Medea Benjamin: U.S. government claims drone victims are mostly
militants, but about half identified victims thus far are civilians and children

Medea Benjamin: Obama and Drone Warfare: Will Americans Speak Out?
Medea Benjamin: Obama Administration Silencing Pakistani Drone-Strike Lawyer
America's Drone Attacks Are 'Killing 49 People for Every Known Terrorist in Pakistan'

If the US debt-ceiling debate goes past the eleventh hour, and the default of the world’s largest economy becomes a reality, leading central banks around the world are gearing up to minimize losses and keep the world economy functioning. ● If US lawmakers don’t reach a budget consensus and raise the debt ceiling by Thursday October 17, the US will become the first Western power to default since Nazi Germany in 1933, and will send markets into uncharted territory. The rest of the world is bracing itself for what would happen if the bill is rejected, and the US inches closer to defaulting on its debts, which are largely foreign- held in the form of US Treasury Bonds.

Armed with tens of billions of dollars in investment deals and romantic tales of ancient explorers, Chinese President Xi Jinping has spent much of the past month promoting his vision of two new “Silk Roads” to connect his country to the West and secure its energy supplies — one by land and another by sea. In the process, he has eclipsed an American vision of a New Silk Road that was advanced with much fanfare by then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton two years ago and was supposed to revitalize Afghanistan as the link between Central and South Asia.

John Pilger: Old game, new obsession, new enemy. Now it’s China

Although four months have passed since Edward Snowden’s explosive NSA surveillance leaks, the most revealing details have not yet been published, and could be rolled out in the international media over the coming weeks and months, beginning with U.S. spying activities involving Spain and France. That’s according to Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the Snowden story last June, and whose life has been drastically upturned since. “There are a lot more stories,” he said on Monday in Rio de Janeiro, where he lives. “The archives are so complex and so deep and so shocking, that I think the most shocking and significant stories are the ones we are still working on, and have yet to publish.”

AlterNet: "Edward Snowden Is a Patriot": Ex-NSA CIA, FBI and Justice Whistleblowers Meet Leaker in Moscow

Julian Assange has talked in detail abut his daily life in the Ecuadorian Embassy with the staff members he says are “like family.” ● The WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief, talking via Skype, said: “We’ve gone through a lot together and we understand we are all in this together. Some staff have been here nearly 20 years. We have lunch together, celebrate people’s birthdays and other details I don’t want to go into because of the security situation. Of course, the working environment has changed a lot because there are still police surrounding the embassy and it’s a difficult situation for the staff.” He lives in a small office room converted into living quarters, equipped with a bed, telephone, sun lamp, computer with internet connections, shower, treadmill and a small kitchenette. He declined to say whether he had learned to speak Spanish during his stay: “I found in investigative journalism it is always best, if you have any language skills, not to admit them.”

Secretary of State John Kerry is calling on the international community for an “urgent” approval of an official date for the Geneva II conference on Syria’s Civil War, saying it is time to install a new “transitional” government in power. “There has to be a transition government, there has to be a new governing entity in Syria in order to permit the possibility of peace,” insisted Kerry, adding that President Bashar Assad would not be allowed to play any role in the new, US-imposed government. [Seems to us that the international community should consider installing one in the U.S. instead. Peace might descend on this stricken earth immediately...]

The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.

Russia Today: NSA Paid Google,Microsoft,Facebook,Yahoo To Spy On You - Video

Michael Crowley ■ One basic obstacle for the new round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program that open today will be America’s basic distrust of the Iranian regime. Before striking any deal with Tehran, the Obama Administration will have to gauge whether a country where hostility toward the U.S. has been a core political theme since 1979 is acting in good faith. That could be a hard notion to swallow, given that some Iranian leaders still call America the Great Satan, and that Iran still celebrates the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran with a national holiday. ● But as Iran and Western negotiators sit down in Geneva today, it’s worth considering some of the reasons why Iran bears such animus toward America, and why cutting a deal with the U.S. won’t be easy for Tehran either. Many of those reasons have to do with the basic Islamic fundamentalist philosophy of Iran’s clerical leaders, to be sure. But as the nuclear talks move forward, it’s worth remembering that the U.S. bears some blame for the poisoned state of the relationship between the two countries.

Muad'Dib's latest film about the July 7 2005 London bombings. ● After being unlawfully jailed for 157 days based on trumped-up charges, and the BBC making a dedicated hit-piece on the original 7/7 Ripple Effect, the film-maker Muad'Dib expands upon the original film and has added over 60 minutes of new material connecting the dots of what most likely really did happen in London on July 7th 2005, when 3 tube-trains and a double-decker bus were exploded. Watching this film should leave the viewer no doubt that the crimes and murder committed in London were done by other organizations than by claimed by the official and corporate media.

Today's middle-class children are on track to be the first in more than a century to be materially less well off in adulthood than their parents, a government commission is expected to warn this week. ● Leaked findings reveal the existence of a national trend not experienced since the early 20th century, with children from families with above-average incomes, as well as the most deprived, set to enjoy a worse standard of living when they grow up than their mothers and fathers. The social mobility and child poverty commission, established by David Cameron, is expected to warn that government initiatives have all too often been aimed at the poorest 10%. Yet the inability to get on in life is a now a major and growing problem for middle-class children and this group is in dire need of attention, it is expected to report.

Former Israeli naval commander, Major General Eli Marom, was detained this morning on his arrival at London's Heathrow airport. General Marom was the commander of the Israeli navy during Operation Cast Lead and during the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara in 2010. Now retired, he is being tried in absentia in Turkey for his role in the Mavi Marmara incident, which saw the death of 9 Turkish activists.