The obsession in politics and diplomacy with decorum - largely a relic from the past - can easily distract people from the realities of the present. Case in point, the uproar over Jeffrey Goldberg's latest article in the Atlantic, the headline of which, The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here, would seem important enough to warrant more attention than it has gotten so far.

Instead, the whisper of an unnamed "senior Obama administration official," who called Netanyahu a "chickenshit," has occupied headlines. And instead of taking a strong, or even a weak stance on Netanyahu's repeated declarations about expanding settlement activity everywhere in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the White House has only tried to distance itself from the remark, describing it as "unauthorized" and "inappropriate."

As Goldberg himself pointed out, the fact that Bibi is a chickenshit is not entirely a bad thing. Whatever else it does, it also makes him quite afraid to back up his rhetoric with action. Even in Gaza this summer, the ongoing slaughter seemed, from Netanyahu's point of view, to be something that spiraled much further out of control than he had intended. Indeed, his constant shifting of the mission's goal posts indicated the lack of any sort of planning beforehand. Political pressures kept driving him on, as they do with most of his actions. But at least the "chickenshit" was never going to attack Iran despite his bellicosity, as the United States seems to finally understand.

Being less of a leader and more of a leaf blowing in the political wind is an apt description of Netanyahu, and it is strongly suggested in Goldberg's piece. But it also applies to the Obama administration, which has repeatedly refused to use the tools it has at its disposal to create real pressure on Israel to, at the very least, desist from its actions that are obviously intended to destroy any possibility of a two-state solution. So, chickenshit cuts both ways.


Maybe Goldberg intended the chickenshit comment to overshadow the rest of his point, maybe he didn't. But the assertion that we are in a period of crisis for US-Israel relations is a very important one. The question is: are we?

The simple answer is no, but Goldberg is not wrong in suggesting that such a crisis could occur in the near future. One can understand why Goldberg focuses so much on personal clashes. Never in the history of Israel has there been a government that so arrogantly insulted the United States so frequently. Whether it's Netanyahu, Finance Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, or some other member of the Knesset, anti-American statements have risen to unprecedented levels.

The leaders of Islamic terrorists could be under the direct influence of NATO and Western powers using their movements to threaten Russia's territorial integrity, says a former general of Russian military intelligence service.

"There are some grounds to suspect that American and British special services could support the Islamic extremists in order to target the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation," Lieutenant-General Nikolai Pushkaryov, formerly of the Central Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff said in an interview with the RIA-Novosti news agency. "The top of these movements can be under the influence of NATO agents," he added.

The general also commented on the statement by the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who promised to destroy any Islamic terrorist who voiced threats against Russia. Kadyrov also told reporters that Chechen special services intended to hunt down and kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - the head of the Islamic State group (also known as ISIL and ISIS), adding that this man had been recruited to work for the US by General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, and former commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back then, Kadyrov claimed the Islamic State "was acting on orders from the West and Europe."

Echoing the work of GATA's late board member Adrian Douglas from 2010, market analyst and fund manager Dave Kranzler of Investment Research Dynamics in Denver today published a chart showing that gold almost always rises when the Asian physical markets are open and falls when the London and New York paper markets are open.

Douglas' study of the dichotomy is posted at GATA's Internet site here:

Lieutenant General Nikolai Pushkarev is a retired member of the Russian Armed Forces' Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). He recently spoke with Russian wire service RIA Novosti on MH17 and the role of ISIS in covert geopolitics. There's no doubt Russia's intelligence agencies know a lot more about what really goes on in the world of covert operations, but when and how they choose to release such information is often hard to know.

For example, it's widely assumed Russian intel is responsible for leaking Victoria Nu-speak-land's infamous "Fuck the EU" conversation. And President Putin has made numerous statements hinting that he is aware of the dodgy antics of his Western colleagues. For just one instance of this, in his much-vilified speech at the annual Valdai conference last month, he said this:

Of late, we have increasing evidence too that outright blackmail has been used with regard to a number of leaders. It is not for nothing that 'big brother' is spending billions of dollars on keeping the whole world, including its own closest allies, under surveillance.

Sott.net has been saying this for years. Sure, it's obvious (the FBI has been doing it since its inception), but the mainstream media ignores it, and Putin is the first person of his stature to just come out and say it.

So it's interesting to hear what an "ex-GRU" man has to say about two of the hottest topics of this year as a possible clue as to what Russian intelligence really knows, and what they're willing to share to combat the information war currently being waged against them by Western powers.

We'll go considerably farther than has yet been revealed by the professional intelligence community, to provide the actual evidence that conclusively shows that (and how) the Ukrainian Government shot down the Malaysian airliner, MH-17, on July 17th.

The latest report from the intelligence community was headlined on August 3rd by Robert Parry, "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts," and he revealed there that,

"Contrary to the Obama administration's public claims blaming eastern Ukrainian rebels and Russia for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, some U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these findings. This judgment - at odds with what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have expressed publicly - is based largely on the absence of U.S. government evidence that Russia supplied the rebels with a Buk anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a civilian jetliner flying at 33,000 feet, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

It's actually based on lots more than that; it's based not on an absence of evidence, but on positive proof that the Ukrainian Government shot the plane down, and even proving how it was done. You will see this proof, right here, laid out in detail, for the first time.

The reader-comments to my July 31st article, "First Examination of Malaysian MH-17 Cockpit Photo Shows Ukraine Government Shot that Plane Down," provided links and leads to independent additional confirmatory evidence backing up that account, of retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko's reconstruction of this event, to such an extent that, after exploring the matter further, I now feel confident enough to say that the evidence on this matter is, indeed, "conclusive," that Haisenko is right.

Facebook manipulated the news feeds of almost 2 million American users during the 2012 presidential election without telling them. The manipulation led to a 3 percent increase in voter turnout, according to the company's own data scientist.

In a stunning revelation, the three months prior to Election Day in 2012 saw Facebook "tweak" the feeds of 1.9 million Americans by sharing their friends' hard news posts rather than the usual personal posts. The effect was felt most by occasional Facebook users who reported in a survey they paid more attention to the government because of their friends' hard news feeds. Facebook didn't tell users about this psychology experiment, but it boosted voter turnout by 3 percent.

The experiment was first shared with the public in two talks given by Facebook's data scientist, Lada Adamic, in the fall of 2012, and more details were disclosed recently by Mother Jones. In those talks, Adamic said a colleague at Facebook, Solomon Messing, "tweaked" the feeds. Afterwards, Messing surveyed the group and found that voter turnout and political engagement grew from a self-reported 64 percent to more than 67 percent.

The legitimacy of the ruling class - whatever political form it may take - is based on the illusion that it can protect the people; whether from war, famine, economic hardship, or any other kind of disaster that disrupts the everyday routine of their lives and livelihood. The following excerpt illustrates this point:

I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want every man, woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos. I want everyone to remember why they need us!

(Excerpt from Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection)

The above quote is from the Chancellor's speech in the movie V for Vendetta, but it could just as well have been from Obama, Harper or Cameron for that matter.

Empires all go through a rising period, a flowering period and a collapse. No empires have escaped this fate and the current empire with its allies is no different, despite Obama's claim of this one being exceptional. All empires in the end have become thoroughly ponerized to the point that every person in a position of power will be suffering from some kind of psychological defect. As Lobaczewski writes:

In a pathocracy, all leadership positions, (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party) must be filled by individuals with corresponding psychological deviations, which are inherited as a rule.

Our current empire of chaos is no exception. It is today ruled by a pathological elite that is thoroughly corrupt, that promotes sick morals and values, that uses torture and violence to squash dissent, that engages in war without end, that demonizes large sections of the world's populace due to color or religion, all the while claiming to protect democracy, freedom of speech and humanitarian ideals. These words spoken by the pathological elite are as vile and devoid of substance as a dead pig once the blowflies have done their job.

As questions continue to be raised about the legality concerning the National Security Agency's vast surveillance apparatus, the NSA's ex spy chief is now coming under attack for ties he had to a tech company while in office.

A report published on Monday this week by Shane Harris at the Daily Beast revealed that Gen. Keith Alexander, the recently retired head of the NSA, bought and sold tens of thousands of dollars' worth of stock in a firm called Synchronoss Technologies Inc. while he ran the United States' intelligence gathering agency.

According to financial disclosure forms reviewed by the Beast, Alexander invested in Synchronoss in 2008 during his NSA tenure as that very company was selling technology to AT&T that allowed the telecom to activate and lock Apple iPhones onto its network.

"The carrier was then the exclusive voice and data service provider for the popular new iPhone, so Alexander stood to profit every time someone bought an iPhone and automatically became an AT&T customer," Harris wrote. "The NSA also had its own special relationship with AT&T," he added. "Under secret court orders, the agency was then hoovering up the phone records of AT&T's subscribers and pouring them into a database of who called whom in the United States, stretching back several years"

Since leaving the NSA earlier this year, Alexander has come under fire time and time again not just for the surveillance operations he authorized as the head of the spy office, but for the relationships that have already been developed during his post-government career. Questions have since been raised about Alexander's new private sector company, IronNet Cybersecurity, after the firm hired a current NSA exec to work concurrently with that group and the government, and Alexander's monthly consulting fee, upwards of $1 million per client, has caused concern as well.

The once and former bond king has lost it. After a long lament about deflation and the failure of massive money printing to ignite growth, jobs and incomes in the real economy, his most recent missive comes up with a better idea. Bigger public deficits!

"The real economy needs money printing, yes, but money spending more so, and that must come from the fiscal side - from the dreaded government side - where deficits are anathema and balanced budgets are increasingly in vogue," he writes.

Let's see. In the case of the US, real economic growth has been faltering since the year 2000. During the last 14 years real GDP growth has averaged 1.8% per annum - the lowest rate of growth for an equivalent period in modern times. In fact, it is barely half the average growth rate during the second half of the 20th century.

Not only is there no correlation between fiscal deficits and economic growth over those 50 years, but the real evidence is more nearly the opposite. During the the golden era of sound money and fiscal rectitude between 1953 and 1963, for example, real economic growth averaged 4.0% per annum. And that was achieved during a period in which the budget deficit averaged only 1% of GDP - with Washington actually recording surpluses during much of the Eisenhower presidency.

It might also be noted that during this same period, the inflation rate averaged only 1.2% annually - far lower than today's phony 2% target peddled by the Fed. Except no one called it deflation. Nor did they wring their hands about impending economic doom because the dollar's purchasing power was not shrinking fast enough.

Putin has called for a "new world order," with the aim of stabilizing the globe. He believes the US is abusing its role as global leader. What's not being widely reported is the fact that the pillars of the old order have been crumbing for years.

It used to be all so simple. The world was split into two camps - the West and the rest. And the West was truly the best. Twenty years ago, six of the world's biggest economies were part of the pro-Washington world.

The leader, the US itself, was so far in front that its total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was more than four times larger than China's and nine times the size of Russia's.

The world's most populous country, India, had almost the same gross income as comparatively tiny Italy and the UK. Any notion that the order would change so dramatically in a mere two decades seemed laughable.