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Don’t let anyone fool you: As we have detailed since 2013, sectarian strife in Syria has been engineered to provide cover for a war for access to oil and gas, and the power and money that come along with it. Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect recent Wikileaks revelations of US State Department leaks that show plans to destabilize Syria and overthrow the Syrian government as early as 2006. The leaks reveal that these plans were given to the US directly from the Israeli government and would be formalized through instigating civil strife and sectarianism through...

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in a lively forum to exchange ideas and share information at George Washington University (GWU) on ways to strengthen educational and cultural exchanges between the United States and Cuba. The “Building Bridges” symposium was organized by GWU’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication in partnership with the State Department and Sister Cities International. The event was intended to bring together experts from inside and outside the U.S. government to discuss how the new U.S. approach to Cuba can promote more people-to-people links.

Tarkhan Batirashvili was a natural military star when he joined Georgia’s military Fought the Russians during 2008 war, but left Georgia for Turkey in 2012 In Syria, he’s known as Abu Omar al Shishani, commander in several major victories "n 2012, everyone was coming to Syria and we had too much work leading all kinds of people across the border,” he explained over lunch in Killis, a Turkish town just a few miles from the rebel-held Syrian city of Azzaz. “A lot were Muslims who had come to support the revolution against Bashar Assad from every country. So many from...

(Translated via Google Translator) Russia has information that the US know the specific location point of the "Islamic State" (extremist organization banned in Russia), but did not give an order to strike on the positions "of the IG," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In the program "Sunday times" on the "First Channel" Lavrov said that the US government "was not originally a very carefully created a coalition, or conspired to it so that it is not the goals that have been declared." According to the Foreign Minister, the coalition was created spontaneously, "just a few days it was announced...

The United States, ranked second in worldwide economic freedom as recently as 2000, has plummeted to 16th, according to the a new report of world economies. The Fraser Institute's annual report, Economic Freedom of the World, showed that the country's drop started in 2010, the second year of the Obama administration. The world-recognized report showed that the U.S. fell in several areas, including legal and property rights and regulation. "The United States, once considered a bastion of economic freedom, now ranks 16th in the world after being as high as second in 2000," said the report issued Monday morning. The...

The signing of a Munich-class agreement with Iran that hands it more than it ever hoped to pull off represents a shocking, craven American capitulation to an apocalyptic crazy state: a North Korea with oil. Nothing in Western history remotely approaches it, not even Neville Chamberlain’s storied appeasement of another antisemitic negotiating partner.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative – the historic nuclear deal with Iran – appears poised to fend off Congressional opposition. After several Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. Senate came out in support of the Iran deal in recent days, the survival of the accord is all but assured. Democratic Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Gary Peters (D-MI) all announced their support for the nuclear deal with Iran, bringing the total number of Senators who have backed the deal to 41, enough to withstand attempts by Republicans to derail the agreement. The deal will give...

The United States on Tuesday moved to head off preparations for a suspected Russian military buildup in Syria as Bulgaria agreed to an appeal from the Obama administration to shut its airspace to Russian transport planes. The planes’ destination was the Syrian port city of Latakia. The administration has also asked Greece to close its airspace to the Russian flights, Greek and American officials said, but Greece has not publicly responded to the request. Over the weekend, two giant Russian Condor transport planes ferried more supplies and equipment from an air base in southern Russia across Iran and Iraq to...

Did a Comet Trigger The Great Chicago Fire? By Irene Mona Klotz, Discovery News The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 March 5, 2004 — Perhaps it was not Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern that sparked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the downtown area and claimed 300 lives. New research lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere. The comet theory has been around — and most often discarded...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a new target in the revived cold war with Washington — the U.S. dollar. The website Russia Today* reported Tuesday that Mr. Putin has drafted a bill to block the use of both the American greenback and the euro in trade between the bloc of countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The measure “would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets,” the Kremlin said in a...

Despite low oil prices, Saudi Arabia is maintaining its investment in its oil industry. Saudi Aramco Chairman Khalid Al-Falih indicated in March that Saudi Aramco would not cut investment. James Crandell, a Cowen & Co. oil analyst cited in this article, who has tracked oil companies’ budgets for many years, estimates that Aramco and its Kuwaiti and UAE counterparts will increase their investment in oil exploration and production in 2015 by 4.5 percent to $38.1 billion. (If proportional to output, the Saudi share would be $24.5 billion). On it’s website, the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) identifies Saudi Arabia...

American Newspaper Article, Circa 1863: On the Influence of the Semitic Races in the History of Civilization On the Influence of the Semitic Races in the History of CivilizationBy Ernest Renan Posted in The Herald of Progress No. 198,Pages 5 & 6 Dated: December 05, 1863Select quotes: "The Arab, at least, and in a more general sense the Mussulman, are today further removed from us than they have ever been. The Mussulman (the Semitic spirit is especially represented in our day by Islam), and the European are, in the presence of one another, two beings of a different spe­cies,...

Read Secretary of State Kerry's eloquent words on National Puke Day U.S. Department of State "For more than half a century, #USCuba relations have been suspended in the amber of Cold War politics." - Secretary Kerry delivering remarks at the Flag Raising Ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, August 14, 2015 We have been suspended in AMBER as it relates to Castro's prison island.

Part One – Targeted Harvesting “Never again” were two solemn words associated with one of the most tragic times in history when Nazi Germany under the Third Reich systematically committed genocide with the extermination of six million Jewish men, women, and children. The butchery reached into Germany’s anatomical institutes where tens of thousands of Jews and political dissidents found themselves or their executed corpses dissected, burned, frozen, or dismembered in the name of science and the eugenics in advancing a superior race. “Again” is one word we now hear following a number of stealth videos revealing leading Planned Parenthood (PP)...

Interstate 11 is getting another boost with execution of a memorandum of understanding between Arizona and Mexico. One of the four international cooperation agreements to be signed by Gov. Doug Ducey and the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Jose Antonio Meade extends I-11 from Nogales into Mexico to Hermosillo and Mexico City. The international commerce corridor MOU grew out of a conversation between Arizona business leaders, Ducey and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim at the Phoenix Business Journal’s Global Market Discovery series earlier this year. People on the Move Victor Foggie Victor Foggie Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arizona Brian...

DENVER (CBS4) – An alert has been issued by the FBI to all law enforcement agencies in Colorado and Wyoming involving U.S. military families and concerns about who may be watching them. The alert says Middle Eastern men are approaching families of U.S. military members at their homes in Colorado and Wyoming. It mentions Greeley and Cheyenne, Wyoming as the specific areas. In one case last May the wife of a military member was approached in front of her home by two Middle Eastern males. The men stated that she was the wife of a U.S. interrogator. When she denied...

Planned Parenthood survived a procedural vote Monday in the U.S. Senate on a bill to defund the organization, after a series of undercover videos emerged to suggest that the organization may have been willing to sell fetal organs from late-term abortions to tissue companies. The vote for cloture was 53-46, meaning that it fell well shy of the 60 votes needed to end debate and proceed to a vote. The vote was largely along partisan lines, with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) 28% crossing over to vote with Democrats, and Sens. Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) 7% and Joe Manchin (D-WV) voting...

Beware the perils of a ‘Little Britain’ and a ‘Little Japan’ by Yoichi Funabashi Jul 10, 2015 Article history Japan and Britain have responded in completely different ways to the China-led initiative to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which the United States has opted not to join. In a rebuff to the U.S., Britain was the first Group of Seven member to announce that it would join the AIIB as a founding member. Out of courtesy, Britain informed the U.S. government of its intention just one day before its official announcement. Some within the U.S. government are still...

In the first quarter of 2014, the government sent shivers through global financial markets by reporting a recession-like contraction in the U.S. economy of 2.1 percent. Despite severe winter storms and record-breaking cold, economists still could not account for the deep plunge in growth. Even Federal Reserve officials worried something worse than just the effects of bad weather could be amiss in the economy. Turns out, it was the data itself and how the government calculates gross domestic product that were actually amiss. The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the federal agency responsible for GDP, now says growth was actually 1.2...

Urdu document passed to U.S. media by Pakistani with links to the Taliban Preparations underway to attack India as a way of enticing U.S. into battle Urges Taliban factions to join with ISIS in bid to form a worldwide caliphate Worldwide caliphate will 'behead every person that rebels against Allah' U.S. intelligence officials say they believe the document is authenticA recruitment document understood to be written by ISIS militants has revealed the terrorist group's plans for all-out war to bring about 'the end of the world'. The Urdu document, passed to the American Media Institute by a Pakistani citizen...