President Barack Obama used his last appearance on the Daily Show to defend the Iran nuclear deal and his other achievements. Host Jon Stewart pointed out that diplomacy might work better than failed US policies of bombing, invasion and regime change.

"Whose team are we on in the Middle East?" Stewart, host of the popular comedy program for over 16 years, asked the president. "Who are we bombing?"

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has warned the "cumbersome" democratic process of Western governments puts them at a disadvantage in confronting Russia and other threats.

Hammond told MPs on Tuesday the UK must get "buy-in" from various sections of society, such as the public and media, during the decision-making process.

The Foreign Secretary contrasted this with the "extraordinarily agile" Russian system, which sees decision making power concentrated in fewer hands.

His comments came as he expressed frustration over the government's inability to take military action against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria despite being able to operate in Iraq.

Hammond told the cross-party Foreign Affairs Select Committee that Russia had an advantage over Western governments.


He said: "Russia has been extraordinarily agile in exploring new technologies like cyber.

"We have to think about how we respond to an adversary in which all decision making power is concentrated in the hands of one man — I have heard it said that it is more concentrated even than under Leonid Brezhnev, when at least there was a Politburo."

They know that the Boeing was downed by the Russians! They are always talking about it! They have concrete proof! But besides vociferous accusations for some reason nothing is revealed! On the contrary, there are hints that the "concrete proof" will never be revealed.

Yesterday the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on European integration, Elena Zerkal said:

"With regard to criminal investigation, we set up a joint investigation team and the investigation is still ongoing. At the same time it is classified and confidential and the results will not be presented for public discussion."

Meanwhile, of course, there is talk of some kind of tribunal, where the accused will be Russia and Donbass.

I think we will not see publication of any serious evidence. Unless someone serious will jump the fence from the Ukrainian side, or something happens along those lines. From the Russian side they gave all they had. What's the point for them to be silent? But even if they had something, what difference would it make? They would publish it and so what? They are not idiots in the EU after all and know what's going on. They spit on the death of their citizens.

There is a worrying and dangerous tendency in the UK to label as extremists anybody who poses a challenge and who wants to protest against the unfair economic system that exists in the UK, journalist and broadcaster Neil Clark told RT.

City of London police have been attacked for pigeonholing an anti-capitalist group, alongside Al-Qaeda and IRA. An anti-terror presentation for nursery and school staff featured a picture of the Occupy London campaign alongside images from the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 and an IRA attack in 1996. The anti-inequality group was also categorized as an example of domestic extremism.

RT: As we've heard London police have placed movements like the Occupy London movement alongside international terrorist groups. What are your thoughts on calling movements like these extremist?

Neil Clark (NC): I think this all fits in with what's been happening here in Britain because the government has got this new so-called 'counter extremism initiative.' They want to bring in a bill and... their definition of 'extremism' is deliberately designed to bring in people who challenge the established order. Of course it's not just simply about terrorists; it's about anybody who criticizes the capitalist system, anybody who poses any kind of challenge, and anybody who wants to protest against the existing very unfair economic system that we've got in Britain. This is worrying, this is dangerous.

I think we've got the biggest threat to our civil liberties in Britain at the moment under this government of David Cameron that we've had for many, many years - over 100 years certainly. I remember Cameron a few weeks ago made a very sinister speech when he said that for too long we've been a passively tolerant society [and] we've got to change that. And he said that in the past people who were not causing trouble would be left alone, and we've got to change that - I think it's very sinister, really, because he is trying to clamp down on legitimate dissent.

On Tuesday, July 14, German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared on a television program called "Good Life in Germany" in which she spoke to local teenagers. Among the audience was 13-year old Reem, a Palestinian refugee who fled their camp in Lebanon four years ago.

In a shaky voice of fluent German, young Reem said, "I have goals like everyone else...I want to go to university." But, she explained, she and her family are facing deportation. "It's very unpleasant to see how others can enjoy life, and I can't myself," she said, "I want to study like them."

Chancellor Merkel responded with the standard western fear of immigrants. She said if Germany allows her to stay, there would be thousands of Palestinian refugees, then thousands from "Africa" [that singular large country] who will flood into Germany. "We can't cope with that," she said. Young Reem crumbled into sobs and the footage of her interaction with Chancellor Merkel went viral.

The former leader of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, gave SinEmbargo details of what it's like being an inmate in the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 "Altiplano". A political prisoner for a year and a half there-he received an invitation to the governor's office and was detained for sedition, robbery, kidnapping, injury, and aggravated dispossession- the oaxacan political activist didn't agree with the description that was given yesterday by Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong.

Sosa was imprisoned from December 2006 to April 2008 in the same prison where Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alías "El Chapo" escaped from on Saturday by allegedly going through a tunnel that was more than a kilometer and a half long which he started in a small opening in his shower cell and ended in an abandoned house.

"In this prison, privacy doesn't exist," Sosa explained. In the version of the Secretary of the Interior, he indicated yesterday that "there were two blind spots" in the shower and toilets, for "humanitarian matters". Those "blind spots", Osorio said, were used by "El Chapo" to escape and buy time.
For starters, he said, it is hard to believe that "El Chapo" would shower on a Saturday night, when he supposedly stopped in front of the shower and then disappeared. The showers, he said, are only allowed to be used at six in the morning.

The social activist and former local deputy in Oaxaca said in an interview that "it is impossible to escape from a maximum security prison such as El Altiplano without complicity." The cells are a capsule within a capsule, he said. The entire surveillance system must have been calm to achieve something like what "El Chapo" did, he said.

To escape without anyone noticing, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel needed complicity not only from the guards in the maximum security area, where his cell was, but also from the three corporations that are in there: the federal, those from the prison, and the special guard.
These three areas, he said, depend on different heads and are usually very suspicious and vigilant with each other.

North America clearly has a very big meth problem on its hands, according to the 2013 World Drug Report by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

From 2010 to 2011 worldwide seizures of methamphetamine by authorities grew by 73% - from 51 tons to 88 tons - and 61% (54 tons) of all seizures were reported by Mexico and the U.S.

From the report (emphasis ours):

The highest methamphetamine seizures were reported by Mexico, where seizures more than doubled, from 13 tons to 31 tons [i.e. the most in the world], and surpassed for the first time those of the United States which seized 23 tons in 2011, up from 15 tons in 2010. ...

Most methamphetamine laboratories continue to be reported by the United States, where their numbers quadrupled from 2,754 in 2010 to 11,116 in 2011.

How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.—Bob Dylan, "Hurricane"

Justice in America is not all it's cracked up to be.

Just ask Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. Despite the fact that Deskovic's DNA did not match what was found at the murder scene, he was singled out by police as a suspect because he wept at the victim's funeral (he was 16 years old at the time), then badgered over the course of two months into confessing his guilt. He was eventually paid $6.5 million in reparation.

James Bain spent 35 years in prison for the kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old boy, but he too was innocent of the crime. Despite the fact that the prosecutor's case was flimsy—it hinged on the similarity of Bain's first name to the rapist's, Bain's ownership of a red motorcycle, and a misidentification of Bain in a lineup by a hysterical 9-year-old boy—Bain was sentenced to life in prison. He was finally freed after DNA testing proved his innocence, and was paid $1.7 million.

Mark Weiner got off relatively easy when you compare his experience to the thousands of individuals who are spending lifetimes behind bars for crimes they did not commit.

Weiner was wrongfully arrested, convicted, and jailed for more than two years for a crime he too did not commit. In his case, a young woman claimed Weiner had abducted her, knocked her out and then sent taunting text messages to her boyfriend about his plans to rape her. Despite the fact that cell phone signals, eyewitness accounts and expert testimony indicated the young woman had fabricated the entire incident, the prosecutor and judge repeatedly rejected any evidence contradicting the woman's far-fetched account, sentencing Weiner to eight more years in jail. Weiner was only released after his accuser was caught selling cocaine to undercover cops.

In the meantime, Weiner lost his job, his home, and his savings, and time with his wife and young son. As Slate reporter journalist Dahlia Lithwick warned, "If anyone suggests that the fact that Mark Weiner was released this week means 'the system works,' I fear that I will have to punch him in the neck. Because at every single turn, the system that should have worked to consider proof of Weiner's innocence failed him."

The system that should have worked didn't, because the system is broken, almost beyond repair.

In courtroom thrillers like 12 Angry Men and To Kill a Mockingbird, justice is served in the end because someone—whether it's Juror #8 or Atticus Finch—chooses to stand on principle and challenge wrongdoing, and truth wins.

Unfortunately, in the real world, justice is harder to come by, fairness is almost unheard of, and truth rarely wins.

Greenpeace charges that pro-nuclear Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cares more about politics than public health

As the Japanese government moves to accelerate the return of Fukushima refugees to their homes, environmental advocacy organization Greenpeace warned Tuesday that radioactive contamination remains "so widespread and at such a high level that" that it will be impossible for people to safely go back.

Four years after an earthquake and tsunami touched off the nuclear meltdown, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pressing to lift evacuation orders by March 2017 and cut off compensation to victims of the disaster by 2018. The move would allow—and some say force—tens of thousands of refugees to go back to their homes.

The pro-nuclear prime minister says that the move, proposed in June, is aimed at speeding up Fukushima's "reconstruction."

Greenpeace, however, warns that such a development would be reckless and dangerous. The organization evaluated radiation contamination in Iitate, a forested 75-square-mile district in the Fukushima prefecture, and found that even after "decontamination," the radiation level remains at 2uSv/h—or ten times the maximum deemed safe for the public.

"Prime Minister Abe would like the people of Japan to believe that they are decontaminating vast areas of Fukushima to levels safe enough for people to live in," said Jan Vande Putte, radiation specialist with Greenpeace Belgium, in a press statement. "The reality is that this is a policy doomed to failure. The forests of Iitate are a vast stock of radioactivity that will remain both a direct hazard and source of potential recontamination for hundreds of years. It's impossible to decontaminate."

According to Greenpeace, the elimination of compensation would effectively force people back into an environment that is dangerous for their health.

"Stripping nuclear victims of their already inadequate compensation, which may force them to have to return to unsafe, highly radioactive areas for financial reasons, amounts to economic coercion," said Putte. "Let's be clear: this is a political decision by the Abe Government, not one based on science, data, or public health."

Meanwhile, nuclear refugees from Iitate are fighting for adequate compensation through an Alternative Dispute Resolution process. Their lawyer, Yasushi Tadano, said: "The Iitate people's fate is another of numerous cases in the past where Japan abandoned its people, as with the Ashio mining pollution and Minamata disease. We can not allow this to happen again."

Residents across Japan have staged protests and filed lawsuits to block nuclear restarts, and polls show that, in the aftermath of the 2011 disaster, a clear majority of the Japanese public opposes nuclear power. In addition, surveys reveal low public confidence in the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Co.—the company behind the Fukushima Daiichi plant that continues to release radiation into the ecosystem.

Kyrgyzstan has cancelled a cooperation treaty with the US which has been in force since 1993. The move was prompted by a human right prize given by Washington to an activist serving life sentence for involvement in the killing of a police officer.

The bilateral agreement that helped facilitate cooperation between the countries in certain areas was ordered to be renounced by Kyrgyz Prime Minister Temir Sariev. With the document to become invalid, US aid to Kyrgyzstan brought into and out of the country will no longer be free of taxes and other custom duties starting from August 20.

US civil and military aid personnel, working in Kyrgyzstan will be deprived of their near diplomatic status, which they had been receiving under the agreement.

On Monday, the US warned Kyrgyzstan that if the accord got canceled, it would damage a range of its aid programs in the country.