The world has suddenly realised that there is a "refugee crisis". There are more refugees now than at any time since World War II. The number has grown three-fold since the end of 2001. The problem is treated as if it arose just recently, but it has been a long time coming. The pressure has been building and building until it has burst the dams of wilful ignorance.

Death and despair has migrated to the doorsteps of Europe. But tens of millions of people do not simply abandon home and native land for an insecure dangerous future of desperate struggle. The forces that have created this crisis are massive and historic in scale. People are now confronted with a tiny fraction of the horrors that have been visited upon millions and millions in the last 14 years. The refugee crisis is merely a symptom of the far greater and far more brutal reality. This is not just a "current crisis" to last a dozen news cycles, and it will not be resolved by humanitarian support.

The current crisis is similar in magnitude to that of World War II because the events causing it are nearly as epochal and momentous as a World War. Those who leave their homelands now face much greater peril of death than asylum seekers faced 20 years ago, yet despite this their numbers have swollen to the tens of millions.

The crisis has been caused by a new Holocaust, but it is one we refuse to acknowledge. The facts of the mass violence and mass destruction are not hidden. We can see the destruction and death that follows Western intervention, but we have been living in wilful ignorance and denial, just as the Germans denied the obvious fact and nature of German genocide. We don't want to understand. However, like the Germans under Nazism, our self-serving ignorance is nurtured and magnified by a propaganda discourse that is in our news and entertainment media, and also in our halls of education and the halls of power.

We do not understand the genocidal nature of US-led Western interventions because we do not understand the nature of genocide. We have allowed Zionist and US imperialist elites to dictate that genocide be understood through a lens of Holocaust exceptionalism, Nazi exceptionalism, and Judeocide exceptionalism. But genocide was never meant to be specifically Nazi nor anti-Semitic in nature. The word "genocide" was coined by a Jew, Raphael Lemkin, but was never intended to apply specifically to Jews. It was meant to describe a strategy of deliberately visiting violence and destruction on "nations and peoples" as opposed to visiting it on armies. Lemkin wrote a great deal about genocide against the native people's of the Americas, but that work went unpublished.

Feuding Republican members of the US House of Representatives have abandoned a resolution against the Iran nuclear agreement after blowback from conservatives.

The House was scheduled to vote on Wednesday on the rule for debating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a procedural measure that would have cleared the way for passing the resolution disapproving the Vienna accord later this week.

But the voting was scrapped after the Republican lawmakers could not secure enough votes to even clear the procedural hurdle in favor of an approach involving votes on three related measures.

Debate and votes were to begin Thursday, but it seems that no legislation opposing the nuclear accord will emerge from Congress this month.

The world needs Russia to end the civil war in Syria and flush out the Islamic State, French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy said in an interview Wednesday. He also urged the West not to start a new Cold War with Russia.

"Setting the stage for a new Cold War with Russia is a serious mistake... We need Russia to end the conflict in Syria and our fight against ISIL. This does not mean, of course, that we should agree with Moscow on everything or accept what is happening in Donetsk," Sarkozy said in an interview with Le Figaro.

"Russia should get back to the G8 and lift the meat import ban, while Europe needs to restart its mutually-beneficial dialogue with Moscow," Sarkozy added.

The United States, the European Union and their allies imposed several rounds of economic, financial and technological sanctions on Russia over its alleged meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs.

Russia has repeatedly denied the assertions, and has responded to the sanctions with a food import ban.

Terror arrests in the UK reached their highest-ever level over the past year, after figures overtook the previous spike recorded in the wake of the 7/7 London bombings in 2005.

Between March 2014 and 2015 there were 299 arrests for terror-related offenses, marking a 31 percent rise on the previous year for the same type of arrest. The number of arrests is also the highest since records began in 2001.

The figures also show a record number of women arrested for terror offenses, as well as a rise in young people aged 18 to 20. Thirty-five women and 43 people aged 18 to 20 were arrested, almost double the number in the previous year.

According to the Home Office, of the 299 arrests, 118 were charged with a terror-related offense.

US presidential hopeful believes that Washington has done "not enough" with regard to putting pressure on Russia.

"I remain convinced that we need a concerted effort to really up the costs on Russia and in particular on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin," Clinton said in a speech at Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. "I think we have not done enough."

Since 2014, the United States and its allies imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia over Moscow's alleged role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the reunification of Crimea with Russia following a popular referendum.

"I'm in the category of people who wanted us to do more in response to the annexation of Crimea and the continuing destabilization of Ukraine," Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton said during her first major campaign speech in New York in June that Russia, Iran and North Korea are "traditional threats" of the United States adding that Washington would also have to "deal with the rise of new powers like China."

Sanctions imposed on Russia had lesser impact than the falling oil prices, Clinton continued.

"The sanctions came out of all of the discussions and maybe to some extent they have had some impact," Clinton said. "I think the falling oil price has had more impact."

Ukraine has closed its airspace to Syria-bound Russian planes with humanitarian aid, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Thursday.

Yatsenyuk said during a meeting with his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico that Ukraine would not let Russian aircraft with humanitarian supplies to war-torn Syria use the country's airspace.

He said that he ordered a Ukrainian state company that services the country's airtraffic to strengthen control over any flights of Russian aircraft to Syria.

"The airspace for these [Russian] aircraft [flying to Syria] over the territory of Ukraine is closed; and the airspace over neutral waters is now controlled in a special way," Yatsenyuk said in Bratislava.

• FOX: Russia is arming Assad to give Europe more of a migrant problem
• Apparently if Assad fell to ISIS the refugee crisis would end - the Syrians could go back home and live happy lives under the evilest regime since the Khmer Rouge
• FOX: Russia and China are 'ganging up' against US and its interests throughout the world
• That's Russian aggression against US interests - Poor US always the victim

News bulletins from the Yemeni channel Al-Masira, August 26th, 2015 (English subtitles).

Translated from French by Jenny Bright

"In five months [of war], Yemen has been reduced to the state of Syria after 5 years", said Peter Maurer, the Director of the International Red Cross, on August 19th, 2015.

These difficult images, which put faces and names to the countless civilian victims, can help to give an idea of ​​the magnitude of the unspeakable massacres perpetrated daily by the forces of the Saudi-US coalition against Yemen's population, with a barbarity unexampled in recent history that overshadows even the Zionist crimes in Gaza, and of the incredible spirit of resistance of the Yemeni people despite being abandoned by the international community.

Terrorist UK and stateless Hollandian France are proud to actively participate, via their ethereal and pacifist weapons, in this "heroic butchery".

At first glance, the current most important figure in Moldova's politics, the oligarch Vladimir Plakhotnyuk, could well become for his country what Petro Poroshenko became for Ukraine: an oligarch hungry for political power, which he obtained by holding out the carrot of European integration, relying on extreme nationalists, attempting to provoke a conflict with Russia, and in the end plunging his country into a civil war and an apparently endless economic crisis which, collectively, could well bring about the end of the Ukrainian state. Will Moldova follow in Ukraine's footsteps? A lot depends here on the actions of Plakhotnyuk himself and his perception of political and economic self-interest. At the moment, he occupies a position similar to that occupied by Poroshenko right after the overthrow of Yanukovych but before the "elections" that propelled him into the actual presidency.

Since both are hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying oligarchs, one can safely assume that both Poroshenko and Plakhotnyuk are motivated by the same considerations: first of all, survival, which can be achieved (given the political climate prevailing in Ukraine and Moldova) only through gradual expansion of political power, which in turn can be used to generate wealth (Poroshenko doesn't appear to have suffered much, even his business in Russia (!) is thriving), which is the ultimate guarantee of survival as it allows one to buy off enemies and procure allies, as Poroshenko has done with some skill over the last couple of years.

So, what are the vectors pulling and and tugging on each of these two oligarchs in their pursuit of power?

Fourteen years later and do you even believe it? Did we actually live it? Are we still living it? And how improbable is that?

Fourteen years of wars, interventions, assassinations, torture, kidnappings, black sites, the growth of the American national security state to monumental proportions, and the spread of Islamic extremism across much of the Greater Middle East and Africa. Fourteen years of astronomical expense, bombing campaigns galore, and a military-first foreign policy of repeated defeats, disappointments, and disasters. Fourteen years of a culture of fear in America, of endless alarms and warnings, as well as dire predictions of terrorist attacks. Fourteen years of the burial of American democracy (or rather its recreation as a billionaire's playground and a source of spectacle and entertainment but not governance). Fourteen years of the spread of secrecy, the classification of every document in sight, the fierce prosecution of whistleblowers, and a faith-based urge to keep Americans "secure" by leaving them in the dark about what their government is doing. Fourteen years of the demobilization of the citizenry. Fourteen years of the rise of the warrior corporation, the transformation of war and intelligence gathering into profit-making activities, and the flocking of countless private contractors to the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, and too many other parts of the national security state to keep track of. Fourteen years of our wars coming home in the form of PTSD, the militarization of the police, and the spread of war-zone technology like drones and stingrays to the "homeland." Fourteen years of that un-American word "homeland." Fourteen years of the expansion of surveillance of every kind and of the development of a global surveillance system whose reach -- from foreign leaders to tribal groups in the backlands of the planet -- would have stunned those running the totalitarian states of the twentieth century. Fourteen years of the financial starvation of America's infrastructure and still not a single mile of high-speed rail built anywhere in the country. Fourteen years in which to launch Afghan War 2.0, Iraq Wars 2.0 and 3.0, and Syria War 1.0. Fourteen years, that is, of the improbable made probable.

Fourteen years later, thanks a heap, Osama bin Laden. With a small number of supporters, $400,000-$500,000, and 19 suicidal hijackers, most of them Saudis, you pulled off a geopolitical magic trick of the first order. Think of it as wizardry from the theater of darkness. In the process, you did "change everything" or at least enough of everything to matter. Or rather, you goaded us into doing what you had neither the resources nor the ability to do. So let's give credit where it's due. Psychologically speaking, the 9/11 attacks represented precision targeting of a kind American leaders would only dream of in the years to follow. I have no idea how, but you clearly understood us so much better than we understood you or, for that matter, ourselves. You knew just which buttons of ours to push so that we would essentially carry out the rest of your plan for you. While you sat back and waited in Abbottabad, we followed the blueprints for your dreams and desires as if you had planned it and, in the process, made the world a significantly different (and significantly grimmer) place.


Fourteen years later, we don't even grasp what we did.