The Obama administration is weighing a military plan to directly arm Syrian Kurdish fighters combating the Islamic State, a major policy shift that could speed up the offensive against the terrorist group but also sharply escalate tensions between Turkey and the United States.

The plan has been under discussion by the National Security Council staff at a moment when President Obama has directed aides to examine all proposals that could accelerate the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Mr. Obama has told aides that he wants an offensive well underway before he leaves office that is aimed at routing the Islamic State from Raqqa, the group's de facto capital in northern Syria.

Deciding whether to arm the Syrian Kurds is a difficult decision for Mr. Obama, who is caught in the middle trying to balance the territorial and political ambitions of Turkey and the Syrian Kurds, two warring American allies that Washington needs to combat the Islamic insurgency.

A suspect has been shot and wounded by a security guard after launching an attack on the Israeli embassy in Ankara, Turkey, according to an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson. All embassy staff are safe.

The Ankara governor's office has said that the suspect seems to be mentally unstable, with no connections to any organization found yet, Reuters reports.

The US Senate gave the go-ahead for a $1.15 billion sale of tanks and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia by blocking the bill opposing the controversial transaction.

The Senate voted 71 to 27 against the resolution to block the billion-dollar sale of tanks, guns and other military equipment.

The resolution was put forward by Senators Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who argued that Saudi Arabia's role in the conflict in Yemen and its human rights record make it a problematic recipient of American arms.

The Pentagon announced last month that the State Department had approved the potential sale of more than 130 Abrams battle tanks, 20 armored recovery vehicles and other equipment to Saudi Arabia.

Dear friends,

It has become incumbent upon me as a lover of peace and understanding, and as an opponent of the lies that often plague public discourse, to write to you the following:

In many countries in your region, the new media message which is being embraced throughout the world - from America to the Far East, from the Middle East to southern Europe, from Latin America to Africa - is being slandered and misrepresented.

I do not claim for a moment that new media are in anyway a monolithic bloc. The opposite is true. This itself is part of the appeal of new media.

New media are news and opinion organizations that speak for themselves, and which speak against a rotten status quo which for too long has censored free speech, free thought, and freedom of conscience in the West.

While in New York for the UN General Assembly debate, Russian FM Lavrov held a meeting with US Secretary of State Kerry, after which the Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that:

"Lavrov emphasized that the United States' fulfillment of its obligations to differentiate the moderate opposition groups and terrorists [in Syria] was a priority, as well as a more active influence of regional sides on the the radical groups."

It may be true, but it's entirely unrealistic, and that's the point.

Ideally, it would all work out: the U.S. would tell its jihadis to break their alliances with al-Nusra and physically separate themselves. Then, they could abide by the ceasefire, stop fighting, and stop being killed, while Nusra and Daesh are eliminated. On the slim chance that would happen, it would be a win for Syria and Russia, and the U.S. too (at least, for those that realize the current strategy isn't working).

But it hasn't happened, and chances are it never will, because the so-called moderates aren't moderate. They are al-Nusra allies - they hold the same goals and employ the same terror tactics. That's why they have refused to cease fighting, despite the U.S. (allegedly) commanding them to do so. But even then, it's still a win of sorts for Syria and Russia, for it exposes the fact that the so-called moderates are not moderate, and that the U.S. either cannot or will not exert any control over them.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated that there is no alternative to a political solution to the crisis in Syria, based on a comprehensive political dialogue among the Syrians, stressing the need for the resumption of Syrian-Syrian dialogue in Geneva without any attempts by some sides to impose preconditions.

Lavrov, at a UN Security Council session, pointed out that the interventions in the affairs of states and the attempts to topple the governments brought the situation to what it is now, adding that the priority in the settlement of the crisis in Syria is the separation between the so called "opposition" from terrorists, which is a main condition for the implementation of Russian-US agreement on Syria.

The Russian minister affirmed that it is important not to protect terrorists in Syria from punishment under the name of "moderate opposition".

Lavrov pointed out that "Ahrar al-Sham Movement" terrorist organization had announced clearly that it will not abide by the Russian-US agreement so it's time to reconsider the list of terrorist organizations.

On the US- led coalition's aggression on Syrian Army sites in Deir Ezzor, Lavrov said that this incident is a flagrant violation and was one of the biggest breaches of the cessation of hostilities agreement.

Over the next two years, the Chicago Police Department will add 970 police officers, the largest police-hiring surge in America's third-largest city since 1986.

To address a boost in homicides, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) will add 516 patrol officers, 92 field-training officers, 112 sergeants, 50 lieutenants, and 200 detectives, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Initial costs per officer will be $138,000 for salary, benefits, and supervision, amounting to a total of nearly $134 million for the additional officers, the Sun-Times reported.

"The mayor has assured me that he will ensure that I get the resources I'm asking for at the end of the day. ... He has assured me that he'll get it done. Specifics of it, you'll have to get from the budgeting office," Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told the Sun-Times in an exclusive interview.

"When I sat down as superintendent, one of the first things everybody asked me was, 'Did we have enough police officers?' We did an overall analysis of the department. ... I took a real hard look at it and this is what I think we need to make Chicago safer. ... It's going to cost. But there's no price for the safety of this city."

Perplexed global public opinion holds its breath at the (circus) best American "democracy" is able to conjure.

The first cage match this coming Monday between a Queen of War profiting from a mighty (Clinton) Cash Machine and a billionaire uber-narcissist adored by a "basket of deplorables".

This is a circus quite fitting for a self-described "indispensable nation" where "evil" has been propelled - seriously - to the status of philosophical category.

For the basket of deplorables, and even beyond their circle, the temptation is immense to equate voting for Donald Trump with raising a finger against the establishment.

Ultra-savvy at playing mainstream media for invaluable free publicity, elevating Outrageousness to an art form and being impervious to irony and derision, Trump has been a master at tapping wave after wave of anger against the new liberal elite — including a nomenklatura of crypto-intellectual Ivy league-educated "experts" who could not give a damn about understanding the (real world) consequences of United States Government (USG) policies.

The anger is manifested by declassified blue collars, the unemployed, the functionally illiterate, white trash. Whatever you call them, they are the excluded form the Neoliberal Banquet, not only economically but also culturally.

But this being Trump, a master of self-promotion, the battle is more like Ego against The Establishment.

And it gets juicier when we learn from powerful, discreet New York-based interests - supporters of Trump's platform — about who's really winning:

"The Trump campaign is hardly spending any money at all and holding all over. They may use their money in the last month after the debates if Hillary recovers for those debates from what appears to be an attack of Parkinson's. He has a shot though no matter who wins I predict there will be peace with Russia; the oil price will rise; imports from Asia of military parts will be repatriated and rigging of currencies is over; there will be offsetting measures to stop the flood of immigrants and products under mis-valued currencies. The masters do not lose."

The "masters" are of course the Masters of the Universe who really run the USG.

And here's the clincher on how's in control:

"Both sides are controlled and that explains everything. Lenin said that the way to defeat our opponents is to take over their leadership of the opponent. Look at the Moral Majority which Jerry Falwell disbanded when it became too powerful. Look at Ross Perot who exited when he started making a real dent. Both were taken care of and Ross made money out of it."

"Their internal lingo for it is the concept of "dynamic silence". This is a technique by the masters to block out all news coverage of let's say a Nazi so that he could gain no following. That they could have done to Trump if he were not theirs. Who could have complained? He was just an apolitical real estate operator that no one was interested in."

"So what do we have in the end? An entertaining gladiatorial contest that they control both sides of and the winner gets all the money — as with the Clinton Foundation. And the public is no wiser."

The US director of national intelligence has suggested Russia is behind the recent hack that saw Democratic National Committee (DNC) records dumped online. The leak undermined the Democrats' reputation ahead of November's presidential election.

"It's probably not real, real clear whether there's influence in terms of an outcome [of the upcoming elections] - or what I worry about more, frankly - is just the sowing the seeds of doubt, where doubt is cast on the whole [election] process," James Clapper said on Tuesday evening at an event hosted by the Washington Post, as cited by the Wall Street Journal.

Furthermore, the intelligence chief said Russia and its predecessor the USSR had been adhering to similar practices targeting the US since the 1960s.

"There's a tradition in Russia of interfering with elections, their own and others.

"[...] It shouldn't come as a big shock to people. I think it's more dramatic maybe because now they have the cyber tools," Clapper is cited as saying.

"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Candidate Barack Obama, December, 2007

As the US heaps blame and accusations on Russia and Syria for the alleged air strike on the aid convoy on Monday 19^th September, as ever there are more questions than answers - and whatever US spokespersons state, absolutely no certainties.

The only undeniable fact is that another tragedy killed at least twenty Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers and the organisation's local Director Omar Barakat, father of nine. At least eighteen of the thirty one-truck convoy were destroyed with the warehouse where humanitarian aid was stored.

The Russian Defence Ministry has categorically denied any attack and claims the convoy caught fire (1): "We have studied video footage from the scene from so-called 'activists' in detail and did not find any evidence that the convoy had been struck by ordnance", commented Igor Konashenkov, a Ministry spokesman.

"There are no craters and the exterior of the vehicles do not have the kind of damage consistent with blasts caused by bombs dropped from the air." His observations are hard to challenge, anyone who has studied the assaults of the "international community" on far away countries over the last decades knows what a bombed truck looks like - what fragments remains of it.

Photographs of the affected lorries show burned out vehicles, metal skeleton intact.
Konashenkov said that damage visible in footage was instead the result of cargo igniting - "oddly" occurring at the same time as militants (formerly Nusra Front) had started a big offensive in nearby Aleppo, backed by tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment.