Syria's White Helmets have been making headlines as 'Heroes of Peace', with the MSM, politicians and Hollywood stars saying the rescue group is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. The 'Helmets' say they're independent, impartial and unsullied by Western cash.

A petition in support of the White Helmets receiving the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize collected more than 300,000 signatures, but didn't help the group take home the coveted trophy.

The White Helmets, also known as the Syrian Civil Defense, who rescue civilian victims of bombardments, largely operate in rebel-held areas.

"The White Helmets wake up every day to save the lives others are trying so hard to take. These volunteer rescue workers have saved 62,000 lives in Syria and for that, they are under constant attack, unarmed and impartial," the rescue group's Nobel page says.

They claim to be first responders. Fire-fighters, medics, rescuers. They operate, exclusively in Syria's rebel and Islamist territories.

"They are fantastically brave, these White Helmets. I'm proud to say we're giving them I think £32 million [US$39.78 million] funding as part of a wider £65 million package for a non-humanitarian aid," British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said.

They also claim to be Syria's civil defense network. In fact, they are not.

There is a curious coincidence of a remark Secretary of State Kerry made to Syrian opposition activists and a new paint scheme applied to some U.S. military jets.

October 1 2016: Kerry in leaked audio: 'I lost the argument' for use of force in Syria

Washington (CNN) Secretary of State John Kerry's frustration with the failure of American diplomacy was on display as he defended US efforts to help end the five-year civil war in Syria during a meeting last week with a group of Syrian civilians, according to an audio recording obtained by CNN.
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Kerry's comments came at a meeting that took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on the sidelines the UN General Assembly, where Kerry was going from session to session in a frenzied effort to resuscitate a ceasefire that seemed poised to collapse.

A complete audio recording of the meeting between Kerry, some of his staff, and some Syrians is available on youtube.

Billionaire investor George Soros has vehemently condemned Russia's bombing campaign in Syria, accusing President Vladimir Putin of aggressively exploiting a power void in the White House ahead of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.

"The world is witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions. It is happening in Syria. It is being perpetrated by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in support of his protégé, (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad," he said in a new statement on his website posted on Thursday morning.

"When the facts are fully established, Putin's bombing of Aleppo will be viewed as among the modern world's most egregious war crimes."

On May 22, 1949 the first US Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, who avidly promoted Russophobia and anti-Russian hysteria in American society, stepped out the window, with the last words from his mouth being: "The Russians are coming".

Today, almost three decades since the end of the Cold War, Russophobia remains a pivotal part of US foreign policy, actively pushed forward by supporters of the so-called war party in Washington.

It seems that America is unable to come to grips with the fact that the 90's are over. Today, Russia is no longer lying in ruins, and the US is not nearly as powerful and hegemonic as it used to be after the fall of Berlin Wall. Washington just cannot adapt to the new realities in order to adjust its relations with Russia accordingly, effectively preventing itself from finding an ally in Moscow. Now Russia demonstrates that it is once again a great power, and in military and political terms - it is again a superpower, one that will not tolerate abuses and provocations the US regularly visits upon nations across the developing world.

Under the pretext of assisting Ukraine, the United States has been actively building up its military presence in Eastern Europe, deploying large numbers of troops in states accepted into NATO after 2000. In 2015, six new advanced command and control centers were established in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Estonia. American soldiers are now standing on Russia's borders in the territory of the Baltic states. In Ukraine, Pentagon's instructors have been providing military training to the militants of a radical Nazi organization know as Right Sector, which played a pivotal role in fueling the Ukrainian conflict and Kiev's growing tensions with Russia.

Similarly in Syria, conflict is driven by America's desire to redraw the map of the Middle East, toppling unwanted governments across the region, allowing the United States to establish control of the energy flow of hydrocarbons across and beyond the region. When Russia at the request of the only legitimate and recognized government in Syria became involved in the crisis, Washington was enraged.

In the end, the US eventually resorted to striking the positions of Syrian government forces on September 17 near the town of Deir ez-Zorom. The US has since demonstrated its unwillingness to fulfill its obligations to separate terrorists and the so-called moderate opposition in Syria, and despite the subsequent announcement that the White House refuses to further cooperate with Russia in a bid to put an end to the Syrian conflict, the US has attempted to place the blame on Moscow for this failure.

The White Helmets: a heartfelt humanitarian NGO or an elaborate and cynical Western PR stunt promoting illegal regime change in Syria? Does wearing white helmets mean they are the good guys supporting a just cause?

CrossTalking with Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, and Patrick Henningsen.

With North Korea's recent nuclear weapon test, it appears the East Asian state is transitioning from possessing a demonstration capability toward hosting a functional nuclear arsenal. While analysts believe North Korea has yet to miniaturise its nuclear weapons to fit in rocket-launched warheads, the frequency and size of the nation's nuclear tests indicate expanding capabilities in both research and development as well as in fabrication and deployment.

BBC's article, "North Korea's nuclear programme: How advanced is it?," would claim:

North Korea has conducted several tests with nuclear bombs.

However, in order to launch a nuclear attack on its neighbours, it needs to be able to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on to a missile.

North Korea claims it has successfully "miniaturised" nuclear warheads - but this has never been independently verified, and some experts have cast doubt on the claims.

And despite Western commentators and their counterparts in South Korea and Japan's claims that North Korea's nuclear weapons programme is a proactive, provocative policy, closer scrutiny reveals that Pyongyang's defence policy may be instead predicated on legitimate fears reflecting and reacting to American and South Korean foreign policy.

The resounding victory of Putin-supported United Russia party in the September 18, 2016 parliamentary elections in which it won 343 out of 450 seats, helped greatly by the changes in the electoral system, will set the stage for the massive transformation of the Russian political system. United Russia, headed by the Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, now has enough votes to single-handedly change the Russian constitution, written under the U.S. tutelage in the 1990s. There is no doubt that it will soon avail itself of this power, further centralizing the Russian state apparatus and making its activities more prominent in all areas of social and economic life of the country.

While constitutional changes will probably take some time, personnel changes at the pinnacle of political power in Russia are already taking place. Just a few days after the Central Electoral Commission announced the election results, Putin had a meeting with Sergey Naryshkin, the speaker of the Russian Parliament since the last election in December 2011, and Mikhail Fradkov, the former Russian prime minister who has led the Russian External Intelligence Agency, better known in the West through its Russian acronym SVR, since October 2007. At this meeting, Putin announced that he was offering Naryshkin the position of the new SVR chief, while Fradkov would assume the position of the chairman of the board of the Russian Railroads, one of the biggest state-controlled companies in Russia.¹

US is trying to distract attention from its own failure to implement the ceasefire deal by calling for an investigation into Russia's actions in Syria, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"The US side just could not fulfill the ceasefire agreement. They themselves told us that they do not have the means to put pressure on the opposition," Zakharova said, as quoted by TASS.

She also warned Washington that there were legal consequences for such rhetoric.

He sold his companies to spend more time doing charity work, but now Tony Blair is hinting at a return to politics as he warns that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party was putting Britain at risk of becoming a "one-party state."

In an interview with Esquire magazine, the former Labour leader dubbed it "a tragedy" that British voters now had to choose between the Tories and "an ultra-left Labour Party" which he believed pursued policies that took the country "back to the Sixties."

"In the UK at the moment you've got a one-party state," he told the magazine. "When you put it all together (taking into account that the Conservative leader wasn't elected), there's something seriously wrong."

And despite having recently announced he was scaling back on his million-pound-generating business activities to focus on his "inter-religious dialogue," the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the ex-PM did not rule out a return to Westminster.

A total of 2031 violations of ceasefire regime by the US-backed 'moderate opposition' units have been registered in Syria from February 27 to September 1 this year in which 3,532 Syrian servicemen and 12,800 civilians were killed, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Friday.

"Another 8,949 servicemen and 25,642 civilians were wounded during the same period as a result of these violations," Antonov told reporters in Moscow.