Hillary Clinton steps behind a pillar to keep the press from filming her coughing at a press conference on national security issues.

Hillary's coughing fits are seriously out of control, and these are not simple conspiracy theories as over 71% of 250 doctors surveyed now believe that HRC is hiding a "serious" health condition.

Even worse, Hillary is now showing all the signs of being totally rattled by the coverage her chronic coughing is receiving.

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.

General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; 1968

While it may no longer be our precious bodily fluids under attack by the big bad Rooskies and their ever-scheming leadership, it is clearly our political system that is in the Kremlin's crosshairs.

However detached from reality such an interpretation might seem to a clear-headed American, that is precisely the notion that Hillary Clinton and her gaggle of political guinea worms have endlessly droned on about. Listening to the Clinton campaign, and its public relations employees masquerading as corporate media journalists, one would think that World War Three had already begun on the battlefield of US electoral politics.

And this is not by accident. The Clinton campaign is trading in the worst forms of chauvinism, paranoia, and conspiracy theory in an attempt to deflect attention away from the rapidly expanding dumpster fires that are the series of scandals plaguing her White House bid.

The Democratic Party conspired with the Clinton campaign to sabotage Bernie Sanders? Why, that's little more than a Russian-Wikileaks plot to expose, well, the truth. But still, you know, Putin!

The Clinton Foundation is exposed as a pay-for-play scheme involving some of the world's most powerful politicians and various other assorted degenerates? Why, that is undeniably the work of those borscht-eating ex-commies.

Hillary illegally destroyed emails that were already illegally being stored on a private server? It was her black predecessor's fault! But Putin was probably behind that too, somehow. Of course, Colin Powell should take heart - at least Ms. #ImWitHer didn't call him a superpredator.

The fact is that only the most dim-witted dullards are entranced by the shiny objects of Clintonian propaganda. The more sophisticated, or even moderately informed, political observers understand that all the talk of Russian espionage is an attempt to both deflect from the scandals as well as the fact that Clinton offers very little that is truly progressive or even moderately beneficial to the vast majority of Americans. She's a Goldman-Sachs Girl, and everyone knows it.

Crimea cannot be returned to Ukraine, Czech President Milos Zeman said on Friday, answering readers' questions in the Parlamentni Listy newspaper.

"An annexation means breaching international agreements, and it is doubtless that agreements guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity were breached," Zeman said.

But, at the same time, the Czech President noted that an unforgivable stupidity was committed by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1954 made Crimea a part of Ukraine, which was then a part of the Soviet Union.

"The world's politicians acknowledge today that Crimea cannot be given back to Ukraine," Zeman stressed.

With so much murder and destruction of infrastructure around the world from Syria to Ukraine to Venezuela and Nigeria, I want to highlight two recent projects to build new infrastructure in order to bring economic growth and prosperity to some of the least developed regions of the Earth—Eurasia, the vast land space between Russia and China. Two projects have just confirmed they are going ahead. The Moscow-Kazan-China high-speed railway via Kazakhstan is one. The second is a major railroad bridge over the Amur River to China. Both in and of themselves are not transformational. In context of the broader multi-trillion dollar infrastructure project, One Belt, One Road or the Economic New Silk Road as it is also called, the two projects are vital links in creating the next world economic center of growth for at least the next century.

On June 3 Alexander Misharin, First Vice-President of the state-owned Russian Railways announced that the New Development Bank (NDB) of the BRICS countries, formally established in 2015, after hearing the presentation from Russian Railways, has agreed to provide partial financing of up to $500 million for the Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway project. China has recently confirmed plans to provide a 400 billion-ruble or $6 billion loan for Russia's Moscow-Kazan section of what will be a far greater Moscow-Beijing high-speed rail link of the One Belt, One Road infrastructure. China will also give equity financing of 52 billion rubles and an additional $1 billion to complete the project.

In a recent article here we reviewed the recent findings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. We saw how the tribunal finally cleared Milošević of the accusations that had been heaped against him by the Western press for over two decades. [...] The question to be asked is: why was he demonized in the first place? Whose interest or interests did it serve? Were there larger programs and plans at work?

The short answer, of course, is that it served the purposes and interests of the West. I recently came across a very perceptive and - as it turns out - incredibly prescient article on this subject. The article was written in 2001 by Nico Varkevisser and Jared Israel, and it predicts precisely the trajectory of US policies towards the republics of the former Soviet Union. It not only explains in detail the reasons for Milošević's portrayal in the West as the new Hitler, but it also sheds a good deal of light on the reasons behind Washington's policies today in the Russian spheres of influence. Current events in the Middle East, the Ukraine, and other places make much more sense when viewed through the prism of the points raised below.

As you read these quotes below, ask yourself: have these predictions from 2001 come to pass?

The exercise codenamed as Caucasus2016 follows a period of heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine after the Kremlin accused Kiev of plotting terror attacks against Russians in Crimea.

On Monday, the Russian forces began a massive military exercise to test troops' combat readiness and cooperation between different branches of the country's armed forces. The exercise, involving over 12,500 servicemen including Navy, Airborne and Aerospace units was conducted in the south of Russia.

The war games, codenamed Caucasus2016, will be carried out over six days ending on September 10 according to an announcement by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The exercises aim to assess and improve the skills of military commanders "in planning, preparation and conducting of combat operations."

The massive war games are likely to grab the attention of Western analysts who continue to call for a more aggressive posture towards Russia in light of recent demonization of the country surrounding accusations tied to the 2016 US presidential election and with tensions simmering in the Ukraine providing a convenient excuse to escalate anti-Russian provocations.

In a few days it will be the 15th anniversary of 9/11, and this November 22 will be the 53rd anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. These two state crimes against democracy destroyed American democracy, accountable government, and the Constitution's protections of civil liberty.

Years after the damage done by these events the American people no longer believe the official stories. Neither does the government, but the government will never validate the distrust that Americans now share of the oligarchs' government by acknowledging the truth.

The official explanation of the assassination of President Kennedy never made any sense. Videos of the assassination contradicted the official story, as did witnesses, and many credible people challenged the government's story. The CIA was faced with the official explanation becoming unglued and launched its media program stigmatizing doubters as "conspiracy theorists."

Islamic State jihadists are praying to Allah and "rooting" for Donald Trump to become the next president, according to Hillary Clinton, who lambasted her rival's "demagoguery" and use of the phrase "radical Islam."

"Basically, the jihadists see this as a great gift," the Democratic presidential nominee told Israel's Channel 2 News. "They are saying 'Oh, please Allah, make Trump president of America.'"

In her statement, aired Thursday, the former secretary of state referred to Matt Olsen, former chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, who recently wrote that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) spokespeople were supporting Trump.

"[Olsen] quoted ISIS spokespeople rooting for Donald Trump's victory, because Trump has made Islam and Muslims part of his campaign," Clinton said.

Originally appeared at Izvestia - Russian daily news. Translated by Julia Rakhmetova

After another Pentagon statement on "unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers" by a ship or aircraft of some country in the vicinity of US sailors and pilots, who 'peacefully' violate Russian, Chinese or Iranian borders, my friends are usually indignant. This happened recently when the American Navy P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft twice approached Russia's border over the Black Sea and were intercepted by Sukhoi Su-27 fighters.

American military tend to misbehave, believing they will escape punishment. Dotting the world with reconnaissance stations, interception and wiretapping systems, they are sure that as "Big Brother," they can take the liberty of doing anything they want. They do this until someone explains in plain language that they must not misbehave, sobering them with a slap in the face.

Many remember the incident of the U-2 spy plane piloted by Gary Powers shot down over Sverdlovsk in 1960. In 1988, the Bezzavetny guard ship literally pushed the American missile cruiser USS Yorktown out of Soviet territorial waters. Deputy Commander in Chief of the Black Sea Fleet Rear-Admiral Valery Kulikov, who took a direct part in that incident as a first mate on the Bezzavetny told me the story.