"Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then." ― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

Once upon a time, there was a nation of people who believed everything they were told by their government.

When terrorists attacked the country, and government officials claimed to have been caught by surprise, the people believed them. And when the government passed massive laws aimed at locking down the nation and opening the door to total government surveillance, the people believed it was done merely to keep them safe. The few who disagreed were labeled traitors.

When the government waged costly preemptive wars on foreign countries, insisting it was necessary to protect the nation, the citizens believed it. And when the government brought the weapons and tactics of war home to use against the populace, claiming it was just a way to recycle old equipment, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled unpatriotic.

When the government spied on its own citizens, claiming they were looking for terrorists hiding among them, the people believed it. And when the government began tracking the citizenry's movements, monitoring their spending, snooping on their social media, and surveying their habits—supposedly in an effort to make their lives more efficient—the people believed that, too. The few who disagreed were labeled paranoid.

When the government let private companies take over the prison industry and agreed to keep the jails full, justifying it as a cost-saving measure, the people believed them. And when the government started arresting and jailing people for minor infractions, claiming the only way to keep communities safe was to be tough on crime, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled soft on crime.

When the government hired crisis actors to take part in disaster drills, never alerting the public to which "disasters" were staged, the people genuinely believed they were under attack. And when the government insisted it needed greater powers to prevent such attacks from happening again, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were told to shut up or leave the country.

Finally, the government started carrying out covert military drills around the country, insisting they were necessary to train the troops for foreign combat, and most of the people believed them. The few who disagreed, warning that perhaps all was not what it seemed, were dismissed as conspiracy theorists and quacks.

By the time the government locked down the nation, using local police and the military to impose martial law, there was no one left in doubt of the government's true motives—total control and domination—but there was also no one left to fight back.

A putsch in Athens to save allied Greece from enemy Russia is in preparation by the US and Germany, with backing from the non-taxpayers of Greece - the Greek oligarchs, Anglo-Greek shipowners, and the Greek Church. At the highest and lowest level of Greek government, and from Thessaloniki to Milvorni, all Greeks understand what is happening. Yesterday they voted overwhelmingly to resist. According to a high political figure in Athens, a 40-year veteran, "what is actually happening is a slow process of regime change."

Until Sunday afternoon it was a close-run thing. The Yes and No votes were equally balanced, and the margin between them razor thin. At the start of the morning, Rupert Murdoch's London Times claimed "Greek security forces have drawn up a secret plan to deploy the army alongside special riot police to contain possible civil unrest after today's referendum on the country's future in Europe. Codenamed Nemesis, it makes provision for troops to patrol large cities if there is widespread and prolonged public disorder. Details of the plan emerged as polls showed the 'yes' and 'no' camps neck and neck." Greek officers don't speak to the Murdoch press; British and US government agents do.

"It was neck to neck until 3 pm," reports the political veteran in Athens, "then the young started voting. "

American health insurance companies are seeking to increase rates by 20 to 40% or more, while federal officials looking to calm outraged customers say they will work to scale back requests for such steep rate hikes.

Many companies are claiming that new customers who enrolled under the Affordable Care Act (AAC) - commonly referred to as "Obamacare" - turned out to be sicker than expected, leading to increased costs to insurers.

Now, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association - which provides insurance to over 100 million Americans - wants to increase its rates by an average of 23% in Illinois, 25% in North Carolina, 31% in Oklahoma, 36% in Tennessee and 54% in Minnesota, the New York Times reported.

In Oregon, insurance commissioner Laura N. Cali approved 2016 rate increases for Moda Health Plan (a 25% increase) and LifeWise (a 33% increase). Moda and LifeWise, which are the largest and second-largest plans in the state, respectively, combine to cover more than 220,000 people.

Jesse Ellis O'Brien, a health advocate at the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, told the Times:

"Rate increases will be bigger in 2016 than they have been for years and years and will have a profound effect on consumers here. Some may start wondering if insurance is affordable or if it's worth the money."

Some experts say there was an initial rush for services under Obamacare, and they expect rates to decline over the next few years.

"People are getting services they needed for a very long time," Marinan R. Williams, of the Scott & White Health Plan in Texas, told the Times. "There was a pent-up demand. Over the next three years, I hope, rates will start to stabilize."

ISIS has been increasing its presence in the Caucasus. On June 23, 2015 ISIS announced the creation of a new governorate, called Wilayat Qawqaz in Russia's North Caucasus, after several senior militants in the area pledged allegiance to ISIS. ISIS has been setting up conditions to establish this governorate in support of its regional expansion campaign since at least January 2015. A declaration of Wilayat Qawqaz followed the circulation of a Russian-language audio statement on Twitter on June 21, in which supporters of ISIS in the regions of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia and Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachay pledged allegiance to ISIS's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. These areas represent four of the six subdivisions that constitute the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus terrorist network. Militants in these four most frequently conducted domestic attacks in support of the IEC's stated goals of establishing a Caucasus emirate under sharia law and waging global jihad. The two IEC subdivisions where supporters have not formally pledged to ISIS are Cherkessia and Nogay steppe.

FEW NEWS EVENTS can unleash more schadenfreude within the security community than watching a notorious firm of hackers-for-hire become a hack target themselves. In the case of the freshly disemboweled Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team, the company may also serve as a dark example of a global surveillance industry that often sells to any government willing to pay, with little regard for that regime's human rights record.

On Sunday night, unidentified hackers published a massive, 400 gigabyte trove on BitTorrent (peer-to-peer file sharing) of internal documents from the Milan-based Hacking Team, a firm long accused of unethical sales of tools that help governments break into target computers and phones. The breached trove includes executive emails, customer invoices and even source code; the company's twitter feed was hacked, controlled by the intruders for nearly 12 hours, and used to distribute samples of the company's hacked files. The security community spent Sunday night picking through the spy firm's innards and in some cases finding what appear to be new confirmations that Hacking Team sold digital intrusion tools to authoritarian regimes. Those revelations may be well timed to influence an ongoing U.S. policy debate over how to control spying software, with a deadline for public debate on new regulations coming this month.

Every single mainstream media has the following narrative for the economic crisis in Greece: the government spent too much money and went broke; the generous banks gave them money, but Greece still can't pay the bills because it mismanaged the money that was given. It sounds quite reasonable, right?

Except that it is a big fat lie ... not only about Greece, but about other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland who are all experiencing various degrees of austerity. It was also the same big, fat lie that was used by banks and corporations to exploit many Latin American, Asian and African countries for many decades.

Greece did not fail on its own. It was made to fail.

In summary, the banks wrecked the Greek government and deliberately pushed it into unsustainable debt so that oligarchs and international corporations can profit from the ensuing chaos and misery.

Greece invented democracy. Greek mythology forged the way the West looks at itself. Greece even invented the denomination of this Eurasian annex - "Europa".

"For it is only criminals

who presume to damage other people nowadays

without the aid of philosophy."

Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities.

Odysseus/Ulysses took ten years to go back home after the Trojan War. His descendants are now making history in the original home of democracy. And they are not going anywhere. They have already placed their Trojan horse in the home of intolerance and austerity. There's no turning back from restoring dignity. And if the Muses rule it, it will be back to the drachma.

The so-called EU "institutions" - along with cosmically mediocre politicians of wealthy EU nations — behaved like barbarians all along, proving, graphically, how the whole Kafkaesque EU construction hates democracy with a vengeance.

Brussels and Berlin proved they are in the regime change business. Updating the exceptionalists on Iraq in 2003, they were advocating the destruction of a democratically elected government via economic Shock and Awe. Their subsequent wet dream was to impose renewed austerity on an interim, unelected technocratic government.

Euclid Tsakalotos has been appointed as the new Greek finance minister following the resignation of Yanis Varoufakis, Greek presidency official said. Greek media reported he will be sworn in at an official ceremony at 20:00 local time (17:00 GMT).

Tsakalotos "will be sworn in with the political oath as finance minister," the presidency official told Reuters.

Tsakalotos was previously the deputy foreign minister responsible for international economic relations.

The US government will pay the salaries to the staff of Georgia's former President Mikhail Saakashvili, who is now serving as a new governor of Odessa Region, Ukraine, Saakashvili said, adding that California police will also train Odessa's officers.

"Within the framework of Odessa's anti-corruption pressure, the US government agreed to provide funds for the salaries of the new team of [Mikhail] Saakashvili," Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page after the meeting with Geoffrey Pyatt, the US Ambassador to Ukraine.

He added that American police officers from California "will train new Odessa police."

Chaos and economic disaster are still stirring up in Greece, with a sharp rejection of foreign control of their troubled affairs.

More austerity and new rounds of loans? Voters in Greece's emergency referendum were overwhelmingly against it. Whatever happens next, they stood up to the authoritarian tactics of the European Union. Hurrah.

Greeks voted overwhelmingly to reject creditors' proposal of more austerity measures in return for rescue loans, in the country's first referendum in 41 years Sunday.

The referendum "will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage," Varoufakis said. (source)

Now signal the panic. Collapse may be impending. Then doom. Contagion could spread to America, too, and trigger global market implosion and derivatives meltdown.