"I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden's killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless."

- Glenn Greenwald, in his latest piece for the Intercept.

Leon Panetta is pretty much the epitome of a status quo insider. Someone, who due to his influence and mainstream veneer of respectability, is capable of inflicting an almost inconceivable amount of damage to freedom and prosperity in America. In fact, you could say that Mr. Panetta is as responsible as almost anyone else for the banana republic laughing stock that this nation has been transformed into over the past several decades. Why? Because he served in top positions for several of America's Presidents over that time.

He started out working for Richard Nixon, before switching parties and serving nine terms as a Democratic Congressman from California. He then served the Clinton Administration, including as Chief of Staff. Most recently, he was head of the Department of Defense and the CIA under Obama. This is an extremely political animal.

His ties run deepest with the Clintons, and while he criticizes Obama heavily in his new book, he excitedly proclaims that Hilary Clinton would be "great president," and that "one thing about the Clintons is, they want to get it done."

I'm sure they do, but get what done exactly. In the case of of Bill Clinton, it was dismantling Glass Steagall, and fully turning over the entire U.S. economy and public policy to financial oligarchs.

Think I am exaggerating? In a recent USA Today interview, we can clearly see exactly what "getting it done" would mean during a Hilary Clinton Presidency: Endless War.

Police in Scotland will formally investigate allegations that anti-Scottish independence campaigners breached electoral law during the referendum held on September 18.

"We can confirm that Crown counsel has instructed Police Scotland to commence an investigation into alleged breaches of Schedule 7, Paragraph 7, of the Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013," a statement issued on Saturday by the Crown Office, Scotland's prosecution service reads.

The allegations relate to comments made by Ruth Davidson, a Member of the Scottish Parliament and leader of the Scottish Conservatives, in which she appeared to know the general results of postal votes arising from "sample opening" of ballot boxes.

The China-India economic relationship is one of the fastest growing in the world: Bilateral trade has grown from virtually zero to $100 billion in just over a decade, and Chinese exports to India grew at 39 per cent a year since 2001.

India's rank as an export destination went up from nineteen to six, for China's exporters.

India's exports to China didn't keep the same pace, however, and as a result, the trade today is skewed in China's favour, by two to one. While India imports consumer and capital goods from China, its exports are mainly primary goods like ores, metals and cotton.

Russia and China will sign more than 30 new agreements on energy, finance and high-speed rail at an annual summit to be held on 13 October.

The slated agreements make it clear that close collaboration between Moscow and Beijing - on everything from historic gas dealsto infrastructure development in Crimea - will continue without interruption.

This is an opinion article of the editorial board of the Guancha Syndicate. Its Chinese version is published in www.guancha.cn.
As protests are continuing in Hong Kong and the Western media are busy engaging in an orgy of throwing mud onto China, Martin Lee, the 76-year-old poster boy of Hong Kong opposition, has not disappointed his supporters in the West. In an article titled Hong Kong's Great Test in The New York Times, Mr. Lee repeated many inaccurate claims and even lies on the situation in Hong Kong.

Leaving aside whether the "umbrella" protestors are as peaceful and unrowdy as he claims in his article, let's go to the heart of the matter: the nomination rules for the 2017 election of a new Hong Kong Chief Executive

The purported rationale for the current protests in Hong Kong is summarized by Mr. Lee this way:

"The people of Hong Kong have waited for decades for China to honor its promise that we would rule our city with a 'high degree of autonomy.'
This commitment was made in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, an international treaty registered at the United Nations - and applauded by the world when it was announced. China's determination to ignore its promises and to control the election of Hong Kong's next chief executive has created this dangerous climate."

"Britain signed the Joint Declaration with Beijing and must act now that it is being violated," Mr. Lee pleads.

All is fair and well except that he is beating up a straw man he created. Let's be absolutely clear on one basic point: Despite what Mr. Lee and the protesters have been crying out so loud China has not violated the Joint Declaration at all.

Moldova's authorities have on Tuesday fined four local TV channels for re-broadcasting Russian programs over "anti-Ukrainian coverage of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine."


Moldova's decision to ban Russia 24 TV news channel for the next six months until January 1, 2015 is outrageous and will certainly produce a negative impact on the Russian-Moldovan relations, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in July.

"It is clear that Moldova took this step under a far-fetched pretext on the wave of euphoria from signing an association agreement with the European Union. However, the decision does not meet an integral right of citizens to free access to information, one of the basic European democratic principles, which Chisinau is zealously trying to observe," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in its statement.

Moldova has banned rebroadcasting of Russia's Russia 24 television channel being driven by the desire to please the United States and the European Union, Konstantin Starysh, a lawmaker with the Party of Communists and former chief of the Moldovan office of the MIR television company, told TASS.

In an ominous sign that the war in Ukraine is set to further escalate, US state department official Victoria Nuland arrived in Kiev where she met with senior members of the Western-backed regime.

In recent days the ceasefire brokered on September 5 has come under intense pressure as Kiev military forces have stepped up their barrage of the eastern city of Donetsk, with several civilian casualties reported almost on a daily basis.

As civilian homes burn in Donetsk, the Kiev regime has also begun openly talking about resuming its war footing by «raising combat readiness» and mobilising new army units toward the eastern Donbass regions, where it is trying to suppress a pro-independence movement in the self-declared People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

For the past month, the Kiev regime has been talking out of both sides of its mouth. At times it has been declaring commitment to a ceasefire brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). At other times, hardliners in the regime have been warning that there was no such truce in practice, and that it was on the verge of an all-out war with Russia.

All the while, the putative ceasefire has been in tatters largely because Kiev's forces have refused to withdraw from the conflict lines and continued to shell civilians centres.

Now the Kiev President Petro Poroshenko has flipped to a strident war rhetoric. In a televised appearance this week, the former industry tycoon had swapped his tie and suit for military uniform, and was warning that forces under his command were ready to use «modern fighting techniques».

The UK's top law enforcement officer says Britons must be prepared to sacrifice their freedoms online if they want to be protected from terrorists and cyber criminals. This includes giving authorities access to private email and social media contents.

Speaking to The Guardian, the director general of the National Crime Agency (NCA), Keith Bristow, warned that the UK's biggest threats are becoming increasingly focused on the web, and that authorities had not done enough to persuade the public that greater oversight of their online activity was necessary.

He told the newspaper that existing methods of monitoring communications had to be "modernized" and that the NCA, which is being touted by the government as Britain's version of the FBI, was "losing capability and coverage of serious criminals".

While Bristow did not outline plans to increase the monitoring of web activity, digital watchdog Open Rights Group (ORG) expressed concern that, while it welcomed public debate about sureillance of personal communications by the police and intelligence services, "so far the government seems intent on simply increasing its powers to allow unchecked whole population profiling,"

"To tackle terrorism and serious crime, we need targeted surveillance that is authorized by judges not politicians, as well as proper democratic oversight to ensure that powers are not abused," ORG executive director Jim Killock said in a statement.

Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (which is one of Germany's largest newspapers), has decided to go public about the corruption of himself and the rest of the Western 'news' media, because he finds that this corruption is bringing Europe too close to a nuclear war against Russia, which he concludes the U.S. aristocracy that controls the CIA wants to bring about, or else to bring closer to the brink.

He told Russian Television:

I've been a journalist for about 25 years, and I've been educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public. ... The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say ... it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe. ... I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don't like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too. ... We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war. ... I don't want this anymore, I'm fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic, and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom. ...

The German media, especially, my colleagues ..., day by day, write against the Russians, [these journalists] who are in transatlantic organizations, and who are supported by the United States to do so. ...

The state panel that oversees Philadelphia's cash-strapped public schools abruptly canceled a contract with teachers on Monday, despite nearly two years of labor negotiations, and said teachers would have to begin paying for healthcare benefits.

The move, which a labor expert said was likely unprecedented in the United States, would free up $43.8 million for the district this school year. Next year, it is facing a $71 million budget shortfall.

The system's long-running financial woes have become a full-blown crisis over the past couple years, leading to thousands of layoffs, dozens of shuttered buildings and program cuts.

The move will affect the roughly 16,000 members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers, assistants, nurses, counselors and others.