Congress is doing little to curb this opaque authority, another rabbit warren in the military industrial complex.

The Pentagon is often described as a black hole of government spending. Just how bad is it these days? The Defense Department spent $21 billion in taxpayer money over two years without telling anyone what services were rendered or which companies benefitted.

Normally, watchdog groups can at least identify the agency's frivolous spending and tease out who the major beneficiaries are. But under something called Other Transaction Authority (OTA), the Pentagon can award money without the usual disclosures or due diligence normally required of federal contracts. Voila! A black hole.

Officials claim that OTA helps the the Department of Defense (DoD) court smaller, non-traditional contractors in places like Silicon Valley by avoiding some of the burdens of a more restrictive competitive bidding process. But loosely written rules and a lack of required congressional communication make OTAs Trojan horses for unaccountable spending that benefits some of the DoD's most entrenched contractors.

The trial of Paul Manafort began yesterday in federal court in Virginia. It has received broad coverage because, at one point, Manafort was the Trump campaign chairman and he is being prosecuted by the Mueller team conducting an investigation of President Trump.

And yet, it really has nothing to do with anything.

Manafort is charged with a variety of tax and banking crimes. The trial is important to him because if convicted, he faces some serious time in the federal pen. But these charges have nothing to do with the Trump campaign, Russian interference with the election, or really anything else that anyone not named Paul Manafort would care about.

So why are they being brought by the special prosecutor?

It has to do with a kind of "drive-by" authority that is often given to special prosecutors and was given to Mueller. Basically, if in the course of his investigation of President Trump he came across other crimes, he was given the power to prosecute them. Apparently, while investigating Manafort, this is exactly what happened.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Moscow is "concerned" that Armenia's new leadership is making what he called politically motivated moves against former leaders who have been targeted in an anticorruption campaign.

Lavrov's remarks on July 31 came after former Armenian President Robert Kocharian was charged with violently putting down protests against his successor in 2008.

Kocharian, who was president from 1998 to 2008, was taken into custody on July 27 after being charged over the deadly dispersion of opposition protesters following the disputed 2008 presidential election.

On the same day, Yuri Khachaturov, the Armenian head of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization, was charged, like Kocharian, with overturning Armenia's constitutional order in connection with the deaths of 10 protesters in 2008.

Khachaturov and Kocharian have both denied the charges and claimed they are politically motivated.

"The events of the last few days...contradict the recent declarations of the new Armenian leadership that it was not planning to pursue its predecessors on political grounds," Lavrov said. "Moscow, as an ally of Yerevan, has always had an interest in the stability of the Armenian state, and therefore what is happening there must be of concern to us," he said.

The British government operated an "open door" policy that allowed Libyan exiles and British-Libyan citizens to join the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi even though some had been subject to counter-terrorism control orders, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Several former rebel fighters now back in the UK told MEE that they had been able to travel to Libya with "no questions asked" as authorities continued to investigate the background of a British-Libyan suicide bomber who killed 22 people in Monday's attack in Manchester.

Salman Abedi, 22, the British-born son of exiled dissidents who returned to Libya as the revolution against Gaddafi gathered momentum, is also understood to have spent time in the North African country in 2011 and to have returned there on several subsequent occasions.

British police have said they believe the bomber, who returned to Manchester just a few days before the attack, was part of a network and have arrested six people including Abedi's older brother since Monday.

President Donald Trump dismissed the billionaire Koch brothers as "globalist" and a "total joke" on Tuesday.

"The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade," Trump wrote on Twitter. "I never sought their support because I don't need their money or bad ideas."

Both Charles and David Koch have been highly critical of Trump's immigration and trade agenda, especially at the beginning of their summer retreat with donors

Trump ridiculed them for supporting some parts of his agenda - especially his tax cuts - but not for his efforts to protect the American worker.

A retired FBI counterterrorism agent with a notable role in the story of 9/11 says the FBI's Office of the General Counsel told him not to cooperate with attorneys representing 9/11 victims in their suit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, because it could harm U.S.-Saudi relations.

In an exclusive interview with 28Pages.org, Kenneth Williams, author of an ignored July 2001 memo warning that Osama bin Laden may be training pilots in the United States, explains why he has now decided to ignore the FBI's instructions, and illustrates how the failure to share critical information continued into the 9/11 investigation - possibly to the benefit of the kingdom.

FBI Priority: Protecting U.S.-Saudi Relationship

The 9/11 plaintiffs - family members, survivors and insurers - allege that officials of the Saudi government provided financial, logistical and other support to the perpetrators of the attacks.

After being contacted by their attorneys in October of last year, Williams notified the FBI legal counsel in Phoenix, where he spent his career. Days later, he received a call from an attorney at the Office of the General Counsel whose name he does not recall.

"She said they didn't want me to cooperate with the plaintiffs' attorneys because it could impact other pending litigation involving the United States government...and because...the Trump administration was trying to develop good relations with the Saudi government," he says.

The housing market is now apparently turning down. Consumer incomes are limited by jobs offshoring and the ability of employers to hold down wages and salaries. The Federal Reserve seems committed to higher interest rates-in my view to protect the exchange value of the US dollar on which Washington's power is based. The arrogant fools in Washington, with whom I spent a quarter century, have, with their bellicosity and sanctions, encouraged nations with independent foreign and economic policies to drop the use of the dollar. This takes some time to accomplish, but Russia, China, Iran, and India are apparently committed to dropping or reducing the use of the US dollar.

A drop in the world demand for dollars can be destabilizing of the dollar's value unless the central banks of Japan, UK, and EU continue to support the dollar's exchange value, either by purchasing dollars with their currencies or by printing offsetting amounts of their currencies to keep the dollar's value stable. So far they have been willing to do both. However, Trump's criticisms of Europe has soured Europe against Trump, with a corresponding weakening of the willingness to cover for the US. Japan's colonial status vis-a-vis the US since the Second World War is being stressed by the hostility that Washington is introducing into Japan's part of the world. The orchestrated Washington tensions with North Korea and China do not serve Japan, and those Japanese politicians who are not heavily on the US payroll are aware that Japan is being put on the line for American, not Japanese interests.

If all this leads, as is likely, to the rise of more independence among Washington's vassals, the vassals are likely to protect themselves from the cost of their independence by removing themselves from the dollar and payments mechanisms associated with the dollar as world currency. This means a drop in the value of the dollar that the Federal Reserve would have to prevent by raising interest rates on dollar investments in order to keep the demand for dollars up sufficiently to protect its value.

With the heat developing on the question of Iran's presence in Syria, a presence which is neither illegitimate nor an invasion of the sorts the US is known for doing, tension in the region is likely to rise. As we write, Israel has already rejected Russia's more than reasonable offer to create a 60-mile buffer between the Israeli border and Iranian forces in Syria, letting the world know its intention that they wouldn't be satisfied on anything less than a virtual Iranian withdrawal from a country where Iran backed forces played a critical role in alliance with Syrian and Russian forces to defeat the world's richest and most brutal terror outfit, the Islamic State/Daesh. Obviously, this defeat did also mean a defeat for the regional, including Israel, and extra-regional actors' plan to 'send Assad home' to pave the way for altering the Middle East's balance of power to their advantage, and thus establish complete dominance over the world's crucial land route and one of the richest energy region. With Iran now firmly established in Syria and the region, Iran's primary enemies - Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia - are bent upon undoing it. Hence, the US withdrawal from the Iran-nuke deal, not because Iran was violating it but because Israel was able to 'convince' Donald Trump of the necessity of doing so.

The idea that Moscow is swaying elections and bringing down US democracy by 'meme-sharing' is preposterous, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. The accusations hurled at Russia by the US lawmakers left him baffled.

"It's just hilarious when I hear that funny pictures can undermine American democracy," Lavrov told reporters on Thursday, answering RT correspondent's question about the latest US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on alleged Russian interference in US domestic affairs.

Experts, brought as witnesses to testify before the Senate on Wednesday, spoke about Russia allegedly using the "less news, more memes" approach online to divide the US public. This led the lawmakers to raise concerns over how Russian "meme-sharing" affects American voters.

"I think that's just paranoia that goes off the scale," Lavrov chuckled, saying that talk of weaponizing memes only makes the Senators themselves look bad. "It's not respectable for American lawmakers to make a sensation out of nothing."

The Syrian government has been restoring its control over the country, with the latest military operation being carried out against jihadists in the south of the Arab Republic.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has stated that he believes that the Syrian front will be more quiet with the restoration of the Assad administration's control.

"From our perspective, the situation is returning to how it was before the civil war, meaning there is a real address, someone responsible, and central rule," Lieberman pointed out.

Asked whether Israel should be less concerned about potential Golan Heights-related tensions, he said: "I believe so."

In July, Lieberman pledged a "harsh response" to any attempts by the Syrian Army to enter the Golan Heights, where a demilitarized zone was established in accordance with the 1974 disengagement agreement.

At the same time, he made it plain that he does not exclude "some kind of relationship" between Israel and Syria even though the two countries are "a long way from that".