NATO must not bury its head in the sand with regard to Turkey's recent behaviour towards its allies, a French defence ministry official said on Wednesday, accusing the Turkish navy of harassing a French warship on a NATO mission.

A senior Turkish official denied the accusation, saying "no such thing" had occurred.

NATO defence ministers will hold a virtual meeting this week amid growing tensions between Paris and Ankara. The two allies have traded barbs over the crisis in Libya, accusing each other of supporting opposing sides in the country's war.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, the French defence ministry official said it was time NATO had a frank discussion about Turkey and its conduct - not just in Libya, but other issues such as Ankara buying Russian S-400 defence systems and blocking NATO defence planning for the Baltics and Poland.

"We have known complicated moments in the alliance, but we can't be an ostrich and can't pretend there isn't a Turkey problem at NATO. We have to see it, say it and handle it," said the official. Calling Turkey's behaviour unacceptable, the official singled out Turkey's role in Libya,

A group of Indian demonstrators set fire to a Chinese flag and burned an effigy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The event, organized by a local NGO, comes after the first fatal clash between China and India since 1975.

In a series of photos, posted by ANI, a group of demonstrators is seen torching an effigy which has a printed image of Chinese President Xi Jinping pinned to its 'head.' Another photo shows a man setting fire to a Chinese flag. Some of the demonstrators can be seen playing drums while others hold signs.

The protest was reportedly organized by Vishal Bharat Sansthan, a local NGO based in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

In 1945, they defeated Adolf Hitler and Imperial Japan. Now, 75 years on, Vladimir Putin believes that the present global health and economic emergency requires the Second World War allies to unite once more.

In a lengthy op-ed, published in American foreign policy journal 'The National Interest' and Russian government newspaper 'Rossiyskaya Gazeta,' the Russian president discusses the reasons behind the rise of the Nazis. He also outlines the benefits of the post-war world order, which he now believes needs to be renewed.

Putin cites the weakness of the League of Nations as one of the principal causes of the conflict. As a result, he praises the winners for setting up the United Nations, with a solid legal foundation, to help prevent future hot wars between great powers.

Today, with the Covid-19 pandemic, and resultant economic fallout, he urges the chief allies - who now comprise the permanent membership of the UN Security Council - to pull together.

One of the strange aspects of western media coverage of Russia is the constant attempts to paint Vladimir Putin as an apologist for Josef Stalin. Meanwhile, in the real world, he has once-again berated the Soviet leader's legacy.

The Russian President used an op-ed, published in American foreign policy journal The National Interest and in the Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, to reiterate that the Georgian-born autocrat, who led the Soviet Union from the 1920s to 1953, had committed crimes against his own people.

Referring to the role of the USSR in the Second World War, and the personal wartime contribution of its commander-in-chief, Putin noted that the Russian people have not forgotten the terror he unleashed. "We remember the crimes committed by the regime against its own people and the horror of mass repressions," the president wrote.

According to Putin, while Stalin and his entourage deserve reproach for their transgressions, they do at least deserve credit for their "understanding of the nature of external threats." The Soviet leaders "saw how attempts were made to leave the Soviet Union alone to deal with Germany and its allies... bearing in mind this real threat, they sought to buy precious time needed to strengthen the country's defenses," he explained.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton's book The Room Where It Happened accuses Trump of incompetence and potential criminality. But it contains nothing that should disqualify him from the presidency.

Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton's new book, The Room Where It Happened, has taken Washington by storm.

Filled with pointed criticisms of President Donald J Trump, Bolton's book, which details allegations of incompetence and potentially criminal conduct, is an elixir of hope for those whose mission is to undermine the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where the Oval Office (the "room" alluded to in the title of Bolton's book) is located. Whether or not this elixir can deliver on its promise remains to be seen.

In 2016, the United States elected a man wholly unqualified to be President of the United States. Those who supported the candidacy of Donald Trump knew this when they cast their votes. Indeed, the lack of Washington "taint" was one of his major alluring qualities. Trump won not because he was deemed to be more experienced than his competition, but rather because the kind of experience that had traditionally been qualifying was deemed by the electorate as distinctly unqualifying.

For those not familiar with the phrase "global economic reset", it is one that has been used ever increasingly by elitists in the central banking world for several years. I first heard it referenced by Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF at the time, in 2014. The reset is often mentioned in the same breath as ideas like "the New Multilateralism" or "the Multipolar World Order" or "the New World Order". All of these phrases mean essentially the same thing.


The reset is promoted as a solution to the ongoing economic crisis which was triggered in 2008. This same financial crash is still with us today, but now, after a decade of central bank money printing and debt creation, the bubble is even bigger than it was before. As always, the central bank "cure" is far worse than the disease, and the renewed crash we face today is far more deadly than what would have happened in 2008 if we had simply taken our medicine and refused to prop up weak parts of the economy artificially.

Many alternative economists often wrongly attribute the Fed's habit of making things worse to "hubris" or "ignorance". They think the Fed actually wants to save the financial system or "protect the golden goose", but this is not reality. The truth is, the Fed is not a bumbling maintenance man, the Fed is a saboteur, a suicide bomber that is willing to destroy even itself as an institution in order to explode the US economy and clear the path for a new globally centralized one world system. Hence, the "Global Reset".

Matt Hancock was seen breaking social distancing rules just moments before joining Boris Johnson for Prime Minister's Questions.

The health secretary walked up to a colleague in the main Commons chamber - straight into a taped area showing where MPs should avoid to maintain the two metre distance mandated by government coronavirus rules.

Mr Hancock was seen on camera putting his hand on the other MP's shoulder, with the pair standing inches apart for around 10 seconds.

Russia's space agency's deputy head, Sergey Saveliev, warns that American plans to militarize the cosmic expanse risk causing destabilization. Roscosmos favors an international agreement to prevent an arms race in outer space.

"We are consistently speaking out, using all possible negotiating platforms, including the Conference on Disarmament, in order to [encourage] the adoption of a resolution," he said, in a post on the state-owned organization's website.

According to Saveliev, Russia wants to establish a comprehensive partnership with the United States in the field of space exploration. The Roscosmos official added that Moscow is of the view that it should be done in the spirit of reciprocity and equality.

"What's been most striking to me is just how one-sided the rules are when Americans take on their own government.... It has been dismaying to learn the extent to which rules and laws shield the government from accountability for its abuses — or even lawbreaking.... It's been a long and frightening lesson.... The rules seem rigged to protect government lawlessness, and the playing field is uneven. Too many processes favor the government. The deck is still stacked." — Journalist Sharyl Attkisson

The system is rigged.

The system is rigged, the government is corrupt, and "we the people" continue to waste our strength by fighting each other rather than standing against the tyrant in our midst.

Because the system is rigged, because the government is corrupt, and because "we the people" remain polarized and divided, the police state will keep winning and "we the people" will keep losing.

Because the system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court — the so-called "people's court" — has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, there will be little if no consequences for the cops who brutalize and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

Because the system is rigged, there will be no consequences for police who destroyed a private home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades during a SWAT team raid gone awry, or for the cop who mistakenly shot a 10-year-old boy after aiming for and missing the non-threatening family dog, or for the arresting officer who sicced a police dog on a suspect who had already surrendered.

This is how unarmed Americans keep dying at the hands of militarized police.

By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it this term that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, 'we the people' are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to 'serve and protect."

This is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

Lawyers tend to offer a lot of complicated, convoluted explanations for the doctrine of qualified immunity, which was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to rig the system, ensuring that abusive agents of the government almost always win and the victims of government abuse almost always lose.

How else do you explain a doctrine that requires victims of police violence to prove that their abusers knew their behavior was illegal because it had been deemed so in a nearly identical case at some prior time: it's a setup for failure.

Do you know how many different ways a cop can kill, maim, torture and abuse someone without being held liable?

The cops know: in large part due to training classes that drill them on the art of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment, which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents.

This is how "we the people" keep losing.

NATO's chief says that the United States intends to consult with allies on plans to draw down U.S. forces in Germany, plans that have rattled some members of the 30-member alliance.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also said that the alliance had no intentions to deploy land-based nuclear missiles in Europe, even as Russia deploys missiles that Washington says violated a key Cold War-era arms treaty.

Speaking to reporters following a June 17 meeting of alliance defense ministers, the NATO chief said the subject of the U.S. plans for decreasing its troop numbers in Germany came up for discussion.