The deal reached by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry appears to have failed to bring peace to Syria as violence resumed following a weeklong ceasefire, which was unsuccessful due to the fact that some in the US did not want it to work, independent Middle East expert Ali Rizk told Radio Sputnik.

"I think it's clear that the ceasefire once again has failed. I think it's also clear that it's failed because there are certain actors in Washington who want it to fail. This is not the first time. Even before this agreement was reached you had the more hawkish voices in Washington, like Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who expressed their objections towards any kind of cooperation whatsoever with the Russian side," the analyst observed.

Rizk maintained that the Syrian ceasefire could only be rebooted if Obama "stands up" to hardliners in Washington, but doubted that the US president will do that.

Continuous violence in Syria provokes extremism and could undermine Russia's security, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday.

The press secretary noted that the situation in Syria continues to worsen despite efforts by the international community to put an end to the conflict.


"It [violence] also poses a risk to Russia back home because we know that this kind of violence and chaos...only fuels extremism in Syria and around the world," Earnest said in a briefing.


The Russian authorities, Earnest claimed, will have to invest additional resources in their efforts in Syria as the country draws itself deeper into the sectarian conflict. "Russia will have to account for their actions in the context of the consequences they are likely to provoke," Earnest stated.

Hand-wringing over Kremlin propaganda says more about about US media's insecurity than it does Putin's reach.

Donald Trump's taboo friendly posture to Russia has pundits in a frenzy. Every day we have takes in major media outlets insisting Trump is a de facto Kremlin agent, a pro-Clinton Super PAC has launched a Web site to "raise awareness" of "the dangerous Putin-Trump connection" that even comes complete with a hammer and sickle (despite the fact that both Putin and Trump are ardent capitalists), and MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid had on a guest who suggested Putin would invade Ukraine to steer the election Trump's way. One subgenre of this frenzy is a renewed focus on Russian-funded English language cable network Russia Today, which critics have accused of going to bat for Trump and working to undermine Clinton.

The latest example of this sub-take is Jim Rutenberg, media columnist for The New York Times. In "Larry King, the Russian Media and a Partisan Landscape," Rutenberg muses on the rise of relativism and the loss of objective truth in media. This is a typical frame when discussing the uniquely sinister nature of RT, and it's one worth dissecting in detail.


Rutenberg begins by citing RT's lockstep support for the Russian invasion of Crimea as evidence it's not a real news source. However, it's worth noting, The New York Times's editorial board has supported every single US war—Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Libya—for the past 30 years. While its reporting and op-eds on these wars has often been critical, much of it's coverage has also helped to sell war-weary liberals on the current military mission—the most notable example being Judith Miller and Michael Gordon's hyping Iraq's nonexistent nuclear program in the buildup to the March 2003 invasion. Indeed, the image of The New York Times as an objective, unbiased news outlet is precisely how it was able to sell the war in the first place. The difference is one of efficacy, not affect.

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."—George Orwell

The final countdown has begun to the 2016 presidential election, and you can expect to be treated to an earful of carefully crafted sound bites and political spin.

Despite the dire state of our nation, however, you can rest assured that none of the problems that continue to undermine our freedoms will be addressed in any credible, helpful way by any of the so-called viable presidential candidates. Certainly not if doing so might jeopardize their standing with the unions, corporations or the moneyed elite bankrolling their campaigns.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few uncomfortable truths about life in the American police state that we will not be hearing from either of the two leading presidential candidates.

1. The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for "we the people."
2. Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control.
3. Republicans and Democrats like to act as if there's a huge difference between them and their policies. However, they are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.
4. Presidential elections are not exercises in self-government. They are merely business forums for selecting the next CEO of the United States of America, Inc.
5. No matter which candidate wins this election, the police state will continue to grow. In other words, it will win and "we the people" will lose.
6. The lesser of two evils is still evil
7. Twenty years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: "What's the difference between a politician and a psychopath?" The answer, then and now, remains the same: None. There is virtually no difference between psychopaths and politicians.
8. Americans only think they're choosing the next president. In truth, however, they're engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It's just another manufactured illusion conjured up in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.
9. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.
10. The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public's cooperation and compliance.

Power is in panic.

The internationally recognized, legitimate government of Syria is on the verge of freeing Aleppo from ISIS and Al Nusra. This would be a decisive blow to the US/Saudi/Qatar plan to overthrow Assad, and would constitute a near final nail in the coffin of Obama's disastrous regime change policy in Syria.

As defeat of Al Qaeda and ISIS in Aleppo nears, the US government, and its controlled main stream media is on a propaganda information war offensive of unprecedented nature, directed at discrediting Russia.

Yesterday The Duran reported that Russia has called the US's bluff on Syria, and with no other option aside from all out war with Russia, America has resigned itself to information warfare, that Russia and Syria will surely brush aside.

It is this US awareness of its own impotence as its Jihadi proteges in Aleppo face total defeat which accounts for all the angry rhetoric and cranking up of atrocity stories we have been seeing over the last week. These have now culminated in some typically furious denunciations of Russia by US ambassador Samantha Power on Sunday's 25th September 2016 at the UN Security Council, over the course of which she actually accused Russia of "barbarism".

When Liz Sly of the Washington Post published her latest deceptive and particularly biased piece titled, "A ferocious assault on Aleppo suggests the U.S. may be wrong on Syria," she intended to give the impression that the United States sought peace in Syria. Never mentioned were open admissions by the US that it intended for years before the conflict even began to overthrow the government in Damascus and to specifically use sectarian extremists underwritten by US ally Saudi Arabia to do so.

Nor was it mentioned that so-called "moderates" fighting in Syria have long been tied directly to designated terrorist organizations, including Al Nusra with many groups openly aligning themselves under the Al Qaeda affiliate's banner just before a large-scale offensive was launched against Syria's northern city of Aleppo - a battle that continues even now.

Sly and other commentators among the Western media establishment cite Syrian and Russian planes carrying out airstrikes across Aleppo as a failure of the so-called Syrian ceasefire - a ceasefire in which the US carried out a sustained attack on Syrian forces in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, "accidentally" giving forces of the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" (ISIS) an edge, allowing them to seize valuable strategic territory. It was also a "ceasefire" armed militants refused to honor, including groups openly armed and backed by the United States and its allies.

Current bombing in Aleppo then, is not a "failure" for the US' attempts to mediate a ceasefire, rather a failure for the US' attempts to perpetuate a destructive war aimed toward achieving "regime change" merely under the guise of mediating a ceasefire.

The US State Department itself admits that Al Nusra, a US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization, is indeed operating in and around Aleppo. Even as early as April of this year, the Business Insider in its article, "The Defense Department has a new line that helps Putin and Assad in Syria," would admit that:

On the surface, the cessation of hostilities was a failure. But it has its advantages, simply by virtue of the fact that it has exposed the reality of U.S. support for terrorism: the attack on Deir ez-Zor, the attack on the aid convoy in Aleppo, and the failure to separate moderates from extremists. With the cat out of the bag, Syria, Russia and Iran are now relatively free to continue their war on terrorism. One of the most important battles of the war - Aleppo city - has entered a new and critical phase. That doesn't mean the end of U.S. treachery, but it does mean the end of treating the U.S. as a partner with good intentions.

On this episode of Behind the Headlines, we discussed the latest developments, and other news.

Running Time: 01:34:30

Download: MP3

If Saudi Arabia continues to exude control and political confidence from behind the billions of dollars its large coffers have offered its elite by way of immunity, the kingdom never planned for Yemen Resistance to rise a colossus against its theocracy ... and yet it did.

Against all odds, and one may add despite all odds, the poorest of all nations, the most downtrodden of people managed by the strength of their arms to not only push again several military super-powers, but also to breach al-Saud's borders to sing defiant freedom.

Brought together by the fires of war, Yemen the nation-state was reborn in the defiance of its most revered revolutionary - the one man, who, far away from the corridors of power has breathed sovereignty and pride back into the hearts of his countrymen: Sheikh Abdel-Malek al-Houthi.

Swiss voters on Sunday were seen backing a law extending the national spy service's authority to monitor internet traffic, deploy drones and hack foreign computer systems, early returns published on Swiss state television showed.

The measure cleared Swiss Parliament a year ago, but privacy advocates and left-leaning political parties collected more than 50,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot, customary in Switzerland's system of direct democracy.

The Swiss government had contended the nation's outdated intelligence laws had left Switzerland ill-equipped to tackle threats that have intensified as militants deploy new technology in a tight-knit global network.

The promise of more effective surveillance and subsequent security improvements resonated with voters worried that militant attacks such as those in neighboring France and Germany could also hit Switzerland, political experts said.

Soaring debt and stagnant growth in China are a major threat to the global economy, said Harvard professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kenneth Rogoff in an interview with the BBC.

"I think the economy is slowing down much more than the official figures show," Rogoff told the British broadcaster.

The IMF expects the Chinese economy to grow 6.6 percent this year, its lowest growth since 1990.

"If you want to look at a part of the world that has a debt problem, look at China. They've seen credit fueled growth and these things don't go on forever," he added.