Will the White House soon host another President Bush? According to family members, Jeb Bush - a son of former president George H.W. Bush and the brother of the current president's predecessor, George W. Bush - is eying the oval office.

With the 2016 presidential election now nearly just two years away, potential candidates are becoming increasingly pressured to announce once and for all if they're willing to throw their hat into the race. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has long been rumored to be considering a run in 2016 under the Republican Party ticket which, if successful, would make him the third Bush to win a presidential election in 30 years. Now, two of his sons are lending credence to those rumors by telling the media that the odds are better than ever that Jeb Bush will run in 2016.

"I think it's more than likely that he's giving this serious thought in moving forward ... that he'll run," son George P. Bush told ABC's This Week on Sunday.

"No question," Jeb Bush Jr., another son of the former governor, added to the New York Times, "people are getting fired up about it - donors and people who have been around the political process for a while, people he's known in Tallahassee when he was governor. The family, we're geared up either way."

Additionally, Jeb Jr. added to the Times for an article published on Sunday that his mother, Columba Bush, has given Jeb Sr. her go ahead to pursue the White House. And according to one "family insider" quoted anonymous by the Times' Peter Baker, George W. Bush - or "Bush 43," as he's often called to differentiate himself from his father, George H.W. Bush, or "Bush "41" - wants his brother Jeb to enter the race.

"The one person who is really, really trying to get Jeb to run is George W.," the source told Baker. "He's talking it up all the time."

"The family will be behind him 100 percent," George P. Bush, Jeb Bush's eldest son, added during the ABC News interview over the weekend.

I recently was in Vietnam and spent some time in prosperous, capitalist Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, and toured the American War Museum. I believe there are a number of parallels between the Vietnam and Iraq War and that history could repeat itself now in Baghdad. Who can forget the former Vietnamese supporters of America being left behind as the last helicopter left the roof of the US embassy?

Today, America still has the strongest military in the world but our manufacturing capacity and financial situation shows the US is on a downhill slide like earlier over-extended and bankrupt empires throughout world history.

We've already watched the frightening incompetence of the Obama Administration and the CDC in dealing with the Ebola virus. One would have to be blind not to see the petrodollar deathwatch as Russia, China and the BRIC countries build new trading alternatives to avoid using the dollar world reserve currency when trading energy and other financial dealings.

The ISIL Takfiri militants operating in Iraq have reportedly carried out a chemical attack on a residential area in the western part of the violence-stricken country.

According to local media reports, the commander of the rapid intervention forces in Iraq's Anbar province, Shaaban Obaidi, said Sunday that the ISIL terrorists "fired seven shells filled with chlorine on the residential district" there.

He added that no casualties have been reported as a result of the gas attack, as residents had left the buildings and some shells did not go off.

Last week, Iraqi officials said the ISIL terror group used bombs with chlorine-filled cylinders during clashes in the town of Dhuluiya, located about 96 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, on September 15.

They noted that some 40 Iraqi soldiers and Shia fighters were made ill and showed symptoms of chlorine poisoning such as coughing and vomiting. They were all treated in hospital and quickly recovered.

The use of chlorine gas has raised grave concerns about future militant attacks in Iraq. There are also fears that Iraq's old chemical weapons stores could have fallen into ISIL's hands.

Financial analyst Andy Hoffman says the real global economy is in deep trouble, which is much to the chagrin of the Fed. Hoffman explains, "Recall last April, they started smashing gold and started with the 'taper' talk. The Fed figured by about this time, they'd be ready to start hiking rates. The fact is the global economy has collapsed. Our real economy has collapsed. Forget the fake PMI numbers or their ridiculous employment numbers. The economy of the world is getting worse and worse and worse. No matter how hard they try to say yes, there is a recovery and we are tapering. Interest rates keep falling and falling. There are plunging rates despite all their talk of recovery and tapering." Hoffman, who also has deep Wall Street experience, points to the recent sell-off in the stock market and the Fed's reaction. Hoffman contends, "The Dow Jones propaganda average fell a whopping 9% from its all-time highs. The Fed absolutely freaked out. Within minutes, they had the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) running it back up, and no less than six Fed Governors in the space of three days came out and called for extension of QE and extension of zero-percent-interest-rates (ZERP). That's how terrified they are, and remember, next week is when QE is supposed to end."

A team of RIA Novosti correspondents was barred Sunday from entering a polling station in Ukraine's embassy in Madrid, Spain over allegedly "biased reporting on the situation in Ukraine by Russian media."

Two RIA Novosti journalists - a Russian and a Spanish citizens - were stopped from entering the station despite having all necessary documents. Local electoral committee's head Ivan Vovk said this decision had been made due to the Russian media's biased angle on the events in Ukraine, which is going through a devastating crisis.


A military confrontation in Ukraine's two eastern provinces began in mid-April, after the Ukrainian government sent troops to the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk to suppress pro-independence uprisings against Kiev.

Since then, media freedom watchdogs have been reporting numerous instances of abuse and violence against Russian and Western journalists at the hands of Ukrainian government forces, who accused the media of distorting the facts and destabilizing the situation in eastern Ukraine.

The pro-Israel Canadian government is modifying the country's criminal code to ban any criticism of the Zionist regime for atrocities against Palestinians, an analyst says.

In a column for Press TV website, Brandon Martinez has analyzed the proposed cyber-bullying law (Bill C-13) by the administration of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"The Zionist ruling clique of Canada, through their front-man Stephen Harper, is seeking to beef up the already-existing Orwellian 'hate propaganda' law, which has been primarily used to curtail criticism of Zionists and Israel," wrote Martinez.

He said Canada's criminal code is to ban criticism or promotion of "hatred" against people distinguished by "national origin."

"This means, say, if you condemn Israelis for their inhumane treatment of Palestinians, you could find yourself in court facing down the self-appointed thought police and commissars of political correctness," wrote Martinez.

He singled out the case of German-Canadian publisher, Ernst Zundel, who has been facing court and jail due to his criticism of Zionists who are "the self-appointed architects of public discourse, the self-declared arbiters of truth and morality."

The analyst said the Canadian police have refused to provide any protection to Zundel, whose Toronto home has been "torched by Zionist terrorists."

Prime Minister Steven Harper and the Canadian federal government are using the shooting rampage on Parliament Hill as a justification for imposing surveillance and detainment measures that they were already implementing and going forward with.

On October 22, 2014 a solitary gunman named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (originally Michael Joseph Hall) from the city of Laval, Quebec went on a shooting spree in downtown Ottawa, the capital of Canada.

Firstly, it was reported that there were shootings in the Rideau Centre which from the northern side of the Mackenzie King Bridge faces National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ), the nerve of Canada's Department of National Defence (DND). This proved to be false or wrong. The gunman had killed a reservist guard in front of the National War Memorial and then made his way northward to Parliament Hill.

Secondly, it was reported that there were multiple gunmen. As a result all government employees were not allowed to enter or leave their respective buildings throughout the interprovincial National Capital Region, which includes the city of Gatineau. Although the police did the right thing in taking precautions to make sure that there were no other gunmen and declined to give explanations, the public was led to believe that there were multiple shooters. This justified the lockdown and suspension of mobility that took place for hours.

Is it a coincidence that the vulture funds are putting increasing pressure on Argentina as it prepares to develop the world's second largest shale gas reserves? Are the vultures instruments of foreign policy?

Paranoia or insightfulness in Buenos Aires?

Hours after the US Embassy in Buenos Aires issued a security warning to US citizens either already inside or traveling to the South American country, Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner accused the US of plotting to overthrow or kill her. Speaking during a television broadcast from the Casa de Gobierno on September 30, she explained that "if something happens to me, don't look to the Mideast, look north" to Washington, DC. She told the Argentine people not to believe anything that the US government was saying, even going as far as dismissing the ISIL/ISIS threat as a US bogeyman.

More or less, at the United Nations she was already cautiously dismissive of the ISIL threats against her when she spoke on September 24. Now, however, President Kirchner connected the dots between the diplomatic situation with Washington and the ISIL threat towards her by stating that "when you see what has been coming out of diplomatic offices, they had better not come in here and try to sell some tall tale about ISIS trying to track me down so they can kill me."

Instead of asking what led Fernandez de Kirchner to make such accusations against the US government, the question should be what has led to the deterioration of relations and diplomatic ties between Buenos Aires and Washington.

Brazil's leftist president Dilma Rousseff has been re-elected for another term with over 51 percent of the vote in a tight presidential run-off on Sunday.

Rousseff, who has been in power since 2011, has been re-elected for a second term, winning 51.6 percent of the vote according to the official tally. With over 99 percent of the ballots counted, her opponent, the centrist opposition leader Aecio Neves got 48.4 percent.

Brazil's leftist President Dilma Rousseff narrowly won re-election on Sunday after convincing voters that her party's strong record of reducing poverty over the last 12 years was more important than a recent economic slump.

After one of the closest, most divisive campaigns in Brazil in decades, Rousseff won 51.6 percent of votes in a runoff against centrist opposition leader Aecio Neves, who won 48.4 percent support.

The vote split Latin America's biggest country almost evenly in two along lines of both social class and geography. Neves prevailed in Brazil's richer south, southeast and center-west, while Rousseff took the Amazon north and impoverished northeast.

Voting was peaceful and Brazil's robust democracy is free of the political violence that mars some other countries in the region. Yet, mindful of the deep economic challenges facing the country, both Neves and Rousseff sounded a cautious, conciliatory tone in speeches on Sunday night.