During Cold War One those of us in the American radical left were often placed in the position where we had to defend the Soviet Union because the US government was using that country as a battering ram against us. Now we sometimes have to defend Russia because it may be the last best hope of stopping TETATW (The Empire That Ate The World). Yes, during Cold War One we knew enough about Stalin, the show trials, and the gulags. But we also knew about US foreign policy.

E-mail sent to the Washington Post July 23, 2014 about the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17:

Dear Editor,

Your July 22 editorial was headed: "Russia's barbarism. The West needs a strategy to contain the world's newest rogue state."

Pretty strong language. Vicious, even. Not one word of hard evidence in the editorial to back it up. Then, the next day, the Associated Press reported:

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that Russia was responsible for 'creating the conditions' that led to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but they offered no evidence of direct Russian government involvement. ... the U.S. had no direct evidence that the missile used to shoot down the passenger jet came from Russia.

Where were these words in the Post? You people are behaving like a rogue newspaper.

- William Blum

I don't have to tell you whether the Post printed my letter. I've been reading the paper for 25 years - six years during Vietnam (1964-1970) and the last 19 years (1995-2014) - usually spending about three hours each day reading it very carefully. And I can say that when it comes to US foreign policy the newspaper is worse now than I can remember it ever was during those 25 years. It's reached the point where, as one example, I don't take at face value a word the Post has to say about Ukraine. Same with the State Department, which makes one accusation after another about Russian military actions in Eastern Ukraine without presenting any kind of satellite imagery or other visual or documentary evidence; or they present something that's wholly inconclusive and/or unsourced or citing "social media"; what we're left with is often no more than just an accusation. Do they have something to hide?

A cholera outbreak has killed 8,500 Haitians since 2010 and UN forces are responsible, the author argues. Not only that, but the UN helped consolidate Gérard Latortue's post-coup regime.

Since 2010 the UN has been dodging responsibility for a cholera outbreak that has killed 8,500 Haitians and sickened more than 700,000. Nepalese soldiers with the UN "peacekeeping" forces caused the outbreak by allowing their sewage to leak into Haiti's largest river. According to the UN itself, cholera could kill 2,000 more people in 2014.

The UN now faces a lawsuit in U.S. courts that was brought by some of the victims. The Obama administration is trying to have the suit dismissed but, this May, Amicus Briefs filed by prominent international law experts refuted the U.S. government's arguments for dismissal. Scientific evidence of the UN's guilt is so conclusive that Bill Clinton, a UN special envoy to Haiti, acknowledged in 2012 that UN soldiers brought cholera to Haiti, but he made the UN's demented excuse that "what really caused it is that you don't have a sanitation system, you don't have a comprehensive water system."

By this logic, if I kill a gravely ill person by knocking them off their hospital bed, my defense should be that a healthy person would have survived the fall. In a civilized legal setting, where the victim cannot be dismissed as irrelevant, making such a repulsive argument might provoke a judge to hand down the harshest sentence allowable. Unfortunately, international law has always been the plaything of the most powerful, and Haitians have long endured the consequences of that fact. Criminal negligence is one of many crimes in Haiti for which UN officials should answer.

On 23 September 2010 the former Ecuadorian president Lucio Gutiérrez (deposed by a popular uprising in 2005) gave a talk to the InterAmerican Institute for Democracy in Miami, criticising his nation's socialists for their mysticism, incoherent Marxism and dangerous populism. He told his listeners that to end 21st-century socialism in Ecuador (the subject of his talk), it would be necessary to get rid of President Rafael Correa.

His speech is on record; there's a video that captures the thunderous applause it received. In the audience were Mario Ribadeneira, a minister in the government of Sixto Durán-Ballén (president 1992-96), when Ecuadorian neoliberalism was at its height; Roberto Isaías, wanted for fraud after the collapse of Filanbanco, Ecuador's largest bank, of which he was part-owner; and Mario Pazmiño, a former head of army intelligence, sacked by Correa in 2008 for having too close a relationship with the CIA.

A week later, on 29 September in Quito, a meeting of members of the opposition continued late into the night. Next morning, the leader of the Patriotic Society Party, Galo Lara, appeared on the Ecuavisa network's 7amshow Contacto Directo (Direct Contact), talking about the Public Service Law that the national assembly had just passed. This ended certain privileges - bonuses, cash payments with medals and other decorations, Christmas gifts - for some civil servants, including the police. Though it granted other benefits, including overtime pay and access to social housing programmes, Lara claimed that "President Correa has snatched the toys out of the hands of the policemen's children - that's why he is afraid of being lynched. That's why he is packing his bags and getting ready to flee the country." An apocalyptic article by leading columnist Emilio Palacio was published in the daily El Universo.

The White House attempts to buy goodwill on the continent amid escalation in militarism

A much-anticipated summit at the State Department and White House was held during Aug. 4-8. Dozens of African heads-of-state and the chair of the African Union (AU) Commission attended.

Nonetheless, several leading countries were not invited or chose not to attend including Zimbabwe, Sudan, Eritrea, Chad, Egypt as well as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Although the AU Commission Chair Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was present at the summit, it was not this continental organization that set the terms for participation.

A similar situation occurred earlier in the year when a European Union (EU)-Africa Summit was held in Belgium. Although the AU had met to determine how the meeting would be approached, in the final analysis the EU made the prevailing decisions.

In a public statement during the summit, Dlamini-Zuma suggested that the U.S. was not fully aware of developments in Africa. She warned that if Washington did not engage the continent then they would effectively be losers in the future character of relations.

A federal judge in California sided mostly with the United States government this week in a decision handed down concerning classified documents pertaining to the National Security Agency's secret surveillance programs.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a justice in the US District Court for the district of Northern California, said on Monday that the Department of Justice does not have to disclose two sets of documents among the three requested in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a California-based digital rights group.

The EFF has long sought the release of NSA documents related to legal rulings made in secret by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the names of phone companies compelled to hand over user data to the NSA and a 2012 legal memo concerning the US Census and Patriot Acts. The NSA's failure to adhere to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the EFF prompted the advocacy group to file suit asking the court to compel their release, but on Monday Judge Gonzalez Rogers said in a 13-page decision that the Justice Dept. was largely right to withhold those filings and need only make public the Census memo.

"Having carefully considered the papers and arguments submitted," the judge wrote, "...the Court hereby Orders that the cross-motions are GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART. DOJ has established a proper basis for withholding, in full, the FISC orders and opinions at issue, and for withholding all names of telecommunications providers participating in the Call Records Collection Program, under FOIA Exemptions 1 and 3. Thus, summary judgment is GRANTED in favor of DOJ on the claim for disclosure of this information. However, DOJ has not established that the Census Memorandum is properly withheld under Exemption 5, and EFF is GRANTED summary judgment on its claim for FOIA violation as to this document."

Northern Ireland's Environment Minister has rejected a global energy firm's proposal to conduct exploratory drilling in County Fermanagh. The drilling would have led to further fracking in the area if sufficient shale gas supplies had been detected.

As part of its broader plans to frack in Northern and Southern Ireland, Australian energy firm Tamboran Resources submitted an application to drill a 750-metre hole at Cleggan Quarry. The quarry is based in Belcoo, a small village in Fermanagh situated on the border of County Leitrim.

The firm had hoped to discern whether there was enough shale gas in the region to warrant a formal licence to construct a fracking operation there. But the Belcoo site, renowned for its pristine natural beauty, subsequently became the focus of 24-7 demonstrations attended by local politicians, farmers, and campaigners who were stringently opposed to the prospect of hydraulic fracturing in their locale.

Taboran Resources attempted to bypass the need for full planning permission to drill at Cleggan Quarry, relying solely on legislation relating to "permitted development rights." Under this legislation, the Australian firm could have drilled the borehole without carrying out an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

Britain's Guardian newspaper has been accused of pro-Israel bias after publishing a widely condemned advert paid for by Jewish group This World: The Values Network, which accused Hamas of "child sacrifice".

The advert previously ran in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post but was rejected by The Times in London. The paper said: "The opinion being expressed is too strong and too forcefully made and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers."

The ad, headlined: "Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it's Hamas turn," was written by Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust survivor. "In my own lifetime," Wiesel wrote, "I have seen Jewish children thrown into the fire. And now I have seen Muslim children used as human shields, in both cases, by worshippers of death cults indistinguishable from that of the Molochites."

Text of ad by This World: The Values Network, calling on #Hamas to reject child sacrifice: pic.twitter.com/F4aLD7szOg

- Lilac Sunday (@LilacSundayBlog) August 4, 2014

Wiesel proposed the battles occurring today were not of Jew versus Arab or Israeli versus Palestinian but a battle between "those who celebrate life and those who champion death. It is a battle of civilization versus barbarism."

Russia's ban on agricultural food imports could cost the European Union about $16 billion (12 billion euro) and drag the continent into the crisis, officials warn.

The Russian government signed a decree on Thursday which bans the import of beef, pork, poultry, meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, cheese, milk, and dairy products from the EU, US, Australia, Canada, and Norway.

EU trade is heavily dependent on Russian food imports, last year Russia bought $16 billion worth of food from the 28-nation bloc, or about 10 percent of total exports, according to Eurostat.

Vygaudas Usackas, the EU ambassador to Russia, cited the same $16 billion figure when speaking with a Russian radio station on Thursday.

"We are yet to analyze in detail what goods fall under sanctions, but it may reach up to 12 billion euro. Food and goods amount to 10 percent of what we export to Russia," Usackas said.

Almost 300 trucks carrying 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid have been sent towards the border with Ukraine, Moscow regional authorities say. Earlier, Russia and Ukraine agreed on a humanitarian mission under the authority of the Red Cross.

Some 280 Kamaz trucks carrying food, medication, and drinking water were sent out by Russia's Emergencies Ministry from the Moscow region on Tuesday morning, Russian media reported.

"The contact group has decided on Monday that the humanitarian aid convoys will cross over at the Kharkov Oblast border. The Lugansk route has also been agreed upon," Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's second President and the mediator in the operation told journalists.

He added that "the aid will be distributed by the Red Cross - the convoy will be accompanied by representatives from the OSCE."

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin apologized to his Brazilian counterpart for a remark by a foreign ministry spokesman calling the Latin American powerhouse a "diplomatic dwarf."

The comment in July was made by spokesman Yigal Palmor after Brazil criticized Israel's military campaign in Gaza as excessive and recalled its envoy in Tel Aviv.

In a phone call Monday, Rivlin assured Brazil President Dilma Rousseff that Palmor's comments "do not correspond to the sentiments of the population" of Israel, Rousseff's office said in a statement.

Rousseff had criticized Palmor's remarks, saying "Words, including the spokesman's, sometimes create a very bad climate. In this case, we have to be very careful."