A coalition airstrike reported on Tuesday that killed at least 85 Syrian civilians—one more than died in the Nice attack in France last week—wasn't featured at all on the front pages of two of the top US national newspapers, the New York Times and LATimes, and only merited brief blurbs on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, with the actual stories buried on pages A-16 and A-15, respectively.

According to the London Telegraph (7/19/16), the airstrike killed "more than 85 civilians" after the "coalition mistook them for Islamic State fighters." Eight families were represented among the dead, with victims "as young as three." The Intercept (7/19/16) reported the death toll could end up being well over 100.

The Pentagon has not denied the reports, saying an investigation is underway, according to Stars and Stripes (7/19/16), a media outlet that operates inside the Department of Defense.

As many on Twitter pointed out, the number of dead was roughly equal to that of the recent Nice attack, yet the airstrike did not garner nearly as much media coverage, nor did news outlets convey an outpouring of grief:

Is the genie finally out of the bottle?

A myriad of seemingly unrelated events and loose ends are converging in a manner that points in the direction of a huge win for Russian diplomacy in the Middle East, and we only need to connect the dots to see this scenario unfolding.

What dots, one might ask?

Henry Kissinger made it law for America to protect Israel. In his shuttle diplomacy trips in the lead up to the Camp David agreement, Kissinger has basically removed the USSR from the position of a superpower and a key partner on the negotiating table between Arabs and the Israelis and reduced its role to zilch. The ensuing dismantling of the USSR and the emergence of the so-called "New World Order" meant that Israel was to maintain its military superiority.

However, with the rise of Axis of Resistance in general and Hezbollah in particular, Israel's technical military edge proved unable to provide Israel with any real security. As a matter of fact, it seems to have done just the opposite. Israel has never ever been under the kind of existential threat that it faces now, with an estimated hundred thousand Hezbollah missiles, if not more, poised to hit Israeli targets as far as Eilat.

And because America had been such a biased supporter of Israel for so long, it has lost its stature as a non-partisan arbitrator and mediator. In reality therefore, whilst America tried as hard as possible to enable Israel to impose its own peace, under its own terms, in practice, it has not been able to provide Israel with any peace under anyone's terms.

The Western pubic doesn't know it, but Washington and its European vassals are convincing Russia that they are preparing to attack. Eric Zuesse reports on a German newspaper leak of a Bundeswehr decision to declare Russia to be an enemy nation of Germany.

This is the interpretation that some Russian politicians themselves have put on the NATO military bases that Washington is establishing on Russia's borders.

Washington might intend the military buildup as pressure on President Putin to reduce Russian opposition to Washington's unilateralism. However, it reminds some outspoken Russians such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky of Hitler's troops on Russia's border in 1941.

Zhirinovsky is the founder and leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party and a vice chairman of the Russian parliament. In a confrontation with the editor of a German newspaper, Zhirinovsky tells him that German troops again on Russia's border will provoke a preventive strike after which nothing will remain of German and NATO troops. "The more NATO soldiers in your territory, the faster you are going to die. To the last man. Remove NATO from your territory!"

The US involvement in Syria comes in "two main flavors": one is an overt military operation which aims to defeat Daesh (ISIL/ISIS), while the other is a CIA-led clandestine program to support the Syrian rebels which are seeking to topple Bashar al-Assad.

Although US efforts to supply rebels in Syria have repeatedly resulted in American weapons finding their way into the wrong hands, Washington's covert operation in Syria is worth the trouble, US academics Austin Carson and Michael Poznansky believe.

"By most accounts, America's efforts to covertly train and supply moderate rebels in Syria aren't going so well... What, then, is the rationale for US policy in Syria? Why has the White House continued to draw on the tool of covert military aid despite its shoddy track record?" Austin Carson of the University of Chicago and Michael Poznansky of the University of Pittsburgh ask in their article for War on the Rocks.

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, will stand trial over a state payout to the French tycoon Bernard Tapie, an appeals court has ruled.

She is charged with negligence over the award to Mr Tapie of €404m ($445m; £339m) in 2008 when she was France's economy minister.

Ms Lagarde had appealed against a lower court ruling from December.

She is now expected to appear before a special court for government ministers.

The case stems from Mr Tapie's sale of his majority stake in the sports equipment company, Adidas, which was handled by the state-owned bank, Credit Lyonnais.

Russian envoy to UN Vitaly Churkin warned the UN Security Council on Friday that the Ukrainian authorities are preparing a full-scale military operation against self-proclaimed republics in the east of the country.

Churkin said in a letter to the UNSC that the latest developments in the situation in Donbas, including increased shelling of settlements controlled by Donbas militia, show that Kiev is not making concrete steps aimed at deescalation of tensions and demilitarization of area along the separation line.

"On the contrary, there is clear evidence that the Ukrainian military is preparing a military operation there," Churkin wrote.

Russia calls on all international partners to convince Kiev to prevent such a disastrous development of events, Churkin added.

What emerges on the sixth day of the failed coup attempt in Turkey is that three inflection points could be in play in the Turkish-American relations in the coming days and weeks. They are:

• The functioning of the Incirlik Air Base on the Syrian border;
• Extradition of Islamist cleric Fetullah Gulen from the US; and,
• The massive purge of 'Gulenists' that is under way in Turkey.

Each of them is going to be trickier to negotiate than the other two and, yet, all three are also inter-related.

The power supply for Incirlik has been suspended since Friday and a back-up generator is barely enabling the US facilities there to support flight operations and around 2700 stationed in that NATO base. It's an untenable situation. The US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter telephoned his Turkish counterpart Fikri Isik on Tuesday evening to stress the importance of operations at the Incirlik to the counter-ISIS campaign.

But on his part, Isik regretted his inability to attend the counter-ISIS defence ministerial that Carter was hosting in Washington on Wednesday. Turkey was represented only at ambassadorial level at Wednesday's conference which was attended by the defence ministers of some 30 countries, NATO, and top Pentagon officials to discuss "the next plays in the campaign that will culminate in the collapse of ISIL's control over Mosul and Raqqa". (Pentagon)

The detention of the commander at Incirlik Gen. Bekir Ercan Van and his subordinates underscores the sensitivities involved here. Gen. Van resisted arrest and had apparently sought political asylum in the US before being led away by the Turkish security.

The lower house of Polish parliament, the Sejm, has passed a resolution which labels as genocide crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists against the Poles in during World War II. The decision was met with regret in Ukraine.

The document, adopted by the lower house of parliament on Friday, declared July 11 "the Day of commemoration of the Poles who fell victim to the genocide committed by OUN-UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and pays homage to the victims of the genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against citizens of the Second Polish Republic in 1943-1945."

The move follows a resolution adopted by the upper house, the Senate, on July 8, meaning that the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists in Volhynia (also called Volyn) - an area of southeast Poland that was occupied by Nazi German troops during the war - are officially viewed as genocide by the Polish state.

The "genocide" committed during this period "resulted in the massacres of more than 100,000 citizens of the Second Polish Republic, mostly peasants. Their exact number is still unknown, and many of them have not been buried with dignity to date," the Sejm's resolution said, according to TASS.

"The memory of the victims of the crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists in the 1940s has not been duly cherished until now, and mass murders were not called genocide in accordance with historical truth," the Polish MPs stressed.

My colleague, Alex Christoforou, has written a fine piece drawing attention to the fact that today is the anniversary of one of modern Europe's tragedies, which however the governments and media of the West dislike being reminded of. That is the Turkish invasion and subsequent partition of Cyprus.

This is for me a particularly distressing episode, not just because as a Greek I share in the tragedy of the Greek people of Cyprus who were the victims of the invasion but because as a Greek I feel guilt and shame for the role my country - Greece - played in the affair.

The pretext for the Turkish invasion (though not the real reason) was a fascist military coup that took place in Cyprus and which overthrew the democratically and constitutionally elected government of Cyprus's President, Archbishop Makarios.

This coup did not have its origins in Cyprus itself. Instead it was ordered from abroad by Dimitrios Ioannides, leader of the fascist military government of Greece, which had seized power in Greece in 1967 by way of a US backed coup. By 1974 the fascist government in Greece sensed power was slipping away as it faced popular protests in Greece and was itself becoming subject to internal divisions and infighting. As a way to bolster its support in Greece it used certain fascist Greek army officers seconded to the Cypriot army to carry out a coup in Cyprus with the eventual aim of uniting Cyprus to Greece.

57,000 Americans run this all-important hub of the empire

The overseas hub for America's "war on terror" is the massive Ramstein Air Base in southwest Germany. Nearly ignored by US media, Ramstein serves crucial functions for drone warfare and much more. It's the most important Air Force base abroad, operating as a kind of grand central station for airborne war - whether relaying video images of drone targets in Afghanistan to remote pilots with trigger fingers in Nevada, or airlifting special-ops units on missions to Africa, or transporting munitions for airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. Soaking up billions of taxpayer dollars, Ramstein has scarcely lacked for anything from the home country, other than scrutiny.

Known as "Little America" in this mainly rural corner of Germany, the area now includes 57,000 US citizens clustered around Ramstein and a dozen smaller bases. The Defense Department calls it "the largest American community outside of the United States." Ramstein serves as the biggest Air Force cargo port beyond US borders, providing "full spectrum airfield operations" along with "world-class airlift and expeditionary combat support." The base also touts "superior" services and "exceptional quality of life." To look at Ramstein and environs is to peer into a faraway mirror for the United States; what's inside the frame is normality for endless war.

Ramstein's gigantic Exchange store (largest in the US military) is the centerpiece for an oversize shopping mall, just like back home. A greeting from the Holy Family Catholic Community at Ramstein tells newcomers: "We know that being in the military means having to endure frequent moves to different assignments. This is part of the price we pay by serving our country." Five American colleges have campuses on the base. Ellenmarie Zwank Brown, who identifies herself as "an Air Force wife and a physician," is reassuring in a cheerful guidebook that she wrote for new arrivals: "If you are scared of giving up your American traditions, don't worry! The military goes out of its way to give military members an American way of life while living in Germany."