Robert Fisk ● For there was President Obama at Monday’s meeting, praising Mr Netanyahu for his support for a two-state solution. And what did President Obama actually say? That there was “a limited amount of time to achieve that goal”. So why was there only a “limited amount of time”? Not a single scribe asked the poor fellow. There is, of course, only a “limited amount of time” – in my view, no time at all – to achieve this illusory goal because the Netanyahu government is thieving, against all international law, yet more Palestinian Arab land for Jews and Jews only, at a faster rate than ever, to prevent just such a Palestinian state ever existing. The Israeli right are well aware of this. And when President Obama can’t even explain this weird “limited amount of time”, the Israelis know that he is still a groveller. This is what real “appeasement” is all about. Fear.

President Barack Obama was scheduled to meet on Wednesday with top bank chief executives to discuss the government shutdown and the looming deadline to raise the nation's debt limit, the White House said. Bank chiefs included Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Michael Corbat of Citigroup, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America.

21st Century Wire: Obama Meets With Goldman Sachs For New Line Of Credit – In Violation Of US Law

The 26 Republican-dominated states not participating in an expansion of Medicaid are home to a disproportionate share of the nation’s poorest uninsured residents. Eight million will be stranded without insurance. Related Article: Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law ● A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times. Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help. The federal government will pay for the expansion through 2016 and no less than 90 percent of costs in later years.

On Monday evening, just hours ahead of the shutdown, the Pentagon went shopping for real, dumping some $5 billion in cash into the bank accounts of various military contractors to buy up everything imaginable before the shutdown took effect. ● Cameras, Reaper drones, robotic submarines, even a television studio and $19 million worth of cots, the military saw the writing on the wall: spending was going to be curbed, and they were getting their money’s worth beforehand. The Pentagon’s splurge reflects the ample time departments had to anticipate the shutdown, and take advantage of everything they could beforehand.

As the picture in Syria becomes clearer regarding the alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus on August 21st, why are the American, British and French governments still parroting their own version of events? ■ The U.S. with the help of its traditional allies and controlled mass media tries to convince the world that the Syrian governmental forces used chemical weapons. Earlier the Americans based their arguments on dubious data from the Internet - uncertain witnesses’ evidence and faked videos. And it is no exaggeration, the French and the British special services directly admitted they had lack of serious information sources in Syria and based their information analysis on social media data. However, the report on chemical use in Syria of the UN commission that had investigated incident in the Damascus suburbs presented new arguments to the western countries. The experts came to the conclusions as follows: 122 mm projectiles were used on August 21; flight trajectory and explosion crater testify the munitions were fired from the governmental forces positions; 350 liters of Sarin gas were used in the rockets. There were also Cyrillic signs on the rocket cruise engine. It’s worth mentioning that these facts can testify that some forces really used chemical weapons in Syria but nothing more.

PressTV: KSA behind Syria chemical attack: Russian source - Video
Russia Today: Saudi black op team behind Damascus chem weapons attack – diplomatic sources
Stephen Lendman: Saudi Arabian Backed Insurgents Responsible for Ghouta Chemical Weapons Attack

Radio Free Europe/Turkish Weekly ■ Afghanistan's mineral wealth is closely tied to its future prospects. If managed well, the theory goes, the mining sector could be the backbone of a sustainable economy, fund national security, and stabilize the government. The Mines and Petroleum Ministry estimates that Afghanistan boasts oil, gas, iron ore, copper, and gold deposits worth about $1 trillion. Kabul hopes to generate about $4 billion a year in mining and energy revenue over the next decade. Yet in 2012, the two sectors brought in less than $150 million combined. ● Stephen Carter, the Afghanistan campaign leader at Global Witness, a London-based nongovernmental organization that investigates links between natural resources, conflict, and corruption, says the government has lacked control over its resource wealth.

Charles Glass: Afghan Mine Field ■ Afghanistan is sitting on an estimated trillion dollars worth of gold, copper, silver, graphite and cobalt. There is also lithium, which may come in handy to treat depression among those who will be ordered to die for the new wealth. Let’s suppose for a moment there really are minerals worth $1 trillion dollars waiting to be plucked from the Afghan earth. (I love the figure $1 trillion. It smells like… victory.) Nobody is going to get his hands on all that rock without a fight. Not in Afghanistan.

New York Times: An Afghan Mystery: Why Are Large Shipments of Gold Leaving the Country?
Alex Lantier: Washington discovers Afghanistan’s mineral wealth
Michel Chossudovsky: Afghanistan's Vast Reserves of Minerals and Natural Gas

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that it evacuated its embassy in Libya after armed men stormed the complex the day before, apparently seeking revenge for the killing of a Libyan Air Force officer. The Russian statement and news reports described a pitched battle between security officers and the gunmen after they broke into the embassy in Tripoli. The ambassador and other staff members hid in safe rooms. And though it was clear how the attack ended — Russian security personnel expelled the attackers, killing two of them, and then the entire embassy staff left the country — why it started remained murky.

Winston Churchill authorised the use of the “most devastating chemical weapon ever devised” against the Russian Bolsheviks at the end of the First World War, a noted historical author has revealed. ■ Giles Milton, who was speaking to The Telegraph following his appearance at the Wigtown Book Festival to promote his new book, Russian Roulette, said: “Churchill, who was secretary of state for war at the time, wanted to really go hard against the Bolsheviks in Russia. He wanted to support the White Army in their fight against the Red Army but the Government simply refused to countenance that. ● “The British had developed this highly secret chemical weapon called the M Device, which is like a shell with a canister of gas on the end. It was developed at Porton laboratories in Wiltshire and described by the head of munitions as the most devastating chemical weapon ever devised. It had been invented but not used.

Winston Churchill 'wanted to use most devastating chemical weapon ever devised' on Russian Bolsheviks

French newspaper says quartet were allegedly involved in inciting political unrest in the African republic ahead of elections last Saturday. ● our Israeli mercenaries were arrested in Guinea last Wednesday on charges of planning a coup to overthrow Guinean President Alpha Condé, the French newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné reported. The four are being held at the island of Casa north of the capital Conakry, which serves as a prison for political activists, according to the report. Guinean’s parliamentary elections, which took place Saturday and marked the country’s transition to democracy following a 2008 military coup, were fraught with tensions and uprisings, with dozens reported killed, which Le Canard Enchaîné attributed to foreign involvement. The newspaper based its findings on intelligence documents from the CIA and DSGE (the French General Directorate for External Security) showing that Israeli, French and South African mercenaries had been involved in planning a coup to overthrow Condé.

"But FEMEN isn’t some hottie-women, feminist, counter-cultural rebel group in Ukraine. Most of them are students recruited from Kiev’s colleges. Some of them are even high school students. None of them are unpaid in their capacity as “activists”. They’re poor young woman who are being paid to play activist by multimillionaires. All their members are strictly forbidden to disclose payments they receive, but according to Ukrainian papers, each student gets around $600-1000 a month, which is a tidy sum for a Ukrainian student. There is a lot of poverty in Ukraine, and I’m not sure whether I feel worse for these women or the idiots in the Western world who have no idea what they’re supporting: poor Eastern European women being paid by a white Israeli man to have Western viewpoints to do neocolonial protests naked…. that’s a whole mess of crazy. "

The head of Iran’s cyber warfare programme has been shot dead, triggering further accusations that outside powers are carrying out targeted assassinations of key figures in the country’s security apparatus. ● Mojtaba Ahmadi, who served as commander of the Cyber War Headquarters, was found dead in a wooded area near the town of Karaj, north-west of the capital, Tehran. Five Iranian nuclear scientists and the head of the country’s ballistic missile programme have been killed since 2007. The regime has accused Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad, of carrying out these assassinations. Ahmadi was last seen leaving his home for work on Saturday. He was later found with two bullets in the heart, according to Alborz, a website linked to the Revolutionary Guard Corps. “I could see two bullet wounds on his body and the extent of his injuries indicated that he had been assassinated from a close range with a pistol,” an eyewitness told the website. The commander of the local police said that two people on a motorbike had been involved in the assassination.

John Glaser: Is Israel Derailing US-Iran Diplomacy With More Assassinations?