CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—As The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald notes, both parties advancing the amendment cited in their arguments the completely unsubstantiated intelligence leak that was recently published by credulous mass media reporters alleging that Russia has paid bounties to Taliban fighters for killing the occupying forces in Afghanistan. Yet another western imperialist agenda once again facilitated by unforgivably egregious journalistic malpractice in the mass media.

Probably the biggest task is building strong networks of solidarity, even with liberals when possible. This is a long-term project and there are no shortcuts. Be trustworthy, up front, and consistent. Be humble and patient. Don’t compromise your principles but don’t draw yourself into a corner with hard lines. Avoid spreading rumors and conspiracy theories. The more you can build these relationships before the repression hits the better. But it’s never too late to start working on it either.

Usually the most obvious thing is to organize legal resources like raising money for bail and legal fees and mobilizing sympathetic lawyers. But the behind the scenes support infrastructure is just as important: the jail support, the prisoner support, the court support, the public support campaign. The best support doesn’t usually come from legal professionals or activist experts but rather your friends, family, comrades.

PATRICE GREANVILLE—He called Biden, Obama and Clinton warmongers to their faces in 2008. They laughed, but he wasn’t joking. Watch this clip from a 2008 election debate closely, and see how fellow presidential candidates with the thinly-veiled help of the whore media neutralize the spot on criticism of US foreign policy by Sen. Mike Gravel. The political whores on the panel, including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama laugh nervously as Mike Gravel accuses them of warmongering against Iraq, Iran and other nations.

RUSSELL BENTLEY—The photographs of the fuselage of MH17’s cockpit are all you really need to see. The perfectly round  30 mm holes can be seen in photos on Google Images. Or listen to what Canadian citizen and OSCE monitor Michael Bociurkiw said, just a few days after the event. Russian military radar detected at least one SU-25 in close proximity to MH17 just before the crash, consistent with eyewitness accounts from people on the ground at the time, including DNP Prime Minister Alexander Zaharshenko (6:14) Interestingly, the Wikipedia and other information sources about SU-25 flight capabilities were edited and changed before July 17th, to reduce the flight ceiling from 10,000 meters to 7,000 meters. The SU-25 CAN fly at 10,000 meters, (10:50) the height that MH17 was at when it was attacked.

RAY McGOVERN—we can expect no let up from the media and the national security miscreant leakers who have served as their life’s blood.  As for the anchors and pundits, their level of sophistication was reflected yesterday in the sage surmise of Face the Nation’s Chuck Todd, who Aaron Mate reminds us, is a “grown adult and professional media person.”  Todd asked guest John Bolton: “Do you think that the president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election, and he doesn’t want to make him mad for 2020?”

ANDRE VLTCHEK—Citizens in the Western countries were told that the ideologies, particularly the left ones, became “something that belongs to the past,” “something heavy,” unattractive, and definitely not ‘cool.’ Western masses accepted it easily, without realizing that without the left-wing ideologies, there can be no change, no revolution, and no organized opposition to the regime, which has been plundering the world for several hundreds of years.

PATRICE GREANVILLE—Please watch Rachel Bevins in this delightfully lucid denunciation of the sham represented by the Democrats’ vindication of John Bolton, and how the people should not pick a dog in this fight as both Trump and Bolton remain indistinguishable in their repugnant criminality. BTW, Rachel’s page on Facebook was deleted arbitrarily by FB about two years ago, charging her with “inauthentic behavior” (absurd) and “spam” even more absurd since Rachel basically published her own work.

JOSE GUADALUPE ARGUELLO—“Few imagined that he would become Brazil’s president. But as after Obama came Trump, so did Bolsonaro come after Lula,” the La Octava host continued. “So, it is wrong to underestimate people like Gilberto Lozano, not so much because somewhere he may have hidden grandeur, but rather because if it goes badly for this [AMLO] government, or if they are not able to meet the expectations of certain sectors such as the middle class, eventually an ultra-right, anti-system figure could grow strong, and get a stroke of luck”.

The Indian Ocean lies at the centre of global oil transport networks, and is also a vital trade route for China, linking it to Europe, Africa and the Middle East. President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to boost infrastructure and trade, includes a “maritime silk road” that passes through the South China Sea and Malacca Strait before entering the Indian Ocean. The PLA Navy has become increasingly active in the region in recent years, starting with anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden in 2008.

MoA—Since December 1997 the rate of the Lebanese pound has been fixed at 1507.5 pounds per U.S. dollar. The country needed dollars to import food, fuel for its electricity plants and pretty much everything else. As Lebanon exported little but some hashish and ran a large budget deficit it needed other ways to continuously acquire dollar. Tourism from the Gulf states brought some foreign currency and a large number of expatriates sent parts of their incomes home. But neither was enough to pay for everything Lebanon imported.

BRYAN MACDONALD—Western media coverage of the process has been typically one-track, focusing on the Putin term-limits issue while ignoring or glossing over the fact that the vast majority of Russians still clearly support his system. Once upon a time, this was attributed to the power of ‘state TV,’ but today, when the internet is beginning to overtake the zombie box as the primary source of news, that unsophisticated trope is clearly redundant. Russia is not a dictatorship, and Putin is not a dictator. The setup is ‘soft’ authoritarian and it relies on the consent of the majority to keep going. Russian people are not stupid, and they know what sort of alternatives would be on offer if they lost faith in the current arrangement.  

We speak to Prof. Richard Sakwa, author of ‘The Putin Paradox’. He discusses Vladimir Putin’s constitutional referendum, in which his reforms were approved by a majority of Russians. He discusses the results of the referendum being impressive for Putin, dangerous elements of the reforms, McCarthyite coverage of Russia and Putin over the allegations of Russia putting bounties on American soldiers for The Taliban in Afghanistan and Trump’s victory in 2016, the journalistic bubble among Western commentators regarding Russia, the threat of nuclear conflict with Russia growing, Joe Biden threatening economic warfare if he wins and more!

GARY OLSON—Our culture of rugged individualism has privatized the idea of caring and minimized the emotional needs of others. It allows for individual expressions of concern but brackets off any notion of social empathy. This exemplifies what sociologists term “feeling rules” that are shaped by ideology and class and include the idea that thinking only about oneself is just “common sense.”