious that the United States chose to conduct this particular air strike at this time,” Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.

Churkin questioned why the US suddenly chose to “help” the Syrian army defend Deir ez-Zor after all these years, recalling how American forces just observed terrorists’ movements and did “nothing when ISIS advanced on Palmyra.”

“It was quite significant and not accidental that it happened just two days before the Russian-American arrangements were supposed to come into full force,” Churkin added.

The 2001 AUMF has been the legal justification for not just the American-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but also for drone strikes in Pakistan against Al Qaeda, missile launches in Yemen, and the September 2014 attack in Somalia targeting the leader of terrorist group al-Shabaab.

But the AUMF specifically left unchanged the requirement of the War Powers Act, a clause which mostly means the 60-day time limit.

Leap ahead to Libya: Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton testified to Congress that Congressional authorization was not needed for the military intervention in Libya, and later, when the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day limit was exceeded, President Obama himself notified Congress that it did not apply because the leadership of the operations in Libya were in the hands of NATO. (Not us, just our sock puppet.) Another bit of pro-war wiggle room is that the War Powers Act never defined "hostilities."

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tonight blasted Russia for calling an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council in response to a U.S.-led coalition airstrike that mistakenly killed over 60 Syrian regime troops, and wounded 100 more, according to numbers provided by the Russian Defense Ministry.

Speaking at the U.N headquarters in New York, Power said "even by Russia's standards, tonight's stunt, a stunt replete with moralism and grand-standing is uniquely cynical and hypocritical."

Tensions between Russian and U.S. diplomats have spilled over at the United Nations Security Council after Russian officials demanded to know whether the United States intentionally supported Islamic State (IS) militants with air strikes that hit Syrian government troops.

You might’ve thought that the United States‘ policy in Syria couldn’t get any more confused or damaged: but the admission that a US air strike has killed somewhere between 60 to 83 soldiers of the Syrian Army is just about the worst thing, and at the worst time, that could’ve happened in terms of US credibility.

Less than two months after declaring the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ready for combat, the Air Force on Friday announced that it was temporarily grounding 15 of the jets after it discovered that insulation was “peeling and crumbling” inside the fuel tanks.

Tensions are simmering in Washington regarding the deal struck by US Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov over Syria. There appears to be a rift within the Obama administration with the "party of war" opposing the idea of US-Russian cooperation.

James George Jatras also explained the rationale behind the harsh comments about Trump from the Democratic camp and the overall attitude towards the Republican nominee.

Hillary is the candidate of the "deep state", of the oligarchy, he said. In effect. the way the script was supposed to run was that the corresponding co-candidate should have been Jeb Bush so that "we have "Tweedledee – Tweedledum" choices like we usually get."

He also pointed out one reason why people are really concerned about Hillary's political and physical viability and might not want to see her go is that they realize there will be "blood bath in the Democratic party while deciding who succeeds her."

A hastily scheduled Security Council meeting was canceled because the U.S. does not want to make public details of the Syrian cease-fire deal, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations said Friday.

Vitaly Churkin said there was no point in briefing the council if the U.S. did not want to say exactly what was in the documents outlining the deal hammered out last week by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"This briefing is not going to happen and mostly likely we're not going to have a resolution of the Security Council because the United States does not want to share those documents with the members of the Security Council and we believe that we cannot ask them to support a document which they haven't seen," Churkin said.

On 13 September 2016, at 1 a.m., although the cease-fire had just come into force, the Israëli aviation attempted to destroy a combat position in the South of Syria and certain military installations near Damascus.

The Syrian Arab Army fired at and hit the planes with new generation missiles. One of the planes crashed in jihadist-held territory, the other managed to land in Israël.

Tsahal at first denied the two incidents, then recognised having violated Syrian air space and admitted that Syria had fired on their planes.

The available information does not enable us to know exactly what the Israêli planes were (F-15, F-16, or F-35), nor if the missiles were fired by Hezbollah or by the Syrian Arab Army, nor what type of missiles they were or who built them.

German documentary film with english subtitles produced by Mr. Frieder Wagner (original name is "Todesstaub"). The film is about war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo and Iraq. The use of depleted uranium is made genocide of those countries that is not remembered in the history of mankind, even the Nazi crimes remained low compared to the genocide, which is still ongoing and will last almost forever, unfortunately. In contaminated areas people are still at risk of a lot of people do not know and this is the worst because it is invisible genocide.

Armed conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa are not only devastating the economies gripped by fighting, but are sapping growth in neighboring countries and those hosting millions of refugees, the International Monetary Fund said Friday.

In a new study analyzing 179 conflict countries since 1970 to quantify economic costs, the IMF found that the drops in economic output in war-torn Syria, Libya and Yemen in recent years have far exceeded the worldwide average.

Kyrgyzstan's refusal to allow the United States deploy its Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft in the country's Bishkek Manas International Airport was one of the reasons behind the subsequent 2005 Tulip Revolution, former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev said.

A columnist for a state-run newspaper in Egypt has suggested the US invented Isis and set up the 9/11 attacks to justify its military interventions in the Middle East.

“Is it possible to believe the official version, from the US government, of the events of 11 September 2001?” wrote journalist Noha Al-Sharnoubi in Al-Ahram, a major national Egyptian newspaper owned by the government.

Ms Al-Sharnoubi said the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks could have been premeditated to "justify the war on terror” in her column, published on 23 August.

"Hillary Clinton wants to start an air war over Syria with a nuclear-armed power [Russia] with 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. Given Hillary Clinton's record not only in Iraq, but in Libya, I think this is as dangerous as it gets."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in New York on Sunday to discuss responses to North Korea's latest nuclear test, South Korea's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

The three countries are pushing for tough new U.N. Security Council sanctions on North Korea after the isolated country on Friday conducted its fifth and largest nuclear test.

The blast was in defiance of U.N. sanctions that were tightened in March.

China, the North's chief ally, backed the March resolution but is more resistant to harsh new sanctions this time after the United States and South Korea decided to deploy a sophisticated anti-missile system in the South, which China adamantly opposes.

South Korea said Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his counterparts Kerry and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will meet during the annual U.N. General Assembly to discuss putting further pressure on North Korea.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s newest drone power. And that could be a problem, since the Saudis are in the midst of a rather nasty war.
Riyadh has signed a contract with Chinese firm Chengdu for an unspecified number of Pterodactyl drones, Saudi media reported in late August and early September.

The 30-foot-long, propeller-driven Pterodactyl, which Chengdu apparently modeled on America’s iconic Predator and Reaper drones, can fly for hours at a time carrying cameras and missiles. Operators on the ground control the unmanned aerial vehicle via satellite.

As far as killer drones go, the Pterodactyl probably isn’t terribly sophisticated—its sensors are certainly less capable than U.S.-made models—and that can mean the difference between life and death for innocent people caught in the crossfire as flying robots hunt militants on the ground.

As libertarian (former) Congressman Ron Paul pointed out recently (here), the “deep state” elects whom it wants and it seems to have wanted Hillary Clinton.

And even after Hillary’s most recent collapse, articles are appearing in the mainstream media (see above excerpt) pointing out that Hillary is better than the alternative.

This is no coincidence. The mainstream media is owned by a relatively few people and they are surely supported by others, hidden influencers for the so-called deep state. And it is this deep state that requires, if possible, the services of Hillary Clinton.

The question is why?

“I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world. The United States does not torture,” said George W Bush on 6 September 2006.

Bush was, for the first time, acknowledging the existence of the program that Senate intelligence committee staff investigator Daniel Jones would later expose as taking power drills to the heads of captured men; making them stand with their arms stretched above their heads for days at a time; leaving at least one of them naked until he froze to death; waterboarding them to the point of catatonia as bubbles rose from their open mouths; and inserting pureed food into their rectums while claiming it was necessary for delivering nutrients.

Details of those procedures were outlined in the 525 pages which CIA director John Brennan, Barack Obama and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough allowed to become public.

David Cameron's 'ill-conceived' military intervention in Libya fuelled the migrant crisis and spurred the growth of ISIS, MPs warn today.
In a devastating verdict, the Commons foreign affairs committee savages the former prime minister's judgment in rushing to war in 2011, saying the intervention was based on 'erroneous assumptions'.
The cross-party committee accuses Mr Cameron of ignoring military chiefs and a lack of reliable intelligence to pursue an 'opportunistic policy of regime change' in Libya.

the House and Senate have unanimously passed an act that could make it possible for US 9/11 victims to sue Saudis for their complicity in perpetrating the 9/11 attack.

Bush and Obama censored for more than a decade the evidence of Saudi involvement while they invaded Iraq, killing at least hundreds of thousands of people.

Obama is now reasserting his intention to veto the act, but, as Jason Ditz reports, will still allow “9/11 victims to sue Iran, even though Iran had nothing to do with the attack”.

Ditz continues that this is in keeping with the standard US practice of “protecting its allies [and itself] from lawsuits while setting up suits against international rivals”. (The US has been attempting to reconquer Iran since 1979 when the US’s Iranian proxy-dictator, whom Amnesty International called one of the world’s worst human rights violators, was overthrown.)

Beijing has blamed Washington for exacerbating the “vicious circle” of tensions on the Korean Peninsula after the US pinned the responsibility for Pyongyang’s nuclear test last week on China’s alleged lack of effort to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.

On Friday North Korea made headlines after conducting its fifth nuclear test. The 10 kiloton explosion set off an artificial earthquake and an avalanche of international responses condemning the test.

While Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for a more “creative” response to the situation rather than issuing endless rounds of sanctions, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter over the weekend blamed China for its failure to curb the North Korean threat.

Strikes in northern Yemen on Saturday reportedly killed two children and first responders as US-backed coalition continues ‘disturbing’ strikes.

A United Nations official has condemned airstrikes, including a “double tap” attack, on a water well in Yemen that killed dozens of people including children. The statement comes as the Obama administration’s proposed $1.15 billion arms to Saudi Arabia, who’s leading the U.S.-backed coalition’s bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, faces opposition both on and off Capitol Hill.

In a statement released Monday, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said that 30 people were killed and 17 were wounded, with the casualties including first responders and two children, as a result of the airstrikes in the village of Beit Saadan in northern Yemen.

The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, one of the most influential parties in the Czech Republic, is gathering signatures for a petition that would lead to the organization of a referendum on the country's withdrawal from NATO.

According to a recently published report by the US Congress’ research services, at least 8 different anti-tank missiles are in use on the battlefield in Syria. The most dangerous of them are those of Russian origin. This observation by analysts’ is especially relevant for American military advisers and instructors in Syria. In effect, it means that the US Army is in need of a modernized tank defense system. As the newspaper notes, the Abrams tank, for example, lacks a dynamic protection system.

What’s more, it’s difficult enough to equip US infantry and Marines with active defense weapons, Business Insider adds. Even if the Americans decided to purchase and adopt battle-tested Israeli Trophy systems, this would not solve the problem.