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Why are some Lebanese Sunni Muslims becoming sympathetic toward Da’ish (ISIS)?
Franklin Lamb
Damascus
As recent developments in the Levant make plain, the Sunni-Shiite conflict is increasingly dominating political and strategic initiatives and calculations in Lebanon. In the twelve months since declaring its "caliphate” on June 29, 2014, the “Islamic State” (IS/ISIS/Da’ish), basically a political power movement as opposed to being a religious project, continues birthing international and local franchises. The numbers of foreign fighters from diverse countries traveling to join Da’ish or Nusra increases after every victory. The US State Departments just released 2014 Country Reports (6/18/2015) spends considerably more time discussing the growth in popularity of the group's ideology than previous reports.
Congress Approves Greater Corporate Predation
by Stephen Lendman
On June 18, House members narrowly approved fast track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) - using procedural gimmicks, bribes and heavy pressure, the usual way corrupt politicians operate.
On June 23, Senate members followed suit. A cloture motion to end debate passed - clearing the way for a Wednesday vote expected to support TPA.
Public Citizen President Robert Weissman commented saying: The usual "legislative contortions an gimmicks…hand(ed) (corporate predators) their top priority" - the right to ram through Congress with minimal debate and no amendments anti-consumer rapacious trade deals no responsible societies would tolerate.
Plans for Destroying Greece Stall
by Stephen Lendman
Monied interests want vVV destroyed - trapped in endless debt peonage. Industry groups said nearly 60 Greek companies shut down daily since January 1 - costing over 600 jobs and 22 million euros in GDP every 24 hours.
EU officials complicit with the IMF and ECB (the so-called Troika) want Greek enterprises and assets handed to Western corporate predators at fire sale prices and its citizenry reduced to impoverished serfdom with no rights whatever.
It wants democracy entirely eliminated in its birthplace. It wants Western plunder turning Greece into a dystopian wasteland - a nightmarish ruler/serf society enforced by police state harshness. It wants it serving as a model for what's intended for other European countries and America. So-called Western civilization was never civilized. It's on a devastating race to the bottom for ordinary people - beyond the worst of what Orwell envisioned.
IMF Violates IMF Rules, to Continue Ukraine Bailouts
Eric Zuesse
The IMF whose bailout operations are absorbed by the taxpayers in the member countries whenever a particular bailed-out nation defaults, announced on Friday, June 19th, that it will "continue to support Ukraine through its Lending-into-Arrears Policy even in the event that a negotiated agreement with creditors in line with the program cannot be reached in a timely manner.” Though this new “Lending-into-Arrears” policy violates two IMF rules, it was justified by the IMF’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde on the basis of the Ukrainian government’s “continued efforts to reach a collaborative agreement with all creditors.”
In other words: a statement by Ukraine’s government that it wants to reach an agreement with its private creditors is being used by the IMF as if it were an excuse to extend into the indefinite future the IMF’s continued taxpayer-guaranteed financing of (‘lending’ to) the Ukrainian government, despite the fact that the IMF is violating two of the IMF’s own most-basic rules restricting its lending-authority — these rules are lending-restrictions whose purpose was to reduce the riskiness of the IMF’s lending, and so to minimize the amount that the IMF will be taking from taxpayers to fund its losses:
John Kerry: War Criminal, Profiteering from Stolen Palestinian Natural Gas
by Stephen Lendman
Kerry's involvement in US imperial wars causing mass slaughter, destruction and human misery makes him one of many unindicted US war criminals.
His considerable wealth together with his wife's fortune includes them among the world's billionaires.
He had an earlier million dollar stake in Houston-based Noble Energy - the US firm co-owning Israeli rigs developing Leviathan and Tamar gas fields containing an estimated 25 trillion cubic feet supply plus potentially billions of barrels of oil.
Operations are in Palestinian waters - part of Israel's longstanding grand theft plan, confiscating resources not its own - including what belongs to Lebanon and Syria.
The Western Mediterranean Levantine Basin is oil and gas rich. Israel wants as much of its resources as possible for itself - shutting out Palestinians entirely.
America’s U.N. Ambassador Continues Standing Up for Nazis
Eric Zuesse
Recently, President Barack Obama’s friend whom he appointed to represent this Vcountry at the United Nations visited Ukraine and used the Ukrainian-language translation and variant of the German Nazi Party’s “Deutschland über alles,” or “Germany above all,” to honor Ukraine’s own racist fascists, that nation’s ideological nazis, whom the U.S. had used in February 2014 for overthrowing Ukraine’s neutralist democratically elected President. This was not our U.N. Ambassador’s first foray into international nazi political pandering.
On 21 November 2014, Samantha Power, America’s U.N. Ambassador, had, in fact, been one of only three out of the 173 nations at the U.N., who voted against a resolution that condemned nazism and all forms of state-sponsored bigotry, and that specifically condemned Holocaust-denial; and she gave as the reason, that the resolution offended the government of Ukraine; but Ukraine wasn’t even mentioned in it. Canada voted against it because the United States did; and the United States voted against it because Ukraine did. Both Canada and U.S. were thus supposedly copying Ukraine.
Israel Criminalizes Delivering Humanitarian Aid
by Stephen Lendman
Gazans have been blockaded under siege for over nine years - for political, not security reasons.
Claims otherwise are outrageous Israeli lies - repeated to justify the unjustifiable. Efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazans are systematically blocked the way Saudis now slowly starve Yemenis to death and deprive them of vitally needed medical care.
Freedom Flotilla III is heading for Gaza - aiming to break Israel's blockade. Flotilla I and II were blocked. The first May 2010 mission cost nine activists' lives aboard the Mavi Marmara along with dozens more wounded and everyone brutally treated and arrested. Flotillas will continue sailing "until the illegal blockade of Gaza is permanently lifted," its sponsors maintain.
"Our voyage is a natural, brotherly action. Our objective is humanitarian. Our basis lies in international humanitarian law. (O)ur method is non-violen(t)."
NATO Preparing for War with Russia?
by Stephen Lendman
Washington dominates NATO. It makes policy decisions. Other members march in lockstep, often harming their own self-interest. Imposing sanctions on Russia hurting their own economies is as good an example as any.
So is acting belligerently against an important neighbor threatening no one, wanting mutual cooperation - risking another European war.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is a convenient US stooge - taking orders from Washington. He supports its likely intention to deploy nuclear weapons targeting Russia on the phony pretext of its nonexistent Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) violations - a policy only lunatics would endorse.
The Day the Earth Died And Why Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Etc., Were Virtually Silent About It
Eric Zuesse
As the civilizations that we all know, and love, and lived, slide increasingly into totalitarian misery; and the environment, which had been our lives, becomes less and less livable, there will be, in retrospect, one key day, which historians will mark, as the turning-point toward Earth’s death; and it was 23 June 2015. That's the day when the U.S. Senate, which had previously turned down the procedural move (called “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority," and discussed here) that opens the door to passing U.S. President Obama’s falsely-called ‘trade’ deals, finally (in effect) passed it — thereby reducing the Constitutionally required two-thirds of Senators that’s needed to approve any of these treaties in order for it to become law, down to merely an unConstitutional 50% of the Senators (+ the Vice President as the tie-breaker), as if a treaty were like any merely ordinary law (which requires only 50%+1); “Fast Track" thus enormously increases the likelihood of passing any of Obama’s world-murderous ‘trade’ treaties, from approximately 0%, to approximately 100%.
Here is how these treaties will murder the Earth:
Saudis Brutalize Migrants
by Stephen Lendman
Saudi Arabia is one of the world's most ruthless regimes. International law principles are systematically breached.
The Kingdom is ruled by the despotic Saud monarchy. Democracy is strictly forbidden. So are free and open expression, press freedom and regime criticism.
Human Rights Watch's 2015 World Report said ruling authorities "continued in 2014 to try, convict, and imprison political dissidents and human rights activists solely on account of their peaceful activities."
"Systematic discrimination against women and religious minorities continued. Authorities failed to enact systematic measures to protect the rights of 9 million foreign workers."
They "subjected hundreds of people to unfair trials and arbitrary detention. New anti-terrorism regulations that took effect in 2014 can be used to criminalize almost any form of peaceful criticism of the authorities as terrorism."
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