Want to decipher what the US military is really doing in Iraq and Syria, or figure out whether its regional war against the Islamic State (Isis) is legal? Good luck. The Obama administration's secret efforts to redefine the ordinary meaning of key legal terms and phrases has made that near impossible.

For instance, in his Tuesday statement that US airstrikes that have expanded into Syria, Obama studiously avoided any discussion about his domestic legal authority to conduct these strikes. That dirty work was apparently left up to anonymous White House officials, who told the New York Times's Charlie Savage that both the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) from 2001 (meant for al-Qaida) and the 2002 war resolution (meant for Saddam Hussein's Iraq) gave the government the authority to strike Isis in Syria.

In other words: the legal authority provided to the White House to strike al-Qaida and invade Iraq more than a dozen years ago now means that the US can wage war against a terrorist organization that's decidedly not al-Qaida, in a country that is definitely not Iraq.

It's been weeks since initial air strikes began, and the administration has still refused to release a detailed written legal rationale explaining how, exactly, that works.

As bombs start dropping in Syria and Iraq, the world is once again being asked to cower in fear of a shadowy terror group that most people hadn't heard of just a few months ago. But even the most cursory examination of ISIS's past, its connections, and the actors populating it reveal a very different story than the one we are being asked to believe in. Fake terrorists. Foreign backers. False flags. Meet the new boogeyman, same as the old boogeyman.

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After having heard your words at the UN a few hours ago, I felt compelled to write this letter, compelled, to expose your lies & deceit. You, Mr. President, are a war-monger & an abettor of terror. You essentially lend a liberal face to the Trans-National Military Industrial Complex.

During your ahistorical & ignorant speech today, you misled the world on every count, whilst trying to preach & lecture the world on the virtues of global cooperation to fight the scourge of religious extremism, terror & wars. Mr. President, the world is aware of the fact that it has been US policy to promote & foster Islamic extremism by both covert & overt means ever since 1979. You would have been aware of the policy that was essentially envisioned by your senior adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

On being asked, "about any regrets having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?"

Brzezinski replied - "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1998)

You would have surely known of the fact that it was the US-CIA that created Al Qaeda, as attested to by Hillary Clinton.

"The people we are fighting today, we funded twenty years ago".

She also vividly describes US cooperation with the Saudi Wahhabis in this entire nefarious design, where the Mujahedeen were mobilized from across the world, funded, trained & armed with the latest weapons that the US armoury had to offer.

You surely would have watched the Hollywood blockbuster "Charlie Wilson's War" starring Tom Hanks & Julia Roberts, also nominated for the Oscars. This is a true story of a Texas congressman Charlie Wilson's covert dealings in Afghanistan, and his efforts to assist the Mujahedeen in their war against the Soviets

These are known facts that the entire world is aware of, but yet you chose to deceive, even as you have yet again created another Frankenstein called the ISIS, which is basically an updated version of the Al Qaeda.

The US fanfare surrounding Washington's bombing raid over Syria was immense. WIth all the hype, you'd have thought that it was a new Pearl Harbor.

With a risk of popping President Obama and the US State Department's bubble, we need to ask: did the US bomb a load of empty buildings in Syria on Tuesday?

According CNN Middle East correspondent Arwa Damon (photo, above), residents from the town of Raqqa, in northeastern Syria had "mixed reactions to US strikes". The reason given was a real shocker:

Damon revealed on air early Wednesday that ISIL terrorists who were held up in the town may have been tipped off weeks in advance to the US airstrikes on Tuesday. According to Damon:

"15-20 days before the airstrikes, (ISIL) buildings were evacuated, and fighters then mixed in with the local population".

Maybe Damon let the truth slip out by accident, or maybe she was trying to do what US journalists so often are not allowed to do by challenging Washington's prefabricated narrative. Regardless, CNN's chief war enthusiast Wolf Blitzer did not feel the need to pursue the point.

This surprising admission by CNN would mean that the US military may have only destroyed empty buildings in Raqqa, and that Washington's inflated claims of dead ISIL fighters are probably exaggerated. In other words, it was all a big show, and ISIL's capabilities were not degraded at all by Obama's celebrated US blitzkrieg in Syria.

Europe will not regain its share of the Russian market after the sanctions war is over, as it will already be occupied by other local and foreign businesses, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned.

Russia and the West will eventually "come to agreements sooner or later, as sanctions don't last forever," Medvedev said in an interview with Vesti 24 TV channel.

"These foolish sanctions will pass, but international relations will continue. And currency markets will open up," he added.


The prime minister stressed that "the niches in our [Russian] economy, which will by then be occupied by local produces or other foreign producers...our European counterparts wouldn't be able to come back."

According to Medvedev, "this is the price Europe will have to pay" for trying to put Russia under economic pressure.

He assured that Asian and Latin American companies - which will replace the Europeans on the Russian market - will maintain their positions after relations between Moscow and the EU return to normal.

"We're decent people. If we reach agreements then we fulfill the existing contracts, including those with our Latin American and Asian counterparts, of course. And those of our Western partners, who'll be eager to return, will only be able to take the remaining share, nothing more," he explained.

Bloomberg has a story today on the faltering of Draghi's latest scheme to levitate Europe's somnolent socialist economies by means of a new round of monetary juice called TLTRO - $1.3 trillion in essentially zero cost four-year funding to European banks on the condition that they expand their business loan books. Using anecdotes from Spain, the piece perhaps inadvertently highlights all that is wrong with the entire central bank money printing regime that is now extirpating honest finance nearly everywhere in the world.

On the one hand, the initial round of TLTRO takedowns came in at only $100 billion compared to the $200 billion widely expected. It seems that Spanish banks, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, are finding virtually no demand among small and medium businesses for new loans.

Many small and medium-sized businesses are wary of the offers from banks as European Central Bank President Draghi prepares to pump more cash into the financial system to boost prices and spur growth. The reticence in Spain suggests demand for credit may be as much of a problem as the supply.

The monthly flow of new loans of as much as 1 million euros for as much as a year - a type of credit typically used by small and medium-sized companies - is still down by two-thirds in Spain from a 2007 peak, according to Bank of Spain data.

On the other hand, Spain's sovereign debt has rallied to what are truly stupid heights - with the 10-year bond hitting a 2.11% yield yesterday (compared to 7% + just 24 months ago). The explanation for these parallel developments is that the hedge fund speculators in peripheral sovereign debt do not care about actual expansion of the Spanish or euro area economies that is implicit in Draghi's targeted promotion of business lending (whether healthy and sustainable, or not). They are simply braying that "T" for targeted LTRO is not enough; they demand outright sovereign debt purchases by the ECB - that is, Bernanke style QE and are quite sure they will get it. That's why they are front-running the ECB and buying the Spanish bond. It is a patented formula and hedge fund speculators have been riding it to fabulous riches for many years now.

Council members said 'social taboo' would still prevent relationships
Germany's national ethics council has called for an end to the criminalisation of incest between siblings after examining the case of a man who had four children with his sister.

Patrick Stuebing, who was adopted as an infant and met his sister in his 20s, has launched several appeals since being imprisoned for incest in 2008 and his lengthy legal battle has prompted widespread public debate.

Sexual relations between siblings or between parents and their children are forbidden under section 173 of the German criminal code and offenders can face years in prison. But on Wednesday, the German Ethics Council recommended the section be repealed, arguing that the risk of disability in children is not enough to warrant the law and de-criminalising incest would not remove the huge social taboo around it.

The chairman of the council, Christiane Woopen, was among the 14 members voting in favour of repealing section 173, while nine people voted for the ban to continue and two abstained. A statement released on Wednesday said: "Incest between siblings appears to be very rare in Western societies according to the available data but those affected describe how difficult their situation is in light of the threat of punishment. "They feel their fundamental freedoms have been violated and are forced into secrecy or to deny their love.

The American corporations labeled unpatriotic for exploiting loopholes to avoid US taxes may see the so-called tax inversion schemes much less lucrative with the new rules announced by the US Treasury to crack down on the practice.

The American corporations labeled unpatriotic for exploiting loopholes to avoid US taxes may see the so-called tax inversion schemes much less lucrative with the new rules announced by the US Treasury to crack down on the practice.

"Today, in an important first step, the Treasury is announcing targeted action to meaningfully reduce the economic benefits of corporate inversions, and when possible, stop them altogether," US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, said in a statement on Monday.

A number of US corporations were labeled "unpatriotic" for engaging in tax inversion, where an American company buys up a foreign one and then moves their headquarters to the host country to take advantage of the lower corporate tax rates.

America's corporate tax rate is 35 percent, while countries such as the UK enjoy a rate of 20 percent and Ireland a rate of 12 percent. Lower corporate taxes are believed to be the reason why, earlier this year, Pfizer was trying to buy Britain's Astra Zeneca and move its headquarters to the UK. The deal fell through because an agreement couldn't be reached on a price, but estimates are that without rule changes the US could lose $19.5 billion in tax revenue over ten years through inversion, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

When nearly a year ago we reported about the case of "Goldman whistleblower" at the NY Fed, Carmen Segarra, who alleged she was wrongfully terminated after she flagged "numerous conflicts of interest and breaches of client ethics [involving Goldman] that she believed warranted a downgrade of Goldman's regulatory rating" and which were ignored due to the intimate, and extensively documented on these pages, proximity between Goldman and either one-time NY Fed Chairman and former Goldman director Stephen Friedman or current NY Fed president and former Goldman employee Bill Dudley, we said:

As everyone knows, both Bill Dudley and Stephen Friedman used to be at Goldman, and as we noted Dudley and Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius periodically did and still meet to discuss "events" at the Pound and Pense.

So while her allegations may be non-definitive, and her wrongful termination suit is ultimately dropped, there is hope this opens up an inquiry into the close relationship between Goldman and the NY Fed. Alas, since the judicial branch is also under the control of the two above mentioned entities, we very much doubt it.

There was hope, but as we said: we doubted it would lead to much more. It didn't: in April, the NY Fed won the dismissal of her lawsuit:

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan ruled that the failure by the former examiner, Carmen Segarra, to connect her disclosure of Goldman's alleged violations to her May 2012 firing was "fatal" to her whistleblower lawsuit. Abrams also said Segarra could not file an amended lawsuit.

"Congress sought to protect employees of banking agencies ... who adequately allege that they have suffered retaliation for providing information regarding a possible violation of a 'law or regulation,'" the judge wrote. "Plaintiff has not done so."

Segarra's findings that Goldman's conflict-of-interest practices may have violated merely an "advisory letter" that did not carry the force of law did not entitle her to whistleblower protection under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, Abrams said.

There is something quintessentially English about the tradecraft of spying, as history reminds us of events not too dissimilar to those in play today.

In the late 1560's Francis Walsingham began his career in subterfuge working with William Cecil to thwart the plots against the then English monarch, Elizabeth I. Later, in 1572 as the Principal Secretary to Elizabeth and her chief spymaster, his earlier work in preventing the subversion of state power became mere opening gambits in a craft that would include the interception of mail, the use of informants and even torture, amongst others.

Enter the Scottish independence referendum to be held on Thursday 18 September 2014, which, coincidentally, is the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 where the English army were defeated by Robert the Bruce, King of Scots.

On Friday 13 June 2014, the very antithesis of an auspicious day for the superstitious, The Independent ran a story about internet trolls 'opening the door' for MI5 dirty tricks in attempting to subvert the Yes Campaign for Scottish Independence. Jim Sillars, a former Scottish National Party (SNP) deputy leader said: