Next week is the 13th anniversary of 9/11. And Washington is back to bombing... It's Iraq, all over again - an eerie echo of the most tragic of all post-9/11 developments: Shock and Awe.

Osama bin Laden, now arguably at the bottom of the Arabian Sea (according to the official spin), used to personify the intolerant Wahhabi worldview run amok. Then his Wahhabism married Sayid Qutb's Egyptian Islamism, personified by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Qutb, killed by the Egyptian regime in the late 1960s, was the wayward prophet of a global jihad between Islam and the West. Yet his zealous sons - from Osama/al-Zawahiri to current Caliph Ibrahim of ISIS/IS [The Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL] - went much further, their jihad targeting civilians and even Muslims.

Now Caliph Ibrahim has maneuvered Washington into renewed bombing in Iraq - and potentially bombing Syria. Obama does "Syraq". And yet, more crucially, what if Obama is doing Al-Qaeda's bidding?

This could all fit Osama's carefully laid-out trap - over the years - of finally managing to expel the US from the Middle East via a constant war of attrition, slowly bleeding the Empire of Chaos. Eric Margolis has alluded to this possibility here.

A federal appeals panel heard arguments in New York City on Tuesday from attorneys representing the American Civil Liberties Union and the United States government as the court considers the future of a controversial phone surveillance program.

The three democratically-appointed judges serving the Second Circuit Court of Appeals spent two hours asking questions of the ACLU and Justice Department lawyers during the hearing, but reserved making a decision just yet concerning the matter at hand: the US intelligence community's reliance on Section 215 of the Patriot Act to receive in bulk the metadata, or raw call records, pertaining to the daily phone habits of millions of Americans.

Last June's disclosure of classified documents detailing how the US National Security Agency compels telecommunication companies for these records spawned a slew of lawsuits, including one brought by the ACLU only days after journalists began to report on the leaks attributed to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. And although a federal court judge serving the District of Washington, DC agreed with the plaintiffs in one case that the government's use of Sec. 215 was likely unconstitutional and "almost Orwellian," Judge William Pauley ruled for the Southern District of New York last December in the government's favor and insisted "There is no evidence that the government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks," and that the NSA's efforts are necessary to combat the "bold jujitsu" of international terrorism.

Attorneys for the ACLU soon after appealed Judge Pauley's decision, which in turn took lawyers to the Second Circuit this week to answer questions before the appellate panel now tasked with deciding if the lower court's ruling is worthy of standing.

Russia will lift restrictions on the import of meat products from Mongolia, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday following talks with Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.

"We will certainly make steps towards our Mongolian friends and the decisions will be taken by the Russian Government in the near future", RIA Novosti quoted Putin as saying after the meeting in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar.

Putin said that Mongolia has a big opportunity to significantly increase the supply of meat products to the Russian market given compliance with Russian food safety regulations.

In the last decade Russia imposed restrictions on the import of livestock from Mongolia due to several outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).

An important round-table discussion was held yesterday evening (Monday, September 1^st), in Paris, under the auspices of the Franco-Russian Dialogue Association, to attempt to assess the political solutions to the Ukrainian crisis, and to exit from the spiral of escalation. This round-table discussion brought together leading Russian politicians and representatives of diverse French political forces, of the business community (Total, GDF-Suez), and of the cultural and scientific communities. The Participants

Without it being possible to list them all (and we apologise in advance to those who have been forgotten), those present included:

• Sergei Naryshkin, Chairman of the State Duma,
• Aleksey Pushkov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign-Affairs,
• Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on the CIS, Eurasion integration and Relations with Compatriots,
• Aleksandr Orlov, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to France.

Islamic State jihadists in Syria have made a video threatening to bring the Russian republic of Chechnya into their self-proclaimed caliphate, after capturing Russian-made planes in Syria. The viral video drew an angry response from the Chechen leader.

The radical Islamists, who have been fighting the government troops of Bashar Assad, captured a key base in Tabqa in northern Syria late last week. Amongst their loot was a hangar containing several antiquated Soviet-made Sukhoi planes, which prompted the Jihadists to record a video address that has now gone viral.

"This message is addressed to you, oh Vladimir Putin. These are your aircraft which you sent to Bashar, and with the help of Allah we will send them back to you," says a militant in Arabic, though accented Russian voices can be heard off-camera.

"Remember this. And with the permission of Allah we will liberate Chechnya and all the Caucasus. The Islamic State exists and it will exist and it will expand with the help of Allah. Your throne is already shaking. It is in danger and it will collapse when we get to you. We are on the way with Allah's permission," says a second Islamic State fighter.

The highest court in Guatemala has suspended the controversial 'Monsanto Law,' a provision of a US-Central American trade agreement, that would insulate transnational seed corporations considered to have "discovered" new plant varieties.

The Constitutional Court suspended on Friday the law - passed in June and due to go into effect on Sept. 26 - after a writ of amparo was filed by the Guatemalan Union, Indigenous and Peasant Movement, which argued the law would harm the nation, LaVoz reported.

The Court's decision came after several Guatemalan parliamentarians from both the governing Patriotic Party and the opposition party Renewed Democratic Freedom said they would consider repealing the law after outcry from a diverse cross-section of Guatemalans.

The decision also offers interested parties 15 days to present their arguments pertaining to the law in front of the Constitutional Court. Members of both political parties said they would present motions to resist the law.

The 'Law for the Protection of New Plant Varieties,' dubbed the 'Monsanto Law' by critics for its formidable seed-privatization provisions, is an obligation for all nations that signed the 2005 CAFTA-DR free trade agreement between Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. The agreement requires signatories to adhere to the International Convention for the Protection of New Plant Varieties.

France has suspended delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier ships to Russia, due to events in eastern Ukraine.

"The situation is serious. Russia's recent actions in the east of Ukraine contravene the fundamental principles of European security," said a statement from the office of President Francois Hollande.

"The president of the Republic has concluded that despite the prospect of ceasefire, which has yet to be confirmed and put in place, the conditions under which France could authorise the delivery of the first helicopter carrier are not in place."

As the rift over Ukraine has widened, Russian officials have repeatedly said that they would accept the French government's failure to deliver the ships, as long as it paid the penalty for breaking the contract, which, could potentially exceed the cost of the ships themselves.

"This is not a tragedy, though of course the news is unpleasant. It will not affect our armament plans. We will act in accordance with international laws and the statutes of the contract," said Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov, in a statement.

The two ships were commissioned by Russia in 2011 at a cost of $1.6 billion. The first of these, the Vladivostok, was due to come into service at the end of this year, with the second, the Sevastopol, due to be completed in 2015.

France's suspension does not fall under the sectoral sanctions the EU and the US imposed upon Russia for purported meddling in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, introduced last month. That raft of sanctions did not cover deals signed before their imposition.

But it could be covered under new sanctions the EU is expected to introduce this week, which may earn France a temporary reprieve from compensation under the terms of the contract.

Once again Israel is very much in the news these days, especially after its new bout of aerial bombardment of Gaza.

As if under a knee-jerking hypnotic trance since these raids began in early July, the Western media again went into "poor-little-Israel-is-only-defending-itself" mode.

Anyone daring to say otherwise will feel the full impact of the "A" word: "anti-Semitism!" That dreaded insult is unleashed like a bolt from Zion's "Olympus" upon all who criticize Israel!

Jews are a very tiny group of people: just under 16 million worldwide in a planet where over 7 billion people live and toil. That's a mere 0.2 percent of the global population; the other 99.8 percent of mankind is a wide assortment of ethnic and religious groups.

That in our day and age any man, woman or child should be attacked or harassed on account of race, creed, nationality, ideology, social or physical characteristics is completely unacceptable. As I mentioned earlier, the world needs to come to grips with the age-old tragedy of Jews being so often discriminated and persecuted.

However, continuously crying "Anti-Semitism!" to stifle all criticism of Israel's seventy years of genocidal attacks on the Palestinians does not and should not work anymore.

NATO is skeptical about the chances of Kiev in the fight against the militia of the Donbass. In fact, the alliance recognized that the current Ukrainian authorities have lost the military conflict, German publication Der Spiegel wrote.

The article in the newspaper said that after the militia took control of the airport of Luhansk, the superiority of militia forces became obvious.

A senior military official said that NATO radically changed its attitude towards the military situation in Ukraine.

The government of Ukraine is launching the project called "The Wall." Within the scope of the project, Ukraine intends to build a wall on the border with Russia, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk said at a cabinet meeting on 3 September.

"We are starting "The Wall" project. This involves the construction of a real border between Ukraine and Russia," he said.