War

Copying the tactics of the coup-meisters, pro-Russian Ukrainians seize government buildings in the east. The coup-meisters were supposedly good guys when they did it, but these are supposedly bad guys for doing the same.

Report claims the election in Afghanistan was successful.

"A bigger-than-expected turnout in Afghanistan's presidential election and the Taliban's failure to derail the vote has raised questions about the capacity of the insurgents to tip the country back into chaos as foreign troops head home."

I have no way to judge if this is honest or propaganda. Eric Margolis calls the election a sham.

"Afghanistan’s national election held this week is a sham. A group of candidates, handpicked by the US, will pretend to compete in an election whose outcome has already been determined – by Washington."

If the outcome is so certain, the article should name the winner in advance.

US officials knew the sarin gas attack in Syria that almost triggered a war was a false flag attack.

"Now we learn from Hersh, citing senior intelligence officials, that even as US officials were proclaiming that only the Syrian government had the capability to deploy chemical weapons, and specifically sarin, Western intelligence agencies and the Pentagon knew better. As I noted here, the Russians secured samples days after the late August incident, concluding that the sarin wasn’t military grade and the means of delivery appeared makeshift.
Hersh takes the story further, relating that the Russians sent the samples to the British, who confirmed their analysis. At which point the joint chiefs led by anti-interventionist Gen. Jack Dempsey – who had previously gone public in warning against the geopolitical consequences of a US attack on Syria – went to the President "with a more serious worry: that the attack sought by the White House would be an unjustified act of aggression. It was the joint chiefs," reports Hersh, citing former intelligence officials, "who led Obama to change course." In a laugh-out-loud moment, Hersh writes:
"The official White House explanation for the turnabout – the story the press corps told – was that the president, during a walk in the Rose Garden with Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, suddenly decided to seek approval for the strike from a bitterly divided Congress with which he’d been in conflict for years. The former Defense Department official told me that the White House provided a different explanation to members of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon: the bombing had been called off because there was intelligence ‘that the Middle East would go up in smoke’ if it was carried out.""

That was new intelligence?

"So they lied to everyone, perhaps even to themselves. Because neither of these explanations even approaches the truth – which is that the President, even after being confronted with evidence he’d been hoaxed, decided to try to rope everyone into the lie. Rather than call the whole the whole thing off, the White House did a good imitation of observing the democratic process – all the while asserting in testimony before Congress that the Assad regime had "gassed their own people" and that the rebels were the victims rather than the perpetrators. Indeed, they assert the same nonsense to this day, as indicated by the terse denials included in Hersh’s piece."

I didn't think so.

"Another bombshell: the Benghazi "consulate" that was attacked and in which Ambassador Stevens was killed was never anything other than a cover enabling the shipment of arms taken from Gaddafi’s arsenals to Syrian rebel factions."

This was talked about at the time, but more evidence is always good.

"In the wake of the Benghazi attack, the rat line continued to function, albeit without a US window into its operations. Heavy military equipment of the sort the US had always sought to keep out of rebel hands began to show up on the Syrian battlefield. With the US and the Brits out of the picture, the way was paved for the necessary technical components of the false flag operation to be shipped from Benghazi, and that now appears to be a real possibility."

More evidence the terrorists killed Ambassador Stevens because he was restricting the weapons.