New research shows many so-called experts who appeared on television making the case for U.S. strikes on Syria had undisclosed ties to military contractors. A new report by the Public Accountability Initiative identifies 22 commentators with industry ties. While they appeared on television or were quoted as experts 111 times, their links to military firms were disclosed only 13 of those times. The report focuses largely on Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser to President George W. Bush. During the debate on Syria, he appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV. None of these stations informed viewers that Hadley currently serves as a director of the weapons manufacturer Raytheon that makes Tomahawk cruise missiles widely touted as the weapon of choice for bombing Syria. He also owns over 11,000 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate. We speak to Kevin Connor of the Public Accountability Initiative, a co-author of the report.

It's one of those times when history accelerates. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations on the shutdown and debt ceiling, October 2013 is one of them. It's the deadlock too far which has opened the eyes of those who still support the United States. A leader is followed when he is believed, not when he is ridiculous.

"Building a de-Americanised world": this statement would have raised a smile a few years ago. At most it would have passed for provocation by Hugo Chavez. But when we are seeing the United States' bankruptcy in real-time and it's an official Chinese press agency that says so (1), the impact isn't the same. In reality, it's describing out loud a process which is already well underway: simply, it's now allowed to speak about it in public. At least US government deadlock has the merit of loosening tongues (2). Let there be no mistake, this analysis hasn't appeared in the Chinese media by chance, and it reflects Beijing's hardening tone.

In fact, if the whole world is holding its breath before this pathetic game of the US elite; it's not out of compassion, it's to avoid being swept away in the fall of the world's first power. Everyone is trying to free itself from American influence and let go of a United States permanently discredited by recent events over Syria, tapering, shutdown and now the debt ceiling. The legendary US power is now no more than a nuisance and the world has understood that it's time to de-Americanise.

The legislation released by the Senate late Wednesday to reopen the government contains several surprises.

The bill includes extra funds to fix flooded roads in Colorado, a $3 million appropriation for a civil liberties oversight board and a one-time payment to the widow of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who died over the summer.

It also includes an increase in authorization for spending on construction on the lower Ohio River in Illinois and Kentucky. The bill increases it to $2.918 billion.

The Senate Conservatives Fund quickly called that language the "Kentucky Kickback," and said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) secured that as the price of his support for the bill. Taxpayers for Common Sense says the bill would increase total authorized spending by $1.2 billion.

What the public were told by the US government via the corporate media, and what actually happened during the White House's much-celebrated "Bin Laden Raid" in 2011 -are not the same.

One thing which becomes clearer by the day about the fabled Bin Laden Raid which took place in Abbotabad, Pakistan, is that the US government has intentionally deceived the public about what happened. In other words, what President Obama described when he addressed the American people following "the raid" - was a work of pure fiction.

The following interview appeared on Pakistani broadcast channel, Sama TV, and includes a translation in English from an eye witness on the scene.

If the translation is accurate, then this eye witness blows the lid off of another plank in the White House's fictional drama.

The following is an interview with Muhammad Bashir, who lives next door to the alleged "compound" of Osama bin Laden. He claims that the first US helicopter suffered an explosion, which killed all of its US military occupants, somewhere between 10 and 20 men.

Based on this man's testimony, we have to ask the question: did the White House cover this up in order to protect the Dear Leader from a devastating "Jimmy Carter moment" (1979 Iran hostage rescue cock-up).

Preface:

Q: Hey, Herman, when will you shut-up about arrests of criminals?

A: When arrests or surrender of 1% OBVIOUS criminals centering in war and money have been accomplished.

Americans cannot imagine real justice because they are dominated by 1% "leaders" in government, banking/finance, and media who:

1. Blatantly violate war law, war-murdering more than WW2 Nazis (~30 million since WW2).
2. Blatantly defraud Americans by trillions of dollars every year by lying that a "debt system" is a "monetary system."
3. Blatantly lie through media that war-murders protect "our freedoms" while hiding all "reasons" for war were known to be false as they were told. They hide that all American freedoms under the Constitution have been destroyed by our own government.

A UN report accuses the United States of downplaying the number of civilians killed in anti-terrorist drone operations, while failing to assist in the investigation by releasing its own figures.

With the increased use of remotely piloted aircraft in military operations in a number of countries, the nagging question of civilian "collateral damage" as a consequence of these deadly technologies is a growing concern for the United Nations and human right groups.

In Afghanistan, for example, the number of aerial drone strikes surged from 294 in 2011 to 447 during the first 11 months of 2012, according to data released by the US Air Force in November 2012, UN Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson noted in his interim report, which is due to be presented to the UN General Assembly next Friday.

Pakistan officials confirmed that out of 2,200 deaths "at least 400 civilians had been killed as a result of remotely piloted aircraft strikes and a further 200 individuals were regarded as probable non-combatants."

Although the first missile test-fired from a drone occurred in February 2001, it wasn't until the end of 2012 that the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released data showing that 16 civilians had been killed and 5 injured due to drone strikes during the course of the year.

In its latest published figures, covering the first six months of 2013, UNAMA documented 15 civilian deaths and 7 injuries in seven separate attacks by drone aircraft.

Emmerson's 24-page document mentions a report by a US military advisor that contradicted official US claims that drone attacks were responsible for fewer civilian deaths compared with other aerial platforms, for example, fighter jets.

It was an innocuous e-mail, one of millions sent every day by spouses with updates on the situation at home. But this one was of particular interest to the National Security Agency and contained clues that put the sender's husband in the crosshairs of a CIA drone.

Days later, Hassan Ghul - an associate of Osama bin Laden who provided a critical piece of intelligence that helped the CIA find the al-Qaeda leader - was killed by a drone strike in Pakistan's tribal belt.

The U.S. government has never publicly acknowledged killing Ghul. But documents provided to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden confirm his demise in October 2012 and reveal the agency's extensive involvement in the targeted killing program that has served as a centerpiece of President Obama's counterterrorism strategy.

An al-Qaeda operative who had a knack for surfacing at dramatic moments in the post-Sept. 11 story line, Ghul was an emissary to Iraq for the terrorist group at the height of that war. He was captured in 2004 and helped expose bin Laden's courier network before spending two years at a secret CIA prison. Then, in 2006, the United States delivered him to his native Pakistan, where he was released and returned to the al-Qaeda fold.

But beyond filling in gaps about Ghul, the documents provide the most detailed account of the intricate collaboration between the CIA and the NSA in the drone campaign.

The Post is withholding many details about those missions, at the request of U.S. intelligence officials who cited potential damage to ongoing operations and national security.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, the managing editor and columnist at the Veterans Today from Atlanta, to talk about the rise of al-Qaeda-linked militants in northern Syria which has left Turkey with a new security threat and raised serious speculations about Ankara's policy towards the crisis in the Arab country.

The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Jim Dean, we could look at how Turkey began going against Assad and there was one point of which the government there of Erdogan was supporting the group that is known as Jabhat al-Nusra and the belief that it was the most effective fighting force against Assad, but then you had the US that came and put that on the list of terrorist organizations.

So, it started from there, the beginning of this foreign policy of Turkey to kind of start falling apart. What happened there? What began with Turkey regarding the support that they were giving these groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra?

Dean: Well, it is just a classic mistake that you always find bigger powers often do. They always think that the war is going to be short, so they never worry about long-range consequences and you had, at the beginning, Turkey felt that because they were in NATO, they had protection from being very aggressive because if Syria retaliated, they were providing staging areas for the rebels which legally under international law makes you a combatant and Syria had the right actually to shell or even bomb and attack those staging areas.

But Turkey would have loved to have had that happened because they would have then invoked NATO that a NATO country has been attacked. So initially that was one of the redlines that they were trying to get Assad to cross over and then when that did not work and things started dragging out, they thought they could collapse the government through defections.

The Western media has hidden that they have had 300 to 350 assassinations of government officials which is really a huge number and then that did not collapse and that is when they started to get a little panicky and that is when they started searching all of the hovels of the Middle East for every dirt bag, every gangster, every kidnapping gang they could find and let them know that there was money to be made in Syria and they started organizing jailbreaks to bring in experienced Jihadi fighters and the idea there was very simple and that would divert Assad's forces and take heed of the Free Syrian fighters and they would have a two-flank war which they could collapse Syria that way and that has not worked.

So, now what they have done is they have released a bunch of Frankensteins that even after this Syrian situation is over, you are now going to have these very highly trained gangsters out of work and there is going to be people willing to offer them money, arms and ammunition to go somewhere else and create mayhem. So, what we have created here we are going to be dealing with for at least 25 years.

Report says CIA attacks led to civilian deaths and casualties and says US protocols are 'hurdle to transparency'

A United Nations investigation has so far identified 33 drone strikes around the world that have resulted in civilian casualties and may have violated international humanitarian law.

The report by the UN's special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson QC, calls on the US to declassify information about operations co-ordinated by the CIA and clarify its positon on the legality of unmanned aerial attacks.

Published ahead of a debate on the use of remotely piloted aircraft, at the UN general assembly in New York next Friday, the 22-page document examines incidents in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan and Gaza.

It has been published to coincide with a related report released earlier on Thursday by Professor Christof Heyns, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, which warned that the technology was being misused as a form of "global policing".

Emmerson, who travelled to Islamabad for his investigation, said the Pakistan ministry of foreign affairs has records of as many as 330 drone strikes in the country's north-western tribal areas since 2004. Up to 2,200 people have been killed - of whom at least 400 were civilians - according to the Pakistan government.

Pulitzer Prize winner explains how to fix journalism, saying press should 'fire 90% of editors and promote ones you can't control'

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism - close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" - or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011 [see footnote].