Some things that happened in July...

Korean Central News Agency (DPRK): US-S.Korea Joint Military Exercises Flailed

Christian Science Monitor: Did Iran attack Japanese oil tanker in Strait of Hormuz?

As things heat up in the Yellow Sea and Strait of Hormuz, it may be wise to revisit this affair...

Secrecy News: 1968 Senate Sessions of Foreign relations Declassified

The transcripts include an extended inquiry into the official version of 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which led to the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and which became the object of increasing skepticism, inside and outside of government.

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Sibel Edmonds examines the back round on recent events in Kyrgyzstan...

Boiling Frogs Post: Maksim Bakiyev: A Groomed Puppet Who Never Came to Be King

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Tyrannis Britannia

BAE Systems: Taranis Combat Aircraft Thunders into view

Other developments in aviation...

BBC: Phantom Eye hydrogen-powered spy plane unveiled

Wired: Killer Drones Get Stealthy

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Cocoa, Gold and Heroin keep the banking system afloat...

Telegraph:

Mystery trader buys all of Europe's cocoa

Secret gold swap has spooked the market

Pravda: Large U.S. Banks Laundered Money from Drug Trafficking

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In police state news...

Wired: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the 'invisible links' between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

Isn't that nifty. It is but one aspect of the only growth industry in the United States: surveil and secure....

Washington Post: A hidden world, growing beyond control

As the national security regime blossoms, meanwhile, state and local governments are hemorrhaging. A case in point: California...

Sacramento Bee: Schwarzenegger orders minimum wage for state workers

NBCBayArea: Suffer These Crimes in Oakland? Don't Call the Cops

But the cops will call on you...

East Bay Express: Oakland Police Search Without Warrants

L.A.Times: Raw-food raid highlights a hunger

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A mostly unnoticed political scandal...

AP: Ex-Clinton fundraiser gets 12 years in prison

But one which demonstrates a certain continuity...

WhoWhatWhy: Hillary's Bush Connection