Senate Republicans asked President Obama Thursday to turn over all communications he and his aides have had with the IRS since 2010, hoping to find out whether the tax agency shared private taxpayer information with political operatives at the White House.

The request, made in a letter obtained by The Washington Times, is signed by new Finance Chairman Orrin G. Hatch and all 13 other Republicans on the committee, and is addressed specifically to Mr. Obama, saying they want to see if his employees broke the law by acquiring or sharing private information.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday said he has set up a committee to explore running for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, portraying himself as a proven winner and a conservative willing to work with Democrats.

House Republicans will kick off February with a vote to repeal Obamacare, providing new members the chance to put their opposition on the record as the party chips away at the overhaul and devises some reforms of its own.

“We will begin the month renewing our commitment to individual freedom and opportunity,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said Thursday in a memo previewing next week’s votes.

Both the Russian and U.S. military continue to stoke World War 3 fears, with a Russian deputy prime minister now claiming that Russia’s nuclear weapons cannot be stopped by U.S. missile defense systems in the event the new Cold War becomes hot.

To the chagrin of the Obama Administration and NATO Russia has not invaded. This latest admission came twice today. Once by inference and the other a direct admission from Ukrainian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Victor Muzhenko.

The crisis gripping the US state apparatus is directly threatening the survival of the Empire. This is no longer merely the opinion of Thierry Meyssan, but the subject that is shaking the ruling class in Washington to the point that the honorary president of the Council on Foreign Relations is demanding the resignation of the chief advisers of President Obama and the appointment of a new team. This clash has nothing to do with a typical opposition of Democrats and Republicans, nor even with that of the doves / hawks. What is at stake is leadership in the United States and NATO.

The ISIL operative, identified as Yousaf al-Salafi, told Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies that he received funding through the US, the Express Tribune reported on Wednesday.

Salafi was taken into custody in December 2014, according to the paper, although other reports said he was arrested on January 22.

“During investigations, Yousaf al Salafi revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organization in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria,” a source close to the investigations made the announcement.

The operative also admitted to receiving $600 for each person he managed to recruit and send to war-torn Syria.

A man believed to be a Pakistani commander of Islamic State or Daish, Yousaf al Salafi, has confessed to law enforcement agencies in Pakistan to getting funds via the United States, according to a leading Pakistani newspaper siting its sources.

Al Salafi and two companions were arrested in Lahore, Pakistan on January 22, according to AFP.

“During investigations, Yousaf al Salafi revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organization in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria,” a source close to the investigations revealed toUrdu-language Daily Express on condition of anonymity, according to its sister English newspaper The Express Tribune. The newspaper also claimed that Al Salafi was in fact arrested last year sometime in December.

Rumors are circulating of an ever widening rift between the Clinton and Obama camps, most recently worsened by the president’s State of the Union address last week. Clinton operatives repeatedly asked to be allowed input into the SOTU messaging in the weeks leading up to the address. These requests were ignored – entirely, by the Obama White House. Now with dissatisfaction regarding the general tone and content of Barack Obama’s SOTU, the Clinton Machine is said to be preparing a “talk right over them” offensive, which will further minimize the importance and influence of the now fading Obama presidency as the Clintons prepare to launch their 2016 campaign in earnest later this spring.

New government documents obtained on Monday by a public-interest organization that investigates government corruption and suspected criminal conduct by public servants may be the "smoking gun" that reveals the Obama administration knowing released a false narrative following a terrorist attack in Libya.

It should come as no surprise to patriots that Barack Hussein Obama is a deceiver. A duplicitous and organized mastermind, Obama has done nothing short of light the fuses of many bombs that have exploded since he took office in ’08.

A recent report showed that under both Obama and Hillary Clinton, the U.S. government switched sides and went from opposing Al-Qaeda to supporting them. The “reason” is because they wanted Al-Qaeda to help them depose of then Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi.

President Obama, speaking to an audience of mostly young people celebrating India’s Republic Day in New Delhi on Tuesday, told the crowd, “I realise that the sight of an American president as your chief guest on Republic Day would have once seemed unimaginable. But my visit reflects the possibilities of a new moment.” He pointed out that he was the first American president to participate in the country’s Republic Day and boasted, “And I’m the first American president to come to your country twice!”

The president went on to refer to himself an astonishing 118 times in the short 33-minute speech, touching on injustices in the United States and in his own personal life.

The congressional Democrats involved in writing the Affordable Care Act told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that they intended for consumers in all states to be eligible for subsidies, and they argue that the law they drafted reflects that intention.

Opponents have challenged the Obama administration’s enforcement of the law, arguing that it only allows subsidies to be paid in states that set up their own exchanges, but not to customers in most of the country who use the federal exchange.

The Obama administration said it would drop a plan to tax so-called 529 college savings accounts, after the proposal sparked widespread criticism over its potential impact on the middle class.

While still traveling overseas to India and Saudi Arabia, President Barack Obama allegedly is seeking revenge on a man he treats more as his nemesis rather than his "closest ally" in the Middle East -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Obama and his White House are steaming over the invitation to speak directly to House of Representatives which was extended to the Israeli leader by Speaker of the House John Boehner, no fan of President Obama. But according to the Israeli media on Tuesday, an Obama friend and political ally was dispatched to Israel to help Netanyahu's opposition defeat him in the upcoming Israeli elections.

US Big Lies proliferate with disturbing regularity. Obama is a notorious serial liar. His January 20 State of the Union address the latest example.

A previous article said it combined demagogic rubbish, duplicitous boilerplate, pure fantasy, colossal arrogance, and a contemptible assertion of US supremacy.

Conservative American oligarchic industrialists Charles and David Koch plan to raise $889 million to spend on political operations ahead of the 2016 election. The sum would be more than twice as much as the Koch network spent during the 2012 election.

The man who says he accidentally flew a drone over the White House this week works for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, but not in the area of drone technology, officials said Tuesday.

"The employee was off duty and is not involved in work related to drones or unmanned aerial vehicles in any capacity at NGA," the agency said in a statement.

The statement did not identify the man, or say what position he holds.

Join us in raising our voices to protest Netanyahu’s speech, not because it’s a partisan snub, nor because the date is close to the Israeli elections, but because Netanyahu is going to Washington to undermine the U.S. strategy of diplomacy with Iran.

Instead of letting diplomacy work, Netanyahu wants the U.S. to impose harsher sanctions on Iran, all but ensuring that talks collapse and increasing the risk of war.

Raise your voice now and tell Congress to boycott Netanyahu’s speech:

Israel’s Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer defended on Sunday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech before the US Congress on March 3, just two weeks before Israeli national elections, saying it was the prime minister’s “sacred duty” to present his stance on Iran — a stance sharply at odds with the Obama administration.

Read more: Israel's US envoy: PM's planned Congress speech 'a sacred duty' | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-us-envoy-pms-planned-congress-spe...
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Spain’s foreign and defence ministers will negotiate the amendment, as requested by the United States last month, “with a view to hosting the deployment for an indefinite time”, she told a news conference.

The White House and the Pentagon did not bother to “pay their respects” in person to the people of France after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The House of Saud – “our” top bastards in the Persian Gulf – is of course much more valuable.

From all appearances, the Obama regime’s negotiations with Iran, overseen by Russia, were on the verge of ending the contrived nuclear issue. An end to the confrontation is unacceptable to the Zionist Israeli government and to their neocon agents in America. The Republicans, a political party owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Israel Lobby, hastily invited Netanyahu, the crazed ruler of both Israel and America, to quickly come to tell the Republican Congress, which the insouciant American voters put in place, how to prohibit any accommodation with Iran.

Washington’s attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.

The New Chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, has declared the Russian news service, RT, which broadcasts in multiple languages, to be a terrorist organization equivalent to Boko Haram and the Islamic State, and Standard and Poor’s just downgraded Russia’s credit rating to junk status.

Clifton has a theory on why America’s crisis in creating new businesses is a well-kept secret. He writes:

“My hunch is that no one talks about the birth and death rates of American business because Wall Street and the White House, no matter which party occupies the latter, are two gigantic institutions of persuasion. The White House needs to keep you in the game because their political party needs your vote. Wall Street needs the stock market to boom, even if that boom is fueled by illusion.”

The US Secret Service has recovered a "device" on the White House grounds, which according to reports was a small drone, but there was no immediate danger from the incident, the White House said.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters traveling with President Barack Obama in India on Monday that the Secret Service — the agency that protects Obama and his family, and secures the White House grounds — is investigating.

Earnest described the object as a "device" but said he did not know what it was.

Israel's Prime Minister on Sunday said openly and loudly that he will go anywhere in the world that he is invited to speak about the clear and present danger posed by Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and the threat to Israel, the United States and European nations posed by radical Islam, according to the Middle Eastern news agencies. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a former officer with the Israeli special forces, while not mentioning names left the impression he was referring to his controversial upcoming visit to the United States.

Many Americans have been predicting this for well over a decade, but it appears the big axe is finally set to swing at America. Amidst a spate of global currency moves causing seismic shifts in global assets, military conflicts are fast enveloping the planet. An increasingly dysfunctional US government struggles over war with Iran, which incidentally just dumped the dollar, in a domestic environment that is steeped in racism, police brutality and irrational fear without end. Our water supply is being swiftly contaminated, all over the country, by fracking. And above all, corruption and lies are being exposed on the internet at breakneck speed, making it painfully obvious, to even the most political clueless, that something terribly wrong is about to happen.

This is the story that nobody dares touch. This is the story that ended my career in Hollywood back in 1994.

Despite having reported the discovery of Dr. Haut's signed report confirming the existence of a second wound to Vincent Foster's neck, radio host Rush Limbaugh to this very day refers to Vincent Foster's death as a suicide.

Even Matt Drudge, when presented with the FBI records proving that the FBI fraudulently manufactured Lisa Foster's recognition of the gun found at Fort Marcy Park, refused to get involved, opting instead for a story accusing Sidney Blumenthal of domestic violence (for which Drudge was then sued and made famous).

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Everyone is focusing on Bill Clinton's wild parties with Jeff Epstein and speculating on how this might deter Hillary from running in 2016.

Quite the contrary, yet another sex scandal for Bill will actually HELP Hillary because she will win sympathy from the female voters by playing the wronged woman, and more importantly, focusing on Bill's sexcapades distracts from the real Hillary scandals that could end her career such as the cattle futures trades, Travel office firings, herself being fired from the Watergate committee, being photographed with a known cocaine smuggler in front of the White House Christmas Tree, and of course, the murder of Vince Foster!

We encountered one of those while on a road trip through Arkansas – and stopping off in Hope. It is not only the famed birthplace of former president Bill Clinton, as well as former governor Mike Huckabee, it is also the hometown and burial ground of Vince Foster, a man who was childhood neighbors with Bill, partner at the Rose Law Firm with Hillary, and as deputy legal council for the White House, one of the closest keepers of the Clinton Administration’s most personal secrets.

Early into the first term, when the Clintons found themselves already embroiled in scandals including those surrounding the Travel Staff and Whitewater financial investigations, Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Darcy Park, officially ruled to be a suicide – but suggesting much more.

My humble thesis tonight is that the entire 20th Century was a giant mistake.

And that you can put the blame for this monumental error squarely on Thomas Woodrow Wilson——-a megalomaniacal madman who was the very worst President in American history……..well, except for the last two.

His unforgiveable error was to put the United States into the Great War for utterly no good reason of national interest. The European war posed not an iota of threat to the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE, or Worcester MA or Sacramento CA. In that respect, Wilson’s putative defense of “freedom of the seas” and the rights of neutrals was an empty shibboleth; his call to make the world safe for democracy, a preposterous pipe dream.

Actually, his thinly veiled reason for plunging the US into the cauldron of the Great War was to obtain a seat at the peace conference table——so that he could remake the world in response to god’s calling.

Murder at Camp Delta is a new book by Joseph Hickman, a former guard at Guantanamo. It's neither fiction nor speculation. When President Obama says "We tortured some folks," Hickman provides at least three cases -- in addition to many others we know about from secret sites around the world -- in which the statement needs to be modified to "We murdered some folks." Of course, murder is supposed to be acceptable in war (and in whatever you call what Obama does with drones) while torture is supposed to be, or used to be, a scandal. But what about tortures to death? What about deadly human experimentation? Does that have a Nazi enough ring to disturb anyone?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended on Sunday a planned speech to the U.S. Congress about Iran, saying he had a moral obligation to take every opportunity to speak out on an issue that poses a mortal threat to his country.

His visit to Washington in March has opened up a political rift in the United States and has drawn accusations in Israel that Netanyahu is undermining a strategic alliance to win an election due two weeks after the trip.

Barack Obama is an African American man. He is black and he was born in Hawaii. He is the president of the United States.

Despite all this, conservative author and convicted felon Dinesh D'Souza tried to convince Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Monday that the president has not lived the "African American experience" for reasons that first included the president not having "descended from slaves on either side of his family."

Wall Street is on the edge of another financial tsunami, and this is driving the world towards general war, with the latest provocations in Ukraine serving as the immediate trigger for confrontation with Russia.

As Citibank was the latest of the Wall Street too-big-to-fail banks to post serious fourth-quarter losses, and as the Wall Street banks were announcing 50,000 layoffs, half-way around the globe the Ukrainian government was launching new provocations against Russia, meeting with top NATO generals and announcing a draft to call up 100,000 new troops to launch a military offensive against its own citizens in eastern Ukraine.

President Obama raised $1.072 billion for his 2012 successful presidential campaign. This is after he raised $750 million for his 2008 campaign.

How well is Hillary Clinton expected to do in the fundraising department?

According to aides, her efforts will "astound and intimidate."

THE POLITICO reports that President Obama, during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, gave shout outs to a number of American companies in an effort to highlight the strength of the U.S. economy. Nearly all of those companies, it turns out, are big political spenders and have contributed heavily to Democrats.

One of those companies was eBay, which Obama cited as an example of how “millions of Americans [are working] in jobs that didn’t even exist 10 or 20 years ago.” That now seems like an unfortunate choice, because less than 24 hours after Obama’s speech, eBay announced it was cutting 2,400 jobs, or about 7 percent of its workforce. Investors welcomed the layoffs, and the company’s stock jumped more than 4 percent on the news.

White House and State Department won’t meet with Netanyahu on his March visit to address both houses of Congress. Emergency Committee for Israel calls this a snub.

The head of a leading Kremlin-owned bank warned on Friday that further banking sanctions would lead Russia and the U.S. to the “brink of war.”

Seven months after federal officials fired CGI Federal for its botched work on Obamacare website Healthcare.gov, the IRS awarded the same company a $4.5 million IT contract for its new Obamacare tax program.

In Tuesday’s State of the Union, Obama said The ‘Shadow Of Crisis Has Passed’, and the one and the only thing I thought was: ‘Good, so now we can tackle the crisis itself?!’. If speeches like the SOTU Tuesday night, and the reactions to it, make anything clear, it’s that the PR guys won the fight against critical thinking. Sure, there are people for whom that shadow has passed, but a president is supposed to be there for all Americans, not just for those who finance his campaigns and those of his successors.

President Obama proposed new laws to protect Americans and “especially our kids” from hackers during his State of the Union address. Swaddled in that almost tender-sounding language, though, was a plan that would strengthen the government’s ability to go after journalists like Barrett Brown.

In fact, the new cybersecurity legislation would further criminalize the kind of activity for which Brown is due to be sentenced in Dallas federal court on Jan. 22. Judge Sam A. Lindsay will decide whether to let Brown, 33, off with time served for the more than two years he’s already spent behind bars, or imprison him for a maximum of eight-and-a-half years. Brown struck a deal to plead guilty to, among other charges, a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) felony.

Ending the US occupation of Iraq in 2011, President Obama tried to portray himself as a peacemaker. He’s still trying to sell that narrative, even as he quickly escalates in his new Iraq war.

The State of the Union address nominally continued that story, but between talking up further escalation of the ISIS war, and commanders suggesting they could extend the Afghan occupation even further, President Obama’s status as a war-time president from start to finish seems secured.

American soldiers will deploy to Ukraine this spring to begin training four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard, the head of US Army Europe Lt. Gen Ben Hodges said during his first visit to Kiev on Wednesday.

The number of troops heading to the Yavoriv Training Area near the city of L'viv — which is about 40 miles from the Polish border — is still being determined, however.

White House says PM's address to Congress 'departs from protocol' after it says Israel has not given advance notice of the invitation.

We already did our post-mortem of last night's teleprompted annual evangelizing of Barack Obama's "straight to folks" propaganda that would make both Goebbels and Dzerzhinsky blush. So instead of repeating ourselves, here is AP with its own fact check of what can only be dubbed lie after lie, courtesy of the president of the "free world" and the head of the "most transparent administration ever."

Central to the problems with the recommended updates to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) are vague terms that could easily be interpreted to prosecute innocents, no matter how weak their links to actual criminal activity. Anyone who "intentionally exceeds authorized access to a protected computer, and thereby obtains information from such computer" could be charged. That sounds acceptable on first inspection, but the definition of "exceeds authorized access" includes using a computer with proper authorization "to obtain or alter information" the relevant party is not entitled to look at, "or for a purpose that the accesser knows is not authorized by the computer owner".

He promised his speech wouldn’t be a “laundry list.” True enough: It was more like a laundry truck, stuffed full of old and misguided ideas from his previous SOTUs. Before the speech slides down the memory hole, here are five moments to remember and then forget again until next year.

President Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address was an important reminder that few professions in these United States of America are as profoundly immune to basic learning curves then that of politicians, speechwriters, and bureaucrats. It was a speech that bragged about the booming economy at a time when the labor-force participation rate is the worst it’s been since Jimmy Carter was president. It called for "everyone to get their fair shot," three years after this same president called for "everyone to get their fair shot." And it championed a series of "free" programs and initiatives that will magically create pain-free prosperity for everyone, without any tradeoffs.

Yay!

Indeed, to the extent that any one speech matters, last night's SOTU most definitely did not sound the bell of something new and different when it comes to Barack Obama or American politics more generally. Far from it. It represents yet one more reiteration of the same-old, same-old, of a 20th century vision of top-down governance and rank partisanship that already controls and commands far too many aspects of our social, cultural, and economic activities. Like so many American presidents before him, Obama just knows in his bones there's no problem that more money and regulation can't make go away. At least until the next SOTU.

From the point of view of the U.S. military and the national security state, the period from September 12, 2001, to late last night could be summed up in a single word: more. What Washington funded with your tax dollars was a bacchanalia of expansion intended, as is endlessly reiterated, to keep America “safe.” But here’s the odd thing: as the structure of what’s always called “security” is built out ever further into our world and our lives, that world only seems to become less secure. Odder yet, that “more” is rarely a focus of media coverage, though its reality is glaringly obvious. The details may get coverage but the larger reality -- the thing being created in Washington -- seems of remarkably little interest.

A man suspected of travelling from Nova Scotia with potentially hazardous chemicals and arrested at an Ottawa hotel was identified by the RCMP as a former military biochemical weapons specialist from the United States.

If you believe all of the pre-packaged government and corporate media propaganda, then you might think that ISIS is just another evil, grassroots Salafist militant movement, one with no connections at all to foreign intelligence agencies like the CIA, Britain’s MI6, Turkish (NATO) intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Israeli intelligence, or Pakistan’s ISI.

Well, you might just be wrong…

That headline sounds crazy, right? It must be untrue, right? Well, read on, because you might be absolutely shocked by what you learn. As you will read about below, the Obama administration has used al-Qaeda fighters and other radical Islamic groups in the past to topple governments. And without a doubt, Barack Obama is absolutely determined to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. In fact, he came dangerously close to taking us to war with Syria earlier in his presidency before backing down in the face of overwhelming public pressure. But what Obama wants to do in Syria has not changed, and he is using the same playbook that he used in Libya and elsewhere to get it done.

Is the Pentagon preparing for civil unrest in the United States?

With the Russian Ruble about to collapse Russia and China are pushing for a collapse of the U.S. dollar. It’s a race between the superpowers to see which currency will collapse first.

Experts have said that the U.S. and Europe cannot survive for much longer, and with Russia’s economic surplus, its looking likely that the Ruble will out-live the dollar.

While past presidents have always invited special guests to sit with their spouses during the annual State of the Union address to the nation, historians have pointed out they usually invited those who either achieved an act of bravery or contributed to the betterment of the United States. However, President Barack Obama is known for inviting guests to sit with First Lady Michelle Obama to illustrated what he believes are his achievements and his contributions. Such was the case with Obama's special guest on Tuesday night, someone who according to U.S. law is in the United States illegally, college student Ana Zamora.

It seems like an eternity ago when Obama delivered the following extensively choreographed "Statement by the President on ISIL", in which he praised US anti-terrorist tactics, giving Yemen and its "partners" as an example of "successful" US foreign intervention.

The United States is deploying some 700 soldiers to a strategic location in the Horn of Africa on a security and training mission, a report says.

Exactly six years after President Obama took office in the depths of the recession, the economy has finally improved enough for the president to brag about it Tuesday night in his annual State of the Union address.

An interesting thing happened in Washington recently, and it had nothing to do with Beltway politics, Democrats vs. Republicans, or any of the other standard fare for the middle of the week in mid-January. Rather, a relatively small, little publicized event took place at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a prominent liberal-leaning think tank in Washington.

The event, “Russia’s Opposition in a Time of War and Crisis,” featured prominent Russian liberal opposition parliamentarian (member of the Russian Duma) Ilya Ponomarev, a noted critic of Russian President Putin, providing a detailed presentation regarding the current political climate in Russia, and the potential for the ousting or overthrow of the Russian government. Yes, you heard that right. A Russian elected official came to the United States to give a talk about how best to effect regime change in his own country.

H&R Block, the nation’s largest retail tax preparation company warns that the newly released Obamacare tax code, officially called the Affordable Care Act, is likely to confuse millions of taxpayers who try to tackle their tax returns for 2014.

“Now that the Affordable Care Act has made health care a tax issue, no one can understand it,” H&R Block flatly tells taxpayers in a video that resides on its dedicated Obamacare web site.

A former IRS Commissioner agrees, and cautions that the new tax requirements will be a “shock to the system,” especially afflicting low-income earners who have never itemized on their tax return.

Judging by his recent history, it doesn’t really matter what President Obama says in Tuesday’s State of the Union address — Congress is going to ignore him anyway.

Mr. Obama has the second-worst record of getting his State of the Union policy requests enacted into law of any president in the last five decades, according to an analysis by two scholars that puts him only above the unelected two-year presidency of Gerald Ford.

While watching the international news network CNN today, one can’t help but notice the quick-fire talking points and messaging being rolled-out in rapid succession, as propagandists work feverishly to build-up the case for a possible military intervention in Yemen.

As President Barack Obama prepares to give his highly-anticipated State of the Union address in which he's expected to target the people he believes are America's real enemy -- the American people who possess wealth -- the nations of Iran and Russia plan to sign what is a significant memorandum of understanding (MOU) on increasing the two nations' military cooperation.

Representatives of the US Army Command will arrive in Ukraine in the coming days, Ukrainian military announced. The visit comes as the Kiev forces have launched a large-scale offensive on the militia positions in the south-east of the country.

READ MORE: Poroshenko rejected Putin’s artillery withdrawal plan, began assault - Kremlin

“This week, a delegation from the US Army Command, headed by Commander of US Army Europe, Lt. Gen [Frederick Ben] Hodges, will arrive in Ukraine,” Vladislav Seleznyov, spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces, said at a media briefing in Kiev on Monday.

The spokesman also said that Ukraine will take part in the NATO Military Committee conference on January 20-22.

A Pentagon plan to arm and train the so-called moderate militants in Syria to fight against the ISIL terrorist group is a “total fraud” and “bogus” claim to carve out a CIA base in the region, an American journalist in Missouri says.

The United States is fighting a “multi-front war” against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad because he operates independently from the West, said Dean Henderson, an author and columnist at Veterans Today.

Who in the world stands with a country when it is under the looming threat of a major U.S. government intervention? When Guatemala (1954), the Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973), and Haiti (2004) were in trouble, there was no one. Cuba was different; over the years, at different times, the Soviet Union, Latin American countries, and nations voting in the UN General Assembly all weighed in with support and solidarity. And Cuba’s socialist revolution survives.

Now the U. S. government targets Venezuela, its socialist government and national sovereignty. This time, however, the intended victim is not alone.

The central challenge of President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address is convincing Americans the next 12 months will showcase a real turnaround for a second term defined by self-inflicted wounds, public disillusionment and calls to action that never materialized.

In October 2014, the UN General Assembly voted to recommend ending the US embargo on Cuba. Of the 193 UN members, 188 voted in favour. The only country siding with the US to continue the embargo was Israel. (The remaining three countries abstained.)

This is not the first time the UN has taken up the question. In fact, it is the 23rd time, having taken it up annually since 1992. On every occasion since 1992, the UN voted for the embargo to end. Israel remains the sole supporter to the US position.

Republican senators vowed Sunday to pursue additional sanctions against Iran, brushing off unusually blunt and dire warnings from President Obama that any more penalties for Tehran would threaten to scuttle nuclear talks and possibly lead to war.

Barack Obama enters the final two years of his presidency with a blemish on his legacy that looks impossible to erase: the decline of the middle class he has promised to rescue.

When the skeletal remains of Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore were found strapped into his Ford Explorer submerged beneath the California Aqueduct in 1998 it brought an end to one of America's most high profile missing person cases.

The fact that Devore was on his way to deliver a film script that promised to explain the 'real reason' why the US invaded Panama, has long given rise to a slew of conspiracies surrounding the nature of his 'accidental' death.

Escalating his battle with congressional Republicans, President Obama will propose $320 billion in higher taxes in his State of the Union address, mostly by raising the rate on capital gains and closing tax loopholes for wealthier families, senior administration officials said Saturday.

The top Obama official overseeing the so-called rollout of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, commonly called ObamaCare, has notified the administration on Friday that she his leaving her position after serving five years. Marilyn Tavenner, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) administrator, said she will official vacate her office in February.

Tavenner's service included the rollout snafu in which the multi-million dollar HealthCare.gov website cause enormous problems for both the Obama administration and the Americans attempting to enroll. It also included allegations of "gaming the numbers" when it was discovered the administration released a report containing inflated enrollment statistics.

The Charlie Hebdo affair has many of the characteristics of a false flag operation. The attack on the cartoonists' office was a disciplined professional attack of the kind associated with highly trained special forces; yet the suspects who were later corralled and killed seemed bumbling and unprofessional. It is like two different sets of people.

Usually Muslim terrorists are prepared to die in the attack; yet the two professionals who hit Charlie Hebdo were determined to escape and succeeded, an amazing feat. Their identity was allegedly established by the claim that they conveniently left for the authorities their ID in the getaway car. Such a mistake is inconsistent with the professionalism of the attack and reminds me of the undamaged passport found miraculously among the ruins of the two WTC towers that served to establish the identity of the alleged 9/11 hijackers.

President Obama warned Congress Friday that new economic sanctions against Iran could lead directly to war, and British Prime Minister David Cameron said he’s personally appealing to top lawmakers to hold off and allow diplomatic negotiations with Iran to play out.

President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron meet at the White House to discuss a range of issues: economic growth, cyber security, Iran, ISIS, counterterrorism, ebola, and Russia's actions in Ukraine.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote in February to decide whether municipalities can bypass state laws to provide their own internet service – a policy that President Barack Obama threw his weight behind earlier this week.

The vote is controversial but has support from the Obama administration, and proponents say it would give the public more options and faster service. Many Republicans and opponents argue that permitting such behavior exceeds the FCC’s authority.

The Obama administration shut off the bank accounts of an Indian tribe as part of its Operation Choke Point program, The Daily Caller has learned.

The Otoe-Missouria tribe of Red Rock, Oklahoma reported that it is the latest victim of Operation Choke Point, according to a whistleblower response the tribe sent to the U.S. Consumer Coalition, which was obtained by TheDC.

Political analyst Dr. Wilmer Leon believes that the United States has no understanding of the current “geopolitical circumstance”.

The G20 told you on November 20, 2014, they plan to steal your bank account. Secretary of Treasury, Jack Lew, has positioned the federal government to steal back federal pensions and now your local police can rob you blind for the crime of going out in public.

The White House on Thursday said legislation was not necessary to settle so-called "net neutrality" rules because the Federal Communications Commission had the authority to write them.

The White House confirmed Thursday that Canada has postponed the North American Leaders Summit scheduled for next month but would not say whether tension over the Keystone XL oil pipeline is the reason.

Amnesty International has released satellite images that it says show widespread destruction in two Nigerian towns attacked by Boko Haram last weekend.

In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the president asked Congress for a Declaration of War, got it, and began to steel the nation for the sacrifices necessary for victory. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the president cowed Congress into ceding its war-making powers (in the form of an authorization for the use of military force), sent the military into indecisive action in Afghanistan, declared war on a country uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks (Iraq), and sent the American people to shop.

Well into its second decade, the undeclared and undefined “Global War on Terror” has yet to gain any measure of security for America’s profligate expenditure of lives and treasure.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution, establishing our country as a republic, wanted no part of a system that codified the executive as the decider of war and peace.

Having unveiled his non-boots-on-the-ground strategy in September, President Obama’s “promise” was quickly proved fragile when General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, indicated to the House of Representatives armed services committee that the strength of ISIS relative to the Iraqi army may be such that he would recommend abandoning Obama’s oft-repeated pledge against returning US ground troops to combat in Iraq. It seems another promise is about to be broken as Bloomberg reports Senator John Cornyn said President Obama told congressional leaders during meeting today at White House he would seek authorization for military force on Islamic State. Boehner’s office, in separate statement after meeting, said Republicans would work with him to build support.

In comments today following a meeting with President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R – KY) said he believes that an authorization vote on the ISIS war could come in the “near future.”

The EU governments got together on January 11th to condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo. However, they concluded that the best response is to curtail freespeech, ramp up propaganda, increase surveillance on citizens, and place a ban on the types of things Charlie Hebdo published.

Brushing aside Democrats’ warnings of permanent political doom, House Republicans voted Thursday to cancel President Obama’s deportation amnesties, casting it as an effort to undo a runaway White House untethered either to the Constitution or even to its own words and promises.

In a debate freighted with political, symbolic and constitutional significance, House Speaker John A. Boehner read the 22 times Mr. Obama had denied he had the kinds of executive powers he ended up claiming last year when he announced his new amnesty, which applies to millions of illegal immigrants, granting them tentative legal status and work permits so they can compete legally for jobs.

Taking direct aim at the oil-and-gas industry, President Obama on Wednesday put forth long-awaited regulations on methane emissions, setting an ambitious goal of reducing those emissions by 45 percent over the next decade.

The move comes just days before the State of the Union address and underscores that, in the final two years of presidency, Mr. Obama is looking to cement his legacy on climate-change and environmental issues.

White House adviser John Podesta is leaving President Obama’s team to join Hillary Clinton’s inner circle as she plots a 2016 presidential run, the Wall Street Journal first reported.

Before there were the lost Lerner emails, the congressional hearings and the retaliatory budget cuts, there was the Albuquerque Tea Party, a group of politically minded folks in New Mexico who wanted to get together and share ideas for taking back their country. The IRS had other ideas about them.

Five years after the Albuquerque Tea Party applied for tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, they remain in limbo — their application apparently no closer to being approved or denied than it was the day they mailed it to the IRS on Dec. 29, 2009.

France’s prime minister said the people would “cry out their love of liberty.” And they did—marchers in Paris chanted “liberté” in response to the murder of the cartoonists, who were well-known for their provocative cartoons lampooning everyone, regardless of taste or decency.

But as Daniel Wickham points out (as amplified by the journalist Glenn Greenwald), many of the 40 leaders attending the rally in Paris don’t have the best record of defending the principle of free speech so viciously attacked earlier this week:

A Jerusalem resident was physically assaulted and battered as he attempted to speak to participants in an Israeli-backed US “Muslim leaders” delegation at the al-Aqsa mosque on Monday evening.

Some of the incident was captured on video by the victim of the assault, a frequent contributor to The Electronic Intifada who goes by the pseudonym Zalameh.

Members of the delegation are taking part in the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), a faithwashing junket sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute.

As The Electronic Intifada reported earlier this month, the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute receives millions of dollars from extreme anti-Muslim donors and is a major contractor to the Israeli military.

Not even the King of England at the time of the American Revolution had the authority to suspend laws unilaterally, the Law Library expert wrote in a memorandum to the Senate committee tasked with responding to President Obama’s recent executive orders on the enforcement of immigration law.

One of the symptoms of a declining empire is that it becomes less and less productive and therefore less relevant to other countries. Any empire, whilst in its prime, will have a strong currency. As its productive relevance declines, so will its currency. Invariably, its leaders attempt to keep the currency strong, in spite of the decline in national relevance. Rather than return to a more productive condition, the empire almost invariably resorts to force.

The US has been unusually forceful in this regard. In order to retain the dollar as the currency upon which oil is denominated and paid for, the US has attacked countries (Iraq, Libya) when their leaders have announced that they will, in future, accept other currencies or gold as payment for oil.