Iraq war architect Donald Rumsfeld has died. Not in a prison cell in The Hague, not murdered by bombs or bullets, but peacefully in his home, surrounded by loved ones, a week and a half shy of his 89th birthday.

The imperial media are giving their fallen master a king's tribute, with headlines describing the psychopathic war criminal as "a cunning leader", "a man of honor and conviction", or simply as "Former defense secretary at helm of Iraq, Afghanistan wars".

The cancerous Washington Post, who just the other day mocked the life of the late antiwar hero Mike Gravel with an obituary branding him the "gadfly senator from Alaska with flair for the theatrical," describes the child killer Rumsfeld as the "influential but controversial Bush defense secretary" in its headline about his death.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) demanded on Wednesday that an investigation be launched into explosive allegations that President Joe Biden's administration has spied on Fox News host Tucker Carlson. On Monday Carlson said:

"Yesterday we heard from a whistleblower within the U.S. government who reached out to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air. The whistleblower, who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails. There's no other possible source for that information, period. ... The NSA captured that information without our knowledge, and did it for political reasons. The Biden administration is spying on us."

McCarthy responded to the allegations by saying that he has noticed a "disturbing trend" unfolding at the National Security Agency (NSA) under the Biden administration:

"Earlier this year, I sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Austin expressing concern over the politicization of the Agency through the sidelining of Michael Ellis as NSA General Counsel. I asked that Mr. Ellis be reinstated and expressed my concern regarding undue political influence in NSA placing Mr. Ellis on administrative leave. Separately, it has recently come to my attention that NSA has refused to deliver information requested by the Republican Members on the House Intelligence Committee who are trying to fulfill their oversight responsibilities."

"Now, there is a public report that NSA read the emails of Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Although NSA publicly denied targeting Carlson, I have serious questions regarding this matter that must be answered. Given this disturbing trend, I've asked HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes to investigate and find answers on behalf of the American people. The NSA cannot be used as a political instrument, and House Republicans will ensure accountability and transparency."

Hunter Biden's laptop shows he brought his Mexican business partners to a meeting with his then-VP father in Washington, while his emails list favors he did for them - including one sent from Air Force Two with Joe Biden on board.

Now president, Biden has steadfastly denied involvement in his son Hunter's business schemes, most of which appear to involve trading on the family name to score lucrative deals abroad. Yet the newest batch of information from his laptop, published by the New York Post, shows him posing with Hunter, his US business partner, and three Mexican magnates at the official vice-presidential residence after a breakfast meeting in 2015.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said it's awaiting explanations from Berlin following a reported top-secret meeting with officials from Luxembourg over a broadcasting license for RT's planned German-language TV channel.

The media outlet is attempting to secure a license in the small central European country for a station under the provisional name RT auf Deutsch. The signal would come from a studio in Moscow, with existing sister company RT DE Productions GmbH, which is based in the German capital, providing talk shows, exclusive interviews, and news reports.

Meanwhile, the plan to expand news coverage is facing a pushback from German media. For instance, newspaper Der Tagesspiegel alleged in June that RT was waging a smear campaign against Annalena Baerbock, the candidate for the German chancellorship from the Green party. Tagesspiegel claimed Baerbock's critical views on the policies of Russia had angered President Vladimir Putin.

While not singling out this particular report, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, on Thursday lambasted media attacks against the outlet, saying the German media is essentially behaving "beyond any professional ethic line." She recalled RT being labelled ''Kremlin's mouthpiece" as well as a "weapon of propaganda."

"It's not even negative [coverage]... It's an outright information war that has been declared on the Russian channel by the German media."

A new think tank founded by a group of US neoconservative figures aims to turn Turkey back into a "democracy" and a "reliably ally" of the United States once more. Although the Turkish Democracy Project" stops short of calling for regime change, its staff is littered with men whose careers have been built on it.

"For the better part of the last century, Turkey was a reliable ally and a model in the region of liberal ideals and cultural freedom," the Turkish Democracy Project (TDP) says on its website. "But in recent years, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dramatically altered Turkey's position in the international community and its status as a free and liberal democracy."


The group, whose website went active on June 23, describes itself as "a nonprofit, non-partisan, international policy organization" which "opposes its destabilizing behavior, supports genuine democratic reform, and holds the forces of corruption and oppression within Turkey to account."

Why this is the task of a bunch of American former diplomats and academics is never stated.

US-Turkish Relations Slowly Implode

Turkey joined the NATO alliance in 1952, meaning the US is pledged to defend the country if it comes under attack, and Turkey has long been a key partner for the US in the region, including housing a large air force base at Incirlik that held nuclear weapons. However, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has butted heads with US policymakers several times in recent years, helping to create a rift between the allies.

NATO began its annual Dynamnic Mongoose anti-submarine warfare exercise on June 28 off the coast of Norway in what the military bloc deems the High North: the Arctic region, which it has identified as its domain since 2009. (As it has the Mediterranean Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea.)

The code name for the war games may seem puzzling; there's a noticeable incongruity with the name of an animal primarily associated with South Asia and Africa used for maneuvers on the top of the world. It's less baffling when one recalls the mongoose is used to kill snakes. Russian submarines are the snakes.

This year's iteration includes warships, warplanes and submarines from NATO member states Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Norway and the U.S. Five of those states - Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and the U.S. - are Arctic coastal nations. The others are Finland and Sweden, both NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partners, and Russia. Isolated Russia. Targeted Russia.

Two submarines, six military vessels and eight aircraft are involved.

The Russian submarine fleet is that part of its nuclear triad of delivery systems least vulnerable to a first-strike attack. Missile silos and aircraft on the ground could be destroyed within hours of such an attack. Submarines, then, are Russia's last line of defense, the only retaliatory force left and as such its main deterrent force.

At a joint press conference with Texas governor Greg Abbott at the U.S. border with Mexico, former president Donald Trump suggested that the border crisis could have been averted if Biden simply did "nothing."

"All Biden had to do was go to the beach," he commented. "If he would have just done nothing, we would have had the strongest border we ever had."

After Vice President Kamala Harris failed to make an appearance at the border site for weeks, despite being appointed to manage the migrant crisis, Abbott invited Trump to accompany him on a tour of the border to witness the deteriorating situation there, marked by overcrowded detention facilities, overwhelmed border-patrol personnel, and high rates of immigrant apprehensions. Harris eventually did take a trip last week to El Paso, Texas, a town technically in proximity to the border but many miles away from the location where the real fiasco is unfolding.

Investigators raided the French Justice Ministry as part of a conflict of interest probe into Eric Dupond-Moretti, the minister whose drive to introduce filmed court proceedings and re-write the judges' training book has angered the legal profession.

A source with first hand knowledge of the case said the raid was carried out by investigators working for a special court that deals with complaints against serving ministers.

The Justice Ministry, housed in an elegant 18th century palace in central Paris next to the Ritz Hotel, declined to give immediate comment.

In my time as a US intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, I was twice privy to the former US defense secretary's MO: to manufacture and manipulate 'intelligence' so as to start wars. The Devil will need to watch his back.

While I never met Donald Rumsfeld in person, our paths crossed indirectly on several occasions. What I learnt from these experiences hardened my heart toward a man who caused so much harm based on actions that placed ambition over integrity.

In the days following my September 3, 1998, testimony before a joint session of the Senate Armed Forces and Foreign Affairs Committees, where I challenged the US government's inconsistent policies regarding the disarmament of Iraq, I received a letter from the former defense secretary. When I heard yesterday that Rumsfeld had passed away at the age of 88, I re-read the letter and ruminated about the man who wrote it, and how I felt about him in retrospect.

So, the War on Reality is going splendidly. Societies all across the world have been split into opposing, irreconcilable realities. Neighbors, friends, and even family members are bitterly divided into two hostile camps, each regarding the other as paranoid psychotics, delusional fanatics, dangerous idiots, and, in any event, as mortal enemies.

In the UK, Germany, and many other countries, and in numerous states throughout the US, a "state of emergency" remains in effect. An apocalyptic virus is on the loose. Mutant variants are spreading like wildfire. Most of society is still shut down or subject to emergency health restrictions. People are still walking around in public with plastic face shields and medical-looking masks. The police are showing up at people's homes to arrest them for "illegally gathering outdoors." Any deviation from official reality is being censored by the Internet corporations. Constitutional rights are still suspended. Entire populations are being coerced into being injected with experimental "vaccines." Pseudo-medical segregation systems are being brought online. And so on ... you're familiar with the details.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, and a few other countries, and in various other states throughout the US, there is no apocalyptic pandemic. People are just going about their lives as normal. OK, sure, there is a nasty virus going around, so people are taking common sense precautions, as people typically do for any nasty virus, but there is no "state of emergency" in effect, and no reason to radically transform society into a paranoid, pathologized-totalitarian dystopia.

This state of affairs, in which two contradictory, mutually-exclusive realities exist, is ... well, it's impossible, and so it cannot continue. Either there exists a devastating global pandemic that justifies a global "state of emergency," the suspension of constitutional rights, and the other totalitarian "emergency measures" we have been subjected to since March of 2020 or there doesn't. It really is as simple as that.