The federal government is considering, again, opening Wayne National Forest to fracking.

Oil and gas companies have formally expressed interest to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in hydraulically fracturing about 31,900 acres of the Wayne. The bureau is reviewing those requests to see if the federal government owns the mineral rights beneath those sections of the forest, and it plans to assess potential environmental risks.

In the meantime, though, the bureau also has scheduled three public meetings to see what the public thinks about those plans.

"It's kind of a scoping meeting to tell people we've got expressions of interest from industry, and potentially, we could see leasing in these areas," said Kurt Wadzinski, planning and environmental coordinator for the bureau's Northeastern States District, which includes the Wayne.

For environmental groups and residents throughout southeastern Ohio, though, it is a battle that has been fought before.

Four years ago, oil and gas companies told the bureau they wanted to drill for oil and gas beneath the Wayne. Environmental groups and local residents were outraged, and, eventually, the bureau pulled the proposal.

The areas that oil and gas companies have proposed for drilling are similar to the ones proposed in 2011.

Roxanne Groff, a township trustee in Athens County who has opposed oil and gas drilling in the Wayne, said her concerns from the 2011 proposal haven't gone away.

"The concerns have even multiplied, because we know that fracking is problematic," Groff said. " And even though the industry continues to say it hasn't caused any problems, we know that to not be true."

Oil and gas companies filed documents called "expressions of interest" with the Bureau of Land Management as a first step to opening the Wayne to fracking. The documents are public records, but the bureau did not make them available on Tuesday.

At least 772,979 refugees from the Middle East and North Africa have arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of 2015, while 3,423 have drowned on their way, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported Friday.

Over the last few years, the world has witnessed the gradual positioning on the Grand Chessboard by the United States, NATO, and Russian forces in the Middle East, most notably in Syria. The aggressive push by the U.S. to overthrow Assad and destroy a Syrian government capable of resisting the will of the Anglo-American powers resulted in a defensive Russian response that soon morphed into an out-maneuvering of Washington on the Syrian front. However, the West is not ready to take its ball and go home just yet and it has now mounted yet another escalation in Syria.

In the past several days, a number of announcements have been made by both the United States and Russia suggesting that we are now witnessing more than a mere placement of chess pieces on the board but the forward motion to some greater confrontation between two nuclear superpowers.

US officials have told NBC News that the Pentagon intercepted "detailed chatter" shortly after the crash of the Metrojet A321. That communications was allegedly sent between IS affiliates in Sinai and the group's self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa.

According to unnamed officials, the communications allegedly included boasts of taking down the airliner.

All anti-Assad forces are US-trained, armed, funded, and directed terrorists, taught the fine art of killing, committing atrocities and using chemical weapons - including ISIS, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and various splinter groups.

The so-called Free Syrian Army and other alleged "moderates" exist only in US and go-along media propaganda reports, willful misinformation to deceive an uninformed public.

Wars depend on lies to gain popular support, or at least no significant opposition. ISIS et al represent proxy US foot soldiers, imported abroad from scores of countries.

Putin is effectively contesting Obama's dirty game. Washington has no effective counter-strategy, increasingly transparent propaganda and dubious military moves alone, along with continued Russia bashing and fear-mongering.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, two State Department officials repeated tired old Big Lies.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Anne Patterson and her European and Eurasian Affairs counterpart Victoria Nuland committed perjury - claiming Russian airstrikes hit 85 to 90% "moderate" rebels and civilians in areas with no ISIS presence.

"Russia's military intervention has dangerously exacerbated an already complex environment," Patterson blustered.

"(T)his has not been a Russian fight against terrorism so much as an effort to preserve the Assad regime," she duplicitously claimed.

'Is the Israeli Prime Minister Insane? Adolf, Amin and Bibi' is a good example of why I feel this way. It is a perfect illustration of how someone who can be such a clear thinker in some ways, is also so blinkered by his innate and almost unconscious support of Zionism. This tendency to be so blinkered and so unconsciously so, serves to support the smokescreen that surrounds Zionism and its real purpose. It indirectly helps Israel and Zionism by distancing us from the real conversation we are supposed to have about Israel and Palestine, namely a conversation about settler-colonialism and its effects on the colonised.

Of course Netanyahu has a personality disorder (as a psychotherapist I can see all the signs of it), but insane in the way that Avnery means, he is not! Netanyahu's policies have been 100% consistent with Israel's goal of taking all the land without the people. To complete the Zionist project of creating an exclusively Jewish safe haven for all Jews in the land of Palestine, Jews will need to be an absolute majority in Israel-Palestine. A few Palestinians can probably be allowed to remain but with all the spirit of resistance knocked out of them, so they are no longer a 'problem' for Israel. Israel has good role models of 'successful' settler-colonial projects in the US and Australia, countries that are also staunch and fanatic supporters of Israel. Netanyahu can see that it worked there. They got away with it, so why not in Israel?

Everything Netanyahu has ever done has been designed to advance Israel towards this ultimate goal. Notice that Netanyahu's statement about how the Mufti of Jerusalem gave Hitler the idea for the extermination of the Jews came a short time after relaxing the gun laws in Israel. I do not think that these two facts are unconnected. Frankly I am amazed by how effective the smokescreen is. So effective, that no one sees what he is doing, and in the meantime the project is reaching a slow and horrific crescendo right under everyone's noses, and with full complicity of the world's community.

There were a few different stories coming out over the last few days that reveal the true nature of government and the apparatchiks who use disinformation, devious machinations, fraudulent accounting, and taxpayer money to cover up their criminality, lies, and the true state of the American economy. The use of government accounting tricks to obscure the truth about our dire financial straits is designed to keep the masses sedated and confused.

Russia's Air Force has secured Syrian airspace with air defense missile systems that were delivered and deployed into the war-torn country along with other military hardware, its chief has revealed in an interview. "We figured out all possible threats in advance, that's why we brought not only fighter jets, strike-fighters and helicopters, but also air defense missile weapon systems," Viktor Bondarev, the chief of Russia's Air Force, told Komsomolskaya Pravda daily, adding that all kinds of force majeure circumstances should be expected.

"Let's say a warplane is hijacked in a country neighboring Syria, to be used to make an airstrike on (Russia's Khmeimim airbase near Latakia). Even that is something we must be ready for," Bondarev said, adding that so far no attacks on the base have been registered and no Russian servicemen have been injured.

The Commander explained why Moscow had opted to deploy its Air Force to Syria:
"ISIS are a very mobile gathering of rabble," Bondarev said. "They use cars, motorbikes, bicycles and donkeys to move around and change their positions after every strike. You can't effectively chase them with tanks, trucks and armored vehicles. Aviation is a different story."

As his visit to Washington approaches, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claque in the U.S. is getting noisier and noisier by the minute. And Hillary Clinton is outfront.

In the Washington Post today, Ronald Lauder of the World Zionist Organization has run a full page ad saying that it's time for President Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu to "reinvigorate" the relationship between Israel and the United States. This is essential because of the rise of ISIS and other violent trends, notably "ongoing violent attacks against Jews in Israel."

If there's anything that should have become abundantly clear over the past several months it's that Washington's "strategy" in the Mid-East is coming apart at the seams.

To be sure, there's no reason why intelligence officials in the US should have ever thought the Syria gambit was going to work. Playing on the Sunni-Shiite divide can certainly be effective when it comes to creating chaos but it's a notoriously risky way to go about things and it's fraught with uncertainty.

The Pentagon should know this all too well. After all, it was the very same jihadists who the US supported in the Soviet- Afghan war that ended up flying commercial airliners into US "targets" on 9/11.