As an alliance of U.S.-backed militias advance against Islamic State in northern Syria, their political allies are making progress of their own toward a new federal system of government which they hope will take root in newly captured areas. The autonomous federation being planned by Syrian Kurdish parties and their allies is taking shape fast: a constitution should be finalised in three months, and possibly sooner, to be followed quickly by elections, a Kurdish official said.

While Kurdish groups insist this is no separatist bid, it is set to redraw the map as U.N. diplomacy fails to make any progress toward ending the war that has splintered Syria into a patchwork of separately-run areas. In so doing, it is likely to deepen the concerns of NATO member Turkey about growing Kurdish influence in northern Syria, a region whose once unfamiliar Kurdish name - Rojava - has now entered the Middle East's political lexicon.

The plan had taken on even greater significance since the Syria Democratic Forces alliance, which is spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, mounted a rapid new advance westwards this month into Islamic State's last foothold at the Turkish border. It holds out the prospect of more areas being included in the federation, plans for which were first unveiled in March.

Hillary's record includes supporting the barbaric "contras" against the Nicaraguan people in the 1980s, supporting the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, supporting the ongoing Bush-Iraq War, the ongoing Afghan mess, and as Secretary of State the destruction of the secular state of Libya, the military coup in Honduras, and the present attempt at "regime change" in Syria. Every one of these situations has resulted in more extremism, more chaos in the world, and more danger to our country. Next will be the borders of Russia, China, and Iran. Look at the viciousness of her recent AIPAC speech (don't say you haven't been warned). Can we really bear to watch as Clinton "takes our alliance [with Israel] to the next level"? Where is our sense of proportion? Cannot the media, at the least, call her out on this extremism? The problem, I think, is this political miasma of "correctness" that dominates American thinking (i.e. Trump is extreme, therefore Hillary is not).

- From the post: "We're Going to War" - Oliver Stone Opines on the Dangerous Extremism of Neocon Hillary Clinton

Jeffrey Sachs has been on a roll lately. His latest might be his best one yet.

Omar Mateen's father and wife were added to the US' no-fly list as investigators try to determine what role they played in the Orlando massacre in which 49 club-goers were killed and 53 injured.

Federal officials have added Omar's father, Seddique Mateen, and his wife, Noor Salman, to the government's no-fly list, according to NBC News, although a spokesman for the US Government Terrorist Screening Database would not confirm that.

"Disclosure of an individual's inclusion or non-inclusion in the TSDB or on the No Fly List would significantly impair the government's ability to investigate and counteract terrorism and protect transportation security," US Government Terrorist Screening Database spokesman Dave Joly told NBC News.

The decision comes as investigators are still trying to determine what role, if any, the pair played in the massacre.

Once on the no-fly list, people are barred from travelling on commercial airlines.

In part, what peaked the investigators' interest was that while Mateen was holed up in a bathroom with hostages at Pulse two hours after the massacre began, he texted Salman to ask if she had seen the news. She typed back, saying that she loved him, according to CNN.

The facile and indiscriminate use of the term fascism has led to a widespread misunderstanding and misuse of its meaning. Asked to define fascism, most people would respond in terms such as dictatorship, anti-Semitism, mass hysteria, efficient propaganda machine, mesmerizing oratory of a psychopathic leader, and the like.

Such a pervasive misconception of the meaning of the term fascism is not altogether fortuitous. It is largely because of a longstanding utilitarian misrepresentation of the term. Fascism is deliberately obfuscated in order to sanitize capitalism. Ideologues, theorists and opinion-makers of capitalism have systematically shifted the systemic sins of fascism from market/capitalist failures to individual or personal failures.

Thus, the origins, the rise and the ravages of the classic European fascism are blamed largely on Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, not the socio-economic circumstances that gave rise to those instrumentally "useful" characters. An obvious flaw of this interpretation of fascism is that it cannot explain recent manifestations of fascism: since the archetype European fascism is attributed to Hitler and Mussolini, their demise ought to have logically meant the end of fascism. Yet, manifestations of fascism has been a recurring phenomenon characteristic of periods of capitalist crisis, as evinced by today's expressions of fascistic tendencies in most of the core capitalist countries.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has visited Syria where he met with President Bashar Assad and inspected the Khmeimim air base, the Russian military said on Saturday. Shoigu and Assad discussed military cooperation and fight against terrorism.

Shoigu has met with the Syrian leader upon the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Ministry's spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

"Topical issues concerning military cooperation between the two countries' defense ministries, as well as certain aspects of cooperation in the fight against terror groups that are active on Syrian territory, were discussed at the meeting," Konashenkov said.

The minister inspected Russian Khmeimim air base in Latakia Province and also inspected the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system deployed there.

The visit was not previously announced.

Shoigu ordered the commander of the Russian reconciliation center to further encourage local administrations and fighters to cease fire and join the peace process. "The defense minister ordered the commanders of the air base to boost comprehensive support to the locals, especially in the areas blocked by terrorists," Konashenkov added.

French jurists delayed their decision on whether to reopen an investigation into the cause of Yasser Arafat's death, but mounting evidence of polonium poisoning and shocking admissions suggest an explosive assassination cover-up has been underway for over a decade.

On Friday, a French court ruled to postpone a decision on whether to resume an investigation into the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat until June 24 or July 8. This comes amid growing suspicions that Israeli agents assassinated him using polonium poisoning.

In 2012, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader's widow, Suha Arafat, filed a complaint after traces of polonium, a highly toxic radioactive substance, were found on Yasser Arafat's personal effects.

Arafat drifted into a coma and passed away on November 11, 2004 at the age of 75, after suffering nausea, massive stomach problems, and other gastrointestinal related issues. His illness initially began on October 12, 2004, despite have previously been given a clean bill of health.

Bucking current US policy, dozens of State Department officials have reportedly signed an internal document calling for military action and regime change in Syria, claiming it is the only way to defeat Islamic State and end the war. "The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable," the New York Times quoted the document as saying. "The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges."

The document is alleged to have expressed frustration with America's inability to halt a civil war in Syria that has killed around half a million people and contributed to a worldwide refugee crisis. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both quoted from the document on Thursday, saying they had seen or obtained copies. A section of the document cited by the Times said that American policy has been "overwhelmed by the unrelenting violence in Syria," while calling for a "judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed US-led diplomatic process."

The Wall Street Journal report said that the document repeatedly called for "targeted air strikes" against the Syrian government in light of the collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year. The memo was filed in the department's "dissent channel," which was created during the Vietnam War as a way for employees who had disagreements with State Department policy to register their protest with the secretary of state.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the department was reviewing the cable. "We do not know, nor are we particularly interested" how the contents of the message ended up public, Kirby told reporters Friday. "People can react to it as they wish," Kirby said, adding that Secretary of State John Kerry would continue pursuing the current policy of ending the Syrian civil war through a political transition.

Structural problems in the global economy have not been overcome, and it hasn't been possible to restart growth just yet, Russian President Vladimir Putin during his address said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2016).

Structural problems accumulated in the global economy persist. It hasn't been possible to restart growth just yet," he said.

"After the 2008-09 crisis, it was possible to partly reduce the financial balances, to restrict, if not to overcome the problem of rising debt, to make cash flow transparent and manageable," said Putin.

President Obama, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and others of the mainstream interventionist ilk continue to debate whether the terrorist problem that America is facing is due to radical Muslims or regular Muslims. Depending on where they come out on that question, their solutions inevitably encompass more destruction of American liberty and privacy, such as with gun control, immigration controls, or surveillance schemes.

There is one big problem with their analysis, however: The terrorism problem America has been facing even before 9/11 isn't due to Islam, Muslims, or the Koran. Instead, the anti-American terrorism problem is rooted in U.S. interventionism in the Middle East and Afghanistan, specifically the ongoing death and destruction that the U.S. military death machine has been wreaking in those parts of the world on an ongoing basis for the past 25 years.

Why is that distinction important? Because gun control, immigration controls, and secret mass surveillance are not going to solve the problem. They're only going to bring about a greater suppression of liberty, privacy, and prosperity for the American people.

Equally important, they're not going to bring an end to anti-American terrorism. As long as the U.S. death machine is killing people in the Middle East and Afghanistan, there will be the continuous threat of anti-American terrorism here at home.

While the Press celebrates the Democratic Party victory of the first female billionaire in history, a somber legal battle is going on in the shadows.

The State Department report on Hillary Clinton's emails, and the different legal proceedings which followed, establish that she is guilty of :

• Obstruction of Justice by Mrs. Clinton and her advisors (Section 1410) ;
• Obstruction of Criminal Enquiries (Section 1511) ;
• Obstruction of the application of local and Federal laws (Section 1411) ;
• Federal crime of negligence with classified information and documents (Section 1924) ;
• Detention in her computer, at home and on a non-secure server, of 1,200 secret documents (Section 1924)
• Felony - Mrs. Clinton declared under oath to a Federal judge that she had given all her emails to the State Department. However, the Inspector General of the State Department declared this week that this was a lie (Section 798) ;
• Moreover, she declared under oath that the State Department had authorised her to use her personal computer to work at home. The Inspector General of the State Department declared this week that this was a lie (Section 798) ;
• Mrs. Clinton did not alert the authorities, nor even her own Department, that her personal computer had been hacked several times. Yet she had asked her system administrator to try to protect her computer.
• Misappropriation and Concealment. The Clinton Foundation and Mrs. Clinton were corrupted so that the State Department would close their eyes to various practices (Rico Law and Section 1503).

In principle, and since the facts and their gravity have been established by the FBI, the State Department, and a Federal judge, Hillary Clinton should have been arrested this week.