American democracy is a shitshow that is insightful only unintentionally and captivating only in its grotesqueries.

In the late afternoon of day three of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, media workers and RNC attendees were blocked from exiting the security zone around the convention center. Past the concrete barriers, lines of police, and double layers of 10-foot tall steel-link fence, a protest was swirling. It was the American flag - burning hyped all day by members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a tiny Maoist-style group known for provocative but ultimately harmless political stunts.

From the security tunnel, apparently modeled on checkpoints dotting Israeli-occupied Palestine, it was difficult to distinguish protesters from media in the crowd of hundreds. Heated yelling drifted above the tightly packed throngs, but there was no smoke to be seen.

The mere threat of a piece of colored fabric being set alight was enough to trigger a lockdown. Rent-a-cops started herding bewildered media out of the tunnel. When two columns of beefy riot cops in full body armor began filing out to take up position near the protest, security swooped in to clear media out of a parking lot where the tumult could be observed.

On the scene was dozens of Bikers for Trump, loudly lecturing how the flag-burners would be killed in any other country. The imminence of violence is a refrain on a right that glorifies its weapons as instruments of peace. The previous day when I took a photo on the street near the convention of a knot of muscleheads all wearing the same 2nd Amendment t-shirts, one told me, with approving nods from his compatriot, "If it wasn't for the First Amendment, I would have smashed your camera."

These gun-slingers hadn't figured out the Constitution is not an a la carte menu they can pick and choose from, and eliminating the First Amendment would usher in the tyranny they rant about as imminent.

The United States has warned of possible Islamic State directed or inspired terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, including assualts on western embassies, the US State Department said in a travel warning issued on Wednesday.

"Possible targets include mosques, pilgrimage locations, and Saudi government facilities, as well as housing compounds, hotels, restaurants, shopping areas, international schools, Western consulates and embassies, and other facilities where Westerners congregate," the warning stated.

Turkish authorities ordered the detention of 47 journalists from a formerly oppositional newspaper amid a widening crackdown on supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames for a failed coup attempt earlier this month.

The warrants were issued Wednesday against executives and senior journalists of the Zaman newspaper, which was seized by the Turkish government in March.

"Today's detentions cover executives and some staff including columnists of Zaman newspaper, the Gulen movement's flagship media organization," a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters, as cited by Reuters.

The official said that the journalists are not being detained for anything they may have written or said, rather because they may have useful information regarding Gulen's network, which could be used by the Turkish state in its investigation against the US-based Muslim cleric, who Ankara believes was the mastermind behind the failed coup.

"At this point, the reasoning is that prominent employees of Zaman are likely to have intimate knowledge of the Gulen network and as such could benefit the investigation," the official added.

Moscow has been forming a force to counterbalance NATO's massive military buildup along Russia's borders in Europe, which will operate along its western and southern borders, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.

Shoigu named NATO's military buildup in Eastern Europe, the overall situation in Ukraine, and growing terrorist activity in the Caucasus region as the three principle drivers behind Moscow's military upgrade.

"In the given conditions, we have to take commensurate reaction measures," Shoigu said, while speaking at a Defense Ministry board session.

Since 2013, the Defense Ministry has conducted over 200 drills in the southern military district, the minister reported.

Four divisions, nine brigades, and 22 regiments have been formed there from scratch, Shoigu said.

The US drone systems delivered to Ukraine are used to transmit live video images and location data to ground control stations, according to the US embassy in Kiev.

The United States has delivered 72 hand launched surveillance drones to Ukraine as part of a larger effort to help the nation enhance its defense capabilities, the US embassy in Kiev said in a press release on Wednesday.

"24 RQ-11B Raven Unmanned Aircraft Systems (comprised of 72 aircraft and associated equipment) arrived at Boryspil International Airport July 27," the release said.

The Saudi-led forces torched the houses of Yemeni civilians in al-Sarari village after looting their properties, killing 20 of them and abducting 40 others.

The Saudi-led forces' atrocities came in Sabr al-Mavadem region of al-Sarari village after they exploded a mosque in al-Sarari village, the Arabic-language al-Ahad news site reported.

The Saudi forces exploded Jamal al-Din mosque in al-Sarari village, and held 40 residents of the village captive after killing 40 others.

The Saudi-led forces cut into pieces the bodies of the residents of al-Sarari village after executing them.

Since the recent ruling by The Hague in favor of the Philippines and against China over the South China Sea, Southeast Asia has been engulfed on how to respond. They dithered. They haggled.

They were plunged into despair.

It was a graphic demonstration of how "win-win" business is done in Asia. At least in theory.

In the end, at a summit in Vientiane, Laos, the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China finally settled for that household mantra - "defusing tensions".

They agreed to stop sending people to currently uninhabited "islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features" after ASEAN declared itself worried about land reclamation and "escalations of activities in the area".

And all this without even naming China - or referring to the ruling in The Hague.

China and ASEAN also pledged to respect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea (which Washington insists is in danger); solve territorial disputes peacefully, through negotiations (that happens to be the official Chinese position), also taking into consideration the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); and work hard to come up with a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (that's been going on for years; optimistically, a binding text will be ready by the first half of 2017).

So, problem solved? Not really. At first, it was Deadlock City. Things only started moving when the Philippines desisted to mention The Hague in the final statement; Cambodia - allied with China - had prevented it from the start.

And that's the heart of the matter when it comes to ASEAN negotiating with China. It's a Sisyphean task to reach consensus among the 10 members - even as ASEAN spins its role as the perfect negotiation conduit. China for its part prefers bilaterals - and has applied Divide and Rule to get what it wants, seducing mostly Laos and Cambodia as allies.

WikiLeaks possesses "a lot more" documents to surprise American voters ahead of the upcoming presidential elections - and will not hesitate to make them public.

The leak of 20,000 internal emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), published by the whistleblowing website on July 22 "is having so much political impact in the United States," Julian Assange acknowledged to CNN in a Skype interview on Tuesday.

Speaking to America's primary media outlet from the safety of Ecuadorian embassy in London, the WikiLeaks founder refused to disclose the source of the leaked batch of DNC emails, particularly avoiding denial or to confirmation of alleged Russian involvement, much talked about by Hillary Clinton's campaign headquarters. He explained his lack of responsiveness by an obligation to protect WikiLeaks' information sources.

"Perhaps one day the source or sources will step forward and that might be an interesting moment. Some people may have egg on their faces," Assange said. "But to exclude certain actors is to make it easier to find out who our sources are. So we never do it."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if the latest Olympic doping scandal involved US athletes and unproven allegations of state-sponsored cheating, British newspapers would not be calling for a ban on all American athletes from the Rio Olympics.

They'd probably be calling - in concerned tones, of course - for each American athlete to be assessed individually and not punished for the sins of others, while simultaneously loudly screaming accusations that the whistleblower was secretly working for Vladimir Putin.

I don't know, it's just a hunch.

As it turns out, proponents of a blanket ban on Russian athletes failed to convince the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which decided Sunday to leave the decisions on individual athletes up to their respective international sports federations and put the onus on athletes to prove they are clean. But the failure of ban proponents to convince the IOC certainly was not for lack of trying - because they truly did their best to have the innocent punished alongside the guilty and get the whole Russian team thrown out.

The UK's Times newspaper, for example, took it upon itself to organize a letter to the IOC. It wrote: "We ask that you ban the entire Russian team from the Rio 2016 Olympics. It is time to take a stand against the institutionalized doping that would otherwise pollute the Games. Now is not a time for half measures."

Since the failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15th, the name of exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen is on everyone's lips.

Not only is President Erdogan pointing the finger at Gulen as the mastermind of the coup, so is General Hulusi Akar, the Chief of Staff of Turkey's Armed Forces and the country's top ranking general. In testimony to prosecutors in Ankara earlier this week he stated that while he was being held captive by pro-coup soldiers he was asked to speak to Gulen, who he described as their "opinion leader," but he refused.

"I believe those coup-plotters are members of [Gulen's] organization," Akar said. "I think they thought their organization would take a huge blow after our Supreme Military Council meeting in August — which we prepared for studiously. This terror organization probably foresaw the outcome of the upcoming meeting and attempted a coup by bombing the parliament building and security offices, killing civilians, attacking their own brothers-in-arms and units with a ferocity and dishonor never seen before."

So who is Fethullah Gulen? Well, that depends who you ask. If you ask the well-coiffed liars of the corporate lapdog media, Gulen is a kindly old reclusive imam who is operating a multi-billion dollar global Islamic school network from his compound fortress in Pennsylvania...for some reason or other.