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As a fragile and partial cease-fire in Syria totters, the back story is the political warfare in Washington where powerful hawks seek to escalate both the war in Syria and the New Cold War with Russia, ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains.

United Nations investigators encountered evidence that alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian military were staged by jihadist rebels and their supporters, but still decided to blame the government for two incidents in which chlorine was allegedly dispersed via improvised explosives dropped by helicopters.

Are the leaders of European member states of NATO planning to follow the example of José Manuel Barroso, who became a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs after his term as president of the European Commission? Were they using the NATO summit to prepare for a career switch as consultants to General Dynamics or some other US arms manufacturer? The suggestion is of

By Jeffrey Sachs, Syria’s civil war is the most dangerous and destructive crisis on the planet. Since early 2011, hundreds of thousands have died; around ten million Syrians have been displaced; Europe has been convulsed with Islamic State (ISIS) terror and the political fallout of refugees; and the United States and its NATO allies have more than once come perilously

France’s trade minister has increased the pressure on the proposed EU-US trade deal by calling for the talks to be called off. Matthias Fekl, the French minister for foreign trade, tweeted that his government demanded negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) should cease.François Hollande, the French president, also raised doubts about TTIP and said France would not support a deal this year

The German newspaper Die Welt has recently created something of a stir by appearing to admit that the sarin gas chemical attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in August 2013 may not have been carried out by the Syrian army as Western governments and the Western media have repeatedly claimed, but by the Syrian rebels instead.

The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction. A weak but functioning IS can undermine the appeal of the caliphate among radical Muslims; keep bad actors focused on one another rather than on Western targets; and hamper Iran’s quest for regional hegemony.

On Monday, August 22nd, the United States government — which demands the overthrow of the internationally-recognized-as-legal government of Syria — officially announced that America’s military forces in Syria will continue to occupy Syrian land, no matter what the Syrian government says, and will shoot down any Syrian planes that fly over U.S. forces there.

The ideas that justified the American economic and political system in the minds of most of our citizens throughout that long period came under stress during earlier storms—from the 1950s to the 1970s in particular—and a few beams and joists cracked but did not give way. Today the manifold crises of capitalism mean that the entire existing intellectual structure of American capitalism is breaking up.

It was necessary to get rid of the idea of a bungling, inept president who spoke of speaking with God every morning, and who waged bloody wars, losing them all but hoisting himself up with the banner over mountains of cadavers. Written on the banner was “Mission Accomplished”. Let's take a look at which mission he accomplished now, after eight years of a Black, pacifistic president, so pacifistic that he garnered the Nobel Peace Prize before