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The Helsinki Summit – or the Treason Summit, as some call it – of the 16th of July, has come and gone.  It left a smell of burning hot air behind.

President Trump opened the meeting by saying that up to now relations between the United States and Russia were bad, and confessing that the US was to blame for it. He wanted them to improve and hoped that this meeting – he indicated that others of similar nature may follow – may be a first step towards normalizing relations between the two atomic super-powers which together, he said, control 90% …

Ironic: Interesting, strange or funny because of being very different from what you would usually expect.

By allowing the Haudenosaunee to travel to Israel for the World Lacrosse Championships on their own passports Canada undermined its colonial authority. But, Ottawa did so at the behest of those promoting the most aggressive ongoing European settler colonialism.

“As indigenous peoples, we have both seen our traditional lands colonized, our people ethnically cleansed and massacred by colonial settlers,” the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel wrote the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Nationals on July 4. “We are asking you to respect our nonviolent …

It is perhaps typical in a time where a star of the fleshy celluloid wonder Baywatch, heavy in bust and known for her sexual adventures, should feature as a political voice.  Pamela Anderson’s views are treated with judicious seriousness – at least in some quarters.  Her association with Julian Assange has given needless room for columns on what, exactly, their relationship constitutes.

Having such defenders as Anderson has added to his conspicuous support base, but it will not move those bureaucrats who are chewing pens in anticipation and pondering options as to how best to eject him from the Ecuadorean embassy …

Dana Milbank wrote it off as a victory of demographics, a minor, inconsequential point which left the “down-the-line liberal” Rep. Joe Crowley in its wake, a simple ploy that avoids any hard headed analysis of the Democrats themselves.  “The argument that there is a Democratic establishment resisting the progressive tide is a straw man.”

This was as one such reaction to the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Congressional primary for New York’s 14th District, secured against the secure middling Rep. Crowley, who had been fairly immune to challenges – three in all – the last being in 2004.  …

“In my four years as High Commissioner, I have heard many preposterous claims. That claim is almost in its own category of absurdity. Have you no shame, sir, have you no shame? We are not fools.”

These were some of the remarks made by outgoing United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, in his final briefing to the Human Rights Council on July 4. He was responding to a Burmese official’s claim that his country is not targeting Rohingya in a genocidal campaign but is defending the rights of all of its citizen.

The Burmese government is now …

To the military, shaping media coverage of deployments is what roasting a marshmallow is to a summer camper’s S’mores; there isn’t one without the other.

Even before beginning a small “peacekeeping” mission the Canadian forces’ have an elaborate media strategy.

At the end of June Chief of the Defence Staff Jonathan Vance brought journalists with him on a visit to Mali. They toured the facilities in Gao where an advance team was preparing for Canada’s UN deployment to the African nation. An Ottawa Citizen headline described Vance’s trip as part of an effort at “selling the public on the Mali mission.”

The …

The Trump administration’s every move is marked with a strange creepiness as well as confusing messages that can only mean: They don’t get it. Their nefarious “destroy science” mentality promotes insane irreversible carbon emissions in good ole America, ultimately threatening the abilities of farmers to cope with ruinous global heat.

As scientists duck for cover from mean-spirited Orange Trumpeters, nature strikes back, emitting 220M tons of carbon from melting permafrost in Alaska. In response, Trumpeters, fighting back, have already taken the first steps towards drilling Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, thus setting the stage for oil and gas leases on 19-million-acres …

In terms of suffering caused, there is often not, in fact, much to choose between dismembering and burning people alive with high explosives, shredding them with shrapnel, and choking them with poison gas. Modern ‘conventional’ weapons can be far more cruel and devastating than, for example, chlorine gas. But chemical weapons, prohibited by international law, are extremely potent in allowing Western ‘humanitarians’ to justify ‘intervention’ in response to crimes – real, hyped or imagined – that the West has itself far surpassed using more respectable forms of mass murder.

Noam …

The first official meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart Donald Trump was a fairly casual, unpeopled affair, absent bureaucrats and note takers.  This was what both wanted in Helsinki, men who believe in the gold weighting authority commands.  According to Masha Gissen of The New Yorker, their meeting reflected “their shared understanding of power: the triumph of nothing over everyone.”

The Helsinki meeting, on the surface, did more for Putin than Trump, though the details about the actual discussions are scant.  “Why did Trump,” inquired former director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan, “meet one …

Juraj Vrdoljak of Telesport was convinced.  “I think half the population didn’t show up to work on the morning after the win against England.” The victory had inspired early shop closures, a feeling of rampant escapism. “Croatia is a country with a deep economic crisis.  Every day, life is really hard.  It’s full of bad stories and tough times.  There is lot of poverty.  A lot of people are emigrating.”

Members of Croatia’s football team have become national talismans of endurance, the shock troops of resilience and hope.  Ivan Rakiti?, when he takes the field against France, will be playing his …

Across the western world June is exam time; in Britain, written tests taken in halls of silence and tension have triggered a mini-epidemic of anxiety rooted conditions. Pupils have reported mental exhaustion, panic attacks, crying, nosebleeds, sleepless nights, hair loss and outbreaks of acne.

Over the past 25 years, depression and anxiety amongst teenagers in the UK has increased by 70%. This pattern is repeated across the developed world, and is the result of a cocktail of pressures, pressures that result in 10% of under 18-year-olds in America being dependent on mental health medication.

In parts of Asia things are just …

There are growing indications that the Trump administration plans to use the Mojahedin-e Khalq (People’s Mojahedin of Iran, or MEK) as a key element in its strategy to destabilize Iran preparatory to regime change.

On June 30 Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani told the group in Paris: “We are now realistically being able to see an end to the regime in Iran. Trump doesn’t turn his back on freedom fighters.”

On July 1, 2017 John Bolton, former State Department official and Trump supporter, addressed a large gathering of MEK supporters in Paris.

There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs,” …

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