Israel is trying to "suck America into" a war with Iran that could destabilize the Middle East and lead to a world war in much the way that the imperial rivalries in 1914 led to the First World War, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned in Washington last week.

A war with Iran, he said, could "perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become."

But Israeli leaders want a war, and they are pushing one with the support of their American political friends, including Democrats like Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, whose overheated rhetoric about Iran recalls Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, Wilkerson said. Another pro-war faction are "warmed-over neoconservatives" who got us into the Iraq war.

"I've been there, done that; I don't need the tour," he said.

Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who now teaches government at Washington-area universities, served Powell during the runup to the Iraq war. He spoke last Friday at the annual Israel lobby conference at the National Press Club, sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Institute for Research: Middle East Policy. The conference aired on C-SPAN.

I have transcribed his speech below. Wilkerson's remarks are important because his analysis of the tail wagging the dog is so cogent and frightening at a time when the premier Israel lobby group AIPAC is pushing for action against Iran in Syria. Also for Wilkerson's respectful take on Vladimir Putin; for his unvarnished opinion of the Israel lobby, so different from the tame piece he published in The New York Times a month ago; and for his comments about Israel attacking the USS Liberty in 1967 and stealing US uranium to build a nuclear weapon with LBJ's knowledge.

"Reminder that there are two kinds of Trump-Russia stories: those we pay attention to because they serve a narrative, and those we ignore because they don't," tweeted The Real News' Aaron Maté ‏yesterday in response to the news that the Trump administration had authorized the sale of hundreds of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. "This one falls into latter category."

"That piss-tape kompromat surely dropping any day now," added journalist Mark Ames, a sarcastic reference to the fact that backing off on calls to arm Ukraine was an explicitly named part of the allegations in the notorious Steele dossier as one of the benefits Russia was supposed to have received from its "collusion" with the Trump campaign.

"If US media attitudes re: Russia weren't so hopelessly blinkered, this could be identified as the dangerous escalation that it is - rather than ignored or spun because it doesn't comport with the narrative that so many are now wedded to," said The Young Turks' Michael Tracey.

Thousands of people gathered at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on March 3 to attend a rally for Vladimir Putin as Russia prepares to hold the presidential election on March 18. The President was there in person to address the crowds.

A campaign rally gathered over 130,000 people in the capital city of Russia. Vladimir Putin addressed the rally:

"We have clear, coherent, noble goals. We want to make our country vibrant, a country that's looking forward to the future, because our ancestors lived here, we live here, our children live here, and our children and grandchildren will live here. We will do everything to make them happy. Nobody can do this for us but us. And if we do this, the nearest decade, the whole 21st century, will pass under the sign of our bright victories."

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday dismissed as "propaganda" claims that Russia and the West have entered a new "cold war."

In an interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly in Moscow, Putin said his earlier comments that Russian ballistic missiles could penetrate any missile defense systems on the planet were not a declaration of a new "cold war" as some defense analysts suggested.

He was an NSA staffer but also a volunteer, having signed up to provide technical expertise for a wide-ranging, joint CIA mission in Iraq. He did not know what he was getting himself into.

After arriving in Baghdad "grungy and tired," the staffer would later write, he discovered that the CIA and its partner, the Defense Intelligence Agency, had moved beyond talking to locals and were now intent on looking through their computer files. Marines would bring the NSA man "laptops, hard drives, CDs, phones and radios." Sometimes the devices were covered in blood - and quite often they contained pornography, deemed "extremely useful" in humiliating and "breaking down" for interrogation the people who owned them.

The story of how the National Security Agency harvested porn for use against prisoners in Iraq is just one of the revelations disclosed in the agency's internal newsletter SIDtoday during the second half of 2005.

There's also the tale of how some intercepts would be rushed almost instantly to the president at Camp David via golf cart "with virtually no oversight."

Then there's one about how the NSA declared it could find "not many" Arabic translators it could trust among "the largest Arabic-speaking population in the United States."

Or the story of how the agency listened as the Egyptian government dictated through its communication channels the final results for an election that had barely begun.

Told in more detail below, these are highlights from some 297 SIDtoday articles published today by The Intercept as part of an ongoing project to release, after careful review, material provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

May you live in interesting times, goes the Chinese proverb. Few can doubt that we are indeed living in such an interesting time. Big changes are afoot in the world, it seems.

None more so than the collapsing of the American Empire.

The US is going through an historic "correction" in the same way that the Soviet Union did some 30 years ago when the latter was confronted with the reality of its unsustainable political and economic system. (That's not meant to imply, however, that socialism is unviable, because arguably the Soviet Union had fatally strayed from its genuine socialist project into something more akin to unwieldy state capitalism.)

"It is essential to provide conditions for creative labor and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development, and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems."

-- Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club

Putin wants to end poverty? Putin wants to stimulate economic growth in developing countries? Putin wants to change the system that divides the world into "permanent winners and losers"? But, how can that be, after all, Putin is bad, Putin is a "KGB thug", Putin is the "new Hitler"?

American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution. Naturally, the Russian system has its shortcomings, but there has been significant progress under Putin who has dramatically increased the budget, improved treatment and widened accessibility. Putin believes that healthcare should be a universal human right. Here's what he said at the annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club:

"Another priority is global healthcare.... All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development." (Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)

On February 20, from Amman, Jordan, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Geert Cappelaere, issued a statement of "outrage" titled: "The war on children in Syria: Reports of mass casualties among children in Eastern Ghouta and Damascus."

The "statement" - consisting of blank lines with the preface "No words will do justice to the children killed, their mothers, their fathers and their loved ones" - dovetails with corporate media's increasingly hysterical rhetoric on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, which has been plagued with chemical weapons attacks for over four years, perpetrated by U.S.-backed proxies allied with the Nusra Front attempting to frame the Syrian government with war crimes.

UNICEF further wrote: "We no longer have the words to describe children's suffering and our outrage. Do those inflicting the suffering still have words to justify their barbaric acts?"

Where was UNICEF's dramatic blank-lined protest when 200 civilians, including 116 children, were slaughtered by terrorist factions while in convoy from Kafraya and Foua in April 2017? These factions included Ahrar al-Sham (supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia), al-Nusra (al-Qaeda), and factions of the Free Syrian Army. The Free Syrian Army was armed by the U.S. And, according to the words of former Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, Qatar - with the support and coordination of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the U.S. - was from the beginning supporting armed groups, even al-Qaeda, in Syria.

This seemingly outraged UN statement has made the rounds in corporate media reports on eastern Ghouta, most of which cite the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), run from his home by a sole person, Osama Suleiman, who uses the pseudonym Rami Abdul Rahman. In its recent Ghouta reports, SOHR itself does not provide sources.

Meet Norwegian Skier Marit Bjorgen. Since 2009, she has been authorized under the western sanctioned TUE program, in which the US controlled IOC and WADA allows NATO countries and allies, to take steroids for asthma, for example.

Of course, these are steroids beyond Clenbuterol and more commonly Albuterol, which certainly are excellent fat reduction and muscle preservation agents. The use of these, however, would eliminate any Russian athlete for 'doping'.

But Clenbuterol and Albuterol are among common steroids prescribed for Asthma. A person with a more severe case of Asthma than Clenbuterol, for example, could help with, would be using such to barely 'get by'. So this raises some questions.

The ongoing litigation of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit and the appeal regarding its dismissal took a stunning turn yesterday. The defendants in the case, including the DNC and former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, filed a response brief that left many observers of the case at a loss for words.

The document, provided by the law offices of the Attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the case, Jared and Elizabeth Beck, and appears to argue that if the Democratic Party did cheat Sanders in the 2016 Presidential primary race, then that action was protected under the first amendment. Twitter users were quick to respond to the brief, expressing outrage and disgust at the claims made by representatives of the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The Defense counsel also argued that because of Jared Beck's outspoken twitter posts, the plaintiffs were using the litigation process for political purposes: "For example, Plaintiffs' counsel Jared Beck repeatedly refers to the DNC as "shi*bags" on Twitter and uses other degrading language in reference to Defendants." Fascinatingly, no mention is made regarding the importance of First Amendment at this point in the document.

The defense counsel also took issue with Jared Beck for what they termed as: "...Repeatedly promoted patently false and deeply offensive conspiracy theories about the deaths of a former DNC staffer and Plaintiffs' process server in an attempt to bolster attention for this lawsuit."

This author was shocked to find that despite the characterization of the Becks as peddlers of conspiracy theory, the defense counsel failed to mention the motion for protection filed by the Becks earlier in the litigation process. They also failed to note the voice-modulated phone calls received by the law offices of the Becks which contained a caller-ID corresponding to the law offices of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a defendant in the case. In light of this context, the Becks hardly appear to be peddlers of conspiracy theory.

The DNC defense lawyers then argued that: "There is no legitimate basis for this litigation, which is, at its most basic, an improper attempt to forge the federal courts into a political weapon to be used by individuals who are unhappy with how a political party selected its candidate in a presidential campaign."

The brief continued: "...To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege based on their animating theory would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office."

It appears that the defendants in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit are attempting to argue that cheating a candidate in the primary process is protected under the first amendment.

If all that weren't enough, DNC representatives argued that the Democratic National Committee had no established fiduciary duty "to the Plaintiffs or the classes of donors and registered voters they seek to represent."

It seems here that the DNC is arguing for its right to appoint candidates at its own discretion while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the belief that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved.

Adding to the latest news regarding the DNC Fraud Lawsuit was the recent finding by the UK Supreme Court, which stated that Wikileaks Cables were admissible as evidence in legal proceedings.

If Wikileaks' publication of DNC emails are found to be similarly admissible in a United States court of law, then the contents of the leaked emails could be used to argue that, contrary to the defendant's latest brief, the DNC did in favor the campaign of Hillary Clinton over Senator Sanders and that they acted to sabotage Sanders' campaign.

The outcome of the appeal of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit remains to be seen. Disobedient Media will continue to report on this important story as it unfolds.