We were business people doing business in Libya since 2007 January. We made a unique enzyme that rejuvenates oil wells and cleans up sludge pits, cleans out pipelines and tanks and does a whole lot of neat things to oil. We booked a huge amount of business in Libya from 2007 to 2011: 5 billion dollars worth of our product. We signed a JV with the Social Security Investment Fund of Janzour near Tripoli, Libya. We actively began to build a production facility to fulfill these contracts for our enzyme when the so called Libyan revolution began in February of 2011.

I would like to note that the Libyan people were not in any way extremist Muslims. The part of the Koran that was added by the Ayatollah Khomeini talking about killing infidels was thrown out of Libya by Ghadafi because he said it was not part of the Koran. For this there was a fatwa or death order put on Ghadafi for over 20 years by the radical extremist Muslims. All religions with a book were allowed in Libya. Women were emancipated in the 1970s by Ghadafi. No special clothing were required and all women were highly educated if they choose to be. They were doctors, lawyers, ministers, business owners, or just house wives whatever they decided.

Libya shared ½ of all the its oil revenue with its 5.5 million population. All medical care was free, if you could not get the care you needed in Libya then you could travel wherever you needed with a family member and all costs and expenses were fully paid. Education was free and if you wanted to go outside to another University that was paid in full with a stipend. When a Libyan couple got married they received a $46,000 gift from the government to start their lives. Their first home, a 2,500 sq foot condominium cost 10% of their salary for 20 years and then it was theirs. Gasoline was 44 cents a gallon, all utilities were free. If you were hungry and had no money they had huge stores of food where you could get rice, milk, cheese, flour and money to buy meat. The average salary in Libya was the highest in Africa, higher than China or India at $15,800 a year. If you had a college education and could not find a job you received that money until you found a job.

For years now judicious analysts have been saying that ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State, is a synthetic witches' brew of malcontents organized, armed and trained by the West and its regional appendages in the Arab Gulf countries.

Despite an overwhelming sand storm of disinformation emanating from the mainstream media that laughably portrayed the militant group and its creepy offshoots as wholly organic, critical thinkers have insisted that ISIS is a controlled outfit of covert mercenaries that were manufactured by Western powers and first wielded like a samurai sword against the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Once the North African country was swallowed whole by the Wahhabi onslaught, which was directed by CIA and MI6 "advisors" on the ground and reinforced by NATO airstrikes from above, the same stock and breed of criminal miscreants were promptly set upon Syria to ravage that unsuspecting nation.

With banal hubris, Western regimes denied whole cloth any suggestion that they have been sponsoring ISIS. But a recently unearthed US intelligence document shatters the façade of secrecy and denial, confirming in bare language that the West and its Persian Gulf marionettes are directly responsible for the rise of ISIS. US intelligence analysts, writing in a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report ^[1] disclosed by Judicial Watch, pondered gleefully about the prospect of utilizing radical Wahhabi-Islamist fundamentalists as a bludgeon against the secular government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

The document categorically demolishes Washington's deceptive 'we were only arming moderates' gambit, noting that the rebels in Syria (which Washington and other Western powers have been supporting^[2] since 2011) were dominated by "Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda" elements from the outset. Such extremists were the "major forces driving the insurgency in Syria," the report states with unambiguity. It adds that Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor group to ISIS, was the ideological backbone of the insurgents who were flooding into Syria that same year - the very same militants that the West was backing with enthusiastic vigor, dumping hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and supplies at their feet.

The military moves to set up an expensive sensor-and-shooter network, but is the threat real?

The Pentagon is quietly working to set up an elaborate network of defenses to protect American cities from a barrage of Russian cruise missiles.

The plan calls for buying radars that would enable National Guard F-16 fighter jets to spot and shoot down fast and low-flying missiles. Top generals want to network those radars with sensor-laden aerostat balloons hovering over U.S. cities and with coastal warships equipped with sensors and interceptor missiles of their own.

One of those generals is Adm. William Gortney, who leads U.S.Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, and North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD. Earlier this year, Gortney submitted an "urgent need" request to put AESA radars on the F-16s that patrol the airspace around Washington. Such a request allows a project to circumvent the normal procurement process.

With less than two weeks before a possible nuclear deal being struck between Iran and the P5+1, the brinkmanship across the "wilderness of mirrors" of Middle Eastern intel is reaching fever pitch. Spin reigns supreme. And nothing is what it seems.

Of course a lot riding on the Iran nuclear deal has to do with Pipelineistan. Iran, assuming sanctions quickly collapse, will finally be able to sell natural gas to the EU - theoretically in competition with Gazprom; but that will take a long time, until Iranian (decaying) infrastructure is upgraded.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has presented EU leaders new proposals on a "mutually beneficial deal" to solve the Greek debt crisis, according to his office.

"The prime minister has presented the three leaders the Greek proposals on a mutually beneficial deal, which will provide a definitive solution, rather than postponing the solution to the problem," the cabinet spokesman told media on Sunday.

Tsipras offered a new solution during a telephone conversation between Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, France's President Francois Hollande and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

As we move toward the second half of 2015, signs of financial turmoil are appearing all over the globe. In Greece, a full blown bank run is happening right now. Approximately 2 billion euros were pulled out of Greek banks in just the past three days, Barclays says that capital controls are "imminent" unless a debt deal is struck, and there are reports that preparations are being made for a "bank holiday" in Greece.

Meanwhile, Chinese stocks are absolutely crashing. The Shanghai Composite Index was down more than 13 percent this week alone. That was the largest one week decline since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

In the U.S., stocks aren't crashing yet, but we just witnessed one of the largest one week outflows of capital from the bond markets that we have ever witnessed. Slowly but surely, we are starting to see the smart money head for the exits. As one Swedish fund manager put it recently, everyone wants "to avoid being caught on the wrong side of markets once the herd realizes stocks are over-valued".

Desertion galore: Ukrainian men understand the absurdity of the war their government is waging.

More than 10,000 cases of desertion have been registered in the Ukrainian Army since the outbreak of the Donbass war in April 2014, Ukrainian Vesti reported.

In 2014 the army suffered heavy desertion and nearly 30 percent of the servicemen called up in the first wave of mobilization (March 17) abandoned their positions, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada has announced six waves of mobilization so far. By the end of 2014 the strength of Ukrainian Armed Forces grew from 130,000 t

As Baltic and Nordic countries continue to express unfounded fears about Russian aggression, paranoia fever appears to have its hold on the United States. The Pentagon is quietly installing a cruise missile defense shield in major US cities, despite the financial fiasco of previous attempts to install similar technology.

"A handful of senior military officials, including several current or past NORTHCOM commanders, have been among those quietly dinging the bell about cruise missile threats, and it's beginning to be heard," Thomas Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Defense One.

To counter that threat, the Pentagon is working to install a high-tech radar system that would track incoming, low-flying missiles. Installed in aerostat balloons over major cities, as well as onboard warships off the coast, the radar would transmit warning signals to F-16 fighter jets if an enemy missile were detected.

The dogs of western fear and sanctions bark, while the Eurasian caravan passes.

And no caravanserai could possibly compete with the 19th edition of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). Thousands of global business leaders - including Europeans, but not Americans; after all, President Putin is "the new Hitler" - representing over 1,000 international companies/corporations, including the CEOs of BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total, hit town in style.

Fascinating panels all around - including discussions on the BRICs; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); the New Silk Road(s); the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU); and of course the theme of all themes, "The Making of the Asia-Pacific Century: Rebalancing East," with former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

An open-access website called fotoforensics.com analyzes digital images to detect potential alteration. One of the techniques offered at the site is Error Level Analysis.

According to the site's tutorial on ELA:

Error Level Analysis (ELA) permits identifying areas within an image that are at different compression levels. With JPEG images, the entire picture should be at roughly the same level. If a section of the image is at a significantly different error level, then it likely indicates a digital modification ...

ELA highlights differences in the JPEG compression rate. Regions with uniform coloring, like a solid blue sky or a white wall, will likely have a lower ELA result (darker color) than high-contrast edges. The things to look for:

Edges. Similar edges should have similar brightness in the ELA result. All high-contrast edges should look similar to each other, and all low-contrast edges should look similar. With an original photo, low-contrast edges should be almost as bright as high-contrast edges.

Textures. Similar textures should have similar coloring under ELA. Areas with more surface detail, such as a close-up of a basketball, will likely have a higher ELA result than a smooth surface.

Surfaces. Regardless of the actual color of the surface, all flat surfaces should have about the same coloring under ELA.

Look around [a] picture and identify the different high-contrast edges, low-contrast edges, surfaces, and textures. Compare those areas with the ELA results. If there are significant differences, then it identifies suspicious areas that may have been digitally altered. (emphases added)

As the author emphasizes, "[s]imilar textures should have similar coloring under ELA," and "all flat surfaces should have about the same coloring under ELA."