Now that some common sense has been restored and the International Olympic Committee has decided against banning the entire Russian team from competing in the 2016 Rio Olympics, I'd like to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Western elites, via their paid shills in the media and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), attempted to block an entire country from participating in a worldwide, amateur athletic competition because they didn't want Russia to garner any public goodwill through its athletic performances, nor did they want to have to watch Russian athletes stand on the podium, receive their medals, and play the Russian national anthem in celebration of their athletic achievements.

Does that not sound absurd, and incredibly petty to you? It does to me. It comes across as wholly desperate too. It's like the Western elites have realized that Putin has beaten them in the geopolitical field so they have changed course to a different field, one much smaller and less important in the grand scheme of things. They have enlisted their agents in the media to act as judge and jury despite the fact that there is actually no real evidence of "institutionalized doping", a fact that's apparently insignificant to journalists who have apparently long ago abandoned integrity and objectivity.

This is what tool-of-the-elites WADA reported: During the Sochi Olympic Games in 2014, Russian athletes were all working directly with the FSB to pass drug tests. The FSB was apparently passing vials of urine through a hole in the wall to athletes. They also somehow were able to put the urine in sterile containers and add salt in the process. WADA does not actually have any proof of this. They are relying on testimony from Grigory Rodchenkov, a Russian national who defected to the USA after being fired for, you guessed it, doping fraud. Pot, meet kettle.

The US military says it has gathered enough material to launch an inquiry into civilian casualties, which included children, allegedly resulting from coalition airstrikes near the town of Manbij in Syria on July 19. Rights groups have slammed the deaths.

"Based on internal and external information that we have - things that we saw during the fight and things we saw in social media," the Pentagon decided that "the information was credible enough to warrant a formal investigation," spokesperson for the coalition against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) Colonel Chris Garver told reporters on Wednesday.

At least 20 civilians, including children, were allegedly killed in a US airstrike last week near the town of Manbij in the Aleppo province, human rights groups said. The US-led coalition has launched dozens of airstrikes near Manbij in past weeks, trying to force IS to leave the city.

The alleged "terror attacks" are happening thick and fast in Europe right now. France has suspended its constitution for another several months as a response. Germany is in turmoil and may well follow suit. The media narrative is already set within a clearly defined paradigm that stipulates these attacks are being perpetrated by "radical Islam." The debate centers solely on what this means. Is it "blowback" for the West's policy of perpetual war in the Middle East, as the more liberal/left-inclined tend to say, or is it just Evil Extreme Islamics being Evil, as the more rightist-inclined aver?

There was a debate just like that on RT today. A Northern Irish white gentleman was looking severe and intolerant and claiming ISIS was basically Islam, (because - duh - they're called "Islamic State"!), and an English non-white gentleman was looking embattled and pointing out (justifiably) that most of the ISIS terrorists identified were anything but devout Moslems and anyhow the history of colonial wars perpetrated by many of the countries currently suffering these attacks can't simply be removed from the equation. He had a little pile of paper printed with the names of all the Moslem countries France had attacked in the last century - but neither the Scottish gent nor the RT anchor seemed much interested.

Despite her public appeals for friendship, a series of leaked emails show that during her time as Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, has continued to promote subversion against the Latin American country behind closed doors.

The emails, leaked by WikiLeaks, show that during her tenure as US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton asked the then-assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, how "to rein in Chavez." Valenzuela alluded to reaching out to other regional partners to help undermine Chavez:

"We need to carefully consider the consequences of publicly confronting him but ought to look at opportunities for others in the region to help."

In an amazing feat of American reality-inversion, this week saw revelations about how the US electoral system is rigged by the rich and powerful. Yet the story is flipped to outlandish allegations that Russia's President Vladimir Putin is a villain out to destroy Western democracy.

US media outlets from the august New York Timesto various others were saturated with claims that Putin is trying to determine the forthcoming American presidential elections by damaging Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton in favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

In an article in Slate magazine, we are told: "Putin plan for destroying the West - and it looks a lot like Donald Trump". The billionaire property magnate is now being labelled as "Putin's puppet" and the "Kremlin's candidate".

This is a re-run of American establishment paranoia that dominated the Cold War decades, when any political challenger for high office in the US could be blackballed by mere assertion that he was a fellow-traveller of the Soviet Union. Today, "communism" is replaced with allegations of being friends with Moscow "tyranny".

Al-Nusra Front has reportedly signaled its willingness to sever ties with al-Qaeda and change its name. What lies behind the terrorist group's re-branding?

Following negotiations between Russia and the US on partnering in Syria, al-Qaeda's affiliate al-Nusra Front has announced its decision to break ties with the terrorist organization and change their name, reports say.

The rumor emerged after US analyst Charles Lister tweeted Saturday that al-Nusra Front's Shura Council voted to break ties with al-Qaeda.

​"Syrian opposition military sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that al-Nusra Front in Syria has taken a decision to break its link with Al Qaeda organization," London-based Arabic media outlet Asharq Al-Awsat reported Tuesday.

Turkish authorities ordered the closure of more than 130 media outlets on Wednesday in a crackdown following July's failed coup, Reuters reports, citing CNN Turk. Some 1,600 military personnel were also sacked in the Turkish government's latest move.

The Turkish government shutdown three news agencies, 23 radio stations, 16 TV channels, 45 newspapers, 15 magazines, and 29 publishers and distributors in their crackdown on the media.

The army saw 1,684 soldiers discharged, according to the government decree cited by CNN Turk.

In the wake of the coup attempt, Turkey is also planning to shut down all of the country's military schools, Al Jazeera Turk reports, citing government sources. A decree is set to be released that will expel all military cadets from military high schools, but they will be able to continue their education at regular schools, according to the outlet.

In yet another statement that is certain to spark outrage among Democrats, moments ago Donald Trump said he hopes that Russian hackers accused of breaching the DNC have obtained the tens of thousands of emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from her private email server, and that they will release them.

"If they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do," Trump told reporters on Wednesday at a press conference at his Miami-area hotel, adding that "I wish I had that power. I'd love to have that power" to orchestrate the alleged email hack and leak.

"They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted. You'd see some beauties, so we'll see."

American democracy is a shitshow that is insightful only unintentionally and captivating only in its grotesqueries.

In the late afternoon of day three of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, media workers and RNC attendees were blocked from exiting the security zone around the convention center. Past the concrete barriers, lines of police, and double layers of 10-foot tall steel-link fence, a protest was swirling. It was the American flag - burning hyped all day by members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a tiny Maoist-style group known for provocative but ultimately harmless political stunts.

From the security tunnel, apparently modeled on checkpoints dotting Israeli-occupied Palestine, it was difficult to distinguish protesters from media in the crowd of hundreds. Heated yelling drifted above the tightly packed throngs, but there was no smoke to be seen.

The mere threat of a piece of colored fabric being set alight was enough to trigger a lockdown. Rent-a-cops started herding bewildered media out of the tunnel. When two columns of beefy riot cops in full body armor began filing out to take up position near the protest, security swooped in to clear media out of a parking lot where the tumult could be observed.

On the scene was dozens of Bikers for Trump, loudly lecturing how the flag-burners would be killed in any other country. The imminence of violence is a refrain on a right that glorifies its weapons as instruments of peace. The previous day when I took a photo on the street near the convention of a knot of muscleheads all wearing the same 2nd Amendment t-shirts, one told me, with approving nods from his compatriot, "If it wasn't for the First Amendment, I would have smashed your camera."

These gun-slingers hadn't figured out the Constitution is not an a la carte menu they can pick and choose from, and eliminating the First Amendment would usher in the tyranny they rant about as imminent.

The United States has warned of possible Islamic State directed or inspired terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, including assualts on western embassies, the US State Department said in a travel warning issued on Wednesday.

"Possible targets include mosques, pilgrimage locations, and Saudi government facilities, as well as housing compounds, hotels, restaurants, shopping areas, international schools, Western consulates and embassies, and other facilities where Westerners congregate," the warning stated.