An objective and non-Eurocentric view of the contemporary world shows that Russia is not in any way isolated even if its relations with some of the Western powers have recently been fraught.

One of David Cameron's early messages to the party he once led was 'we need to stop banging on about Europe'. We all know how that worked out. Now though it seems people everywhere are banging on about Europe. In this context the fiction being authored states that there will be a great modern European war and Russia will somehow be the aggressor.

To say Russia is largely indifferent to Europe would of course be a simplification. Every great power is concerned with every region of the world, especially a neighbouring region. But Russia's overall interests are not in places which have become increasingly hostile to her, let alone places whose currencies are collapsing, whose economies are stagnating and whose workforces cannot survive without the manual assistance of foreigners.

"Operation Unified Protector is one of the most successful in NATO's history... We have done this together for the people of Libya, so they can take their future firmly and safely into their own hands. Libyans have now liberated their country. And they have transformed the region. This is their victory" - Former NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking in October, 2011.

"In Libya, the death of Muammar al-Qaddafi showed that our role in protecting the Libyan people, and helping them break free from a tyrant, was the right thing to do" - US President, Barack Obama, speaking in October, 2011.

"I am proud to stand here on the soil of a free Tripoli and on behalf of the American people I congratulate Libya. This is Libya's moment, this is Libya's victory, the future belongs to you" - Former US Secretary of State and Democratic Nominee for President, Hillary Clinton, speaking in October, 2011.

On August the 1^st, US warplanes bombed Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL) targets in the Libyan city of Sirte, almost exactly five years after Western imperialists declared NATO's 2011 war in Libya a complete success.

These strikes are not the first conducted by the US in Libya this year, in a broader campaign that is officially aimed at defeating an enemy that the US had a major hand in creating in the first place (I'm sure the military-industrial complex isn't complaining however).

Israeli cyber intelligence company hacked the Daesh Telegram messenger group, local media reported Friday.

Experts from the Israeli cyber intelligence company Intsights hacked the Telegram messenger group which militants of the Daesh terrorist group have used for communication and thus revealed their plans for multiple attacks, local media reported Friday.

According to Haaretz newspaper, a Herzliya-based intelligence company discovered the Daesh plans to attack the US air bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, as well as attacks which already took place such as the one in the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray church in France.

The media added that the company did not disclose any details on how they managed to hack the Telegram group.

While President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 214 offenders, the US remains a world leader in the number of jailed citizens, disproportionally minorities. Obama's 20th century predecessors were also more merciful.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it would commute the sentences of 214 federal inmates, making it "the most grants in a single day since at least 1900," according to White House Counsel Neil Eggleston.

"To date, President Obama has granted 562 commutations: more commutations than the previous nine presidents combined and more commutations than any individual president in nearly a century," Eggleston added.

After being accused of blatant bias against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the BBC is now facing claims it may not be checking journalists' possible conflicts of interest and impartiality.

The revelation came after financial researcher and campaigner Joel Benjamin submitted a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the BBC on the links between a Newsnight editor and the Conservative Party.

The corporation - the world's largest broadcaster - continuously rejected Benjamin's inquiries,arguing they fell outside the Freedom of Information Act's (FOIA) remit because it was related to journalistic output.

Some dismiss it as fear porn incessantly pumped out on the internet, constantly warning Americans that dictator Obama has a sinister design to create a national crisis in order to declare martial law as a means of canceling November's election and thereby stay in power. Of course that kind of conspiracy theory speculation has only been fueled by this summer's rise of alleged terrorist attacks and staged mass shootings skyrocketing both in America and across the globe. After the bloodiest Ramadan month on record, near daily terrorist attacks and mass killings are now striking Germany, France, Sweden and Japan like never before. The latest victim was an elderly priest, his throat slashed in his Catholic church by an electronic ankle bracelet wearing ISIS terrorist in a sleepy French village in Normandy. In Japan a knife-wielding killer on a rampage murdered 19 mentally disabled people and wounded 45 more, calling it a mercy killing for their overburdened caregivers.

This year the globalists have been working overtime, stepping up Western state sponsored terrorism attacks around the globe using their Islamic jihadists and deranged extremists as their regular go-to patsies. The hundreds of terrorist cells embedded in the millions of migrating refugees still pouring into Europe and America have Merkel and Obama still welcoming them with open arms, just as their puppet masters pulling their strings demand, while the entire world knows it's reaping disastrous consequences. Yet the madness, turpitude and destruction committed at the highest levels of power every day are impervious to the will of the people and immune from any real accountability.

In America the globalists have been especially busy employing Soros funded groups like MoveOn.org, Black Lives Matter and Color of Change to incite chaos, confusion and tension especially along a racial divide through distortion and lies. Meanwhile, Islamic State terrorists and MS-13 gangsters have infiltrated America's 8-year unprotected border with intent to create violence and terror. The results promote race wars, religious wars, a war between foreign immigrants and Americans as well as the war between an increasingly hostile federal government and angry citizen patriots feeling betrayed by Washington. Puppet Obama has faithfully carried out his Manchurian orders, by design leaving America wide open and defenseless, just like his European counterparts Merkel and Hollande. A culture of irrational mob rule, fanatical extremism and militant PC rigidity and intolerance have killed free speech, leaving the nation fragmented, zombified and mentally, economically, and politically unstable.

Several poison gas shells have been fired into the old city of Aleppo, killing over a dozen residents and hospitalizing over 30 others. Sputnik Arabic was able to speak to several residents on the ground about the barbaric attack.

Militants from the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki militant group, an Islamist group which has received US-made weapons and financial aid from the CIA, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, were reported to have fired seven shells of poison gas at a local market in the al-Awamid neighborhood of old Aleppo on Tuesday night, ostensibly in order to force the Syrian Army to stop its military operations in the city.

Against the backdrop of terrorist attacks that rocked Europe - and Germany in particular - in recent months, the German government is set on updating the system of national civil defense for the first time in some 20 years, Bild reported on Thursday.

Citing excerpts from the 69-page draft version of the new document which is expected to be adopted by ministers on August 24, the newspaper reports the proposed changes cover a variety of spheres, from increasing vaccine and basic supplies storage to stocking up on chemical protective suits to be distributed among the population in case of emergency.

All German municipalities will be ordered to dig special water-wells to provide a minimum supply of drinking water for their citizens for at least two weeks, as well as purchase chlorine tablets for disinfection and organize water distribution across their land.

"[Local authorities] are responsible for setting up temporary accommodation and food-distribution places," Bild quotes the paper, adding that in case of an attack (nuclear, biological or chemical) hospitals are planned to be used as"decontamination sites."

The document reportedly addresses the creation of an "own food reserve" for the federal government, as well as increasing federal reserves of drugs and medical products. Currently, there is enough in stock for 14 days.

The results are already in, even before the official campaign-finance final figures will become available after the election.

Though a large percentage of the people funding the campaign advertising will never be made public — due to recent Supreme Court decisions allowing "dark money" — data already exist on the final product of the campaigns (including both the above-board and the dark money), which is the booked advertising time for each of the two candidates at the start of their campaigns. (Similar proportions of donations go also to get-out-the-vote and other campaign-activities; so, these booked-advertising figures correlate rather well with across-the-board funding of the two campaigns.)

Advertising rates — the charges per second of air-time — get higher and higher the later and closer to Election Day the time is booked; so, any candidate who books late is really starved for funds and has little chance of winning; any candidate who does the booking early is getting a big break from the networks and from certain other media. This discount, for early booking, magnifies even further the cash-advantage of the candidate whom the oligarchs prefer.

However, normally, both Parties' nominees have their own billionaires backing them (Republican billionaires backing the Republican nominee, and Democratic billionaires backing the Democratic nominee), and so there's a real contest, they both have a chance; but not this time: Look at the figures, and you can see that, this time around, virtually all of the oligarchs are backing only one candidate: they have united around Clinton.

Netflix subscribers will have to pay more to watch movies starting today thanks to a series of new taxes.

The new taxes were part of a revenue package passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Tom Wolf to fill a $1.3 billion hole in the state's new $31.5 billion budget.

The state's existing 6-percent sales tax will now be extended to digital downloads and subscription services like Netflix and Hulu.

This also includes music, e-books, apps, online games, and ringtones.

Magazine and newspaper subscriptions, as well as digital versions of the Bible, will be exempt from the digital downloads tax.

The tax will be triggered when a customer uses an account with a Pennsylvania billing address.