Bombarded relentlessly for decades with cacophonous, image-saturated, information-light television advertising, Americans have been conditioned to reflexively digest propaganda without reflection, inquiry or resentment.

As the firewall vanished between TV news and entertainment in the 1970s, public exposure to realities evoking understanding, empathy, conscience and judgment vanished with it. Sponsors dislike their products juxtaposed alongside real-life death and destruction.

Henry Kissinger famously observed, "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people." Controlling the world's food supply as well as oil and minerals have been our chief "foreign policy" objectives.

Alongside Haliburton and Blackwater, Monsanto marched into Baghdad behind former Kissinger Associates Managing Director, CPA Administrator Paul Bremer, who brought 100 Orders to the Fertile Crescent including Article 81 to prohibit new seed saving, destroy family farming and install Big Ag. The same condition was imposed upon the U.S.-installed coup government in soil-rich Ukraine, the "Breadbasket of Europe," through EU Article 404 embedded in its $17 billion IMF loan agreement.

Were either of these quietly orchestrated takeovers vitally important to societies we have cruelly victimized reported by the US corporate media? Prerequisite to both Kissinger-prescribed areas of control is public mind control, presaged in 1949 by George Orwell. The corporate media efficiently performs this imperial function, now preparing the American mind for ever-expanding war. The broad reach, complexity, disguises, cynical scripting and human costs of this propaganda cannot be overestimated.

As prospective coronation of the "Queen of Chaos" draws closer, familiar leader-demonizing and atrocity-image propaganda of dubious origin about Syrian President Assad and Russian President Putin increases.

Don't miss SOTT.net Spanish's recent interview (in English) with Canadian independent journalist and activist Eva Bartlett. Since 2008, Eva has spent more than 3 years in Gaza documenting Palestinian life under Israeli rule. She has also visited Lebanon, and has just come back from her 5th trip to Syria, the latter for 9 weeks, to bring back firsthand accounts of what daily life is like for the Syrian people who have been subjected to a Western imperial war for the past 5 and a half years.

The oil-rich West-Central African state of Gabon, home to less than two million people and some of the highest income-per-capita earners in the entire continent, surprisingly exploded into Hybrid War after a disputed presidential election handed a narrow victory to the incumbent. The opposition attempted to storm the electoral commission's offices and then proceeded to torch the National Assembly in an orgy of anarchy that was belatedly put down with tear gas and riot police. Right afterwards, the security services attacked the opposition's headquarters and arrested a few hundred of its leader's supporters. As yet another country descends into the hellfire of Hybrid War, the rest of the world is scrambling to explain why this is happening, what the impact will be, and where it's all headed.

In seeking to clear up the confusion surrounding the Hybrid War on Gabon and discover all the answers, the research begins by introducing the reader to the basics of this country so that its relative importance can be made understandable. After that, the work proceeds to discuss Beijing's interests in Gabon and Libreville's changing attitude towards China, before rehashing some of the details from the ongoing Hybrid War. Looking to the future, the research will then prognosticates on France's reaction to these unfolding events and describes the factors that could push it to directly intervene in the fracas.

Ireland's cabinet agreed on Friday to join Apple in appealing against a multi-billion-euro back tax demand that the European Commission has slapped on the iPhone maker, despite misgivings among independents who back the fragile coalition.

The Commission's ruling this week that the U.S. tech giant must pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) to Dublin has angered Washington, which accuses the EU of trying to grab tax revenue that should go to the U.S. government.

With transatlantic tensions rising, the White House said President Barack Obama would raise the issue of tax avoidance by some multinational corporations at a summit of the G20 leading economies in China this weekend.

With much of the recent discussion focusing on Hillary Clinton's general health condition, and mental acuity in particular, we wonder if the FBI just threw her under the bus with the following statement which links Hillary's "inability" to remember her transition instructions with her 2012 concussion and blood clot:

CLINTON stated she received no instructions or direction regarding the preservation or production of records from State during the transition out of her role as Secretary of State in early 2013. However, in December of 2012, CLINTON suffered a concussion and then around the New Year had a blood clot. Based on her doctor's advice, she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing she received. CLINTON did not have any discussions with aides about turning over her email records, nor did anyone from State request them. She believed her work-related emails were captured by her practice of sending email to the state.gov email address of her staff. CLINTON was unaware of the requirement to turn over printed records at that time. Her physical records were boxed up and handled by aides.

In exclusive interview with Sputnik, Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party in Turkey, commented on Russia's policy towards the Kurdish problem in Syria.

"Russia should intensify its ties with the Kurdish people. Cooperation with Kurds should be based on a strategic basis, not under the influence of a political environment. Such an approach would contribute to the peaceful settlement in the Middle East," Demirtas said.

According to the politician, Russia and other major international players could play an important role in the Syrian settlement, including the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in Syria.

What a fine race it has become! Both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump are competing in it as a who is the 'tougher guy/gal' in what could be easily described as a 21^st Century Tarantino-style (or Scorsese-style) political pulp fiction gore.

What they both utter, may often sound like some staged bluff: "Are you talking to me? Hey, there's nobody else here... Are you talking to me?"

But just think for a moment what would really happen if one of them sticks to his or her 'promises' and 'principles', after getting elected! (The bullets would be flying, the nukes exploding, and millions of immigrants pushed off some cliff).

Let's face it: unless there is any intervention from outer space, one of them will actually ascend to the throne very soon! And they both may actually mean, at least partially, what they say!

The FBI has released documents relating to its investigation of the private email server used by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, including notes of its interview with her.

The information was given to Congress last month and made public on Friday afternoon, ahead of the holiday long weekend. The documents were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from a slew of media organizations.

"Today the FBI is releasing a summary of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's July 2, 2016 interview with the FBI concerning allegations that classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on a personal e-mail server she used during her tenure,"the bureau said in a statement. "We also are releasing a factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter."

"This report recounts the information collected in this investigation," the FBI said in the first of two documents. "It is not intended to address potential inconsistencies in, or the validity of, the information related herein."

That 47-page document is a summary of the investigation, which began in July 2015, at the request of the US Intelligence Community Inspector General. The second is an 11-page summary of the FBI's interview with Clinton at the beginning of July.

Infighting between two Tunisian and Moroccan commanders of the ISIL terrorist group in Raqqa province led to armed clashes and took a toll.

Sources in al-Akirshi village in Raqqa reported on Thursday that the ISIL's Tunisian and Moroccan leaders fired bullets at each other and their comrades in fierce clashes.


One terrorist was killed and 4 others were wounded in the armed clashes.

Opposition source confirmed in August that differences between the Ansar (Syrian members of ISIL), and Mohajereen (foreign nationals of the terrorist group) have increased after the Takfiri group's leadership granted more advantages to Mohajereen and their families in Raqqa.

"ISIL security units refused to deliver the body of Ansar fighters to their families to bury them in their birth place and even in so many cases the security forces did not inform the families about the death of their sons, but instead ISIL transferred the bodies of non-Syrian fighters to cities and buried them there," the sources said.

The lawyers of Brazil's ex-president Dilma Rousseff on Thursday challenged the impeachment decision at the country's Supreme Federal Court, the Globu TV reported.

The lawyers' chief argument is that the legal norms behind Rousseff's impeachment were outdated and contradicted some paragraphs of Brazil's fundamental law.

"Unlike the constitution of 1946, the 1988 Constitution does not classify violations concerning the storage and illegal use of state funds as crimes, which can lead to the loss of the mandate," the lawyers wrote in the appeal, the extracts of which have been published by Folha de S. Paulo newspaper on its website.