ISIS Release Video Of Beheading Of Journalist Steven Sotloff

ISIS has released a video that it claims shows the beheading of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff and says the murder is retaliation for the Obama administration’s continued airstrikes in Iraq.
Sotloff is the second American journalist to be killed by ISIS, and his death comes two weeks after James Foley was executed in a similar video.
In the video entitled 'A Second Message to America,' Sotloff appears in a similar jumpsuit before he is beheaded by an Islamic State fighter.
The executioner appears to be the same man who killed Foley – known as ‘Jihadi John’ and tells the camera: 'I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State.”
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Beheaded: ISIS have released a video showing the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff

Sotloff calmly read a statement moments before his murder: ‘I’m sure you know exactly who I am by now and why I am appearing.;

He tells the camera: ‘Obama, your foreign policy of intervention in Iraq was supposed to be for preservation of American lives and interests, so why is it that I am paying the price of your interference with my life?’

While he speaks, a militant calmly holds a knife at his side and stands next to Sotloff.

The man believed to be Jihadi John also says: ‘As your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike necks of your people.’

Prime Minister David Cameron said the Islamic State video showing an apparent beheading was an 'absolutely disgusting, despicable act', and he would be making a statement later.

Foley’s family released a statement after Sotloff’s execution, calling it ‘just horrific,’ according to WHDH-TV.

On Thursday, Sotloff’s mother Shirley Sotloff went on television to make a direct appeal for her son’s life. She addressed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-claimed caliph of ISIS.

Hackers Might Have Stolen Credit Card Data Fom Home Depot

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Home Depot may be the latest retailer to have suffered a massive credit card breach, the company confirmed on Tuesday, after a website reported that a large cache of stolen data had appeared on black market sites.
Home Depot is working with investigators to determine the origin of "unusual activity," a spokeswoman told CNBC in a statement. "Protecting our customers' information is something we take extremely seriously, and we are aggressively gathering facts at this point while working to protect customers," she added, but declined to provide further information.

Amid a rash of identity thefts that have laid claim to banks and retailers in recent months,Krebs on Security reported that the breach bore similar hallmarks to groups that hit Target and P.F. Chang's, among other vendors. Privately, according to reports, officials suspect the hackers are of either Russian or Ukrainian origin.
In Target's case, the breach affected as many as 70 million of its consumers, costing the company upwards of $100 million in charges, as well as lost customer traffic. Not long after the retail giant disclosed its breach, high-end retailer Neiman Marcus reported that it too had fallen prey to cyberattacks

Obama Has No Strategy For Iraq And Syria

Ron Paul - Last week President Obama admitted that his administration has not worked out a strategy on how to deal with the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a dominant force in the Middle East. However, as ISIS continues its march through Syria and Iraq, many in the US administration believe it is, in the words of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a threat “beyond anything we have ever seen.”
Predictably, the neocons attacked the president’s speech. They believe the solution to any problem is more bombs and troops on the ground, so they cannot understand the president’s hesitation.
Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon made it clear that fighting ISIS is going to cost a lot more money and will bring US forces back to Iraq for the third time. The post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan peace dividend disintegrates.
Mr. McKeon said last week:
ISIS is an urgent threat and a minimalist approach, that depends solely on FY15 funding or pinprick strikes that leave fragile forces in Iraq and Syria to do the hard fighting, is insufficient to protect our interests and guarantee our safety in time.
What does this mean in practice? If the neocons have their way, the Federal Reserve will “print” more money to finance another massive US intervention in the Middle East. In reality this means further devaluation of the US dollar, which is a tax on all Americans that will hit the poorest hardest.
A new US military incursion will not end ISIS; it will provide them with the recruiting tool they most crave, while draining the US treasury. Just what Osama bin Laden wanted!
McKeon and the other hawks act as if they had only recently become aware of the ISIS. Or if they noticed it, they pretend US policy had nothing to do with its rise.
McKeon also said last week, “ISIS threat was allowed to build and fester over a period of time.”
In fact, US regime change policy in Syria was directly responsible for the rise of ISIS over these past three years. As journalist Eric Margolis observed recently, the emergence of ISIS is the “mother of all blowback.” The neocons who want us to get tougher on ISIS, including a US attack on Syria, are the same ones who not long ago demanded that we support groups like ISIS to overthrow the Assad government in Syria. US-trained and funded “moderates” from the Free Syrian Army joined the Islamist militias including ISIS, taking US weapons and training with them.
Three years of supporting any force that might overthrow the secular government of President Assad has produced a new monster in the Middle East that neocons insist the US must slay.
Why can’t they just admit they were wrong? Why can’t the interventionists just admit that their support for regime change in Syria was a terrible and tragic mistake?
If ISIS is as big a threat as they claim, why can’t they simply ask Assad to help out? Assad has never threatened the United States; ISIS has. Assad has been fighting ISIS and similar Islamist extremist groups for three years.
Why does the US government insist on aligning with theocracies in the Middle East? If there is anything that contradicts the US Constitution and American values it is a theocratic government. I do not believe that a majority in the Middle East wants to live under such a system, so why do we keep pushing it on them? Is that what they call promoting democracy?
A lack of strategy is a glimmer of hope. Perhaps the president will finally stop listening to the neocons and interventionists whose recommendations have gotten us into this mess in the first place! Here’s a strategy: just come home.

New York Times Calls For Full Scale Arming Of Ukraine Against Russia

The New York Times describes the regime in Kiev installed by a violent coup d’état and led in part by fascists and xenophobic nationalists as “one of us” and demands the U.S. arm the regime in its war in eastern Ukraine.

“The West needs to be honest with Ukraine. We talk as though this country were one of us — as if, one day, it will become a member of the European Union and the NATO alliance. That is Kiev’s wish, but the West is not giving Ukraine the means to fight this war,” writes Ben Judah.
That is only the wish of some of the people of Ukraine. 96% of Crimeans voted to break away from the regime in Kiev earlier this year. In the oblasts of Donetsk, Odessa, Luhansk and elsewhere in Ukraine large Russian minorities want to sever relations with a government that includes members of Svoboda and others – Pravy Sektor, Patriots of Ukraine, Trizub, and Ukrainian National Self Defense – who advance radical Russophobic rhetoric. The leader of Svoboda, Oleh Tyahnybok, has called for liquidating "the Moscow-Jewish mafia" ruling Ukraine.
“The uncomfortable truth is that a sizable portion of Kiev’s current government — and the protesters who brought it to power — are, indeed, fascists,” Andrew Foxall wrote in March.

“For the first time since 1933, the followers of a movement that valorizes Adolf Hitler and preaches anti-Semitism has entered a European government,” adds Justin Raimondo. “The German Nazis, too, were part of a ‘coalition’ government, the other members of which thought they could contain or even ‘tame’ them and prevent a Communist takeover. They were tragically wrong – and the United States and its European allies are taking the same road in backing Hitler’s heirs in Ukraine.”
All of this is ignored by the establishment media as it portrays the resistance in eastern Ukraine as a Russian invasion.
“What’s actually happening is a civil war between the government of Western Ukraine (which no longer rules the east in any definable way) and the Russian population of Eastern Ukraine,” writes Dmitry Orlov.
Russia does not recognize the Lugansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic – two areas of in eastern Ukraine that have decided by referendum to break away from the government in Kiev – and it “has withheld all military support, limiting itself to providing humanitarian supplies to the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been destroyed by artillery and rocket fire coming from the Ukrainian forces,” notes Orlov.
The New York Times and the establishment are now calling for an intensification of this destruction of lives and property in eastern Ukraine. The “logic” contrived by the establishment characterizes the resistance as a Russian invasion and “demands that we send Western military advisers to Kiev, and give the Ukrainians full intelligence and satellite support. And we must ship them guns, tanks, drones and medical kits by the ton. We must even be ready to deploy NATO troops if Russian tanks roll toward Crimea, as many fear they will, to build a land bridge to the mainland of southern Russia,” writes Judah. “American and British special forces should be dispatched to plant the flag and protect the airports of Kiev and Odessa.”
In short, the U.S. should immediately engage in military brinkmanship and risk another world war.
This is the sort of insanity currently operative in the United States. The financial elite in control of foreign policy are determined to confront Russia on its own border. Soros NGOs and other foundations are busy at work not only on Russia’s periphery but inside the country itself.
The New York Times is a trusted propaganda asset. It played a significant role in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq and later Libya. It has supported the effort to topple the al-Assad government in Syria using al-Qaeda. It has championed the economic declaration of war against Russia and is now calling for actions that risk staring a nuclear war.