This month was marked by incredible amounts of water falling in a very short period of time all over the world; killing thousands, displacing millions... and damaging more crops.

China, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Africa, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sweden, Russia, Italy and the US, were the most affected by the sheets of rain and the resulting flash floods during July. Japan also experienced an historic flood that caused widespread damage, 200 deaths and thousands displaced.

Italy, Brazil and South Africa all had their share of unseasonable or 'rare' snow this month, leaving the local population rather surprised.

As the 'heavens opened' in many places, high temperatures, droughts and wildfires hit California, Sweden, Norway, and Greece; the latter being the worst affected with 94 deaths, hundreds of displaced, 2,500 square kilometers ravaged with hundreds of people forced to flee to the beaches.

There were significant fires in California, but no record was broken, until now, the fire of 1937 maintains the record with almost 90,000 square kilometers burned. Even combining all of the hectares burned by fire in California in the last five years aren't enough to beat that 1937 record. In addition, since the 1930s there has been a net decrease in the incidence of fires in the state.

The same applies to the fires that developed in Europe, no records were beaten and there has been a significant drop in the incidence of fires since the 1980s, as Adapt 2030 has stated. The high temperatures recorded in July in Europe do not compare to those of the 1930s, not to mention the extreme heat experienced in Europe and much of the US over several years in the late 19th century.

Again, we see the mass media focusing and magnifying the localized incidences of high temperatures and wildfires; one headline even stated that the world hasn't experienced such high temperatures since the emergence of our civilization (10,000 years ago), a statement that is just plain wrong.

The Earth's surface temperatures are indeed rising due to geologic and volcanic activity, and the more direct incidence of solar rays due to the weakening of the magnetosphere. But forgotten amid the hype is that temperatures in higher layers of the atmosphere have been plummeting. Proof of this is seen in the increasing incidence of solar and lunar halos, noctilucent clouds, multicolored steles, ever-growing hailstorms and of course, unseasonable snowfalls. And let's not forget that we had rare snow events in the northern and southern hemispheres in both June and July this year.

So don't be fooled, many of the earth changes we are now seeing are due to the low solar activity, the weakening of the magnetosphere, as well as the cosmic rays maximum. And all these changes are not specific to our Earth, we are finding parallels in other planets of our solar system. As someone said, "not by fire, but by ice..."

Traditionally a male institution, the last decades have seen the rise of policies that push for equal inclusion of women in all areas of military service. But they're not working, for some strange reason. Men still dominate militaries all over the world, including in western democracies. This has led to charges of systemic discrimination, misogyny and toxic masculinity. But no worry, the gender activists have the solution: affirmative action, including special woman-only incentives to attract them into the military.

But will these additional policies work? Or will they only result in a more 'toxic' military atmosphere? Are the ideals of 'diversity, inclusivity, and equity' compatible with the purpose of a military as an effective fighting force, or are they mutually exclusive? Today on the Truth Perspective we look at recent developments of gender politics in the military, with Australia as a case study and ask the question: are such policies making the military a better institution, or just making it weak?

Running Time: 01:24:57

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While writing my book on the Syrian war, I came across several disturbing videos. In one, Syrian rebels destroyed a church and riddled the Cross with bullets; in another terrifying video, an armed Syrian rebel asks someone if he was a Sunni or an Alawite (Shiite Muslim). When the victim says, "Alawite," the rebel fires multiple rounds and kills the victim. Such psychopaths have three qualities: (1) Fanatic belief in their ideology (2) Inability to sympathize with other people's point of view, and (3) Refusal to coexist with others who are different.

If half of what I have come to understand about the Curious Case of Bill Browder is true, then the "Magnitsky Trio" of Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Ben Cardin are guilty of espionage, at a minimum.

Why? Because they know that Browder's story about Sergei Magnitsky is a lie. And that means that when you tie in the Trump Dossier, Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, the Skripal poisoning and the rest of this mess, these men are consorting with foreign governments and agencies against the sitting President.

As Lee Stranahan pointed out recently on Fault Lines, Cardin invited Browder to testify to Congress in 2017 to push through last year's sanctions bill, a more stringent version of the expiring Magnitsky Act of 2011, which has since been used to ratchet up pressure on Russia.

RT's special reports about the humanitarian crisis in the Iraqi city of Mosul has netted the network its sixth International Emmy Awards nomination, earning recognition for a story that went largely ignored in western media.

The finalists for the Emmy in the News category, announced on Monday, included RT's #MosulSOS, a series of reports and a social media campaign aimed at highlighting the plight of civilians fleeing the Iraqi city as US-backed forces laid siege to the former Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL/ISIS) stronghold. In order to raise awareness about the humanitarian disaster occurring, RT launched the campaign #MosulSOS on social media in March 2017.

RT's Murad Gazdiev reported on the ground from Mosul, where he spoke with locals whose tragic stories about the destruction of their city never seemed to make western headlines. Those who managed to flee the carnage provided Murad with stories that often contradicted the US-led coalition's narrative of a precise, targeted bombing campaign.

Wednesday marks exactly a decade since an ambitious Georgian leader shook world politics and ushered in a new era of antagonism between Russia and the West.

Ten years ago Western audiences learned about breaking news. Russia was doing it again - attacking its weaker neighbor Georgia with tanks and warplanes. Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili was giving exclusive interviews right and left, explaining how his country was being attacked because it wants freedom and how the battle was for values, nothing less. Anchors reminded viewers that Georgia provided troops to missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wanted to be part of NATO.


On the same day Russian audiences learned that Saakashvili went on his latest military adventures, sending tanks and heavy artillery to shell the rebellious city of Tskhinval. Russian peacekeepers stationed there had been killed. President Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the Olympic Games in Beijing, ordered a military response to enforce peace in South Ossetia.

Top technology companies erased most of the posts and videos on their services from Alex Jones, the internet's notorious conspiracy theorist, thrusting themselves into a fraught debate over their role in regulating what can be said online.

Apple, Google, Facebook and Spotify severely restricted the reach of Mr. Jones and Infowars, his right-wing site that has been a leading peddler of false information online. Mr. Jones and Infowars have used social media for years to spread dark and bizarre theories, such as that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax and that Democrats run a global child-sex ring. Apple made its move on Sunday and the others followed on Monday.

The actions, one of the tech companies' most aggressive efforts against misinformation, highlighted a difficult dilemma for their businesses. They have long desired to combat misinformation online, but they have also been reluctant to be arbiters of truth.

Editor's note: Cnet has revealed that Jones' Linkedin account has also been deleted by Linkedin. This makes it clear that the "hate speech" justification given by Youtube, FB et al, is a narrative hiding the real reason: deliberate censorship.

The US Constitution explicitly forbids government censorship. So Silicon Valley big-tech companies made themselves the gatekeepers of 'goodthink,' de-platforming anyone who runs afoul of their arbitrary 'community standards.'

Alex Jones, the host of InfoWars, has often been derided by establishment media as a conspiracy theorist. Yet on Monday, Apple, Spotify, YouTube and Facebook proved right the motto of his show - "There's a war on for your mind!" - by blocking or deleting InfoWars accounts from their platforms, saying he allegedly engaged in "hate speech" and violated their "community standards."

Simply put, these corporations appointed themselves arbiters of acceptable political thought, and censored Jones for failing to comply with arbitrary political standards set in Silicon Valley boardrooms, not at the ballot box.

Last year, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were instructed on the US Senate floor that it is their responsibility to "quell information rebellions" and adopt a "mission statement" expressing their commitment to "prevent the fomenting of discord."

"Civil wars don't start with gunshots, they start with words," the representatives were told. "America's war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America."

Yes, this really happened.

There's a strange confluence happening in Canada that is likely to alter the fate of all citizens across the country and leave an indelible mark upon the psyche of what was once considered a peaceful and friendly nation. A perfect storm is brewing of seemingly unrelated, but loosely connected events, that have transpired to increase tension and foment division between formerly amicable citizens in a profound and significant way.

Uncontrolled illegal mass immigration, along with the spectre of potential Islamic terrorism, combined with the forcible imposition of absurd and counter-productive neo-Marxist, social-justice inspired government policies, has resulted in a very public backlash recently, which has at times taken the form of several highly publicized incidents deemed as racially motivated "hate crimes" by Canada's progressive liberal media.

Contrary to all appearances, this confluence may not be merely an accidental and independent series of events, but is arguably a direct result of a deliberate and conscious plan by those in power to weaken national sovereignty and sow discord, mistrust and hostility between different groups of people. The signs are all there. It's time to put the pieces together...