Sooo....what has "good" neighbor Israel been doing lately to help the headchoppers in Syria?

The second item by Sharmine Narwani was published just a day before Israel bombed the sovereign state of Syria for the ....  I have lost count of the number of times it has.
 
From ZeroHedge
Israel Launches Air Strikes On Syria And Assad's "Waiting Game"

Immediately after Israel's latest unprovoked strike on Syria we posed the question, did Benjamin Netanyahu just panic? The answer is yes, Israel is now acting from a position of desperation as it has failed in its goal of regime change in Syria. Overnight (Wed. evening/Thursday early morning), Israel attacked a Syrian military base near the town of Masyaf at about 3:00 a.m. which Syria has now confirmed in a statement that warns of "serious repercussions". Syria reported two troop deaths in the attack. It appears to have been a massive strike - grainy photos show a large fireball lighting up the night sky outside of Masyaf.

Israel appears to have timed its attack to occur on the very night a controversial U.N. report was released earlier in the day (Wednesday) which blames the Assad government for using chemical weapons against civilians at Khan Sheikhoun in April. A number of Israeli analysts and media reports purport the Masyaf base to be a site for chemical and non-conventional weapons storage (such as "barrel bombs") while claiming the attack was motivated by "humanitarian" concern for Syrian civilians.

But this is the reason for Israeli media and defense officials quickly claiming that the strike at Masyaf was on a chemical weapons facility: they know the "humanitarian" angle sells in the West, especially when coupled with allegations of civilians being gassed. Currently, this is putting the dubious and contested claim that the Syrian government attacked Khan Sheikhoun with sarin gas back in the spotlight at a time when Israel is eager to sell war for regime change while casting its actions in terms of protecting and defending civilians from a brutal dictator. In typical fashion the big newsrooms, which rarely report from inside Syria but instead opt for the comfort of Beirut, are uncritically echoing the "humanitarian airstrike" narrative. The New York Times, in a report filed from Jerusalem, narrates the attack as follows while relying on unnamed "former Israeli officials" and a single Syrian pro-opposition outlet:.......

Sharmine Narwani at TheAmericanConservative 
Israel’s Geopolitical Gut Check
A once favorable balance of power has shifted, clipping Tel Aviv's wings.

Tel Aviv has had a bad few weeks. A once favorable regional balance of power has suddenly shifted in a direction that clips Israel’s wings—all while adversaries on its borders are making swift strategic gains.

At the core of the issue is Israel’s obsession with Iranian ascendancy in the region. The 2015 nuclear deal that ended the Islamic Republic’s isolation was a real setback for the Israeli establishment, but what really hit home this summer was a steady succession of political and military victories for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.

So Israel’s power players headed to the United States and Russia to try to claw back some lost leverage on the ground.

They returned from Washington empty-handed, unable to wrest guarantees on keeping Iranian and allied troops out of southern Syria, where the U.S. and Russia in July established a de-escalation zone near Israel’s border.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s consultations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi went nowhere too. Russian accounts of those talks describe a highly “agitated” and “emotional” Netanyahu who was told in no uncertain terms by a calm Putin: “Iran is Russia’s strategic ally in the Middle East.” To Netanyahu, Putin offered what must have comparatively felt like crumbs: “Israel is also an important partner of Russia in the region.”

The Israeli prime minister and other senior officials went on the offensive after that meeting, promising to “defend ourselves by all means” from Iran’s ambitions in Syria, and threatening military attacks on Assad’s “palace in Damascus.”........

Sophie Shevarnadze talks to Russia's UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia ....

on the Syria situation and the US/Russia relationship within the UN and outside the UN

Whose Side Are You On?

Interesting read.

Major Danny Sjursen's  (served in Iraq and Afghanistan) article at TomDispatch.
Foreword by TomDispatch:
Whose Side Are You On? 

In some closet, I still have toy soldiers from my 1950s childhood.  They played a crucial role in an all-American world of good guys and bad guys I learned about, in part, from the westerns and war movies my father took me to at local movie theaters. I can still remember playing out those long-lost stories out with a motley assortment of bluecoats, redcoats, GIs (of the green plastic variety), and Indians on the floor of my remarkably empty room in the era before childhood had been truly discovered as a marketplace of significance.  I didn’t even have blocks to build battlefields, so I used my books, which, in two facing rows, became cliffs on either side of a narrow defile. The treacherous Indians would peer over The Pony Express or Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia, commanding the heights of the valley of death below into which the cavalry would have to ride. Preparing their ambush, they would “lie” on top of books or “crouch” behind them, fingering -- in my imagination, of course -- bows, tomahawks, or guns

Into that grim valley, the bluecoats (and because I had too few of them, the GIs and redcoats from other wars entirely) would ride.  Well, actually most of them weren’t mounted because I was short a reasonable troop of cavalry or even a full contingent of foot soldiers.  Choosing the order of the cast of characters for that “ride” and so who was to be handed over to destruction lent individual character and value to each treasured good guy.  Yet, if the initial ambush was to be satisfying, death had to be faced, which meant choosing the most lackluster of those figures -- casualties of previous battles with chipped paint, broken limbs, or busted-off rifles -- to fall in the first cascade of arrows.  The crucial question was when to stop the killing of the bluecoats and begin the destined slaughter of the Indians with which all such stories in that bygone era had to end. A satisfying cutoff point was needed, especially given a countervailing temptation -- to go all the way, to wipe out every last bluecoat.  Sometimes it was powerful enough that I found myself almost siding with the Indians, which hinted at something novel hidden away in this traditional storytelling process.  It also hinted at a moment, still years away in my life, when in the midst of a grim, never-ending war in Vietnam, that American war story of my childhood, the very definition of who was a good guy and a bad guy, would be turned on its head.  Yet, in all those “battles” on the floor of my room, I never gave in to that temptation and brought myself to test out what another kind of story would truly feel like.

Amid the carnage, as arrows rained down, a few Indians would begin to fall. There was no particular order, no special precedence in the roll call of death, since bad guys were, by their nature, essentially indistinguishable, the only exception being “the chief.”  He held a silver-bladed tomahawk, and miraculously in those days, his arm actually pivoted at the shoulder.  As the sole Indian with a distinguishing trait, he was invariably the last to die.

These scenes from my childhood -- and with minor variations I suspect, from so many childhoods of that era -- came to mind when I read the latest piece by TomDispatch regular and Army Major Danny Sjursen, author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge, on our never-ending wars in the Greater Middle East.  He raises a much-needed twenty-first-century question that still couldn’t be more awkward: Who, on the all-too-real, still-spreading American battlefields of our world, are the good guys and who are the bad guys of our time?  And then, of course, there’s that other question: What story, if any, about the wars of our moment will future American children, no longer undoubtedly on the floors of their rooms but in as yet unknown entertainment environments, play? Tom

    Worth Dying For?
    When It Comes to the War in the Greater Middle East, Maybe We’re the Bad Guys
    By Danny Sjursen

    I used to command soldiers. Over the years, lots of them actually. In Iraq, Colorado, Afghanistan, and Kansas.  And I’m still fixated on a few of them like this one private first class (PFC) in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2011. All of 18, he was short, scrawny, and popular. Nine months after graduating from high school, he’d found himself chasing the Taliban with ....

Hurricane Irma's fury in Barbuda and the Caribbean ....

Thankfully, there was only one fatality in Barbuda which has only approximately 2000 dwellings. 
Irma is now expected to make a landfall in Florida, unless by some miracle it veers sideways away from that State.

Nuclear Armageddon at hand .... courtesy Donald Trump

I wonder how deeply disappointed the anti-war folks must be who voted for this charlatan believing his lies of  anti-war.  I think the first inkling  anyone got as to the kind of liar Trump was, concerning the military and wars, was when he kept appointing and nominating warlord after warlord in his entourage.
We know the Empire is going down, but is there any hope it will be down and out without starting a nuclear war?  I don't think so.

Scott Ritter at TheAmericanConservative
Trump Quietly Promises Billions in New Nuke Contracts
This could trigger a new arms race with Russia and China.
Americans of a certain age remember things about their youth—Bert the Turtle and the ditty “Duck and Cover” (1951), Pat Frank’s apocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon (1959), and Sidney Lumet’s film Fail Safe, from Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s novel of the same name (1964 and 1962, respectively). “There was a Turtle by the name of Bert, and Bert the Turtle was very alert”; that song was whistled by kids like myself, ironically often at the same time we whistled the catchy tune from Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Prokofiev’s classic children’s story adapted by Walt Disney and very popular at the time.

My father, a career Air Force officer who spent the first part of his career with the fighter-interceptor squadrons of North American Air Defense Command, had borrowed Frank’s biblical reference in crafting his own nuclear war warning for my mother. It took me awhile to figure out what they were talking about, and when I finally did, it was terrifying. The delta-winged fighters that futilely chase down the errant nuclear-armed bombers in Fail Safe were identical to the F-106 Delta Darts my father’s squadrons flew to shield America from similarly armed Soviet bombers that probed our borders on a daily basis, and I was able to figure this out quickly the first time I saw the movie.

Nuclear Armageddon was a pervasive reality during the Cold War, and America had an arsenal and doctrine to make it a reality. Again, flashbacks from my childhood make it all-too real: F-100 fighter-bombers .......

The evil of the Colombian government

Abby Martin talks to Human Rights Advocate Daniel Kovalik
There's so much we don't know about the evil being done by the Colombia government while it enjoys  the protection of the Empire.

Unsavory in the USA and their handmaiden the MSM and the MSM of US allies ....

are deliberately taking away our attention from what they are doing at the Russian border by working hard  to divert all our focus on anything and anywhere but the Russian border and the coming nuclear war.

Johannes Stern at World Socialist Web Site
Washington is preparing for nuclear war in Europe

 Amid mounting military and diplomatic tensions between the US and Russia, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday that the American Congress has taken the first steps toward Washington’s annulling of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The INF, or Washington Treaty on Mid-range Nuclear Systems, is a bilateral agreement reached between the United States and the Soviet Union on the decommissioning of short- and mid-range missiles (with a range of between 500 and 5,500 miles), and the banning of their production.

The treaty, signed on 8 December 1987 by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, led to a significant reduction of US nuclear weapons in Europe. The nuclear-armed mid-range Pershing II missiles, whose stationing in Western Europe five years earlier had triggered the largest peace demonstrations to that point in history, were withdrawn.

The danger now is “that the US will construct new missiles and station them in Europe,” warned the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A major shift would be set “into motion” and Europe would stand “on the brink of a new nuclear era … nuclear mid-range missiles were the horror of the Cold War … thirty years on, the spectre has returned.”

The reason for the potential ending of the treaty, according to the newspaper, is the “deep freeze” in US-Russia relations and announcements by both sides of intentions to “comprehensively modernise their nuclear arsenals.”

Characteristically, the explosive reports by the German press have been totally ignored by the US print and broadcast media.

The report came amid a hysterical campaign being mounted by the US and NATO over military exercises planned by the Russian military in western Russia, Belarus and Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad later this month, with Washington and its allies suggesting that they could be used as a “Trojan horse” to pre-position weapons stockpiles and prepare an invasion of the Baltic states.

The Pentagon has deployed seven US F-15C fighter planes to a base in Lithuania along with an additional 600 US airborne troops to the Baltics in advance of the war games.

This military build-up has been carried out in conjunction with a major US diplomatic provocation as the Trump administration has retaliated against Russia’s expulsion of US embassy personnel from Russia (itself a tit-for-tat response to earlier expulsions of Russians from the US) by ordering the shutdown of three Russian diplomatic facilities in Washington, New York and San Francisco. Moscow has charged that the action, which it said was accompanied by FBI searches of the San Francisco consulate and the residences of Russian diplomatic personnel, constituted a violation of international law........

Cartoons

Why Free Speech is of the paramount importance to all of us

Very thoughtful article from David Cole the National Legal Director of the ACLU.
Really worth a read.  Agree completely. 


Why We Must Still Defend Free Speech
August 26, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - Does the First Amendment need a rewrite in the era of Donald Trump? Should the rise of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups lead us to cut back the protection afforded to speech that expresses hatred and advocates violence, or otherwise undermines equality? If free speech exacerbates inequality, why doesn’t equality, also protected by the Constitution, take precedence?

After the tragic violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, these questions take on renewed urgency. Many have asked in particular why the ACLU, of which I am national legal director, represented Jason Kessler, the organizer of the rally, in challenging Charlottesville’s last-minute effort to revoke his permit. The city proposed to move his rally a mile from its originally approved site—Emancipation Park, the location of the Robert E. Lee monument whose removal Kessler sought to protest—but offered no reason why the protest would be any easier to manage a mile away. As ACLU offices across the country have done for thousands of marchers for almost a century, the ACLU of Virginia gave Kessler legal help to preserve his permit. Should the fatal violence that followed prompt recalibration of the scope of free speech?...

Cartoon - How the Saudis Can Promote Moderate Islam according to the WSJ

Tracking Turkey for the month of August ...

and waiting for the day Erdogan get his comeuppance for what's he done to Syria.
 
Almost 500 appear in court in Turkey's biggest coup trial yet
People at the court outside Ankara chanted 'We want the death penalty!' and some threw nooses towards the suspects
Nearly 500 people appeared in court on Tuesday in the biggest trial yet of suspects from Turkey's failed coup, facing charges of conspiring to oust the government from an airbase seen as the plotters' hub.

Forty-one of those held were marched into the court outside Ankara one-by-one in a long line in front of television cameras and the public, with each suspect held by two members of the Turkish gendarmerie and flanked by an armed soldier.

People chanted "We want the death penalty!" and some threw nooses towards the suspects. The death penalty has been abolished in Turkey since 2004.

There were also chants of "Martyrs don't die, the nation won't be divided". Some people threw water bottles.........

Publisher mounts legal challenge to Turkey's detention of journalist Deniz Yucel

A German publishing group lodged a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights over Turkey's detention of reporter Deniz Yucel. He was detained in February and stands accused of spreading "terrorist propaganda."
The German publisher WeltN24 has accused Turkey of violating German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel's right to freedom of expression and lodged a complaint before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Friday.

Yucel's reported on Turkey for one of WeltN24's flagship dailies, "Die Welt," before being arrested by Turkish authorities in February for allegedly spreading terror propaganda.........

FETÖ terrorists to wear standard issue uniforms
The uniform for the FETÖ terrorist organization defendants will be almond-colored, and consists of a shirt and trousers
After one of the defendants appeared at the Fetullah Terror Organization (FETÖ) trial wearing a T-shirt reading “Hero”, sparking public outrage, a “uniform” for the suspects has been considered and decided on by Turkish authorities. The Ministry of Justice discussed the options regarding the prison uniform in detail with textile experts, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recalled the Guantanamo prisoners’ “uniform” on the first anniversary of the July 15 coup attempt and said that it could be similarly administered for FETÖ terrorists.....

Turkey & Qatar stage military drills amid Gulf diplomatic crisis

 Turkey and Qatar have staged joint military drills showcasing their strategic alliance, according to Qatari media. It comes after Turkish troops moved into Qatar following a diplomatic and transport blockade imposed against Doha by several Arab countries.

The drills were aimed at preparing Qatar's military to defend "vital economic, strategic and infrastructure facilities," Al-Sharq newspaper reported, as quoted by Reuters......

Turkey Detains 42 Suspected Militants in Raids

Turkish police on Friday detained 42 people over suspected militant links in operations across two separate provinces, security sources said and media reported.
 Police detained 22 suspected Wahhabi Daesh [Arabic acronym for "ISIS" / "ISIL"] militants in operations across the eastern province of Elazig, security sources said.

Separately, police detained another 20 people in the southern province of Adana over alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers Party [PKK], the state-run Anadolu news agency said. It said authorities were still seeking 10 suspects.

Ankara had detained more than 5,000 Daesh suspects and deported some 3,290 foreign militants from 95 different countries in recent years, according to Turkish officials. It has also refused entry to at least 38,269 individuals. ....


Police detain 22 Daesh suspects in Turkey's eastern Elazig province

Turkish police detained 22 Daesh suspects in eastern Elazig province, reports said Friday.

Elazig police carried out counter-terrorism operations targeting the terrorist group in the city, governor's office said.

"22 suspects have been detained in simultaneous operations carried out on Aug. 11 as part of the investigation against Daesh terrorist organization" a statement by the office said.

The suspects were brought to the hospital for routine health check-ups and were then transferred to the police headquarters for inquiry.

Major Geopolitical Shift: Turkey Ends Its Support of Syria Opposition Rebels
 as ‘Goodwill Towards Damascus’
This is a potentially incredible breakthrough in the painful 7 year-long Syrian conflict.

As 21WIRE has pointed out previous, aside from Turkey’s key part in facilitating the creation and supply of anti-Syrian terrorist enclaves over the last 7 years, it has also played the central role in the dismantling of Syria’s manufacturing sector centered around the now devastated industrial hub of Aleppo.

That’s what makes this latest news almost unbelievable.

Since 2011, the leadership in Ankara has committed much of its southern territory, a good portion of financial and military resources, as well as nearly all of its diplomatic credibility… for one goal: to destabilize its neighbor and achieve regime change in Damascus.

Perhaps its renewed dialogue and a lucrative Southstream energy partnership with Russia, along with the relative success so far in the Astana Peace Process – and Washington’s disruptive military and financial backing of a prime Turkish arch-enemy, the Kurdish militia in northern Syria, has made Turkish President Erdogan and his inner circle realize that it’s time to reverse course on a 7 year failure, and immeasurable social, civil and economic destruction of their southern neighbor.....


'Enemies of Turkey': Erdogan tells 'countrymen' in Germany not to vote for Merkel's party 

 Turkey's president Recep Erdogan has once again lashed out against Germany, this time branding three of its political parties "enemies of Turkey" and urging his "countrymen" not to vote for them. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party was included on the list.

"I am calling on all my countrymen in Germany... the Christian Democrats (CDU), SDP, the Green Party are all enemies of Turkey. Support those political parties who are not enemies of Turkey," Erdogan said following Friday prayers in Istanbul, as quoted by Reuters.

"I call on them not to vote for those parties who have been engaged in such aggressive, disrespectful attitudes against Turkey, and I invite them to teach a lesson to those political parties at the ballot box," he said.......


‘Turkish President Erdogan has given up on the European Union’

 The relationship between Turkey and the EU are further deteriorating, Dr. Rainer Rothfuss, geopolitical analyst and consultant, told RT. Rainer Rupp, publicist and former German intelligence officer, also joins the conversation. 

Turkish President Recep Erdogan urged nearly 3 million German Turks not to cast their vote for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, Martin Schulz’s Social Democrat Party (SDP) or the Green Party in the upcoming German federal election because of the alleged anti-Turkish stance of the parties.

“You should give them the most beautiful lesson by providing your democratic right… You should vote for those who are not hostile to Turkey,” Erdogan said Saturday, the Hurriyet daily news reported.

Erdogan’s comments triggered a strong reaction from Sigmar Gabriel, the German Foreign Minister, who accused Erdogan of interference in the electoral process........


Turkish PM says further U.S. support to Kurdish YPG will cause problems: NTV

Any additional support given by the United States to Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters will cause problems for Turkey, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was quoted as saying on Friday.

Speaking to reporters on his return flight from Vietnam, Yildirim also said Turkey was working in cooperation with Russia and Iran in Syria, and there should be no reason for the United States and Turkey to be on opposite sides.

“We are talking about two NATO nations, there should be no reason for there to be (problems). Of course, if they show a stance other than what they have told us on the YPG issue, it would be a problem,” Yildirim was quoted as saying by broadcaster NTV....

Second indictment for Erdogan guards over DC beatdown in May

Turkey’s fraught relations with the United States are heading for further turbulence after a grand jury in Washington indicted 15 Turkish security officials accused of attacking pro-Kurdish protesters in the US capital on May 16 during a visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They include Muhsin Kose, the head of Erdogan’s security detail. In all, 19 people who engaged in acts of violence against the demonstrators outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence on Sheridan Circle were indicted.

Several wounded after blast hits bus in Turkey's Izmir

Seven people were wounded when an explosion hit a shuttle bus carrying prison guards in the Turkish coastal province of Izmir on Thursday, and authorities were investigating a possible terrorist attack, the local mayor said.

The bus was hit as it passed a garbage container at around 7:40 a.m. (0440 GMT), Levent Piristina, the mayor of Izmir’s Buca district, said on Twitter. ....

Some tweets and retweets of mine the past few days

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli "Ron Paul Says President Trump’s Afghanistan War Plan Calls for Perpetual War and is a.... https://t.co/gpG3SAuKyI

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 24, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli "Cambodia Exposes, Expels US Network"  Always interfering, always!! https://t.co/SL8jCbfphf #news via @activistpost

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 27, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli "Those of us in favour of true liberty will continue to abandon the far-left; we... " AMEN!! https://t.co/QHc7gjeCgW

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 28, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli A journalist loses her job 4accurate research n telling the truth? https://t.co/UGDeafDWLq

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 28, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli "Four strikes were launched against a house full of women and children, why?.. https://t.co/bqhgN4dYg1

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 28, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli Trump's master in Tel Aviv is crazier than his puppet in the White House.   https://t.co/9lE6YfT61u

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 29, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli "...The only survivors were those who holed up in caves and tunnels..."  https://t.co/I6khWohYKk

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 29, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli "Where is the US antiwar movement?  Rarely are these engineered protests against US led wars" https://t.co/PhlauL6f3w

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 30, 2017

#Travel  Visited Benjamin Franklin museum in Philly. Check out the pen names he used 2use. My favs are Fart Hing and Alice Addertongue. pic.twitter.com/AkmeycMwuq

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 30, 2017

This former US Ambassador to Russia prefers ISIS and Al-Qaeda occupying Syria instead of the current secular gov't.

Why am I not surprised? pic.twitter.com/6SOi54lOAa

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) August 30, 2017

What an ugly multi-faced individual @KenRoth is!  When his masters in Israel were doing same in Gaza, not a peep fm him. Now, no credibility https://t.co/XbGxrmk3iw

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 31, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli  More actors on USA and Israel payroll?? https://t.co/2fP5t9TGEQ

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 31, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli "In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints https://t.co/W8lFrLqsPr

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 31, 2017

How the US Deep State hypnotized the world with the 9/11 movie

Very interesting read.

Graeme MacQueen  at GlobalResearch
9/11: The Pentagon’s B-Movie

The events that took place in the United States on September 11, 2001 were real and they were extremely violent. As David Griffin has recently shown in detail, they also had catastrophic real-life consequences for both the United States and the world. [1]

But these events were also deeply filmic (like a film) and they were presented to us through a narrative we now know to be fictional. This “9/11 movie” reveals itself to careful investigators as scripted, directed and produced by the U.S. national security state. The movie does not represent the real world. It violates the rules operative in the real world, including the laws of physics. Audiences will remain in thrall to the spectacle and violence of the War on Terror only as long as they remain mesmerized by the B-movie of 9/11.

The Filmic Nature of the September 11 Events

Many people caught a whiff of Hollywood on September 11, 2001. According to Lawrence Wright (screenwriter of The Siege),

    “It was about an hour after the first trade centre came down that I began to make the connection with the movie, this haunting feeling at the beginning this looks like a movie, and then I thought it looks like my movie.”[2]

Steve De Souza (screenwriter, Die Hard I and II) has said:

    “Well it did look like a movie. It looked like a movie poster. It looked like one of my movie posters.”[3]

The 9/11 attacks were filmic in at least the following ways:

    Given the complex and coordinated nature of these attacks, they had been scripted and given a timeline in advance;
    given the need to make decisions as the attacks progressed (for example, when an aircraft went off course or was delayed), it is clear that there was a director;
    given the overall vision, the need for funds, resources and international coordination over a period of years, it is obvious that there had been a producer;
    given the numerous roles played in this event (for example, by the “hijackers”), there were undoubtedly actors............

Berkeley, California is a hot bed of the coming Civil War USA 2017

This vid is from 4 months ago and shows Berkeley's pro-Trump and anti-Trump Americans coming to blows.  There are ongoing protests on almost a weekly basis in that part of California.  Think back to protests and marches like happened in Ukraine and Syria and you don't have to be a genius or a Nostradamus to predict what is bound to happen in the USA, very, very soon.


The vid below is from a few days ago.  I don't know about you, but to my eyes, the so called Antifa or anti-fascists come across just like the Ukrainian Nazis did during that uprising. So, who are the Nazis now??

..........

USA and its partner-in-crime, the SDF, commit war crimes aplenty in Syria ....

but as the USA is the self-proclaimed dictator of our entire world, can any one nation go against its rule?
 
Murtaza Hussain and Rajaai Bourhan at TheIntercept
Entire Families Are Being Killed by U.S. Airstrikes in Raqqa, Syria

..............One of the survivors of that attack, named in the report as “Marwan,” said that his family had been killed while trying to hide in safety outside the city.

    My sisters, my mother, my nephews, and nieces were bombed to shreds for no reason at all. Four strikes were launched against a house full of women and children, why? Only one of my brothers was with them. My sister’s husband had stayed in Raqqa to try to protect their homes. They knew that if they left their homes empty, Daesh would occupy them. The battle for Raqqa had not yet started but they got the women and children out for fear that the city would be besieged and they would get stuck there. That is why they were staying at the farm, to be safe, but death came to them in the more horrible way. Don’t they keep watch over their targets before they bomb? If they had they would have known that there were only women and children there.

Another member of the family, who saw the attack hit the farmhouse from a distance, described being unable to help his family as they came under assault. “The planes were circling all night, and we could not even approach the house to get the two injured children out from under the rubble until the following day,” he said. “The bodies were in shreds. We recovered body parts hundreds of meters away.”........

Scenes from Hurricane Harvey's fury over Houston and surrounding areas

Humans, Horses, Dogs and others being saved by humans. Posted to YouTube Aug 29


Drone footage posted to YouTube on Aug 27


Drone footage posted to YouTube on Aug 28

Wanna know how North Korea got to be what it is now?

Worth a read.
 

William R Polk at ConsortiumNews
How History Explains the Korean Crisis
The U.S. and North Korea are on the brink of hostilities that if begun would almost certainly lead to a nuclear exchange. This is the expressed judgment of most competent observers. They differ over the causes of this confrontation and over the size, range and impact of the weapons that would be fired, but no one can doubt that even a “limited” nuclear exchange would have horrifying effects throughout much of the world including North America.

So how did we get to this point, what are we now doing and what could be done to avoid what would almost certainly be the disastrous consequences of even a “limited” nuclear war?

The media is replete with accounts of the latest pronouncements and events, but both in my personal experience in the closest we ever came to a nuclear disaster, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and from studying many other “flash points,” I have learned that failure to appreciate the background and sequence of events makes one incapable of understanding the present and so is apt to lead to self-defeating actions. With this warning in mind, I will recount in Part 1 how we and the Koreans got to where we are. Then in Part 2, I will address how we might go to war, what that would mean and what we can do to stay alive.

Throughout most of its history, Korea regarded China as its teacher. It borrowed from China Confucianism, its concepts of law, its canons of art and its method of writing. For these, it usually paid tribute to the Chinese emperor.

With Japan, relations were different. Armed with the then weapon of mass destruction, the musket, Japan invaded Korea in 1592 and occupied it with more than a quarter of a million soldiers. The Koreans, armed only with bows and arrows, were beaten into submission. But, because of events in Japan, and particularly the decision to give up the gun, the Japanese withdrew in less than a decade and left Korea on its own..........

The Second American Civil War .... brewing, brewing...

Some videos from the recent protest marches/rallies/what have you.











Check out the first video within this link and  listen to the hate at about the 6min mark. The most hateful vitroil is coming from the Left, especially from the Black American Left.

The Second American Civil War is at hand .... glory be !!

I bet your guts are telling you that the stage has been set for a civil war in the USA but you dare not even whisper it or wish for it, eh?! I have no such qualms. I know the purge has to happen so our Earth can breathe again, and for our planet to heal, the mighty Empire HAS TO FALL. The Empire is crumbling under the weight of  hatred emitting from its own citizens, the kind of hatred we have seen from the wahhabis (headchoppers) towards the Shiites, Christians and Alawis. Here, I am  recalling the unbridled hatred seen in recent videos, hatred coming from the Antifa whose attendees hide their faces behind black scarves and of course the BLM whose sponsors have really deep, deep pockets. Hard to believe the BLM organization has grown so huge and so fast and even spread its wings to Canada and the UK.

I listened to some of the speeches from the KKK and the hard right folks. Of course, their viewpoints are vomit-inducing, but that does not mean their voices have to be drowned out.  Wouldn't it be more beneficial to all if they were debated on their concepts and perceptions?  Are there no competent debaters on the Left? No debaters in Antifa, none in BLM? 

You have to be totally deaf, dumb and blind if you think this deep division in American society is going to heal without a civil war.  Or, perhaps a  breakup of the USA can be negotiated with or without  bloodshed.  How would that happen?  Well...the USA has had plenty of  experience in that quarter, having broken up many, many, many, many nations in every nook and corner of our Earth.  Right now the USA is in the process of breaking up a chunk of Syria and handing it over to the Kurds after having failed to break up Syria in half a dozen chunks as was the original plan, now  abandoned,  thanks to Russia coming to Syria's aid.

It will be fun to watch which areas or maybe even entire States, seek secession from the part of the USA that has become a warmongering blood-thirsty beast.

Below, just a few of the many, many opinions.

From TheBurningPlatform
FUNCTIONAL ILLITERATES TRYING TO ERASE HISTORY
“True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them the desire to do right is precisely the same.” ? Robert E. Lee
I consider myself a student of history. I’ve always been fascinated by the personalities who drove events throughout history. I probably would have been a history major in college if I didn’t feel the need to make enough money to support myself and my family. I chose a business major and decided studying history would be my hobby. Over the years I’ve taken a particular interest in the Civil War. You could even call me a Civil War buff.

I’ve probably read 60 books on the Civil War, from Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote and numerous other historians. I’ve visited the Gettysburg battlefield a half dozen times, as it is only 150 miles from my home. My basement office is decorated with six prints depicting various scenes from the Civil War. One depicts Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Fredericksburg, another depicts Jackson leading his troops through Richmond, another depicts Grant taking command of Union forces, another shows Chamberlain leading the charge down Little Round Top, another portrays Lee and Longstreet making the fateful decision to send Pickett’s men on their futile charge into history, and the last showing the slaughter during Pickett’s charge.......


Paul Craig Roberts
A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

The liberal/progressive/left are enjoying their drunkfest of denunciation. I can’t say I have ever witnessed anything like it. These are the people who sat on their hands for 16 years while Washington destroyed in whole or part seven countries. Not being satisfied with this level of warmongering and crimes against humanity, Washington orchestrated a conflict situation with Russia. Americans elected a president who said he would defuse this dangerous conflict, and the liberal/progressive/left turned on him. In contrast, one person is killed after the hated Charlottesville protest event was over, and there is endless absurd outrage against the president of the US.

Three New York Times presstitutes yesterday blamed the crisis on Trump, declaring him “increasingly isolated in a racial crisis of his own making.” Apparently, Trump is responsible for the crisis because he blamed both protest groups for the violence.

But isn’t that what happened? Wasn’t there violence on both sides? That was the impression I got from the news reporting. I’m not surprised that Trump got the same impression. Indeed, many readers have sent emails that they received the same impression of mutual violence.

So Trump is being damned for stating the truth......

Pat Buchanan at ZeroHedge
Pat Buchanan Asks "In This Second American Civil War - Whose Side Are You On?"

    "They had found a leader, Robert E. Lee -- and what a leader! ... No military leader since Napoleon has aroused such enthusiastic devotion among troops as did Lee when he reviewed them on his horse Traveller."

So wrote Samuel Eliot Morison in his magisterial "The Oxford History of the American People" in 1965.

First in his class at West Point, hero of the Mexican War, Lee was the man to whom President Lincoln turned to lead his army. But when Virginia seceded, Lee would not lift up his sword against his own people, and chose to defend his home state rather than wage war upon her.

This veneration of Lee, wrote Richard Weaver, "appears in the saying attributed to a Confederate soldier, 'The rest of us may have ... descended from monkeys, but it took a God to make Marse Robert.'"

Growing up after World War II, this was accepted history......

From TheAmericanConservative
In an effort to show that Donald Trump was wrong to denounce
violent antifa left-wingers in Charlottesville, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick asks left-wingers in Charlottesville if the antifa were violent. Surprise! The verdict is: no way!

Take a look at the response of the Rev. Seth Wispelwey of a United Church of Christ congregation in C’ville. Before you read, understand that he was with a group of people trying to block the right-wing extremists from gaining access to the park, where they had a legal permit to gather:

    I am a pastor in Charlottesville, and antifa saved my life twice on Saturday. Indeed, they saved many lives from psychological and physical violence—I believe the body count could have been much worse, as hard as that is to believe. Thankfully, we had robust community defense standing up to white supremacist violence this past weekend.....

From LibertyBlitzkrieg
Americans are Rapidly Descending Into Madness
I don’t live in an echo chamber, partly because there aren’t enough people out there who think like me, but also because I constantly and intentionally attempt to challenge my worldview by reading stuff from all over the political map. I ingest as much as I can from a wide variety of intelligent sources, picking and choosing what makes sense to me, and then synthesizing it the best I can.

Though I’m certainly grounded in certain key principles, my perspective on specific issues remains malleable as I take in additional information and perspectives. I try to accept and acknowledge my own ignorance and view life as a journey of constant mental, emotionally and spiritual growth. If I’m not growing my capacity in all of those realms until the day I die, I’m doing it wrong. Life should be seen as a battle against one’s own ignorance, as opposed to an obsession with the ignorance of others. You can’t legislate morality, nor can you legislate wisdom. The only way the world will improve on a long-term sustainable basis is if more of us get wise. That’s a personal journey and it’s our individual duty to accept it.....

A few tweets of mine the last few days

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli Why does USA want war w NK when SK wants to start peace negotiations???? https://t.co/0jem9qbqTB

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 10, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli Bernie Sanders on Trump n North Korea.  https://t.co/xHj6XAuMmM

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 10, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli HAHAHAHA..knew this wud b somehow blamed on Russia n sure enuf AP implies so. https://t.co/68W559CgWu

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 10, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli Wanna c some of Israel's agents in US Congress? Mind u, these r only "some" of the traitors https://t.co/yjvpYowm0W

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 10, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli USA is a threat to Planet Earth...no doubt about it!  https://t.co/vnyyNZtwnU

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 8, 2017

#cdnpoli #TOpoli Wonder if situ is as bad as Reuters is making it sound. "Canada’s jailhouse secret: .... https://t.co/xeKKFsSS9U

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 8, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli Any1 surprised?!! "US Is "The Greatest Threat To Peace In The World Today," New Poll Finds" https://t.co/7X5IM6wDgf

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 8, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli  Mend, heal n restore headchoppers so they can chop Syrian citizens.That's the Israeli way! https://t.co/7p9lJnRYCv

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 8, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli Something very foul n nasty is headed 2the Philippines. https://t.co/XRHYp1u0P1

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 8, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli The cruelty of Americans. https://t.co/8m1yU65U3B Hiroshima-Nagasaki, August, 1945 https://t.co/26Ppdz6w4E

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 6, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli ".. full excerpt of Truman’s radio address pertaining to the atomic bomb..." https://t.co/KDRc814a8W via @grtvnews

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 6, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli "project monitors 600 Twitter accounts that the German Marshall Fund claims are "accounts.... https://t.co/dibkKYS4Pp

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 6, 2017

#cdnpoli #tcot #TOpoli Started already?!  "Minnesota mosque bombed during morning prayers" https://t.co/YmfHntCE5i

— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) August 6, 2017

Trump's dancing partners go on a rampage in ....

the town of Awamiyah and all because the town is home to a large Shiite community.
Nice, eh?!

How the North Korean war if started, could lead to disastrous consequences...

Let's hope neither side will take it upon themselves to prove to the world who's the "bigger and better" bully.

Jason Ditz at AntiWar
A New Korean War Would Quickly Escalate
US Attack Would Likely Start With B-1B Bombers
Analysts and defense officials past and present are warning that a potential military exchange with North Korea is unlikely to be a brief, token show of force or a simple trade of fire, and rather would almost certainly quickly escalate into a full-scale war, including potential use of nuclear weapons

For decades, North Korea’s massive conventional arsenal of artillery and rockets have led to estimates that over a million people could be killed in a new Korean War, and that much of the South Korean capital of Seoul would be leveled in the attacks.

New estimates that North Korea likely has a deliverable nuclear warhead threatens to raise the war to even more catastrophic proportions, as well the US brags of having a superior arsenal, even a small nuclear exchange would have disastrous consequences.

As we look at the possible consequences, former senior military officials talked openly of how the war would likely begin: with a preemptive US strike involving B-1B heavy bombers attacking North Korea from an Air Force base in Guam......

Add Yemen's woes and the death of thousands of Yemenis to the....

never-ending sins of the USA.

Paul Street at InformationClearingHouse
The United States and the Crucifixion of Yemen 
 The United States has killed, maimed, displaced and otherwise harmed an astonishing number of people in its 241-year record of murder and mayhem—including more than 20 million killed in 37 nations since 1945.
 Murder, Direct and Proxy

Direct

A grisly distinction exists between those Uncle Sam has directly assaulted and those he has more indirectly attacked. Here are just a few examples from the long record of direct U.S.-military mass murder since 1945:

Hiroshima (146,000 killed with a single bomb—what President Harry Truman called “the greatest thing in history”) and Nagasaki (80,000): The arch-criminal atom bombings were unnecessary and savagely carried out even though the U.S. high command knew Japan was defeated and ready to accept U.S. surrender terms.

Iran Air Flight 655: On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes crossed into Iranian waters and shot down an Iranian civilian plane, blowing 290 people out of the sky. The Vincennes’ commander was granted an award for “exceptionally meritorious conduct.”

The “Highway of Death”: U.S. fighter jets engaged in a frenzied slaughter of tens of thousands of surrendered Iraqi troops in 1991. Lebanese-American journalist Joyce Chediac testified that “U.S. forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road that it created an aerial traffic jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions.”

Fallujah: The U.S. Marines waged chemical warfare and used radioactive ordnance in the process of leveling a great Iraqi city in April and November of 2004.

The U.S. drone war program (2001 to present), aptly described by Noam Chomsky as “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports a minimum number of 3,734 U.S. drone strikes with nearly 10,000 killed, including 1,427 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, “since the Bureau began collecting data.”

Indirect

Dreadful as such incidents of direct imperial butchery are, the United States may well have killed, maimed and displaced more people indirectly, through proxies and clients.

In 1954, a CIA-orchestrated coup removed the democratically elected and leftist Guatemalan government of Jacobo Árbenz. Over the next four decades, U.S,-backed right-wing Guatemalan regimes killed tens of thousands of peasants, workers, students and activists.

In 1960, the CIA killed Congo’s first independent head of state, the leftist anti-colonialist leader Patrice Lumumba. The United States subsequently backed the brutal Congolese dictator Joseph Mobuto, who killed hundreds of thousands of people. The U.S. has been significantly responsible for as many as 3 million deaths in that resource-rich country ever since. It sponsors and protects the Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame, whose body count in his own country and Congo runs into the tens of thousands.

In 1965 and 1966, the United States worked with Britain and Australia to help orchestrate the overthrow of the democratically elected leftist government of Indonesia and the subsequent massacre of somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million Indonesian peasants, workers, intellectuals and activists. Coup General Suharto received military and economic assistance from the U.S. over three decades of subsequent authoritarian rule.

In December 1975, Suharto got a green light from his sponsors.........

The propaganda from MSM on the situation in Venezuela ......

 is far too unrealistic as these TU members found out for themselves.

From Telsur
US Trade Unionist Unmask Mass Media Lies on Venezuela Assembly
“We visited several polling places and that was when we were just so moved by what was going on,” said the president of the New York State Nurses Association.

Three representatives from trade unions in New York were among the many international observers to attend the Venezuelan National Constituent Assembly vote July 30 to monitor the election proceedings.
Estela Vazquez the executive vice president of the 1199 SEIU Health Care Workers Union East, the country's largest health care union; John Patafio the vice president of the Transport Workers Union, and Judy Gonzalez a registered nurse and president of the New York State Nurses Association were interviewed by Rosana Silva on their experiences before and after their visit to Venezuela and their thoughts on the ANC.

The three had been invited by the Venezuelan Transport Workers Union to witness the voting process and most importantly to talk to Venezuelans and just "see what's going on."

Prior to arriving in the Bolivarian state, the three were warned by American Airline’s crew members of the “dangerous” situation they were walking in to.

“We had a sort of a culture shock on the airplane,” explained Gonzales who heads the NY union that includes 40,000 members across the state. “The staff on the airplane was basically hysterical. They told us that we absolutely shouldn’t go. We should get back on the plane; don’t get off the plane. That if we stepped off the plane we’d be robbed, we’d be kidnapped, we’d be raped, they’d steal our kidneys ... we were absolutely putting ourselves in danger ... they really did scare us.”

Vazquez, “But our experience has been different since we arrived Saturday, despite the propaganda of blood running in the streets, and fires and shootings all over the city of Caracas, that was not the case.”

“I’ve been here three days and I have to say, it’s propaganda. There’s a lot of propaganda and they’re taking some instances and they’re creating a very powerful message and it's being repeated in very powerful media stations and good people are believing it,” agreed Patafio.

The union leaders traveled throughout Caracas unimpeded, visiting polling stations, hospitals, as well as working class sectors.

“I would say that (people) need to come and see for yourselves what is happening in Venezuela. You can not rely on CNN or any other international communication or papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post, because they are only reflecting the story of the ruling classes, the oligarchy of this country, that want to preserve their .....

Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side"