Exclusive: In the Orwellian world of Official Washington, the U.S. government is now wedded to the theory of “information warfare,” meaning that Americans who challenge national security policy may be treated as “unprivileged belligerents” under the new Law of War doctrine, retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce writes.
In a piece for the Daily Beast Monday, James K. Glassman, former Under Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration, made an impassioned – and, in our view, logical – case for a separate online national primary contest to choose a single independent candidate to go up against the Republican and Democratic nominees in the three final presidential debates in the fall of 2016.
Science works best when in harmony with nature. If we put these two together, we can discover great technologies that can only come about when the consciousness of the planet is ready to embrace them. One example is “free energy,” also known as “zero-point energy,” which utilizes the substance that exists all around us and converts it into usable energy. This would give us a limitless source of energy, and would practically wipe out all poverty on the planet. (more on this later in the article)
By inserting troops into Latakia, Syria, Putin is interested in much more than protecting Russia’s small naval base at Tartus, Syria. Already in possession of the powerful Shiite Iranian ally in the region, the ineffective U.S. policy in the region has opened up a road from Moscow to the Sunni Arab powers. Thus, Putin seeks to parlay the deepening Syrian crisis into a grand deal to forge an anti-jihadi alliance spanning the Sunni-Shiite divide.
Pro-Israeli American neocons, who promoted the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of the Assad regime, may well think that Israel is the prime strategic beneficiary of the breakup of Iraq and Syria. However, the reality is that Israel is now faced with the spectre of horrendous and unending blowback over the long term at the more decisive grand strategic level of conflict.
It is an era of violence in the Middle East and North Africa, with nine civil wars now going on in Islamic countries between Pakistan and Nigeria. This is why there are so many refugees fleeing for their lives. Half of the 23 million population of Syria have been forced from their homes, with four million becoming refugees in other countries. Some 2.6 million Iraqis have been displaced by Islamic State – Isis – offensives in the last year and squat in tents or half-finished buildings. Unnoticed by the outside world, some 1.5 million people have been displaced in South Sudan since fighting there resumed at the end of 2013. Read more.
Exclusive: In the up-is-down world of Official Washington, everyone condemns Russia for aiding Syria’s internationally recognized government but stays mum on Saudi Arabia and other U.S. “allies” arming Al Qaeda and various terrorists fighting the Syrian government, an incoherence examined by Daniel Lazare. Read more.