Moscow has upped the ante in its growing confrontation with Washington after releasing an incendiary statement, accusing the US of spinning and distorting facts to allege that Russia is testing a new cruise missile, banned by a landmark Cold War treaty.

"Once again the US is trying (and again rather clumsily) to act as a mentor, for some reason pretending to possesses the truth in the last instance and have the right to judge others. Claims are made with little to no evidence and based on warped logic, in other words presented not with further experts' analyses in mind," opens the lengthy tirade by the Russian Foreign Ministry, in response to the allegations detailed in the State Department report released on Tuesday.

"The purpose seems to be to create a wall of information noise to incite other countries, and to boil up a propagandist brew for the media. Or does the US administration still sincerely deceive itself that the world can take Washington's word?"

The US report never specified how exactly Russia violated the treaty, instead offering a vague finding that: "The United States has determined that the Russian Federation is in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km, or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles."

An old Soviet Tu-143 reconnaissance drone allegedly deployed by the Ukrainian army has crashed near Donetsk, with local militia, initially not aware of what that monstrosity was, suspecting in the video to have downed Kiev's "weapon of mass destruction."

The YouTube video of the downed drone claims the archaic unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was shot down "at approximatly 13:30 local time near Shahtersk." In the video, the representatives of DPR anti-Kiev forces say that the "object will be further identified."

"Today we have shot down 'something' over our skies," a man in the video says. "At first, we thought it was an unmanned drone. But now we have doubts."

The soldier in the video sends a message to the authorities in Kiev, saying "don't you think it is a bit too much? To use such weapons!" as he pointed out to the serial number of the unit, saying that Kiev will not be able to disguise the deployment of "that weapon."

Well-known US author and journalist Fred Kaplan in his artiсle "America's Flight 17" for Slate Magazine calls readers not to jump to conclusions on the Malaysian Boeing tragedy. Before accusing self-defence forces in Ukraine's South-east of the Malaysia Flight MH17 downing, the international community has to recall one of the Pentagon's most inexcusable disgraces - shooting down the passenger aircraft Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes, he writes. Whoever brought down the Malaysian airliner should be held accountable, stresses the journalist, just as the White House and the crew of the Vincennes should have been.

While the western mass media hastened to link the MH17 tragedy to the notorious Korean Airlines Flight 007, shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor in 1983, the infamous Vincennes case remained unspoken.

"A quarter-century later, the Vincennes is almost completely forgotten, but it still ranks as the world's seventh deadliest air disaster (Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is the sixth) and one of the Pentagon's most inexcusable disgraces," writes Fred Kaplan in his article "America's Flight 17."

The Times of Israel published and then removed from its site an essay by Yochanan Gordon that openly called for genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. A cached version is still on the internet as of this writing.

Gordon's logic, if one wants to dignify it with that term, is that Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel, and therefore the only way to deal with them is to obliterate them entirely. He used the words "obliterate entirely."

Hamas is a party-militia of the religious right. It does say it wants to see the Israeli government overthrown. Its leaders don't, however, speak of committing genocide against Israelis. They say they want to recover their country, which was stolen from them by the Israelis in 1948. Colonial regimes always produce resistance movements.

The fact is that Hamas was supported by Israeli intelligence in the 1980s as a foil to the PLO, so Shin Bet and Mossad don't seem to have been worried by the party charter.

Judging by the numbers of casualties on both sides in this almost one-month old war one would be led to the conclusion that Israel has resorted to disproportionate means in fighting a far less- capable enemy. That is as far as what meets the eye. But, it's now obvious that the US and the UN are completely out of touch with the nature of this foe and are therefore not qualified to dictate or enforce the rules of this war - because when it comes to terror there is much more than meets the eye.

I wasn't aware of this, but it seems that the nature of warfare has undergone a major shift over the years. Where wars were usually waged to defeat the opposing side, today it seems - and judging by the number of foul calls it would indicate - that today's wars are fought to a draw. I mean, whoever heard of a timeout in war? An NBA Basketball game allows six timeouts for each team during the course of a game, but last I checked this is a war! We are at war with an enemy whose charter calls for the annihilation of our people. Nothing, then, can be considered disproportionate when we are fighting for our very right to live.

The sad reality is that Israel gets it, but its hands are being tied by world leaders who over the past six years have insisted they are such good friends with the Jewish state, that they know more regarding its interests than even they do. But there's going to have to come a time where Israel feels threatened enough where it has no other choice but to defy international warnings - because this is life or death.

Iran's justice minister has called on his counterparts from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states to take legal action against Israel for committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

"The NAM [member] states...are expected to once again stand in unison against these [Israeli] crimes and lay the groundwork for the punishment of the masterminds and the perpetrators of these crimes," Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi wrote in a letter to NAM justice ministers on Wednesday.

He added that continuation of the Zionist regime's crimes against Palestinians calls into question "international justice and the rule of law."

"Doubtlessly, the Zionist regime's crimes, which are threatening international peace and security today, stem from the condoning of the crimes this regime has been committing against defenseless Palestinians over the past 66 years," Pour-Mohammadi said.

He noted that Israel's ongoing strikes against the Palestinians are "flagrant manifestations of war crimes" necessitating punitive action.

NAM, whose rotating presidency is held by Iran, is an international organization with 120 member states, which is not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. Nearly two-thirds of the member states of the United Nations are NAM members.

The deadly Israeli military attacks against the blockaded Gaza Strip have destroyed nearly 5,000 Palestinian houses. Ashraf al-Qidra, Gaza's Health Ministry spokesman, said on Tuesday that as many as 4,987 Palestinian homes had been destroyed due to the Israeli onslaught on the impoverished territory as of Monday.

The spokesman further said that a total number of 26,270 houses had been partially damaged, of which 4,136 are no longer habitable. It was also noted that the number of the destroyed houses is expected to rise as the Israeli regime keeps hitting the besieged area.

On Tuesday, the United Nations (UN) reported that 215,000 Gazans have fled their homes. As the aria is blockaded, most of the Palestinians take shelter in the places designated by the UN. The Israeli regime, nevertheless, has been targeting UN-designated shelters as well. In less than one week, the Israel regime has targeted two UN-run schools sheltering Palestinian families against the Israeli offensive.

During her maiden meeting with United States' Secretary of Defence, John Kerry, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has categorically told that alleged snooping of the BJP, which was revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, was 'unacceptable' and asked for an assurance that it will not happen in near future. With this stern message to the Obama administration, the Narendra Modi government has sent clear signals that unlike its predecessors, UPA, it won't tolerate such breach of its privacy laws.

What did Sushma tell Kerry?

"I told Secretary Kerry that this was completely unacceptable to us as India and US are friendly countries. Friends don't snoop on each other," Swaraj told reporters after the 5th India-US strategic dialogue with Kerry.

India's assertion at World Trade Organisation (WTO) meet in Australia has sent shivers down the spine of some Western nations, including the United States. India, in the last global meet, had asserted that it has the right to retain higher stock-holding of food grains. This is the bone of contention in the Bali Agreement, the final Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) for which is to be signed by July 31, this year. For the first time, the Government of India has asserted itself in no uncertain terms.

Defending the Indian stance noted Economic Policy Analyst Dr. Anantha Nageswaran in an Op-Ed in The Mint had this to say:

Let us continue to strive for an original and smarter food security programme from this government but let us not allow that to blind us to the hypocrisy of the arguments made against India for its stance at the WTO negotiations.

Dr.Nageswaran's argument primarily is that:

India is insisting upon change in the method of calculating the legally permissible subsidy. It cannot be based on prices that prevailed in 1986-88. That India has a badly designed and ultimately counterproductive grain procurement and distribution programme today is no reason to agree to the use of an outdated benchmark price to calculate the nation's food subsidy. At a future date, even a well-designed food security programme might still fail to comply with the treaty obligation if the reference prices are not updated. The reluctance to do the same raises many unanswered questions on the intent behind keeping the reference price from nearly two decades ago. Further, the numerical ceiling of the total food subsidy not exceeding 10% of the value of production (calculated at 1986-88 prices) needs to be reviewed

India's stance has been the cause of much consternation with the developed countries.

As I've written many times before, "terrorism" is, and from the start was designed to be, almost entirely devoid of discernible meaning. It's a fear-mongering slogan, lacking any consistent application, intended to end rational debate and justify virtually any conduct by those who apply the term. But to the extent it means anything beyond that, it typically refers to the killing of civilians as a means of furthering political or military goals.

Below are two charts reflecting the deaths of civilians, soldiers and "militants" in both Gaza and Israel since the July 8 Israeli attack began. The statistics used are unduly generous toward Israel, since "militants" in Gaza are often nothing more than residents who take up arms to defend their homes against an invading and occupying army. Even with that generous interpretation, these numbers, standing alone, tell a powerful story: