"People don't trust Hillary Clinton, and no one can agree on why," begins a sympathetic piece on the Democratic Party presidential candidate in Fast Company last July. In a CNN poll that same month, only 30 percent of Americans believed Clinton to be "honest and trustworthy."

If voters don't know what to make of Clinton or how to read her, the blame may lie directly with the candidate herself. In an April 2013 speech made public by WikiLeaks last week, Clinton confided:

Politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.

That last 'public vs. private' comment quickly made the media rounds, and confirmed - for her critics - Clinton's deliberate duplicity on a number of policy positions.

WikiLeaks has provided an opportunity to delve into some of these, so let's take a look at one very prominent feature of Clinton's foreign policy agenda: Syria, a country that stands at the center of a potential global confrontation today.

Not a Syrian uprising; a regime change plan

A 2012 email released by WikiLeaks last year shows that, behind the scenes, Clinton's State Department was calculating its Syria policy using entirely different metrics than its publicly-stated narrative of supporting reforms and rejecting violence:

Christopher Miller is a reporter at RFE/RL, the US state broadcaster, which is controlled by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

You might remember them as the guys who believe RT is a massive threat to civilization (read Western control of the airwaves), despite the fact that this network's budget is about a third of their own.

With all the largesse enjoyed by the BBG, it's always been curious as to how RT manages to achieve around 74 times more monthly visits (103 million, according to similarweb) ) than RFE/RL.org can boast (1.4 million, but their Russian language Svoboda.org can claim 8.3 million) However, things became a little clearer this week, when it emerged that Miller, the American network's main man in Kiev, apparently doesn't understand some basic tenets of journalism. Like how to conduct a good old-fashioned scoop, for instance.

Miller was so shocked at RT's ability to produce an exclusive story before mainstream outlets that he seems to believe that only collusion with the source - in this case WikiLeaks - would explain it. Of course, that fits with a long-term angle from western conspiracy theorists which suggests that the whistleblowing agency works hand-in-hand with the Kremlin. This is despite WikiLeaks releasing lots of negative stuff about Russia and its government, such as completely unverified allegations about the President's wealth - something that's essentially ignored by the popular press because it doesn't fit the neat little narrative box.

Among the many revelations from the #PodestaEmails are passages showing that even before President Obama was elected, the staffing for leading cabinet positions had more or less been decided by a group led by an Citigroup exec.

The revelation came from a hack of the email account of John Podesta, a chair of Obama's 2008 Transition Team. They show that Obama gave executives of Citigroup an "outsized role in shaping and staffing his first term."

In an email dated from October 18, 2008, Michael Froman, who is now the US trade representative, used his official Citigroup email address of fromanm@citi.com, to send the following email to Obama advisers:

"Attached is the latest version of the Agency Review teams. It is a closely held document, so please treat it with the same sensitivity as ours. If you all could take a quick look at the lists for the agencies in your area, that would be helpful. I think the hope is that, while there are no guarantees, some of the people on these lists make their way into the agencies ultimately. Our role, therefore, is to check whether there is much overlap between the names here and the names were seeing/generating for sub-cabinet positions in each agency...."

In an earlier email, dated October 6, a month before the election, Froman provided Podesta with "Lists" attaching three documents: a list of women for top administration jobs, a list of non-white candidates, and a sample outline of 31 cabinet-level positions and who would fill them.

The CIA is reportedly planning a "clandestine" cyberattack on Russia, in retaliation for its alleged efforts to influence the US elections against Hillary Clinton. The "wide-ranging operation" is meant to "embarrass" Russia's leadership, NBC News reported.


"Current and former officials," who the report claims have direct knowledge of the situation, say the CIA has been tasked with providing options to the White House.

Sources tell the channel that US intelligence has started preparations for the operation and has even obtained "reams of documents" to target Russian President Vladimir Putin and his "unsavory tactics."


Earlier this week, the White House said President Barack Obama was weighing a "proportional response" to Moscow. Spokesman John Earnest told reporters that the president was still deciding on "response options" that would probably not be announced in advance and may never be disclosed.

Although the mainstream media bias in favor of Hillary Clinton is painstakingly obvious, the Clinton campaign has achieved new lows as media outlets have been forced to drop the "subtle" pro-Clinton propaganda they previously employed. Instead, many media outlets have come right out to openly support her.

This past week, the Washington Post and Foreign Policy both came out with uninformative articles supporting Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency. The lesson learned from these two publication's endorsements is that there are only two reasons to vote for Clinton —and neither of them is valid:

1. Vote for Clinton due to a number of stretched lies and propagandized half-truths
2. Vote for Clinton to stop a President Trump from running the White House

The eighth summit of BRICS nations has kicked off in Goa, south west India. Amid the turbulent geopolitical situation in the world, India, as the current BRICS chairman, is hosting under the slogan "Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions."

The leaders of Russia, India, China, South Africa and Brazil, as well as several guest countries, will meet at the summit to discuss the strengthening of strategic partnerships, cooperation on Russian and Chinese infrastructure projects, joint measures to fight global terrorism, drug dealing and corruption, and some of "the most important" issues facing the world today.

A declaration outlining the joint position of the BRICS group on the Syrian crisis is expected to be signed during the summit. China has repeatedly backed Russia's position on the situation in Syria, while India has previously expressed major interest in achieving stability in the Middle East.

"China and Russia hold similar positions on the most important international and regional issues, including on Syria and Afghanistan," China's vice foreign minister Li Baodong said this week. "The sides, being permanent members of the UN Security Council, continue close cooperation on international and regional issues."

On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to rule on a lawsuit against former senior government officials related to the kidnapping and detainment of immigrants following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government rounded up several hundred individuals suspected of having ties to terrorism. The arrests were allegedly based on tips received through a hotline. In total, 762 people were detained around the country. Detainees were held between three to eight months in facilities in New York and New Jersey. Some individuals were even deported even after they were found to have no ties to terrorism.

Since that time, not one U.S. government official has been held accountable. This is because nearly everyone involved with these despicable actions, both the order-givers and the order-takers, enjoy some level of diplomatic immunity. This is what is at issue with the lawsuit under consideration by the Supreme Court. The suit was originally filed in federal court in April 2002 and now has eight plaintiffs, all of Middle Eastern, North African, or South Asian origin. Each of the plaintiffs was deported after being cleared of wrongdoing.

Last week, a Canadian journalist published pictures of the US Air Force repainting their F/A-18 jets to match the paint scheme of Russian jets currently deployed in Syria. Though the journalist, Christian Borys, suggested that the unusual paint job was due to standard military "aggressor squadrons" war-games meant to simulate engaging "the enemy," some have speculated it could be proof of an imminent false flag meant to justify US "boots on the ground" in Syria. Regardless of whether it is standard procedure or indicative of an impending false flag, either threatens to worsen what is already an increasingly desperate geopolitical situation that could easily develop into full-scale, global war.

Aggressor squadron have indeed been a part of US military war-games since the late 1960s. Planes that are painted to appear as the "aggressor" employ enemy tactics, techniques, and procedures in order to offer US soldiers a realistic simulation of air combat. During much of the Cold War, many of these "aggressor" planes were also painted in Russian colors to simulate combat encounters anticipated with the Soviet Union.

Though the Cold War thankfully failed to develop into a full-scale military confrontation, the US Air Force's decision to use aggressor squadrons mimicking Russian jets once again is indicative that the US government undeniably views Russia as its enemy. Indeed, less than a year ago, the US Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, called Russia "aggressive" and "adversarial to the interests of the United States," making the nation the US' #1 threat in the world. Milley's rhetoric, as well as that of other US military officials and politicians, has only become more hawkish over the past few months. Last week, Milley spoke to those "who oppose the United States," warning them they they would be stopped and beaten "harder than [they] have ever been beaten before." Moments later, he directly named Russia as an enemy of the state.

The American people are receiving a highly distorted view of the Syrian war - much propaganda, little truth - including from one of the moderators at the second presidential debate, writes Robert Parry.

How ABC News' Martha Raddatz framed her question about Syria in the second presidential debate shows why the mainstream U.S. news media, with its deep-seated biases and inability to deal with complexity, has become such a driving force for wider wars and even a threat to the future of the planet.

Raddatz, the network's chief global affairs correspondent, presented the Syrian conflict as simply a case of barbaric aggression by the Syrian government and its Russian allies against the Syrian people, especially the innocents living in Aleppo.

"Just days ago, the State Department called for a war crimes investigation of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its ally, Russia, for their bombardment of Aleppo," Raddatz said. "So this next question comes through social media through Facebook. Diane from Pennsylvania asks, if you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? Isn't it a lot like the Holocaust when the U.S. waited too long before we helped?"

At this 11th hour 59th minute while we're still alive, we must do everything in our collective power as peace-loving citizens of the world to stop the madness bent on destroying life on planet earth. An unbroken stream of treasonous Washington neocons from the seamless Bush-Clinton-Obama ad nauseam regime is recklessly pushing humanity off the doomsday cliff. The DC despots have already lit the now burning fuse countdown to World War III against the Russian-Chinese-Iranian Eastern alliance. If we passively wait any longer, millions will soon be dying and our planet may lay in apocalyptic ruin.

The US government teamed in criminal tandem with the likes of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC and all the rest of the MSM propaganda whores are belligerently paving the way to global war in Syria against both Assad and Putin. With echo-chamber demands growing louder daily calling for taking out both Russian and Syrian soldiers including both nations' leaders, the neocons are throwing us all under the bus in a demented suicidal-homicidal bloodlust as an expedient, culling of the herd shortcut. It's time for those who embrace life to oppose these Washington psychopaths and hold them accountable as traitors and the next Hague war criminals on trial.

The latest warmongering neocon troll with his recent Washington Post op-ed is Carl Gershman, president since 1983 of the US tax-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Recently he undemocratically declared that the United States should overthrow the Putin government. This over-the-top, brazen instigator is demanding the US engage in criminal misconduct expanding Empire's longtime regime change policy beyond MENA borders to include Russia as well. If roles were reversed, how long before Washington orders a preemptive nuclear strike on Moscow if some warmongering think tank Russian zealous insider insisted that the United States government be overthrown? Only the bodacious hubris of US exceptionalism could come up with such insane double standards. Yet this sort of rhetoric is the preposterously desperate extremism currently making MSM rounds as gov.corps launches its full-on lead-up to World War III.