The US fanfare surrounding Washington's bombing raid over Syria was immense. WIth all the hype, you'd have thought that it was a new Pearl Harbor.

With a risk of popping President Obama and the US State Department's bubble, we need to ask: did the US bomb a load of empty buildings in Syria on Tuesday?

According CNN Middle East correspondent Arwa Damon (photo, above), residents from the town of Raqqa, in northeastern Syria had "mixed reactions to US strikes". The reason given was a real shocker:

Damon revealed on air early Wednesday that ISIL terrorists who were held up in the town may have been tipped off weeks in advance to the US airstrikes on Tuesday. According to Damon:

"15-20 days before the airstrikes, (ISIL) buildings were evacuated, and fighters then mixed in with the local population".

Maybe Damon let the truth slip out by accident, or maybe she was trying to do what US journalists so often are not allowed to do by challenging Washington's prefabricated narrative. Regardless, CNN's chief war enthusiast Wolf Blitzer did not feel the need to pursue the point.

This surprising admission by CNN would mean that the US military may have only destroyed empty buildings in Raqqa, and that Washington's inflated claims of dead ISIL fighters are probably exaggerated. In other words, it was all a big show, and ISIL's capabilities were not degraded at all by Obama's celebrated US blitzkrieg in Syria.

Europe will not regain its share of the Russian market after the sanctions war is over, as it will already be occupied by other local and foreign businesses, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned.

Russia and the West will eventually "come to agreements sooner or later, as sanctions don't last forever," Medvedev said in an interview with Vesti 24 TV channel.

"These foolish sanctions will pass, but international relations will continue. And currency markets will open up," he added.


The prime minister stressed that "the niches in our [Russian] economy, which will by then be occupied by local produces or other foreign producers...our European counterparts wouldn't be able to come back."

According to Medvedev, "this is the price Europe will have to pay" for trying to put Russia under economic pressure.

He assured that Asian and Latin American companies - which will replace the Europeans on the Russian market - will maintain their positions after relations between Moscow and the EU return to normal.

"We're decent people. If we reach agreements then we fulfill the existing contracts, including those with our Latin American and Asian counterparts, of course. And those of our Western partners, who'll be eager to return, will only be able to take the remaining share, nothing more," he explained.

Bloomberg has a story today on the faltering of Draghi's latest scheme to levitate Europe's somnolent socialist economies by means of a new round of monetary juice called TLTRO - $1.3 trillion in essentially zero cost four-year funding to European banks on the condition that they expand their business loan books. Using anecdotes from Spain, the piece perhaps inadvertently highlights all that is wrong with the entire central bank money printing regime that is now extirpating honest finance nearly everywhere in the world.

On the one hand, the initial round of TLTRO takedowns came in at only $100 billion compared to the $200 billion widely expected. It seems that Spanish banks, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, are finding virtually no demand among small and medium businesses for new loans.

Many small and medium-sized businesses are wary of the offers from banks as European Central Bank President Draghi prepares to pump more cash into the financial system to boost prices and spur growth. The reticence in Spain suggests demand for credit may be as much of a problem as the supply.

The monthly flow of new loans of as much as 1 million euros for as much as a year - a type of credit typically used by small and medium-sized companies - is still down by two-thirds in Spain from a 2007 peak, according to Bank of Spain data.

On the other hand, Spain's sovereign debt has rallied to what are truly stupid heights - with the 10-year bond hitting a 2.11% yield yesterday (compared to 7% + just 24 months ago). The explanation for these parallel developments is that the hedge fund speculators in peripheral sovereign debt do not care about actual expansion of the Spanish or euro area economies that is implicit in Draghi's targeted promotion of business lending (whether healthy and sustainable, or not). They are simply braying that "T" for targeted LTRO is not enough; they demand outright sovereign debt purchases by the ECB - that is, Bernanke style QE and are quite sure they will get it. That's why they are front-running the ECB and buying the Spanish bond. It is a patented formula and hedge fund speculators have been riding it to fabulous riches for many years now.

Council members said 'social taboo' would still prevent relationships
Germany's national ethics council has called for an end to the criminalisation of incest between siblings after examining the case of a man who had four children with his sister.

Patrick Stuebing, who was adopted as an infant and met his sister in his 20s, has launched several appeals since being imprisoned for incest in 2008 and his lengthy legal battle has prompted widespread public debate.

Sexual relations between siblings or between parents and their children are forbidden under section 173 of the German criminal code and offenders can face years in prison. But on Wednesday, the German Ethics Council recommended the section be repealed, arguing that the risk of disability in children is not enough to warrant the law and de-criminalising incest would not remove the huge social taboo around it.

The chairman of the council, Christiane Woopen, was among the 14 members voting in favour of repealing section 173, while nine people voted for the ban to continue and two abstained. A statement released on Wednesday said: "Incest between siblings appears to be very rare in Western societies according to the available data but those affected describe how difficult their situation is in light of the threat of punishment. "They feel their fundamental freedoms have been violated and are forced into secrecy or to deny their love.

The American corporations labeled unpatriotic for exploiting loopholes to avoid US taxes may see the so-called tax inversion schemes much less lucrative with the new rules announced by the US Treasury to crack down on the practice.

The American corporations labeled unpatriotic for exploiting loopholes to avoid US taxes may see the so-called tax inversion schemes much less lucrative with the new rules announced by the US Treasury to crack down on the practice.

"Today, in an important first step, the Treasury is announcing targeted action to meaningfully reduce the economic benefits of corporate inversions, and when possible, stop them altogether," US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, said in a statement on Monday.

A number of US corporations were labeled "unpatriotic" for engaging in tax inversion, where an American company buys up a foreign one and then moves their headquarters to the host country to take advantage of the lower corporate tax rates.

America's corporate tax rate is 35 percent, while countries such as the UK enjoy a rate of 20 percent and Ireland a rate of 12 percent. Lower corporate taxes are believed to be the reason why, earlier this year, Pfizer was trying to buy Britain's Astra Zeneca and move its headquarters to the UK. The deal fell through because an agreement couldn't be reached on a price, but estimates are that without rule changes the US could lose $19.5 billion in tax revenue over ten years through inversion, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

When nearly a year ago we reported about the case of "Goldman whistleblower" at the NY Fed, Carmen Segarra, who alleged she was wrongfully terminated after she flagged "numerous conflicts of interest and breaches of client ethics [involving Goldman] that she believed warranted a downgrade of Goldman's regulatory rating" and which were ignored due to the intimate, and extensively documented on these pages, proximity between Goldman and either one-time NY Fed Chairman and former Goldman director Stephen Friedman or current NY Fed president and former Goldman employee Bill Dudley, we said:

As everyone knows, both Bill Dudley and Stephen Friedman used to be at Goldman, and as we noted Dudley and Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius periodically did and still meet to discuss "events" at the Pound and Pense.

So while her allegations may be non-definitive, and her wrongful termination suit is ultimately dropped, there is hope this opens up an inquiry into the close relationship between Goldman and the NY Fed. Alas, since the judicial branch is also under the control of the two above mentioned entities, we very much doubt it.

There was hope, but as we said: we doubted it would lead to much more. It didn't: in April, the NY Fed won the dismissal of her lawsuit:

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan ruled that the failure by the former examiner, Carmen Segarra, to connect her disclosure of Goldman's alleged violations to her May 2012 firing was "fatal" to her whistleblower lawsuit. Abrams also said Segarra could not file an amended lawsuit.

"Congress sought to protect employees of banking agencies ... who adequately allege that they have suffered retaliation for providing information regarding a possible violation of a 'law or regulation,'" the judge wrote. "Plaintiff has not done so."

Segarra's findings that Goldman's conflict-of-interest practices may have violated merely an "advisory letter" that did not carry the force of law did not entitle her to whistleblower protection under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, Abrams said.

There is something quintessentially English about the tradecraft of spying, as history reminds us of events not too dissimilar to those in play today.

In the late 1560's Francis Walsingham began his career in subterfuge working with William Cecil to thwart the plots against the then English monarch, Elizabeth I. Later, in 1572 as the Principal Secretary to Elizabeth and her chief spymaster, his earlier work in preventing the subversion of state power became mere opening gambits in a craft that would include the interception of mail, the use of informants and even torture, amongst others.

Enter the Scottish independence referendum to be held on Thursday 18 September 2014, which, coincidentally, is the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 where the English army were defeated by Robert the Bruce, King of Scots.

On Friday 13 June 2014, the very antithesis of an auspicious day for the superstitious, The Independent ran a story about internet trolls 'opening the door' for MI5 dirty tricks in attempting to subvert the Yes Campaign for Scottish Independence. Jim Sillars, a former Scottish National Party (SNP) deputy leader said:

At the beginning of the two year referendum campaign on the question of Scottish independence the Department of the Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland circulated a memo to all of the departments of the Irish civil service to the effect that the Irish government would remain silent throughout the campaign. It was to be understood that the question of Scotland's future would be a matter for the Scottish people. Dublin is a small European capital where news gets around. Media and government in Ireland adhered to this principle of neutrality.

As the campaign in Scotland progressed it became widely known in Dublin that the British government and the British Embassy were applying pressure on the Irish state and the press to speak out against Scottish independence. One source within Oireachtas Éireann, the Irish parliament, has let it be known that the agenda of the British government was to paint a bleak picture of an independent Scotland in order to depress the growing support for a Yes vote in Scotland. Ireland, heavily dependent on trade with the United Kingdom, remained neutral throughout the campaign. At about the same time it became clear that this was very much part of a global offensive against Scotland. France, Spain, the United States, Canada and others began to make pronouncements echoing the sentiments that had been pressed upon Ireland. Certainly, the opinion within Dublin was that this was policy as far as Britain was concerned. Russia made the decision to break the silence of Downing Street's international conspiracy and spoke out.

As the campaign progressed into the final year analysts in both Berlin and Dublin predicted that support for independence in Scotland would overtake support for the union and issued memos to various of their government departments with instructions to begin the process of drafting policies to deal with the breakup of the United Kingdom and the arrival of a new European state. It can only be assumed that this, as a standard practice of government, was replicated around the world. Such a provisional measure no doubt undermined the confidence of Westminster in securing a No vote in Scotland. It was clear in the final months of the campaign that Britain was indeed in a state of frantic desperation. It was at this point that Mr. Cameron himself entered into secret discussions with the Council authorities on the Shetland Islands. Britain was preparing for defeat, and was not prepared to leave empty handed. This was the state of play until the date of the referendum.

The change.org petition demanding a re-run of the Scottish referendum, "counted by impartial international parties", has now reached 93,000 signatures as incredulous reaction mounts to the highly dubious referendum vote. Even Ron Paul expressed extreme scepticism about the result. The British media, meanwhile, is having a field day mocking the viral video footage of suspect activity at counting venues across Scotland, laughing off the fact that the only international observers to report anything about how the referendum was conducted were Russian observers, and dismissing Scots' calls for recounts and fresh referenda as being "sour grapes" based on "conspiracy theories".

But are these 93,000 (mostly) Scottish citizens, and the thousands of Facebook users demanding an investigation, just deluded sore losers?

If we look at the British voting system in general, we find a somewhat less than glowing 2008 report from the Council of Europe's human rights watchdog stating that reforms to the postal voting rules introduced by Labour made electoral fraud in Britain "childishly simple". The British voting system was now open to fraud and the system "makes it extremely easy to add bogus characters to the voters' lists", the report stated.

But to conclude that the Scottish referendum specifically was likely rigged for a 'No' vote by 'British' intelligence, we need to provide reasonable evidence that the British elite have the necessary character 'qualities', motive and operational history to engage in such a serious crime. We must also provide reasonable cause to believe that the British government and media opinion polls, that generally predicted a majority 'No' vote in the run-up to the referendum, were false, that the majority of Scots intended to vote yes, and that rigging of the vote was therefore necessary. Most importantly, we must present a plausible scenario, backed up by evidence, that British agents had the opportunity to commit this most undemocratic of crimes.

Americans overwhelmingly are in favor of a re-escalation of the war in Iraq. This is part of their view of Constitutional government, which can be summarized as follows. "Bomb them wogs!"

A Washington Post-ABC News poll this week showed that Americans overwhelmingly view the Islamic State as a serious threat to vital U.S. interests and, in a significant shift, widely support airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. Seventy-one percent of all Americans say they support airstrikes in Iraq, and 65 percent support strikes in Syria. That is more than double the level of support a year ago for launching airstrikes to punish the Syrian regime.