In May 2012, in the warm Chicago sunshine, I sat with journalist Jim Foley who had just returned from Syria. Jim and I had come for a large demonstration against a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). War reporting in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria had not been easy on Jim, who was an easy-going man. "You can't get what the Afghan people really think," he said, when you travel with US troops and rely upon a US-military translator. Nearby sat a group of Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans who had planned to return their medals to their commanders. Jim had a great deal to say about warmongers, the merchants of war. NATO's advocates were among them. They had come to celebrate their war on Libya. Meanwhile, in Libya, the devastation had spilled social toxicity across its landscape. This mattered little to NATO's bureaucrats.

Jim would later return to Syria, where ISIL took him prisoner. Sadly, two years later, Jim would be the first American to be beheaded by ISIL on camera. He was another victim of a senseless war. At the NATO protest in 2012, one protestor carried a sign, "I can't believe we still have to protest this shit." I remember pointing that sign out to Jim. One more war, more civilians dead, more chaos produced, less security for all.

European Divides

President Barack Obama went around Europe this week with two apparent purposes: to urge the United Kingdom not to sever its ties to the European Union and to plead with European countries to increase their military spending. European unity, Obama argued, was a force for good. NATO would only be able to function if Europe remained united and if it spent more on military goods. "I'll be honest," Obama said, "sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense."

The famous Hollywood adage - 'nobody knows anything' - seems to perfectly apply to the current turbulence in the oil market. So in an effort to clarify where the global oil economy is heading to, let's engage in a Battle of the Oil Analysts.

Relying on these Oil Analysts (OA) does not necessarily mean you will be handed straightforward answers, but perhaps with some luck you will see a ray of light.

Saudi Arabia is saying that they are raising oil production to 12 million barrels a day. That's highly debatable. Russia is saying that they can raise oil production to 13 million barrels a day. OA1 cuts to the chase: "Both are bluffing. Prices are still rising. That means no one believes them."

OA2 kicks in, reminding that, "oil price is holding because of the 1.5 million barrels a day pulled off the market by a strike in Kuwait of about 10,000 workers. That cut their 3 million barrels a day production in half. Now they are going back to work. Yet the price of oil is still rising."

I had explained before how the oil price was holding over $40.00 a barrel even with concerted Washington pressure over Saudi Arabia to keep it down. Then, OA3 had told me: "that's because oil demand and supply is tightening."

But then OA4 came up with a totally different outlook; the whole thing was about 'The Big Long', upon which I based my prediction of $45/$50 per barrel when I was in Tehran in November 2011 and the price was approaching $100 a barrel. The Saudis have been supporting the price and while they have plenty of capital to do so at high prices, storage is finite. Aligning with this, OA4 added that: "the market is about to crash, and is only being supported by the financial positions of the Saudi/GCC support operation, now unwinding."

OA5, predictably, could not agree that the Saudis are supporting the market and about to let it collapse. He elaborated on how "hard it is to predict day-to-day prices. The only way you can know what is happening is to watch by satellite or surface observation the tankers coming out of each exporter, assume they are full, check their names to look up their capacity, and then add up what is leaving each exporter. What they say otherwise means nothing. There are services that do this that cost about $300,000 a year."

OA6 kicked in with some perspective, explaining what happened in the middle of 2014: "The oil price started to crash with no visible increase in production. The deduction had to be that the surplus in the Gulf - which was the only place where there was a surplus - was being dumped in the market by the Gulf States, under orders from Washington. And this fit geopolitically with the uprising in Kiev as a replay of Afghanistan."

If there is a consensus amongst most OAs, it is that Saudi Arabia is hurting. OA7 says he's been "watching the markets, and a lot of this static comes from Iran trying to break into the market. The Gulf States are trying to prevent that as much as possible and trying to cut Iran's throat.

However, I do not see overall that the situation is deteriorating. Such a severe drop in price restrains production. The amount of excess was not more than about 5 percent of the market; not 20 per cent, as in 1985. It has to be tight now based on macro-logic and that is why a famous Goldman Sachs former trader who picked the collapse is not massively buying."

Still confused? You should be. Because now another variable kicks in - the rise of US gasoline demand. OA8 has a fine take on the matter: "I was expecting this in the second quarter, not now. We should be over fifty to sixty dollars a barrel then. Fundamentals always prevail in the end."

People living near the Syrian Jabisah oil field, recently liberated from Islamic State extremist group, told RT Arabic crew, that the jihadists transported the oil from the facility first to their stronghold in Raqqa and then to Turkey. Jabisah oil field and facility near the town of Shaddadi in northern Syria were under Islamic State (IS, Daesh, formerly ISIS/ISIL) control for two years, with the illegal oil trade being a major source of funding for the extremist group.

The field was liberated in February by Kurdish and Syrian rebel troops united under the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) banner, who are now working to restore operations at the fields. People living in the area say that before leaving the facility damaged and plundered, foreign IS militants made ample use of its oil deposits. Ghazi Hussein, a resident of Hasakah province, who witnessed the terrorists having Jabisah under their control, said they were transferring oil to Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa and then to Turkey through the Tell Abyad checkpoint on the Turkish-Syrian border.

"Then they sold it [oil] to Turkey in exchange for dollars and weapons," Hussein said, adding that Syrian historical artefacts were also smuggled to Turkey.

Many have been critical of Obama's decision to deploy additional troops to Syria. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh told Democracy Now that he was "horrified" by the announcement, while former UN Assistant Secretary-General Hans-Christof von Sponeck referred to it as a "tragic "development" that could hamper the Geneva peace process.

"I do not understand why [Obama's] decided to jump into a war that [is] being won right now by the Syrian army and its allies, including Russia," Hersh said. "I can just speculate that our anti-Putin, anti-Russian instinct in America continues apace. That's all."

The journalist further praised Moscow's counterterrorism campaign in Syria. "The real winner in the last year or so of the war there has been the Russians. And the Russians - the bombing was much more effective," he noted. Russia has largely withdrawn its forces from Syria following a five-month-long limited engagement and has focused on pushing for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.

Despite repeated promises to the contrary, US troops are in Syria, and the Pentagon has sent 250 more. But the State Department says those American soldiers wearing boots in Syria aren't actually "boots on the ground." President Barack Obama confirmed plans to dramatically increase the American troop presence in Syria by deploying an additional 250 personnel, bringing the total to 300. He said the troops would help drive out Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

In 2013, Obama promised not to put any "American boots on the ground in Syria." The president repeated that claim in a September 2014 interview on Meet the Press. "The notion that the United States should be putting boots on the ground, I think would be a profound mistake. And I want to be very clear and very explicit about that," Obama said on September 7, 2014. Three days later, he reiterated that point in an address to the American people, promising that US troops would not fight in Syria.

On Monday, however, State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted that the US has boots on the ground in Syria... but that they are not there as boots on the ground.

So it's a go for Zeus to launch the thunderbolt. Neo-Athena - minus the wisdom - Hillary Clinton, Queen of Chaos, Goddess of War, Empress of the Perma-Smirk, will finally have her shot at the U.S. presidency. After the Battle of New York, she's on top on number of votes; number of states; number of pledged delegates; number of superdelegates.

It seems as inevitable as death and offshore accounts. "I don't think she's going to be indicted"; thus spoke Donald Trump to Fox News in relation to Servergate. "The Democratic Party is going to protect her." And yet, assuming he clinches the presidency, Trump said he would pursue charges against Hillary concerning her subterranean email server.

Charles Koch, for his part, now admits Hillary might make a better President than, well, Trump or any other Republican ("It's possible, it's possible) - as much as, in some respects, he considers Bill was a better President than George W. Bush. So would Koch's billions support Hillary? "We would have to believe her actions would be quite different from her rhetoric."

Which brings us to Hillary as Queen of Turbo-Charged Casino Neoliberalism. And once again, the evidence insists to suggest that her actions do not exactly match her rhetoric.

The US is currently exploring "several options" for revealing how many Americans the government has swept up in a surveillance program meant to spy on foreign individuals, the nation's top intelligence official said.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said his office was assessing the possibility for a public statement on the issue, though he didn't say when an announcement would come. He also said the process of creating such an estimate might involve skirting privacy concerns.

"We are looking at several options right now, none of which are optimal," Clapper said at a breakfast event organized by the Christian Science Monitor, Reuters reported.

His statement comes after 14 members of the House of Representatives (eight Democrats and six Republicans) sent a letter to Clapper asking for an estimate. The lawmakers want to know how many Americans are getting caught up in the government's PRISM program, which collects communication data from a variety of messaging services, including those offered by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others. The data includes text messages, emails and phone calls.

Russian warplanes have destroyed over 29,000 terrorist targets in Syria over 7 months of the anti-terrorist air campaign in the war-torn country, the Russian General Staff said Wednesday.

"Over almost seven months of the Russian Aerospace Forces' military operation [in Syria], more than 9,500 sorties have conducted and some 29,000 terrorist targets have been destroyed," Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy said.

The Russian Aerospace Forces have destroyed over 200 terrorist oil facilities since the start of the military operation, Sergei Rudskoi, head of the General Staff's Main Operational Directorate, said.

"The sources of finance of Daesh and al-Nusra Front have been cut off. More than 200 facilities for extracting, refining, and pumping fuel in locations controlled by terrorist groups in Syria have been destroyed, as well as more than 2,000 means of delivering oil products."

Rudskoy emphasized that Russia has carried out zero strikes leading to destruction of civilian facilities or civilian deaths.

Al-Qaeda-linked militants have shelled the Syrian city of Aleppo, killing 16 people and injuring 86, state news agency SANA reports, as the fragile ceasefire is being threatened by resurging violence.

A source at Aleppo police command told SANA on Monday that shells fired by al-Nusra fighters landed in Aleppo's al-Sulaimaniyeh neighborhood, claiming lives of four, three of them children, and injuring 19 others, many in critical conditions.

Five other civilians have been killed and around 41 injured by a number of shells that hit al-Izaa neighborhood, the source added. Two other shells hit Bab al-Faraj neighborhood and Qurtuba roundabout in al-Zahraa neighborhood, killing two civilians and injuring one, SANA reported.

Earlier, the source told SANA that three rocket shells fired by militants from Bani Zaid neighborhood landed in the neighborhoods of al-Jamiliyeh, Mogambo and al-Ashrafiyeh, leaving three people dead, among them a woman, and injuring five others.

Two days ago, a friend in Aleppo messaged me: "Aleppo is burning. Numerous shells."

He was not referring to the lies found in corporate media on Aleppo, but instead to the unreported reality: foreign-backed terrorists have continued mortaring, rocketing, hell-cannoning Aleppo's residential areas.

Since his message, various Syrian news outlets and individuals have reported on further bombardments of Aleppo, as well as yet another terrorist bombing in Damascus' Sayyeda Zeinab district, an area which has been repeatedly targeted by western-backed terrorists.

From Damascus countryside, Syrian journalist, Mohamed Ali, wrote:

"Live from the explosion scene near Sayyeda Zeinab quarter in Damascus countryside. At least 8 people killed and 20 injured.
من مكان التفجير قرب منطقة السيدة الزينب"