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Iraq is descending into chaos, but not for the reasons you're being fed by the politicians and the mainstream media.

In June of 2014 the world watched in shock as an Islamic militant group operating under the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or ISIS), took control of Mosul, Baiji and Tikrit and began pushing south to Baghdad. Fallujah has been under their control since January.

[Note they are also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIL]

Iraqi military and police put up very little resistance in spite of the fact that they greatly outnumbered the militants. Most fled their posts and left their uniforms and weapons behind, those who didn't were killed.

ISIS, whose stated goal is to erase the border between Syria and Iraq, to establish an Islamic Caliphate encompassing both countries, and to impose sharia law, already holds vast swaths of territory, and they are rapidly gaining ground.

How did this happen?

Today I would like to just share two thoughts with you and suggest that each and every one of you come to his/her own conclusions.

First, Russia was literally "sucked into" WWI by the Germany. Russia did not have to enter the war as Russia herself was not attacked. "Only" Serbia was. Russia was not ready to enter the war, but the Czar-Martyr Saint Nicholas II decided that it was his Christian duty was to take the defense of the Serbian people even if all pragmatic considerations were clearly advocating against a Russian intervention. This war soon turned out to be extremely costly for Russia and greatly contributed to the weakening of the Russian monarchy which eventually resulted in a Aristocratic-Masonic coup (February 1917) followed by a Jewish-Bolshevik coup (October 1917). Did the Czar do the right thing when he decided to defend the Serbian nation at the potential cost of his own Empire, the last Christian Empire in history? It is a fact that the Serbian Prince Alexander and the Serbian people have always shown an immense and sincere gratitude to the Russian people and to Czar Nicholas II (whose first icon was painted on a fresco in Serbia, not Russia). But Russia also liberated Bulgaria from the Ottoman yoke. We now see the kind of "gratitude" Russia got from Bulgaria. Will a liberated Novorossia be more like Serbia or more like Bulgaria?

By now you have all already probably heard it. The CEO of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, has announced that Russia was now implementing a "prepayment only" gas delivery plan for the Ukraine and Lavrov has announced that he has "nothing to talk about" with the Ukie clown currently impersonating a Foreign Minister, Andrii Deshchytsia, and that he "would not meet with him". Unlike the always calm and impeccably diplomatic Lavrov, Miller made no effort to show his complete disgust with, and contempt for, the junta in Kiev whom he clearly sees as blackmailing and stealing mobsters. This was especially evident when he said that the amount of gas the Ukies had set aside in their reserves was exactly the amount of gas which they were now refusing to pay for. To put it in plain English: the Ukies stole gas from Russia to fill up their reserves and they are about to begin stealing gas bought by the Europeans. Nice folks indeed. Very "Euro-compatible" I suppose...

So my first reaction was to rejoice that Lavrov and Miller and finally expressed their total disgust and treated the junta leader with the disgust and contempt they deserve. But then a very unpleasant thought crept up into my mind: is that not exactly what the Ukies wanted?

Hawai'i has become "ground zero" in the controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops and pesticides. With the seed crop industry (including conventional as well as GMO crops) reaping $146.3 million a year in sales resulting from its activities in Hawai'i, the out-of-state pesticide and GMO firms Syngenta, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow Chemical, BASF, and Bayer CropScience have brought substantial sums of corporate cash into the state's relatively small political arena.

Chemical Conglomerates Retaliate Against Local Democratic Control

These "Big 6" pesticide and GMO firms are active on the islands in a big way, making use of the three to four annual growing seasons to develop new GMO seeds more quickly. The development of new GMOs by these pesticide and seed conglomerates goes hand-in-hand with heavy pesticide use in some of the islands' experimental crop fields, new data show.

Despite a decade of testing and tens of billions of dollars' worth of research, a major missile defense program in the United States has proven to be anything but successful, a new investigation suggests.

Nevertheless, the Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, plans on conducting next week its ninth exercise of that costly system since 2004, and the outcome of the drill is expected to influence whether or not more than a dozen new interceptors are added to the United States' arsenal.

According to a recent investigation by the Los Angeles Times, however, that system has so far been marred by mistakes that raise questions about its ability to thwart any major attack and the cost incurred during the last decade.

The results of the Times probe, published by the paper on Sunday this week, show that Pentagon officials with inside knowledge of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, say the program has suffered from mishaps more often than the US government would have expected.

William Hague says diplomatic base in Tehran to be restored as west looks to Iran to help tackle Isis-led insurgency in Iraq

William Hague has announced that the British embassy in Iran will be reopened as jihadist gains in northern Iraq have forced the west to reassess its relations with Tehran.

The foreign secretary said the circumstances were right to restore the diplomatic mission after a significant thawing in relations in recent months.

"Our two primary concerns when considering whether to reopen our embassy in Tehran have been assurance that our staff would be safe and secure, and confidence that they would be able to carry out their functions without hindrance," Hague told MPs in a written statement.

Hague's announcement came amid reports of clashes in the city of Baquba less than 40 miles north of Baghdad, the closest the fighting has come to the Iraqi capital since jihadists led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) took over most of the northern part of the country last week.

Insurgents took control of parts of Baquba overnight but were pushed back, army and police officers told Agence France-Presse. The attack took place in the centre of the capital of Diyala province and, according to the officers, militants temporarily occupied several neighbourhoods.

Fighting also took place in the village of Basheer, nine miles south of the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, where an attack by militants was repelled after an hour of clashes.

Isis fighters supported by disaffected Sunnis have swept through towns in the north but appeared to have halted their advance on Baghdad. The swift advance has faced little opposition from US-trained Iraqi forces, triggering fears that extremists will end up controlling a swath of territory from eastern Syria to northern Iraq.

The prospect of Iraq breaking up has forced the US and Britain to look to Iran. Hague said on Tuesday that the circumstances were right to reopen the British embassy in Tehran once "a range of practical issues" had been resolved. The embassy closed in 2011 after being ransacked by a mob protesting against sanctions.

The other day I was handed the translation of a paper written by Israeli journalist Oded Yinon as far back as 1982. Ah! Old news, I thought. I'll get around to browsing through it one of these days. When later, the person who proffered the document, asked me about my conclusions, I grabbed my spectacles and sat down for what I thought would be a dull read. How wrong I was!

Yinon, who was attached to Israel's Foreign Ministry, published his paper, titled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," in Kivunim (Directions) a "journal for Judaism and Zionism," and if the Association of Arab-American University graduates hadn't widely distributed the article, it might have disappeared down the memory hole.

Unfortunately, as the document is 11 pages long, I can only give you the gist but it can be found in its entirety on the Internet.

The basic premises of the plan are these: In order to survive Israel must become an imperial regional power and must also ensure the break-up of all Arab countries so that the region may be carved up into small ineffectual states unequipped to stand up to Israeli military might.

Yinon described the Arab-Muslim world as "a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners and arbitrarily divided into states, all made up of combinations of minorities and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another."

Powers once granted are almost impossible to take back.

After 13.5 years, there is more than enough evidence for reasonable people to conclude that the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama are easily the most destructive in U.S. history.

When historians speak of failed presidencies or weak presidencies, they are typically referring to presidencies characterized by uneven leadership, petty corruption by self-serving cronies or in extreme cases such as the Nixon presidency, abuses of executive power.

But weak or failed presidencies are not destructive to the rule of law and the foundations of the nation. The failed president leaves office and the basic structure of the nation continues: the rule of law, the balance of powers and a free-market economy.

France World Cup coach Didier Deschamps says world football's governing body, FIFA, is conducting an official investigation on the UAV spotted taping the team's training session from above earlier this week.

"Apparently, drones are used more and more. We don't want an intrusion into our privacy but it's very hard to fight this these days," Deschamps told the media in Porto Alegre, ahead of Sunday's opening match of its Brazil 2014 campaign against Honduras.

Un drone survole les Bleus lors de l'entraînement, enquête du service de sécurité. Image captée par @nicopaillardpic.twitter.com/UwEzCdrHrJ
- infosport+ (@infosportplus) June 10, 2014

A multi-rotor unmanned vehicle was observed and photographed just as the French team ran out on to the pitch for a closed practice at the team's Ribeirao Preto base on Tuesday. Italian news agency ANSA reported that while many of the players made light of the inanimate observer hovering in the air, the coaching staff was sent into a fury, and immediately lodged a complaint.

One of Africa's last 'great tuskers', elephants with ivory weighing over 100lbs, has been poisoned to death by poachers in Kenya after years of adapting his behaviour to hide himself from humans.

The bull, named Satao and likely born in the late 1960s, succumbed to wounds from poison darts in a remote corner of Tsavo National Park where he had migrated to find fresh water after recent storms.

His carcass yesterday lay with its face and great tusks hacked off, four legs splayed where he fell with his last breath, left only for the vultures and the scavengers.

Conservationists told how he moved from bush to bush always keeping his ivory hidden amongst the foliage.

"I'm convinced he did that to hide his tusks from humans, he had an awareness that they were a danger to him," said Mark Deeble, a British documentary filmmaker who has spent long periods of time filming Satao.