The biggest problem in our world today is that the vast - and I mean vast - majority of people have no - again, I mean no - idea of how the world actually works and has been working for centuries. Let's take Putin's Russia as an example. Most people in the West, including those who are relatively well-informed about the geo-political context, see Putin as a 'dictator', a cold-eyed ex-FSB agent who is running Russia with an iron fist. There is only one reason why anyone can have ever formed this opinion: they are massively ignorant of how the world works. Putin is ex-FSB, and it is he, along with the upper echelons of Russian intelligence, that runs Russia. This is seen as 'anti-democratic' in the West and in those Russian minds infected by Western 'values' and propaganda. Yet US and British intelligence (among others) have been running not only the USA and UK for decades, but, indirectly, much of the rest of the world also.

It's difficult (in a face-palm kind of way) to listen to people, even well-informed educated people and 'experts', opine on global politics when they are clearly ignorant of (or studiously ignore) this most important fact. There is no 'democracy' in this world, and there has not been for, oh... forever. Western populations are so damn dumbed down and dissociated that they actually can't figure out that nothing of any significance changes with a change of government, despite all the evidence before them. In fact, it's worse than that, things do change, but for the worse from the point of view of the average citizen. Who will argue that Western warmongering and the divide between rich and poor has increased dramatically over the past 40 years? How many administrations does that period comprise, about 10? Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican... Whoopee frickin' doo. In the UK, it's Conservative, Labour, Conservative, Labour... In both countries, the supposedly 'bleeding-heart lefty' Democrat and Labour governments fronted by Tony Blair and then Obama actually out-warmongered their supposedly traditionally uber-warmongering opposition parties.

How do you explain that? Easy. There is no difference between them because neither of them, as parties or Presidents or Prime Ministers, actually control anything of any significance. Someone else does.

Richard Nixon was a traitor. The new release of extended versions of Nixon's papers now confirms this long-standing belief, usually dismissed as a "conspiracy theory" by Republican conservatives. Now it has been substantiated by none other than right-wing columnist George Will.

Nixon's newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson. Nixon's interference with these negotiations violated President John Adams's 1797 Logan Act, banning private citizens from intruding into official government negotiations with a foreign nation. Published as the 40th Anniversary of Nixon's resignation approaches, Will's column confirms that Nixon feared public disclosure of his role in sabotaging the 1968 Vietnam peace talks.

Will says Nixon established a "plumbers unit" to stop potential leaks of information that might damage him, including documentation he believed was held by the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank. The Plumbers' later break-in at the Democratic National Committee led to the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down. Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks was confirmed by transcripts of FBI wiretaps. On November 2, 1968, LBJ received an FBI report saying Chernnault told the South Vietnamese ambassador that "she had received a message from her boss: saying the Vietnamese should "hold on, we are gonna win."

A new study, conducted jointly by the University of Hong Kong and Indiana University, has found that Mississippi is the most corrupt U.S. state. Personally, given all the negative publicity, I would have expected Louisiana to top such a chart. Boy, would I have been wrong - Louisiana comes in at the far more prestigious second place!

According to Fortune, the researchers have examined more than 25,000 convictions of public officials for various violation of federal corruption laws between 1976 and 2008. The huge number means that data collected for the study include many small cases, which would not have been widely publicized.

As a result, the findings may come as a surprise to many people - some of the states in the top 10 do not necessarily have a reputation for being crooked. Moreover, states which do have a reputation for corruption, such as New Jersey and New York, do not even make the list. The researchers - Cheol Liu and John L. Mikesell - stated that:

"States with higher levels of corruption are likely to favor construction, salaries, borrowing, correction, and police protection at the expense of social sectors such as education, health and hospitals."

The report suggested that the need for correctional officers is higher in corrupt places because "the overall extent of corruption will be higher in states with higher numbers of convictions of public officials". Very interesting...

The superficially coincidental images coming from both Gaza and Ferguson this month have created some surprising and sudden currents of solidarity. Many have looked on with amazement, for example, as Gazans offer tips via twitter to those who have been involved in the uprising and faced the absurd and excessively militarized response to it by Ferguson police. And participants in "peaceful" vigils and more militant confrontations in Ferguson have invoked Gaza by now a dozens times.

Few have looked at images coming out of Ferguson and not been tempted to draw the same allusions between the 2/3 Black suburb policed by a nearly all-white police force, and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. It would be difficult not to draw that comparison at the moment given the spectacle of the massive armory gifted to the FPD by the federal government in the name of stopping "terror" - which has so often been given a Palestinian face in the US - and the revelation that the former police chief of Ferguson studied "counter-terror" measures in Israel in 2011. Ironically, it seems Black Americans are now the target of anti-terror funding and training, which was ostensibly meant to target those from the Muslim and Arab world.

While there is nothing happening within the US anything like the now-cyclical Israeli slaughter of thousands of Gazans, the reality is that life for Black Americans in places like Ferguson does not vary in much from blockaded Gaza, and West Bank Bantustans in off-attack times. The similarities are not just coincidental in terms of the timing of the events - they are in fact, concurrent and historical.

As Moscow banned food imports from the West, Turkey voiced its readiness to increase its exports of agricultural products to Russia, Turkish economy minister has said.

"Turkey is a major supplier of food and agricultural produce to Russia. It is ready to increase its food exports to Russia if necessary," Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said in an interview with Itar-Tass.

The two countries have recently reached an agreement to increase the number of Turkish food suppliers to Russia. A delegation from Russia's agricultural watchdog, Rosselkhoznadzor (the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phyto-Sanitary Control), visited Ankara for negotiations in the search for alternative food supply sources following the sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU, Russia's top food supplier, the US, the EU, Australia and Canada.

To reciprocate, on August 6 Russia introduced a full ban for imports of beef and pork (fresh, chilled, refrigerated, pickled, dried or smoked meat), poultry and any poultry edible products, fish, cheese, milk, dairy products, vegetables, including root vegetables and tuber crops, and fruit from Australia, Canada, the EU, the US and Norway.

Moscow is now set to ensure country's food supply security by finding new suppliers in countries that have not joined the sanctions against Russia. Some of the country's closest neighbors, China and Turkey, have been among the first candidates for a lucrative offer to extend their share of the Russia market.

Jason Westcott was afraid.

One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his home. They were intent on stealing Wescott's handgun and a couple of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was planning on "burning" Westcott, who promptly called the Tampa Bay police and reported the plot.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, the investigating officers responding to Westcott's call had a simple message for him: "If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill."

Around 7:30 pm on May 27th, the intruders arrived. Westcott followed the officers' advice, grabbed his gun to defend his home, and died pointing it at the intruders. They used a semiautomatic shotgun and handgun to shoot down the 29-year-old motorcycle mechanic. He was hit three times, once in the arm and twice in his side, and pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.

The intruders, however, weren't small-time crooks looking to make a small score. Rather they were members of the Tampa Bay Police Department's SWAT team, which was executing a search warrant on suspicion that Westcott and his partner were marijuana dealers. They had been tipped off by a confidential informant, whom they drove to Westcott's home four times between February and May to purchase small amounts of marijuana, at $20-$60 a pop. The informer notified police that he saw two handguns in the home, which was why the Tampa Bay police deployed a SWAT team to execute the search warrant.

In the end, the same police department that told Westcott to protect his home with defensive force killed him when he did. After searching his small rental, the cops indeed found weed, two dollars' worth, and one legal handgun -- the one he was clutching when the bullets ripped into him.

Welcome to a new era of American policing, where cops increasingly see themselves as soldiers occupying enemy territory, often with the help of Uncle Sam's armory, and where even nonviolent crimes are met with overwhelming force and brutality.

In an in-depth interview published by Wired Magazine on Wednesday, Edward Snowden discloses what government activities proved to be the "last straw," prompting the whistleblower to expose the depths of the National Security Agency's secret surveillance operation.

Speaking with investigative journalist James Bamford - who blew the whistle on a government eavesdropping program when stationed in Hawaii during the Vietnam War and later wrote a number of best-selling books about government secrecy and the NSA - Snowden reveals how a botched U.S. government hacking operation caused Syria's 2012 internet blackout.

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday announced the appointment of experts to carry out an independent commission charged with investigating possible war crimes during the month-long assault on Gaza that has killed nearly 2,000 Palestinians and 67 Israelis.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has urged a rethink of the European Union's sanctions policy toward Russia, saying the measures are like "shooting oneself in the foot."

"The sanctions policy pursued by the West, that is, ourselves, a necessary consequence of which, has been what the Russians are doing, causes more harm to us than to Russia," Reuters quoted Orban as saying on the radio, he added "in politics, this is called shooting oneself in the foot."

Russia is Hungary's largest trade partner outside of the EU, with exports worth $3.4 billion in 2013. Also it is highly dependent on Russian energy. Earlier this year Hungary agreed a $13 billion deal with Russian power company Rosatom to expand the country's only nuclear power plant.

"The EU should not only compensate producers somehow, be they Polish, Slovak, Hungarian or Greek, who now have to suffer losses, but the entire sanctions policy should be reconsidered," the Hungarian Prime Minister said, saying he is already looking for support to force through changes.

Despite the negative sentiment on Tuesday, Hungary's Agriculture Ministry stressed the Russian embargo won't significantly affect the Hungarian economy as the banned products account for less than a third of Hungarian agricultural exports to Russia, being only one percent of total national farming exports.

Almost all Russian citizens claim that they feel no effect from the sanctions against their country and most maintain that the campaign seeks to weaken Russia and its position in global politics.

According to the results of the latest poll released by the VTIOM agency on Friday, 92 percent of Russians said that the Western sanctions had not touched their interests in any way, 4 percent replied that they had noticed an increase in retail prices and only 4 percent declined to answer or reported actual problems, such as frozen bank accounts or the loss of a job in a foreign-based company.

Further, 62 percent of respondents said the sanctions would not have any effect on Russia. Fifteen percent said that after the start of the sanctions campaign the life in the country had only become better and the same number claimed life in Russia had deteriorated.

The poll was conducted among about 1,600 people in 42 different Russian regions on August 9 and 10.

The research also shows that of all Russians who knew about the sanctions, 45 percent could not say what the particular steps taken by Western nations and their allies against Russia were. Nineteen percent were aware of visa bans on certain Russian officials, 15 percent said they knew about restrictions in the banking sector and 10 percent knew about the sanctions in the export-import sphere.