White House

"...we didn’t go after oil wells - actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls because we didn’t want to do environmental damage."

Americans today are blissfully distracted by their iGadgets, plotting out their holiday shopping strategies, leasing new cars, eating out, and buying advance tickets to the new Star Wars movie. They don’t see the wicked winter squalls ahead which will try their souls. We are experiencing the lull before the storms, but the storms are surely coming. The potential for catastrophe is high and burying our heads in the sand is not a strategy.

Another 'mass' shooting, and another outraged statement from President Obama proclaiming "enough is enough." With 9 injured, and 2 police officers and 1 civilian dead after the dreadful standoff at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs, the President took the opportunity to explain "we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period." Of course, any discussion of the shooter's mental health, the violent polarization towards and politicization of abortion among an increasingly micro-aggressive America were conveniently ignored.

How Uncle Sam seeded global Jihad... and cultivates it to this day.

With Americans facing a day of travel and giving thanks tomorrow, President Obama is set to make a statement we presume urging everyone to get out and spend... but be more alert to bad guys...

With 11 days passed since the horrific actions in Paris, French President Francois Hollande arrived at the White House to discuss the conflict with President Barack Obama, likely asking for greater cooperation (with Russia - who Hollande will meet Thursday) in the battle against ISIS. Obama and Hollande made no statements as they began their meeting in the Oval Office but we can only imagine Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet over its border with Syria produced fresh complications for the international campaign against Islamic State.

The American people have been forced to pay untold millions for a ten-year CIA and Pentagon program to undermine and overthrow the Syrian government, and now we are supposed to pay millions more to provide welfare for the refugees Obama created. If Obama wants to take in refugees from the chaos in Syria, there are probably plenty of vacant rooms in the White House.

According to current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, US Central Command may have been involved in a year long effort to obscure the fact that America’s strategy to combat ISIS simply was not effective. "At the least, the prospect that senior officials intentionally skewed intelligence conclusions has raised questions about how much Mr. Obama, Congress and the public can believe the military’s assessments."  

After calling repeatedly for the US to stop supporting militants in an effort to oust the Assad government in Syria, Hawaii Congresswoman Gabbard has now introduced bi-partisan legislation to put an end to what she calls an "illegal", CIA-sponsored war.

There are so many strands of lies and distortions that it is now almost impossible for Official Washington to disentangle itself from all the false narratives that the neocons and the liberal hawks have spun in support of their various “regime change” strategies. So, the American people are left with the mainstream U.S. news media endlessly repeating storylines that are either completely false or highly exaggerated. Official Washington’s many false narratives about Russia and Syria have gotten so tangled that they have become a danger to the struggle against jihadist terrorism and conceivably a threat to the future of the planet.

"Give me liberty, or give me death!" – Partrick Henry, American Founding Father, 1775

"They value their civil liberties more than they value life. I disagree with that. You want to be free and dead? I’d rather be not free and alive" – Billionaire Hillary Clinton donor Haim Saban, 2015

"Daesh has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex. Until that point is understood, battles may be won, but the war will be lost. Jihadists will be killed, only to be reborn again in future generations and raised on the same books. The attacks in Paris have exposed this contradiction again, but as happened after 9/11, it risks being erased from our analyses and our consciences."

• French, U.S. Troops Enter Mali Hotel as Gunmen Hold Hostages (BBG)
• Top suspect seen on CCTV in metro during Paris attacks (Reuters)
• Paris Attacks’ Alleged Ringleader, Now Dead, Had Slipped Into Europe Unchecked (WSJ)
• Global shares march on as alarm bells ring for metals (Reuters)
• European Stocks Rise With Asian Shares as Zinc, Ringgit Advance (BBG)
• World leaders arrive for summit amid heavy security (Reuters)