In a break from the usual softballs that Barack Obama receives at news conferences, the President on Friday endured some tough questions, including a testy exchange with ABC's Jon Karl. The White House correspondent pressed Obama, looking for a "direct response" to a previous question:

Will the U.S. launch strikes against Syria, regardless of whether Congress approves it? Obama lectured, "And you're not getting a direct response. Brianna asked the question very well. You know?" Karl shot back, "It's a pretty basic question." An annoyed Obama, in Russia for the G20 meeting, complained, "Did you think that I was going to give you a different answer? No."

VOR: US may attack Syria without UN sanction

■ The US drive to war presents a spectacle of international gangsterism and lying not seen since the heyday of the military dictatorships and fascist regimes of the 1930s—of Mussolini, Hitler and Tojo. The modus operandi of the United States government in world affairs today is in all essentials no different from that employed in the rape of Abyssinia, Poland and Manchuria.

■ The words Nuremburg prosecutor and Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson used to describe the Nazi war criminals apply in full force to the political gangsters who constitute the American government today. These figures, Jackson said, “are surprised that there is any such thing as law. [They] did not rely on any law at all. Their program ignored and defied all law... International Law, natural law, German law, any law at all was to these men simply a propaganda device to be invoked when it helped and to be ignored when it would condemn what they wanted to do.”

World Net Daily describes the video as follows: A video posted on YouTube, embedded below, shows Free Syrian Army, or FSA, rebel forces launching a Sarin gas attack on a Syrian village. Another video posted on YouTube shows what appears to be Syrian rebel forces loading a canister of nerve gas on a rocket to fire presumably at civilians and possibly government forces. [You may want to turn off the volume.]

As leaders of countries making up half of the world’s population firmly opposed military action against Syria without a UN mandate, the US kept pushing for a strike, claiming that many countries represented at the G20 summit were “comfortable” with it. ● Although discussion of the Syrian conflict was never officially on the G20 agenda, world leaders used their statements and speeches to outline their stance on a possible US-led military strike against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the notion that there was a 50/50 split of opinion on the issue, alluding that leaders of the majority of the world’s largest economies clearly stated their opposition to military intervention in Syria. Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa were among the countries that openly spoke out against military action not authorized by the UN Security Council, Putin revealed.

Vladimir Putin has warned the US against launching military action in Syria, stating that Russia has "plans" on how it would react if such a scenario unfolded. ● The Russian president's comments came as Barack Obama for the first time portrayed his plans for US military action as part of a broader strategy to topple Bashar al-Assad, as the White House's campaign to win over sceptics in Congress gained momentum.

Breitbart: Interfax: 4 Russian ships head for Syria

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey has told Obama that a strike on Syria will end in involvement with Iran and Russia. Senator John McCain responded that Dempsey’s warnings are “disingenuous.” ● Specifically calling Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “disingenuous,” McCain claimed that limited, strategic strikes against key assets of Syrian President Bashar Assad would be much more manageable than the army – and the administration of US President Barack Obama – have let on...McCain was responding to a letter sent last month by Dempsey to Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, in which Dempsey described military intervention in Syria as a fool’s errand. Estimating that action could cost the $1 billion a month and require “thousands” of ground troops, Dempsey said strikes would be “no less than an act of war” with no guarantee of success.

Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says, “Let’s cut to the chase. It’s got nothing to do with Syria. The reason they are looking for a fabricated excuse to attack Assad is to continue the radicalization of Muslims in the hopes this spreads into the Muslim populations of Russia and China. . . . Washington intends to weaken the two giants it cannot run over.” Dr. Roberts goes on to warn, “I think this will lead to World War III, and that, of course, will be nuclear.” One big dilemma Dr. Roberts points out, “The issue is will any aspect of the government have any credibility if they back Obama when the rest of the world already knows he’s lying through his teeth? . . . This time the big lie didn’t work like it did in Iraq.” On the economic front, Dr. Roberts worries, “If they start abandoning the dollar, the collapse of the exchange rate will bring down the whole house of cards in the United States. The Fed will lose control. The banks will fail. Prices will rise dramatically. People will essentially not be able to pay their bills. It will be an unbelievable mess.” What would happen to gold with a Syrian war? Dr. Roberts says, “If you get a real collapse in the dollar, gold could be $30,000 an ounce. Who knows?” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has conceded defeat in the federal elections, paving the way for conservative leader, Tony Abbott, to become the next Australian premier. ● Speaking to his supporters at a party function in Brisbane, Rudd conceded defeat and announced that he would not recontest the leadership of the Labor Party. "I can inform you that the government of Australia has changed," Rudd told his supporters in the capital of Queensland State and the third populous city of Australia. However, Rudd added that he was proud he had helped preserve Labor as a "viable fighting force" for the future. The remarks come after voters punished the Labor government by giving conservative opposition candidate Tony Abbot’s Liberal-National coalition a sweeping victory in the parliamentary vote.

The Guardian: Tony Abbott declares Australian election victory for Coalition
BusinessInsider: Julian Assange's WikiLeaks Party Underwhelm Everyone With Australian Election Results

A headteacher in the London borough of Camden has come under fire by bloggers for reporting one of his students to police after reading the student’s blog, which criticised the school and revealed the student’s ‘enchantment’ with the philosophies of anarchism and individualism. ● The student, named Kinnan Zaloom, 19, operated the ‘Hampstead Trash’ blog as an outlet for his and his classmates’ dissatisfaction with the practices of the Hampstead School and the conduct of its employees, lambasting the school’s overspending on promotional material, lack of investment in musical instruments and gym equipment, insincere attempts to listen to pupils’ views about the school, and a failure to raise GCSE results to a higher level. The headteacher, in addition to reporting Zaloom to the police, phoned Glasgow University, where the student had applied to study, in an attempt to dissuade them from accepting him.

Bill Van Auken ■ Facing overwhelming opposition to its war plans among the American people, the prospect of losing a vote in Congress on a resolution authorizing military force, and unprecedented isolation on the world stage, the Obama administration has reportedly ordered the Pentagon to plan a far wider attack on Syria than had originally been indicated. Obama is “now determined to put more emphasis on the ‘degrade’ part of what the administration has said is the goal of a military strike against Syria—to ‘deter and degrade’ Mr. Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons,” the New York Times reported Friday, citing unnamed Pentagon officials.