Standard & Poor's has downgraded Greece's credit rating from CCC to CCC-, increasing the probability of an exit from the Eurozone to 50 percent.

"In our view, the probability of Greece exiting the eurozone is now about 50 percent," S&P said in a press release. "Also, we believe that, absent unanticipated favorable changes in Greece's circumstances, a commercial default is inevitable within the next six months."

S&P downgraded Greece's rating with a negative outlook, meaning a likely selective default within half a year, probably due to non-payment of commercial debt, including treasury bills.

As ISIS and ISIS-style terror erupts across the globe, Western governments are busy making plans to establish a rapid reaction force in Eastern Europe to 'contain Russia', thus qualifying them for an annual 'you couldn't make it up' award.

It calls to mind one of Britain's worst military defeats, suffered at the hands of the Japanese, when 100,000 troops and sailors were marched into captivity after the fall of Singapore on February 15, 1942. Winston Churchill called it "the largest capitulation in British history." Many of the British troops never even fired a shot before surrendering, thus adding to the humiliation and ignominy of their defeat at the hands of a much smaller force. The British commander responsible for the surrender, Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, earned himself a cold place in history as a consequence.

On Sunday the people of Greece can hit back at the eurozone's busted economic system that is slowly strangling them. Their battle is ours too

Europe's top politicians agree that the Greeks will vote this Sunday on one of the most important questions facing any nation. Yet they can't settle what that question actually is. For Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, it is about whether his people will tolerate any more "strict and humiliating austerity". Not so, says Germany's Angela Merkel. She reckons the Greeks are choosing between staying in the euro and returning to the drachma. The stakes are raised higher still by the boss of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker: come next weekend, "the whole planet" will find out whether Greece wants to remain in Europe.

All of these may be correct, but each swerves the central importance of the moment. The reason to watch Greece this week is because a population of 11 million will hold a contest that the rest of us may one day also get to stage: a fight between democracy, and a broken political and economic system.

That battle - between what people want and what their rulers force down their throats, supposedly for their own good - can be glimpsed at every dramatic moment in Greece's recent history.

It was already there in spring 2010, when the then prime minister, George Papandreou, begged Merkel not to crush his country with austerity, and she coolly replied: "We want to make sure nobody else will want this." It marched into clear view in summer 2011 as ordinary Greeks swarmed cities demanding an alternative to their venal political elite and the Eurocrats and financiers who pulled the strings.

It has been a while since the US State Department, with the help of the UK-funded and US-supported Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, floated doctored YouTube clips of hundreds of Syrians dead as a result of Assad's chemical attacks. In fact, it has been almost exactly two years since the last time the US nearly launched an all out proxy war in Syria, one involving an axis of western powers and Qatar (whose natural gas this whole charade is all about) against another axis of Russia and China who were supportive of the Syrian government. Luckily, a last minute snafu by John Kerry allowed a de-escalation, which in turn resulted in the appearance of ISIS, whose entire purpose has been, as leaked Pentagon memos have revealed, to topple Assad.

And with collective memories short, and with the "diplomatic" playbook of the US State Department even shorter, the time has come to once again rekindle this particular fabulation.

Greece is open to the possibility of becoming a member of the BRICS group of developing nations as part of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), Greek Deputy Defense Minister Kostas Isychos told Sputnik.

In May, Russia invited Greece to become an NDB member, with discussions on Athens' membership in the bank expected to take place at the July 9-10 BRICS summit in the Russian city of Ufa.

"Greece has also been invited to become a BRICS member within the Development Bank of the BRICS. We are still open to that," Isychos, who is also the co-chair of the Russian-Greek Intergovernmental Committee, said.

According to him, Greece has always been in favor of good European-Russian relations and of European-Eurasian relations. Athens is currently in talks over joining the BRICS bank with the group's members.

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane

- The End, The Doors

It goes without saying that we rarely get an accurate representation of reality in the corporate media, which is, after all, what independent media exists for. Last Sunday Joe Quinn and I interviewed a very ordinary couple with a very extraordinary tale: businesspeople James and Joanne Moriarty and how they escaped from capture by Al Qaeda terrorists during the 2011 'Libyan revolution'. Listening to James and Joanne tell their story, it was impossible not to be struck by the significance, for every human being on this planet, of the problem of psychopaths in positions of power.

The Moriartys present three powerful motivating factors for the destruction of Libya by Western powers and their internationalist financiers:

• thwarting Gaddafi's plan to establish a gold-backed currency, to ultimately serve as a pan-African currency and thereby economically unite African nations and free them from Western imperialism;
• the US desire to establish AFRICOM (military control of Africa to ward off Chinese investment)
• an alleged $7 trillion lawsuit, on behalf of all participating African countries, at Gaddafi's instigation, to sue for damages incurred from broken treaties with European countries during their "colonial era".

So far from "freeing the Libyan people from a dictator", the NATO bombardment of Libya in 2011 was about the maintenance of US and EU domination over Africa.

But what really comes across in this riveting interview with the Moriartys is the utter recklessness displayed in Libya (and elsewhere, for that matter) by both NATO and the 'rebel' forces, as well as the relish with which they demonstrably enjoyed tearing the entire country apart. These demented animals have access to unparalleled hi-tech weaponry and vehicles, enabling them to 'achieve feats of destruction' that before only 'the gods' could perform. Their handiwork is psychopathy writ large, the nihilistic culmination of Western civilization, and the glorious - for them - embrace of the destructive principle.

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New Yorkers may soon be unable to smoke in their own homes, as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is pressing landlords and developers to prohibit residents from lighting up inside apartments.


This comes as part of the de Blasio administration's efforts to reduce smoking citywide. It recently released a "sustainability blueprint" that outlined the initiative, which involves paying four health advocacy groups $9,000 each to get apartment complexes to ban smoking, reported the New York Post.

City health officials emphasized that the initiative is voluntary, but the same blueprint, titled "One New York: The Plan for a Strong and Just City," also said that de Blasio is moving towards legislation that would require apartment buildings to create a smoking policy and "disclose it to residents and prospective residents."

"Everyone benefits from smoke-free housing. Residents enjoy breathing cleaner, healthier air in their homes ... while owners see reductions in property damage and turnover costs," a Health Department spokesman said to the Post.

Andre Fursov is a historian and a specialist in shadow global elites

Andre Phephelov, host: Hello, this is Andre Phephelov in Den TV studio. We are joined by historian Andre Fursov. The subject is World War. Everyone talks about the world being on the verge of WWIII, from housewives to intellectuals. Many different factors point at it. And the main factor is the factor of uncertainty. No one knows what's coming. And the most apocalyptic scenario is being painted of an epic slaughter which will resolve the knot of irreconcilable differences. We can built many models of the beginning of this process. Do you agree that this stage is approaching?

Andre Fursov: It is not approaching, it is already here. The problem is our view of a world war depends on how we define a world war. They say: "Generals always prepare for the old war". The thing is that in mass consciousness, even in the consciousness of professionals, a view of war is based on the last war. Everyone thinks it must look like WWI or WWII. The problem is the world war phenomenon is not limited by these two wars. World wars are a characteristic trait of a capitalist era, because capitalism is the only global system, and wars for the hegemony in the capitalist system always had a global character, related to breaking out of Europe, colonies etc.

We can identify three types of world wars in the history of a capitalist system.

• First type is the sum of local conflicts, the 30-year war lead by the Hapsburgs and their coalition on the one side, and on the other side - by the coalition financed by Holland.

• Second type: Anglo-French wars, two rounds: the 7 year war of 1756-63 and the Napoleonic wars. By the way, if we add the 7-year and the Napoleonic wars, we will also have a 30-year war, but stretched in time.

• And finally the third type - First and Second World wars, although I agree with those experts who say that it was a big 30-year European war from 1914 to 1945, because if we take the period between 1918 and 1938 (because WWII began on September 28, 1938 with a Munich pact), these 20 years have been saturated with wars, it is a continuum.

So we are dealing with 30-year world wars, some of which are stretched in time, and others last as the 30-year long WWI.

A UN Security Council resolution would contribute to healing the wounds in the Balkans still plagued by the memories of the bloody wars in the 1990s if it condemns Western powers for their part in Yugoslavia's breakdown along with war crimes, Serbian politician Vladimir Krsljanin said.

"Not a single atrocity on the territory of former Yugoslavia in 1991-1999 and later on the lands occupied by NATO was committed without the British and other Western security services playing a key role," Krsljanin of the People's Movement of Serbia said in an article.

The remarks came after Britain decided to draft a UNSC resolution to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, which saw approximately 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed. Serbia is against the document saying it would only cause "tension, friction and further destabilize" the Balkans.

"The only resolution capable of making things better in the region ... should condemn all war crimes and their perpetrators, as well as commemorate the innocent victims. It should also decry unlawful policies of the Western countries, which led to the breakup of Yugoslavia with the help of NATO, secret services, the Hague Tribunal, terrorism, drug traffickers, national and religious extremists of every stripe and color," Krsljanin pointed out.

Such a document would surely be vetoed by Britain, France and the United States, the politician added.

As part of its rapid land grab, the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group has, for the first time, made significant inroads into Afghanistan, wresting control of a sizeable chunk of Nangarhar province away from the Taliban.

Earlier this month, a band of mysterious fighters pushed through Taliban-controlled territory in eastern Afghanistan. According to witnesses speaking to Reuters, hundreds of insurgents rode through Nangarhar province, burning Taliban opium fields as they went.

This new band of insurgents fought under the banner of the self-proclaimed Islamic State terror group.