In a September 10th speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would annex a third of the West Bank if reelected. Netanyahu's declaration comes just a month after dozens of congress members (Republicans and Democrats) traveled to Israel as part of a trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a branch of AIPAC. Recent comments by Republican members of the delegation suggest that the trip is being sold as an indictment of the two-state solution and an attack on the BDS movement. These statements indicate that GOP support for Israel is moving beyond cynical two-state solution rhetoric and toward a more public embrace of Netanyahu's annexation vision.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) led AIPAC'S Republican delegation to Israel. After the trip, he told the Jewish News Syndicate that pushing a two-state solution on the region wasn't the United States' job. "The world is constantly changing," he said, "Look at Lebanon. Look at Syria. Things are always in flux in these areas, so how can we choose a solution now without knowing what's going to happen in a few years?"

Turkey is interested in buying US-made Patriot missiles, if Washington can offer a good deal, says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - this despite US sanctions on its NATO ally for buying the Russian S-400 air defense systems.

Erdogan said he brought up the deal in a phone call with US President Donald Trump, and will discuss it in person on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly later this month.

"I said no matter what package of ... S-400s we get, we can buy from you a certain amount of Patriots," Erdogan told Reuters on Friday. "But I said we have to see conditions that at least match up to the S-400s."

Canada has seized and sold some $30 million worth of Iranian assets, court documents indicate. The funds were transferred to American families seeking compensation over terrorist acts that were all pinned on Tehran.

The confiscated assets include two buildings - the Iranian Cultural Center in Ottawa and Center for Iranian Studies in Toronto - as well as some $2.6 million seized from Iranian bank accounts and a couple of vehicles.

The two properties have been sold for $26.5 and $1.85 million respectively, while the proceeding were transferred to several families in the US, who sought share of the assets as a compensation for various acts of terrorism they blamed on Iran. Court documents confirming that the funds have been distributed are dated August 7, yet only caught eye of local media on Friday.

Facebook has blocked RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan's account for allegedly "violating community standards." Revealing the ban, Simonyan complained of pervasive censorship practiced on the platform.

The three-day-long ban was not accompanied by a more detailed explanation, Simonyan said in her Telegram channel. She is trying to find out the exact reason, she added.

"Meanwhile I'll be meditating on a free internet, freedom of speech and all that."

Facebook effectively allows Washington to spread its censorship beyond the American borders at will, Simonyan said. "Those who are young and live in social networks, think it's normal, and those who are older and in charge, don't really get what it's all about most of the time. Me, I'm just sad," she told Russia's RIA news agency.

Over the course of the past decade the United States, following decades of relative stagnation in oil production, has surprised many to become the largest oil producer in the world, exceeding Russia as well as Saudi Arabia. Latest daily production is just above 12.1 million barrels a day. In November 2018 for the first time in decades the US became a net oil exporter. The geopolitical implications to this energy boom in a world where oil determines the growth of entire economies, would appear to be great. Almost all the increase owes to the exploitation of what is called shale oil, unconventional oil found in shale rock formations. The US Department of Energy projects a rise to 8.8 million barrels daily from US shale oil alone, a new record. Now though, we are seeing the first clear signs that the "shale boom" could implode even faster than it rose. The implications for American foreign policy and global geopolitics and economics are significant.

The 'Fracking' Revolution

The idea of extracting oil or natural gas embedded in shale rocks has been known for years. However shale oil, or tight oil as it is known, first became economical with introduction of new horizontal drilling techniques combined with oil prices of $100 a barrel or more. This was about two decades ago.

In hydraulic fracturing or fracking, oil embedded in shale rock thousands of feet down is injected with a high pressure mix of water, lots of it, mixed with chemicals and sand. The de facto sand blasting creates fissures where oil can flow into the oil pipeline. The actual drilling of a shale well is only about 30-40% of the total cost. Up to 55-70% are from completion which includes actual fracking. The independent oil consultancy, Wood Mackenzie, recently estimated that the USA held an impressive 60% of all world shale reserves that are economically viable at oil prices of $60 per barrel or less.

Certainly, there are many things that President Donald Trump can rightly be criticized for, but it is interesting to note how the media and chattering classes continue to be in the grip of the highly emotional but ultimately irrational "Trump derangement syndrome (TDS)." TDS means that even the most ridiculous claims about Trump behavior can be regurgitated by someone like Jake Tapper or Rachel Maddow without anyone in the media even daring to observe that they are both professional dissemblers of truth who lie regularly to enhance their professional resumes.

There are two persistent bogus narratives about Donald Trump that are, in fact, related. The first is that his campaign and transition teams collaborated with the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton. Even Robert Mueller, he of the famous fact-finding commission, had to admit that that was not demonstrable. The only government that succeeded in collaborating with the incoming Trumpsters was that of Israel, but Mueller forgot to mention that or even look into it.

Nevertheless, Russia as a major contributing element in the Trump victory continues to be cited in the mainstream media, seemingly whenever Trump is mentioned, as if it were demonstrated fact. The fact is that whatever Russia did was miniscule and did not in any way alter the outcome of the election. Similarly, allegations that the Kremlin will again be at it in 2020 are essentially baseless fearmongering and are a reflection of the TDS desire to see the president constantly diminished in any way possible.

Venezuelan opponent Juan Guaidó took pictures with Colombian narcoparamilitary leaders while reportedly receiving help from them to cross his country's border with Colombia in February.

The photos were made public by the accusation of Wilfredo Cañizares, activist and leader of the Colombian Non-Governmental Human Rights Organization Foundation for Progress in the North of Santander (FPNS). According to Cañizares, the mysterious passage of Guaidó from Venezuela to Colombia was made with the help of Colombian criminals.

On the occasion, Juan Guaidó went to the neighboring country to attend an event called Venezuela Aid Live, whose purpose was supposedly to bring humanitarian aid to Venezuela from Colombian territory in February this year, but revealed just to be a big financial scam. Guaidó had been banned by the Venezuelan courts from crossing the border.

China gave Britain a stern warning this week that any naval maneuvers conducted with the US near its declared territories in the South China Sea will be met with a military response.

Beijing rapped London further, telling it to dump its "colonial attitude" with regard to Hong Kong. However, the ultimate leverage, was the caustic reminder to Britain that if it wants to trade with China in the future, then it better mind its manners.

Given the deepening turmoil over Brexit and the uncertain economic prospects once Britain quits the European Union, the British government is going to need every trading opportunity around the world it can muster. Keeping on good terms with China, the globe's second-biggest national economy, will therefore be crucial for Britain's post-Brexit survival.

A flood of news in the last 24 hours regarding Russiagate. I am referring specifically to reports that the CIA ex-filtrated Oleg Smolenkov, a mid-level Russian Foreign Ministry bureaucrat who has hooked himself on the coat-tails of Yuri Ushakov, who was Ambassador to the US from 1999 through 2008. He was recruited by the CIA (i.e., asked to collect information and pass it to the U.S. Government via his or her case officer) at sometime during this period. A supposedly "sensitive" source. He was not. But you would not necessarily glean this fact if you read either the Washington Post or New York Times accounts of this event.

This is the kind of source that helps a CIA case officer get promoted but adds little to actual U.S. intelligence on Russia. If you understood the CIA culture you would immediately recognize that a case officer (CIA terminology for the operations officer tasked with identifying and recruiting human sources) gets rewarded by recruiting persons who ostensibly will have access to information the CIA has identified as a priority target. In this case, we're talking about possible access to Vladimir Putin.

If you take time to read both articles you will quickly see that the real purpose of this "information operation" is to paint Donald Trump as a security threat that must be stopped. This is conveniently timed to assist Jerry Nadler's mission impossible to secure Trump's impeachment. But I think there is another dynamic at play - these competing explanations for what prompted the exfiltration of this CIA asset say more about the incompetence of Barack Obama and his intel chiefs. John Brennan and Jim Clapper in particular.

While protests in Hong Kong and the debacles in the UK Parliament under Boris Johnson have pushed Venezuela out of the media narrative, a recent troop detachment indicates Caracas may be back in the crosshairs.

The US has a long and hidden history of encircling rivals and adversaries with military bases with two notable goals in mind: one being to contain and surround the rival nation to prevent it from expanding its sphere of influence as much as possible; and two, to support a regime-change operation in that rival nation.

For example, I suspect most Americans have heard of the Monroe Doctrine. But I equally suspect that very few Americans realized that as of now, the US military has just recently returned to Guyana for the first time in a decade. The purpose of this detachment, according to Military.com, is to "shore up relationships amid growing tensions in neighboring Venezuela."