Last month, I wrote an article highlighting the fact that President Barack Obama apparently had become so tired of being President that he decided to just hang out and socialize instead. The piece was titled, The New York Times Describes Obama - "A Restless President Weary of the Obligations of the White House..."

Apparently, Mr. Obama has found a middle ground. A perfect mix of dinner-party diplomacy with some of the world's most violent and homophobic dictators. Introducing the first ever U.S.-Africa summit, which just ran from August 4-6th. As the Daily Mail points out, President Obama had no problem smiling and hobnobbing with a cornucopia of murders and human rights abusers. If there was a Hollywood celebrity hashtag campaign of outrage protesting the event, I must have missed it.

Former Congressman Ron Paul said the US knows 'more than it is telling' about the Malaysian aircraft that crashed in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 298 people on board and seriously damaging US-Russian relations in the process.

In an effort to inject some balance of opinion, not to mention pure sanity, into the ongoing debate over what happened to Malaysian Flight MH17, Ron Paul is convinced the US government is withholding information on the catastrophe.

"The US government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a Buk anti-aircraft missile," Paul said on his news website on Thursday.

Despite desperate calls from witnesses, Odessa fire brigades came to the scene of the notorious Trade Unions House blaze only 38 minutes after it was reported, leaked transcripts of emergency calls show. The fire claimed the lives of 48 people in May.

The leaked transcripts involve calls which local emergency services reportedly received on the evening of May 2.

The fire began after violent clashes erupted between rival rallies of anti-government protesters and radicals supporting the Maidan-imposed authorities in Kiev. Tires, a protesters' tent camp and the Trade Unions House - which had anti-Kiev activists inside - were set ablaze.

According to documents obtained by Odessa news website dumskaya.net, the first calls from activists were received at 7:31 p.m. local time.

Washington has refused to allow the UN International Court of Justice (IJC) to hear Argentina's claims that US court decisions on the country's debt have violated Argentina's sovereignty.

"We do not view the ICJ as an appropriate venue for addressing Argentina's debt issues, and we continue to urge Argentina to engage with its creditors to resolve remaining issues with bondholders," the US State Department told Reuters in an email.

The State Department sent an email with the same content to one of Argentina's leading newspapers, the Clarin.

Argentina complained against Washington's decisions on its debt to the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday.

In the video embedded below, openly gay Irish senator and international human rights activist David Norris spoke frankly about the ongoing conflict in Gaza. In his speech, Norris abandoned the normal Pro-Israel vs. Pro-Palestine dichotomy and attempted to address the changes in direction of Israel's rulers.


Norris said that over time, Israel has fundamentally shifted its social and political orientation.

"I am not anti-Israeli, I am not anti-Semitic. I supported the state of Israel. In the forty years I have known the state of Israel and sometimes had a home there I've seen it completely changed," he said.

On July 22nd, zerohedge bannered sarcastically, "Flight MH-17 Black Boxes To Be Analyzed In 'Impartial' London," and reported that they would be analyzed by the U.S.-allied, anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian, British Government. A mere four days later, on the 26th, CBS News headlined the results, "Black box findings consistent with missile blast," but they declined to report who, or even what country's government, had actually done the analysis. CBS reported merely: "Unreleased data from a black box retrieved from the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine show findings consistent with the plane's fuselage being hit multiple times by shrapnel from a missile explosion. 'It did what it was designed to do,' a European air safety official told CBS News, 'bring down airplanes.' The official described the finding as 'massive explosive decompression.'" That's all. Nothing more. However, this "explosive decompression" would have happened with bullets too, if the pressurized airliner were punctured by bullets instead of shrapnel. Why did that person (whomever it was) assume that the plane had been hit by a missile's shrapnel, instead of by hails of bullets fired by machine-guns from a fighter-plane flying alongside it? Maybe because Britain is allied with the Obama-installed Ukrainian Government, against the anti-Government rebels who have no airplanes at all and thus cannot get gunmen 33,000 feet up into the air to shoot directly at the Malaysian airliner's pilot, and that that's what actually brought this plane down. We'll show that the latter scenario is, indeed, correct.

Only idiots would trust Britain to interpret these black boxes to determine what and who brought down that plane. But, fortunately, the physical evidence lying on the ground at the site in Ukraine was photographed very quickly by locals there and uploaded to the Internet sometimes before any fighters and any governments were able to tamper with anything; and there happened to be one modest-looking item found at the site that tells a remarkably complete and entirely credible and convincing account of how this plane came down.

It tells that the Ukrainian Government itself did this airliner-downing, with bullets, not with shrapnel. You'll see the evidence laid out before you here; you won't need to rely upon the British Government to tell you how this event happened. The evidence will tell you that.

U.S. President Barack Obama's war against Russia isn't only causing Russia to cooperate more strongly with the other BRIC countries to break the U.S. dollar's reign as the global reserve currency, but it's also causing Russian President Vladimir Putin's job-approval rating in Russia to soar, and the confidence that the Russian people have in their own Government to soar likewise.

The latest of these signs came on August 5th, 2014 in a report from Gallup Analytics (by subscription only) headlined "Russians' Confidence in Many Institutions Reaches All-Time High."

Especially sharp has been the rise in "Confidence in national government," which was only 39% in 2013 prior to the overthrow by Obama in February 2014 of Ukraine's government which had been friendly to Russia, but which confidence-level stands now at 64% - a gain of 64/39 or 1.64 times higher than it was a year ago.

Confidence in the military has risen from 65% in 2013 to 78% now.Confidence in the "honesty of elections" has risen from a very low 23% in 2013 to 39% today (which is 39/23 or 1.70 times higher), as increasing numbers of Russians have come to conclude that their political system is producing better results for them than they had expected, perhaps better than in the longer-established "democratic" nations, such as the United States, whose President Barack Obama is far less highly regarded now by Russians, after his overthrowing Ukraine's Government, than he was prior to that.

Remarkably, more Russians than ever before, 65%, answer "Yes" when asked "are you satisfied ... with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?"

Last year, only 56% did, down 2% from the prior all-time high of 58% in 2006.A Gallup poll issued on 18 July 2014 headlined "Russian Approval of Putin Soars to Highest Level in Years," and reported:

"President Vladimir Putin's popularity in Russia is now at its highest level in years, likely propelled by a groundswell of national pride with the annexation of Crimea in March on the heels of the Sochi Olympic Games in February. The 83% of Russians saying they approve of Putin's leadership in late April/early June ties his previous high rating in 2008 when he left office the first time."

Furthermore, "The 29-percentage-point increase in Putin's job approval between 2013 and 2014 suggests he has solidified his previously shaky support base. For the first time since 2008, a majority of Russians (73%) believe their country's leadership is leading them in the right direction."

Banking giant HSBC has been accused of "shamelessly profiling" its customers after it closed bank accounts belonging to Syrian refugees and students in the UK.

Despite cracking down on its customers with even the most flimsy connection to Islam, HSBC itself has been linked to terrorism financing, including Hezbollah and 9/11 and the laundering of billions of dollars by Latin American drug cartels.

HSBC, branding itself as "the world's local bank," is increasingly being accused of Islamophobia, after it emerged that the bank is closing accounts of Syrian nationals in the UK. The move comes shortly after the global banking giant closed the accounts of high-profile UK-based Muslim groups.

The mainstream media is hyping the "biggest ever" Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

We are told that the dread disease, which produces symptoms like something out of a horror movie, is spreading to the USA. Some Americans are canceling their vacations and refusing to fly, believing that they might catch Ebola on an airplane.

People are being terrorized by horrific images, fear of a quick and awful death, and fear of airplanes. The fears are out of all proportion to the reality of the threat. Where have we seen this before?

On September 11th, 2001, the American public was subjected to trauma-based mind control - an intensive form of the brainwashing technique known as coercion, described in a book by Douglas Rushkoff of the same name. Trauma-based mind control uses extreme fear or horror to shape the subconscious minds of its victims. It is a highly effective technique for making people submit to authority without realizing what they are doing or why.

In the autumn of 2001, we were brainwashed into believing that radical Muslims, using airplanes, anthrax, and who knows what else, were willing and able to kill large numbers of Americans. As a result, the US went to war against Muslim nations, persecuted Muslims worldwide, shredded the Constitution, threw away trillions of dollars, and risked moral as well as fiscal bankruptcy.

US oil giant ExxonMobil and Russia's Rosneft will continue joint exploitation of the Russian Arctic despite Western sanctions, the American company said as the two giants launched exploration drilling in the Kara Sea.

"Our cooperation is a long-term one. We see great benefits here and are ready to continue working here with your agreement," Glenn Waller, ExxonMobil's lead manager in Russia, told President Vladimir Putin during a video-conference call.

The Russian leader hailed the exploration project as an example of mutually beneficial cooperation that strengthens global energy security.

Rosneft head Igor Sechin said the launch of the Universitetskaya-1 well drill is one of the most important events for the company this year.

"We hope that this work will discover a new oil reserve here in the Kara Sea. The development of the Arctic shelf would have a big and positive effect for the Russian economy," he said.