Honestly, if you had described this America to me more than half a century ago, I would have laughed in your face.

Donald Trump becoming president? You must be kidding! 

If you want a bizarre image, just imagine him in the company of Abraham Lincoln. I mean, really, what’s happened to us?

BY Tom Engelhardt

ON THIS SITE WE HAVE EXPOSED MANY BAD DEEDS PERFORMED by our leaders UNDER THE IDEAL OF DEMOCRACY. THE LIST OF OUR POSTINGS IS LONG BUT WE SHOULD REVISIT THEM FROM TIME TO TIME. SUCH ARE https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/37019 AND "The Age of Deceit". MEANWHILE, Jonathan Cook, award-winning British journalist, HAS A TEARY DESPAIR: "A more urgent question is whether the democracies we have will be worth saving?"

Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom confirmed on Tuesday it had cut off off gas supplies to French utilities company Engie. The Paris-based firm has failed to pay for July gas deliveries in full, the Saint Petersburg major explained.

Gazprom informed Engie that it would cease the gas deliveries starting September 1 until the moment it gets the payment for the already supplied gas in full, the energy giant said in a statement. It also noted that the French side had failed to make the payment by Tuesday evening, making any further gas deliveries impossible under Russian law.

An early Australian leader said: “the doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman”.

Inter-group violence and “yellow peril” fears were a key factor motivating the setting up of Australia’s political map.

Fear of China is still so entrenched that it’s no surprise that many Australians today carry the absurd fear that an invasion of their country is imminent.

BY Laurie Pearcey

“AUSTRALIA HAS NOT CHANGED – China has changed.” That is a phrase often used by Australia’s new prime minister Anthony Albanese (left) to describe the structural deterioration in relations between Canberra and Beijing. It is not often I agree with an Australian prime minister these days, but in this case, Albanese is bang on the money.

Russian forces have taken out hundreds of Ukrainian troops and dozens of tanks and armored military vehicles after repelling an ill-fated offensive in the south of the country, the Defense Ministry claimed on Tuesday.

A statement added that officials believe the failed operation was mounted at the personal order of President "Vladimir" [Volodymyr] Zelensky.

“The effective actions by the Russian forces destroyed 48 tanks, 46 infantry fighting vehicles, 37 other armored combat vehicles, eight pickups with heavy machine guns and more than 1,200 Ukrainian servicemen in one day,” they outlined. The Ministry added that Kiev sustained these losses during a botched offensive whose directions led to Nikolaev, Krivoy Rog, and other cities in southern Ukraine.

The huge disinformation campaign ran for almost five years. The reputation of Chinese, Russians and Iranians was blackened..Falsified accounts pushed stories in tandem with US govt media VOA, RFE and others.

A TORRENT OF DISINFORMATION about the Chinese and other communities painted as enemies of the Western allies ran for almost five years on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter, researchers reported on Wednesday.

In a recent podcast, Kevin Barrett stated that the rule of law has disappeared in the US. This is so obviously true to outsiders looking in, and is even more true of American official conduct abroad, but I find myself wondering about the extent to which Americans generally are aware of this and how it is perceived.

In days gone by, this lawlessness was usually deeply buried and obfuscated but today it seems there is no longer even a pretense of any rule of law. We see this most recently in the so-called “sanctions” the US so freely applies to countries and individuals, being no more than illegal rampaging and looting.

While U.S. and Western mainstream and corporate media remain biased in favor of Israel, they often behave as if they are a third, neutral party. This is simply not the case.

Take The New York Times coverage of the latest Israeli war on Gaza as an example. Its article on Aug. 6, “Israel-Gaza Fighting Flares for a Second Day” is the typical mainstream Western reporting on Israel and Palestine, but with a distinct NYT flavor.

By Ramzy Baroud
Common Dreams

As global temperatures rise, people in the tropics, including places like India and Africa’s Sahel region, will likely face dangerously hot conditions almost daily by the end of the century – even as the world reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, a new study shows.

The mid-latitudes, including the U.S., will also face increasing risks. There, the number of dangerously hot days, marked by temperatures and humidity high enough to cause heat exhaustion, is projected to double by the 2050s and continue to rise.

By David Battisti, University of Washington

President Vladimir Zelensky said in his daily evening address on Sunday that Ukraine will recapture Donbass, which is now almost fully seized by Russian forces. 

“We have not forgotten and will not forget any of our cities and any of our people,” he said. 

“Now Donbass is almost destroyed by Russian strikes, devastated. The proud and glorious Ukrainian Donetsk was humiliated by the Russian occupation and robbed. But Ukraine will return. For sure. Life will return. The dignity of the people of Donbass will return. The ability to live will return. The opportunity to live safely and happily,”Zelensky added. 

Former Howard government minister Fran Bailey says she forced Scott Morrison out as head of Tourism Australia because of a “complete lack of trust” and has called on him to quit federal parliament immediately.

In her strongest criticism of the former prime minister yet, Bailey claimed she felt bullied by Morrison and that he had not consulted her on key decisions as managing director of the nation’s tourism body.

“Essentially, it came down to a complete lack of trust – and when you no longer have trust in someone who is the managing director of an organisation, you have to move that person on,” Bailey told The Sunday Age columnist Jon Faine in an exclusive interview.

On a 10-point scale, the current energy crisis in Europe has already received 8 points and a “frightening” forecast from the renowned consulting firm Rystad Energy. As the energy situation in the EU has steadily worsened in recent days, the number of problems facing Europeans is unwaveringly increasing.

The EU will encounter “major challenges” due to the sanctions it imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has said.

The issue was raised during Borrell’s interview with the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung, with journalists pointing out that many people in their country are “skeptical” about the anti-Russia measures.

The diplomat claimed that the sanctions are working, and that “Russia is in trouble.”

“These are restrictive measures. We’ve limited Russia's economic possibilities. As long as Russia’s economy is dependent on oil and gas, they’ll be needing our technologies,” he said.

I have never gotten over a story The New York Times ran in its Sunday magazine back in May 2016. Maybe you will remember the occasion. It was a lengthy profile of Ben Rhodes, the Obama administration’s chief adviser for “strategic communications.” It was written by a reporter named David Samuels.