Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission President, has shown up in an oddly cheerful mood at an international summit in Latvia. He slapped and hugged world leaders, compared his tie to theirs, sparking speculation that he was drunk as a sailor.

The video showing Juncker's unorthodox diplomacy was shot during the EU-Eastern Partnership summit, which was held on May 21-22 in Latvia.

Standing in front of the cameras alongside fellow EU official Donald Tusk, who heads the European Council, and the host nation's prime minister, Laimdota Straujuma, Juncker made a number of friendly gestures which may seem too frivolous for the occasion.

China's new South China Sea coast guard ships are more muscular than most and their mission comprises of law enforcement, search and rescue according to online publication The National Interest.

One especially combative ship CCG3210, formerly known as Yuzheng 310 has been affecting politics in the South China Sea, for a long time.

The ship is armed with machine guns, light cannons and innovative hardware proficient at jamming communications.

"Built in 2010, CCG3210 escorted a fishing flotilla and stared down the Philippine navy during a dispute over territorial rights. But that was just the beginning," The National Interest reported.

Berlin's decision to include Russia in the list of major security threats is belated as Germany has been consistently treating Russia as a rival in recent years, the first deputy of the Russian upper house's Defense and Security Committee said on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, German media reported that the country's new White Paper on security policy, the 80-paper document in the final stage of preparation, would include Russia in the list of 10 major threats for the country and views Russia as a rival, but not as a partner.

"I think that the new edition of the White Paper is even overdue, in a certain sense. In the implementation of the so-called NATO's eastern policy one of the key roles belongs, perhaps, to Germany... For a long time, Russia has been de facto considered by Germany as a rival, not a partner. One behaves in a completely different way toward a partner," Franz Klintsevich told RIA Novosti.

He added that Berlin's decision was unlikely to add optimism to the current state of bilateral relations.

To read the Western mainstream media, we would be led to believe that the big, bad Russian Bear, with Vladimir Putin atop, shaking a fistful of nuclear warheads, is confronting the West in the most threatening manner imaginable. We should believe Russia is provoking at every turn, frothing at the mouth and threatening to invade the Baltic countries and perhaps all Western Europe. We would feel quite justified, as the propaganda spin of Washington claims, to protect America's European allies from surprise Russian nuclear attack by surrounding Russia with anti-Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems.

So we as citizens in the Western NATO countries have little reaction at all when we read some days ago that the Obama White House announced it had activated the first phase of its anti-ballistic missile defense system (BMD), known as AEGIS, in an air base in Deveselu, Romania. Poland will be next to become activated with Washington's Aegis.

The Aegis Ashore system has been officially put into operation and can already launch SM-3 interceptor missiles. The system includes 24 anti-aircraft SM-3 missiles. At the same time the Pentagon is placing its BMD installations in Japan and South Korea and possibly, Australia, aimed at China. Our perception of world reality is primarily shaped for us by what we read in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or hear on CNN or BBC. We sigh a small sigh of relief that our world is now more secure. Nothing is farther from reality. That's a grave error.

On May 13, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, alongside officials representing the United States and European NATO members, announced the activation of a new missile system, based in Romania. Stoltenberg announced,

The European Union, in partnership with YouTube, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, has published a "code of conduct" to fight the spread of "illegal hate speech" online.

Following the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks, the EU has taken it upon itself to begin cracking down on "hate speech". The technocrats in Brussels have already taken over the economic and political sovereignty of member states, the hijacking of free speech online was bound to happen. The terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe have provided the unelected in Brussels perfect cover.

In partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, the newly released EU "code of conduct" will fight "illegal hate speech" online in Europe. The arguments from those supporting the initiative is textbook smoke and mirrors...in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, a crackdown on "hate speech" is necessary to counter jihadist propaganda online.

Of course we will see definitions of what is "hate speech" take on various forms, all of which will be defined as any voice that strays from the EU narrative, as content that must be removed from the above popular online destinations.

Opponents to the "code of conduct" rightly argue that this is nothing more than an assault on free speech in Europe.

The Syrian Army launched on June 3 a large-scale offensive to liberate the city of Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the Daesh caliphate.

Retired Syrian Major General Sabet Muhammad told the Russian newspaper Izvestia that the operation started from the town of Isriya, in Hama province, nearly 140 km to the west from Raqqa.

"The operation was prepared for many days. Several thousands of troops were deployed to Isriya. The forces have several interim objectives, including the town of Al-Thawrah, a military airfield as well as the town of Resapha. These positions will be used for an assault on Raqqa," he said.

According to the general, after the army regains control over Raqqa the Daesh-controlled area will be split. Terrorists in Deir ez-Zor will be cut off from supply lines.

So Taliban supremo Mullah Mansour's white Toyota Corolla was rattling across the Baluchestan desert just after it had crossed the Iranian border when a Hellfire missile fired from a US drone incinerated it into a charred / twisted wreck.

That's the official narrative. The Pentagon said Mansour was on Obama's kill list because he had become «an obstacle to peace and reconciliation».

There's way more to it, of course. Mansour was a savvy businessman who was extensively traveling to Dubai - the Taliban's historic clearing house where all sorts of dodgy deals are made. He was also in close connection with Jundullah - a.k.a. the hardcore Sunni anti-Tehran militia very much active in Sistan-Baluchestan province in Iran.

This time Mansour was in Sistan-Baluchestan on a medical visit - allegedly to eschew hospitals in Pakistan heavily monitored by the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]. Yet arguably Pakistan intel knew about it - so US intel also may have known about it and thus were able to track him.

But then there's the real ace in the hole: the New Opium War.

As EU sanctions against Russia come up for renewal opposition against them builds both in Europe and Germany.

The details are extremely murky but with Merkel's position coming under increasing pressure and with growing dissatisfaction with the sanctions in France and southern Europe it is clear a battle of some kind over their pending renewal is underway.

The country at the centre - as always - is Germany. Here there are visible signs of a split.

Merkel herself stated publicly on Tuesday through her spokesman that she wants to see the sanctions renewed unaltered.

The fact Merkel felt obliged to make her stance public is itself a sign of conflict. On every previous occasion when the question of renewing the sanctions has come up she has maintained her preferred Sphinx-like stance of silence. She was able to do that previously because there was no pressure on her to change it. The fact that on this occasion she has been forced to go public shows that disagreement with her sanctions policy is growing and that she has therefore felt the need to go public to hold the line.

As to where the disagreement with the sanctions policy in Germany is coming from, the signs of that are everywhere.

New, silent, and deadly Russian submarines are challenging NATO's maritime dominance, says a senior US admiral who calls the current situation a "Battle of the Atlantic," comparing it to the Cold War and the two World Wars.

"Once again, an effective, skilled, and technologically advanced Russian submarine force is challenging us," Vice Admiral James Foggo III, commander of the US 6th Fleet, wrote in the June issue of the US Naval Institute's magazine, Proceedings."Russian submarines are prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses, confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battlespace to give them an edge in any future conflict."

In the article, which was co-authored with naval analyst Alarik Fritz, Foggo argued that a "Fourth Battle of the Atlantic" is underway, comparing the present-day situation to Cold War tensions between NATO and the Soviet Union, as well as the Anglo-American battles with German submarines during the two World Wars.

Russia is "rapidly closing the technological gap" and the "clear advantage that we enjoyed in antisubmarine warfare during the Cold War is waning," wrote Foggo and Fritz, pointing to the Severodvinsk, a Russian Yasen-class attack submarine commissioned in December 2013, which so impressed the US admiral in charge of submarine construction that he commissioned a model for his office in 2014.

Michel Temer's interim government has moved rapidly to reverse 13 years of social programs advanced by the democratically elected Workers Party, despite increased turmoil in his beleaguered administration.

In two weeks, the highly-orchestrated rightwing impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, viewed by many Brazilians as a coup, has been beleaguered by a combination of incompetence by the Temer government and a series of leaked audio files implicating key cabinet ministers in their plotting of the "impeachment" as a means to derail a far-reaching corruption probe.

The façade of Michel Temer's legitimacy unraveled just days into his administration, when Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo released an audio recording and transcript of a conversation between the country's Planning Minister, Romero Juca, and oil executive Sergio Machado, discussing how to put Temer into office to "stop the bleeding" from the so-called Car Wash Investigation into petroleum giant Petrobras.

At the time, Juca also served as the president of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, the same political party of the chief participants in the impeachment, Temer, Senate leader Renan Calheiros, and disgraced former lower-house leader Eduardo Cunha. Juca stepped down from office immediately following the release of the news story.