US officials say President Barack Obama must carefully consider how to respond to what security experts believe was Russia's involvement in the hacking of Democratic Party organizations amid Washington's concerns of a confrontation with Moscow. US intelligence officials said publicly blaming the intelligence services of Russian President Vladimir Putin would bring immediate pressure on Washington to disclose its evidence, which relies on highly classified sources and methods.


The intelligence officials said they fear of a rapid escalation of cyber attacks by Russia if Washington retaliates against Moscow in cyberspace. Under a worst-case scenario, Russia's sophisticated hackers could attack financial systems, power grids and other critical infrastructure, the intelligence officials said.

Russian state company Rostec has reached a €1 billion deal with Iran to build a 1.4 gigawatt power station, Kommersant daily reports. Rostec is the first Russian company to get a firm contract with Tehran since the ending of sanctions.

The Hormozgan plant in the port of Bandar Abbas will be built by Rostec subsidiary Tekhnopromexport and will take five years to construct.

According to the newspaper, it will have four 350 megawatt generators and a seawater desalination plant with a capacity of 200,000 cubic meters per day. Tekhnopromexport won't invest its own money, 85 percent of the funds will come from a Russian state loan at 2.77 percent interest, with the difference provided by Tehran.

This isn't the biggest power plant Russia has built in Iran. In the 1980s, the USSR built the Ramin (1.89 gigawatt) and the Isfahan (1.6 gigawatt) plants in the country.

The devaluation of the ruble has made Russian projects more competitive abroad, although analysts polled by Kommersant regard the new project as more political.

"This is a totally political project, and the construction margin is very low," said Vladimir Sklyar from Renaissance Capital. He said it's hard for Moscow to make big profit from such projects, as they are funded by Russian loans and built by Russian contractors.

Despite growing political ties between Moscow and Tehran, economic cooperation between the countries is complicated by project financing, the newspaper says. Iran is ready to attract Russian contractors, but only for Russian loans.

Thus, Russian Railways and Tehran have agreed a €1.2 billion project to electrify 495 kilometers of Iranian railroad, but the contract hasn't been signed. Inter RAO is ready to modernize and expand Iranian hydroelectric and power generation but financing is still unclear, reports Kommersant.

Serbia has issued a strong protest against a new statue in Croatia of an ultranationalist independence fighter who assassinated the Yugoslav ambassador to Sweden in 1971.

The Serbian Foreign Ministry demanded on August 1 the removal of the monument to Miro Baresic that was unveiled in the seaside Croatian village of Drage on July 31. Croatian cabinet members and prominent public figures attended the unveiling.

Baresic was a supporter of the Ustasha -- the Nazi puppet regime -- who campaigned and fought for Croatian independence from Yugoslavia. He shot Ambassador Vladimir Rolovic in the Yugoslav Embassy in Stockholm and was sentenced in Sweden to life in prison.

But a group of Croatian far rightists hijacked a Scandinavian Airlines plane in 1972 and forced officials to release Baresic. He fled to Paraguay but was eventually recaptured and extradited to Sweden in 1980.

In 1991, Baresic was released from prison and returned to Croatia where he was killed while fighting against Serbian-led forces.

Baresic is considered a terrorist in Serbia but a hero among many Croats due to his devotion to Croatian independence.

UK counter-terrorism cops are going on permanent standby amid fears of a Europe-style assault on targets across Britain.

Specialist armed police units will provide 24 hour coverage ready to respond to attacks like those in Nice in July if there is an attempt to replicate them on British streets.

London Police Chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe wrote in the Mail newspaper that his force was "training hundreds of extra officers so they are ready to supplement our numbers during an attack similar to that seen in Paris. This increases armed officers by 600 to 2,800."

A British MP was paid thousands of pounds by a group allegedly linked to the failed Turkish military coup to write a report on Turkey's human rights record, which was then promoted during a House of Commons debate, it has emerged.

According to The Times, Tory MP Sir Edward Garnier accepted £115,994 ($152,951) from the Istanbul-based group Journalists and Writers Foundation (JWF). The group has been linked to an organization headed by the Islamic preacher Fetullah Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the US.

On July 15, a group of rogue soldiers that Ankara alleges were connected to Gülen attempted to topple the democratically-elected government in Turkey and bring martial law into effect.

Garnier's paper, titled 'A Report on the Rule of Law and Respect for Human Rights in Turkey', was released in September last year and promoted by London-based PR company Hawthorn, which offers "reputation management." Copies were sent to then-foreign secretary Philip Hammond and then-Prime Minister David Cameron. It was written at a time when Gülen's group was listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey.

The US-led international coalition air power has delivered 12 more air strikes on ISIS targets in the Syrian city of Manbij. Pro-US sources say that the air strikes targeted the ISIS positions and manpower in the city in next areas: in the vicinity of the automated bakery in southwestern Manbij, near the gas stantion in northern Manbij, urban areas in northeastern Manbij and the city hall.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are consolidating recent gains in the city.

Predominantly Kurdish SDF units seized a significant part of Sheikh Aqeel Cemetry, Post Office north of the city hall and advanced in Sheikh Aqeel Neighborhood. However, the ISIS is still in control of the significant part of the city.

The visit by a 10-person delegation from the National Assembly and Senate of France to Crimea concluded today. A farewell press conference was held with the delegation members. The head of the delegation, Thierry Mariani, issued a loud statement: the international community should recognize Crimea as part of Russia.

The Russian press has busied itself with discussing an instance from today's press conference, namely, when a Ukrainian journalist posed a "repulsive" question to the delegation's head, Thierry Mariani [1]. But of much more interest to us is the visit's hidden motivation.

As informed media reports have pointed out, 8 of the 10 members of the delegation that arrived in Crimea represent the Republican Party headed by former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, as we recall, has recently made a number of positive statements about Russia. He recently met with President Vladimir Putin and called upon Russia to lift the counter-sanctions imposed on French agricultural products. In doing so, Sarkozy prepared the ground for the Crimean visit by his party fellows. What's more, for several of them such as Mariani, this is not their first visit to Crimea since its reunification with Russia.

Russian Crimea is becoming a factor in the internal politics of Western countries, and not only in Europe. We've already written about the series of resolutions passed in Northern Italy's regional councils and in the Parliament of Cyprus supporting the Russian status of Crimea. Literally yesterday, US presidential candidate Donald Trump also called Crimea's reunification with Russia a realization of the will of Crimeans. Of course, the Crimean issue is not the most important ant not even a secondary issue in the electoral campaign in the US, but it is nonetheless becoming all the more visible as it affects the main nerve of Western foreign policy: relations with Russia.

While British soldiers fear for their children's health in squalid flea-infested housing, UK taxpayers are footing a massive bill for senior officers to stay on 5-star luxury superyachts, it has emerged.

Only weeks after the horrendous conditions forced upon soldiers in privatized military housing were exposed by the Public Affairs Committee (PAC), a new freedom of information (FoI) request by the Times shows the military has spent tens of thousands of pounds on opulent hotels for its senior officers.

The revelations cast light on the James Bond lifestyle enjoyed by some officers in luxurious hotels both at home and abroad in exotic settings such as Djibouti, Chad and Nigeria.

In 2014-2015 the military spent more than £300 (US$396) per night on 75 different hotel stays, costing the public purse more than £120,000 (US$160,000).

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."—Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union

No, America, you don't have to vote.

In fact, vote or don't vote, the police state will continue to trample us underfoot.

Devil or deliverer, the candidate who wins the White House has already made a Faustian bargain to keep the police state in power. It's no longer a question of which party will usher in totalitarianism but when the final hammer will fall.

Sure we're being given choices, but the differences between the candidates are purely cosmetic ones, lacking any real nutritional value for the nation. We're being served a poisoned feast whose aftereffects will leave us in turmoil for years to come.

We've been here before.

Remember Barack Obama, the young candidate who campaigned on a message of hope, change and transparency, and promised an end to war and surveillance?

Look how well that turned out.

Under Obama, government whistleblowers are routinely prosecuted, U.S. arms sales have skyrocketed, police militarization has accelerated, and surveillance has become widespread. The U.S. government is literally arming the world, while bombing the heck out of the planet. And while they're at it, the government is bringing the wars abroad home, transforming American communities into shell-shocked battlefields where the Constitution provides little in the way of protection.

Yes, we're worse off now than we were eight years ago.

We're being subjected to more government surveillance, more police abuse, more SWAT team raids, more roadside strip searches, more censorship, more prison time, more egregious laws, more endless wars, more invasive technology, more militarization, more injustice, more corruption, more cronyism, more graft, more lies, and more of everything that has turned the American dream into the American nightmare.

What we're not getting more of: elected officials who actually represent us.

The American people are being guilted, bullied, pressured, cajoled, intimidated, terrorized and browbeaten into voting. We're constantly told to vote because it's your so-called civic duty, because you have no right to complain about the government unless you vote, because every vote counts, because we must present a unified front, because the future of the nation depends on it, because God compels us to do so, because by not voting you are in fact voting, because the "other" candidate must be defeated at all costs, or because the future of the Supreme Court rests in the balance.

Nothing in the Constitution requires that you vote.

You are under no moral obligation to vote for the lesser of two evils. Indeed, voting for a lesser evil is still voting for evil.

The central issue in the U.S. Presidential campaign can't even be discussed in U.S. newsmedia, because America's media have been almost uniformly complicit all along in hiding from the American public the crucial factual information that's necessary in order for the public to vote in an intelligent and truthfully informed way about it. No news medium wants to report its own having been complicit in anything; so, the cover-up here just continues; it has a life of its own, even though it's a life that brings the world closer and closer to a situation which would kill billions of people, as things get increasingly out-of-control the longer this coverup continues. The cycle of virtually uniform lying thus persists, despite the growing danger it produces. This article will need to be lengthy, because the American public have been almost consistently lied-to about so many very important things — things associated with the nation's central issue — an issue even bigger than terrorism, and than global warming, and than rising economic inequality and corruption, but which is still virtually ignored. This article is thus intended to be 'Drano' for a political system that has become clogged by lies just jammed down into it, now backing up and pouring out onto America's political floor. The overflowing sludge has got to be cleaned up, and discarded. Or else — and very suddenly — it will kill us all.

This central issue is whether or not to continue to move forward with the American government's plan, ever since the Soviet Union and its military alliance the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991, to extend NATO — the anti-Russia military club — right up to Russia's borders, surround Russia with NATO nuclear missiles a mere five minutes flight-time to Moscow, and simultaneously build a "Ballistic Missile Defense" or "Anti Ballistic Missile" (BMD or ABM) system to nullify Russia's retaliatory missiles against an unannounced blitz U.S.-NATO invasion to take over, if not totally eliminate, Russia and its resistance to U.S. power. This operation is an ugly reality, but it is an American-led reality, and the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election will bring it into its final stage, either by ending it, or by culminating it — two drastically different outcomes, but one side or the other will prevail in this political contest, and the present article links to the documentation that America's voters will need to be aware of that shows not only that they've been lied-to, but how and why they've been lied-to. The documentation is all-important, especially because the facts that are being documented have been hidden so successfully for so long. This is not a world that Americans want to know, but it is a world that especially the few Americans who are in control, don't want the American public to know. That's a toxic combination (public ignorance, which the people in control want to continue), but it is tragically real (as the documentation here will make clear).