We begin with CBS News. The president of CBS News, David Rhodes, of course has a brother named Ben. Benny Rhodes, born 1977, serves as an Obama confidante and national security adviser.

Russ Baker thinks Benny strange, and wonders, with ample justification and in connection with a New York Times "profiles in power" article about Benny:

"What's especially strange about the article is that, for those of us who continue to wonder how a virtual cipher rose so quickly from the Illinois legislature to become the most powerful person in the world, we end up wondering the same thing about an aspiring novelist from New York City who fairly catapults to enormous influence in shaping policy regarding some of the most complex and sensitive matters facing this country.

Somehow, beyond noting that "In many ways, Mr. Rhodes is an improbable choice for a job at the heart of the national security apparatus," the Times is not sufficiently curious about any of this to probe further."

In addition to the CBS link, perhaps this is all we really need to know about Benny: as Baker points out, Benny helped draft the collection of lies and omissions that is the 9/11 commission report.

So what about "Khorasan"?

Just when we thought the jokes and lies couldn't get any sicker and thicker, we get, via CBS, a new figurative, yet also polysemously literal, present: "Khorasan." Of course, the "new", to be sure, is also by now rather old. Do have a look; we've got yet another recycling of the bin Laden/Emmanuel Goldstein image, this time associated with the out-of-thin-air Khorasan group. CBS kindly informs us that "an expert on Al-Qaeda" (who is undoubtedly also expert in the knowledge of Eurasia, Eastasia, and telescreens) "says they [Khorasan] are following bin Laden's vision."

Thank goodness, though, for the Pentagon and CIA bombings in Syria, since, as CBS relays, Khorasan "was nearing", per Lt. Gen. William Mayville (director of operations for the joint chiefs of staff), "the execution phase of an attack either in Europe or the homeland." Correspondingly, we have more scare-talk regarding stuff like toothpaste and airplanes.

Could Khorasan conceivably have something to do with the 9/11 and 9/19 White House fence jumpers/intruders? Very conceivably indeed, and shortly we will turn to data and theory in support of this contention.

The birther fringe has been touting some highly dubious "evidence" that Michelle Obama was born a man and so is biologically incapable of being the mother of her own children. The conspiracy theory is based on the alleged lack of publicly available photos of Barack and Michelle Obama's daughters, Sasha and Malia, when they were babies or very young - although adherents freely admit the First Family prefers to limit the girls' exposure to the media.

"Barack Obama and the First Lady have kept a tight lid on photos of their precious daughters being released by the press," writes Jodi Swann at Mr. Conservative. "Still, we have seen a startling lack of pictures from the early years of Malia and Sasha. Now we have evidence that this may not be due to the fact that Michelle has ordered the press not to release them, but that they do not exist."

She cites a blog post from last year at Fellowship of the Minds that speculates the girls were adopted - "possibly from Morocco."

That blogger, who goes by the name Dr. Eowyn, claims to have performed a Google image search for baby pictures of the girls and found none, although the blog's readers found several that were quickly dismissed as obvious forgeries. Dr. Eowyn also noted that Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com, which the blogger paid $9.95 for a trial membership, turned up no birth records or other personal information about the president's minor children. Birther litigant Orly Taitz claimed to Dr. Eowyn she has proof at least one of the girls was adopted from Morocco.

Conservatives are demanding that Ruth Bader Ginsburg should recuse herself from hearing abortion cases on the U.S. Supreme Court after she made remarks about a restrictive Texas law. The Supreme Court justice said in a lengthy interview with The New Republic that the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision would be a "worst-case" scenario - particularly for non-affluent women.

"Any woman who has the wherewithal to travel, to take a plane, to take a train to a state that provides access to abortion - that woman will never have a problem,"Ginsburg said. "It doesn't matter what Congress or the state legislatures do, there will be other states that provide this facility, and women will have access to it if they can pay for it. Women who can't pay are the only women who would be affected."

Conservatives were most upset when she said state legislatures and courts could not be trusted to ensure poor women had access to reproductive health services.

"How could you trust legislatures in view of the restrictions states are imposing?" Ginsburg said. "Think of the Texas legislation that would put most clinics out of business."

Conservative law professor Josh Blackman said Ginsburg's comments about the Texas law, which is currently being challenged in the 5th Circuit Court and could go before the U.S. Supreme Court, were problematic.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that more than 400 bodies have been discovered in mass graves near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, in what he described as "horrific" evidence that pointed to a war crime.

"This is obviously a war crime. Already more than 400 bodies have been discovered in [mass] graves outside Donetsk and we hope that western capitals will not hush up these facts [because] they're horrific," Lavrov said, adding there was an apparent blackout of the incident in Western mass media.

Last week, several mass graves filled with bodies of massacred civilians and independence supporters, killed execution-style, were unearthed 35 kilometers northeast of Donetsk.

"I expect [to hear] a clear, unbiased and responsible response from international organizations. OSCE is already working at the scene. We will make the truth known and, of course, make sure that the justice is done," Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference.

Speaking at PACE's fall session in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Russian lawmaker Olga Kazakova called on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to keep an eye on the investigation into this horrendous massacre.

The independence supporters of southeastern Ukraine believe that the civilians were murdered by the National Guard fighters who had stayed in the village of Nyzhnia Krynka, near the city of Donetsk, where the graves had been discovered, since April. Ukrainian authorities later denied this accusation, saying that not a single National Guard fighter had been in the area, adding however that some other Ukrainian units were deployed there at the time.

Lavrov commented on Kiev's recent claim to conduct an open and impartial probe of the alleged massacre as soon as it regained control of the area, saying it was pure hypocrisy because "these crimes were obviously perpetrated there at the time when Ukrainian security forces were in control of this region."

Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the need to exclude the opportunity for the Ukrainian government forces to shell civilians in the country's eastern regions, speaking with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Kremlin said in a press release Thursday.

"V.V. [Vladimir Vladimirovich] Putin has emphasized the need for further prevention of shelling of civilian objects by the Ukrainian [military] units in southeastern Ukraine," the statement reads.

According to the press release, Russian and German leaders also agreed on the importance of sticking to the agreements, reached during the meetings of the Contact Group on Ukraine in Minsk; first and foremost, on the clauses concerning the withdrawal of heavy weapons and the monitoring of the situation by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

On Wednesday, the authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said the shelling of a school and a public transport stop in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk had killed 11. A representative for a local hospital has told RIA Novosti some 40 had been wounded in the artillery fire. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the shelling.

UK aid cuts to West Africa's two worst Ebola-blighted nations may have contributed to the rapid spread of the deadly virus, MPs have said. This comes as London hosts an international summit to discuss the crisis.

In a report published on Thursday, the International Development Committee said the government's decision to cut direct aid to Sierra Leone and Liberia by a fifth may have contributed to the epidemic, which has killed more than 3,000 people.

Committee Chair Sir Malcolm Bruce said the scale of the outbreak "may well be connected to declining levels of international support for health system improvements" in the two countries.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 3,338 have been killed by the virus so far. A total of 7,178 confirmed cases have been reported since the outbreak began in March.


The virus continues to spread alarmingly rapidly across West Africa, with Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea worst affected.

Just as the US admitted shortly after the so-called "Arab Spring" began spreading chaos across the Middle East that it had fully funded, trained, and equipped both mob leaders and heavily armed terrorists years in advance, it is now admitted that the US State Department through a myriad of organizations and NGOs is behind the so-called "Occupy Central" protests in Hong Kong.

The Washington Post would report in an article titled, "Hong Kong erupts even as China tightens screws on civil society," that:

Chinese leaders unnerved by protests elsewhere this year have been steadily tightening controls over civic organizations on the mainland suspected of carrying out the work of foreign powers.

The campaign aims to insulate China from subversive Western ideas such as democracy and freedom of expression, and from the influence, specifically, of U.S. groups that may be trying to promote those values here, experts say. That campaign is long-standing, but it has been prosecuted with renewed vigor under President Xi Jinping, especially after the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych following months of street demonstrations in Kiev that were viewed here as explicitly backed by the West.

The Washington Post would also report:

One foreign policy expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, said Putin had called Xi to share his concern about the West's role in Ukraine. Those concerns appear to have filtered down into conversations held over cups of tea in China, according to civil society group members.

"They are very concerned about Color Revolutions, they are very concerned about what is going on in Ukraine," said the international NGO manager, whose organization is partly financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), blamed here for supporting the protests in Kiev's central Maidan square. "They say, 'Your money is coming from the same people. Clearly you want to overthrow China.' "

Congressionally funded with the explicit goal of promoting democracy abroad, NED has long been viewed with suspicion or hostility by the authorities here. But the net of suspicion has widened to encompass such U.S. groups as the Ford Foundation, the International Republican Institute, the Carter Center and the Asia Foundation.

China has said no country must interfere in its internal affairs even as the Occupy protestors in Hong Kong refuse to disperse, threatening to occupy government buildings if the current chief executive does not resign.

"Secretary Kerry mentioned Hong Kong. The Chinese Government has very firmly and clearly stated its position. Hong Kong affairs are China's internal affairs. All countries should respect China's sovereignty. And this is also a basic principle governing international relations," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Washington on Wednesday.

Wang was meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss regional and international issues of mutual interest.

"I believe for any country, for any society, no one will allow those illegal acts that violate public order. That's the situation in the United States, and that's the same situation in Hong Kong," Wang said in an apparent reference to US police clashing with demonstrators at protest rallies in Ferguson, Missouri, where black teenager Michael Brown was shot to death by a white police officer in August.

"We believe that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's government has the capability to properly handle the current situation in accordance with the law," Wang added.

The ISIL Takfiri terrorists have purportedly opened a consulate in Turkey and use it to issue visas for those who want to join the fight against the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

The Turkish daily Aydinlik said in a recent report that the consulate was founded in the Cankaya district of the capital Ankara.

The militants are said to be operating freely inside the country without much problem.

Other reports said the members of the Takfiri group have rented luxurious houses in the upscale neighborhood of the capital and Istanbul and use them for residence or as offices.

The terrorists are said to be using minibuses with black windows to get around the city.

The ISIL Takfiri terrorists currently control parts of Syria and Iraq. They have threatened all communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, Izadi Kurds and others, as they continue their atrocities in Iraq.

Senior Iraqi officials have blamed Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and some Persian Gulf Arab states for the growing terrorism in their country.

The following is a transcript of a speech delivered by Noam Chomsky in February 2013

Whether public education contributes to the Common Good depends, of course, on what kind of education it is, to whom it is available, and what we take to be the Common Good. There's no need to tarry on the fact that these are highly contested matters, have been throughout history, and continue to be so today.

One of the great achievements of American democracy has been the introduction of mass public education, from children to advanced research universities. And in some respects that leadership position has been maintained. Unfortunately, not all. Public education is under serious attack, one component of the attack on any rational and humane concept of the Common Good, sometimes in ways that are not only shocking, but also spell disaster for the species.

All of this falls within the general assault on the population in the past generation, the so-called "neoliberal era." I'll return to these matters, of great significance and import.

Sometimes the attacks on education and on the Common Good are very closely linked. One current illustration is the "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act" that is being proposed to legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth. This act mandates "balanced teaching of climate science in K-12 classrooms."