The Bank for International Settlements — the Swiss-based financial institution that acts as a counterparty to national central banks — has declared that stock markets are currently in a "euphoric" state and has urged central banks globally to begin tightening interest rate policies now while economies are growing rather than wait for another recession, when it will be too late. Those are scary words, coming from a set of economists whose job it is to monitor how capable central banks are of responding to economic conditions with flexible monetary policy. The subtext (and not-so-subtext) of BIS's annual report is that because many central banks have reduced interest rates to zero — the U.S. and Japan included — they are currently without weapons to boost the economy should another crisis hit. You can't go lower than zero, basically.

Paul Craig Roberts: A New Recession and a New World Devoid of Washington’s Arrogance?

Blackwater’s top manager issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to U.S. State Department reports. ● Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports. ● American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports. ● After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created “an environment full of liability and negligence.”

The Permanent Representative of Syria to the United Nations Bashar Al-Jaafari says the recent developments in the Middle East, particularly the unrest in Syria and Iraq are part of a project to divide the Middle East. In an exclusive interview with Press TV, the Permanent Representative of Syria to the UN said that by taking part in Syria's presidential elections, the Syrians said "NO" to foreign interference in their country's internal affairs.

21st Century Wire: ISIS CRISIS: $500 Million Sought in ‘War Funds’ for Rebels in Western Proxy War & Israeli Oil Shipments

Ukrainian government forces have shelled a church in the city of Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine. An estimated 1,000 people were on the territory of the church during the shelling, which lasted for 30 minutes; however, none was killed, nor injured. Moreover, Ukrainian forces shelled the microdistrict of Artyom and the city's central marketplace, where several people died, the statement on the eparchy's website says. "The shelling began on Sunday morning at 6 am GMT during a liturgy. People were praying, when Ukrainian forces produced a first volley from Karachun hill. One woman was nearly beheaded by an explosion. We've buried her," archpriest Nikolay Fomenko said. Ukrainian government forces have launched an attack on the Cathedral church of St. Alexander Nevsky in Slovyansk, according to the local diocese.

Another journalist killed; Russia's Channel One cameraman sustained a lethal abdominal wound in a trip to a military camp in Donetsk. This is the latest episode in a series of journalists being injured or killed in Ukraine. ● Overnight into Monday, June 30 four camera crews from Russia’s four different TV stations were attacked. MIR 24, LifeNews and Ren-TV journalists were lucky, Channel One lost a life. The trip to the military unit near Donetsk, where the operator for Russia’s top federal channel died, was organized by the press service of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). During the attack the Ukrainian military gunned a bus with group of Russian Channel One journalists and mothers of enlisted soldiers. As a result, the team’s operator Anatoly Klyan was fatally wounded in the stomach and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The bus driver sustained a neck injury and at the expense of his own life managed to drive the vehicle away from fire and save his passengers. “Tonight, our colleague Anatoly Klyan, cameraman for the Channel One, died in Donetsk,” the TV channel's statement said. “The tragedy happened near one of army units, where the crew came to film a report. At the site, shots were unexpectedly fired from the side of the servicemen. Anatoly Klyan received a fatal gunshot wound to the abdomen. He was 68 years old.”

RT.com: Last word ‘camera’! Russian journalist killed in E. Ukraine working till dying breath
VoR: Ukranian forces attack journalists again - this time in Donetsk

While the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, has just inked an agreement with the leaders of the Donbas People’s Republic, Andrew Korybko dwells on the reasons for the uprising: it is not simply a question of refusing to recognize the coup government in Kiev, but an attempt to ward off an official project entailing the ethnic cleansing of the Russian-speaking populations. ● On the centennial anniversary of “Russophilic” individuals (Rusyns) from modern-day Ukraine being sent to concentration camps, history appears set to once again repeat itself. The Ukrainian Defense Minister has publicly voiced his plan to corral the citizens of Donbass into special “filtration” camps prior to forcibly resettling them in different parts of Ukraine. ● A few days later, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk declared the pro-federalists in the East to be “subhuman”. This choice of words not only wasn’t condemned by Kiev’s American patrons, but was actually defended by State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, who strangely said that Yatsenyuk “has consistently been in support of a peaceful resolution”. Raising concerns even higher that a full-fledged cleansing is being planned, Ukraine’s land agency said that it will be giving “free land” from the east to the military, Interior Ministry, and Special Services troops battling the federalists. With Ukraine on the verge of large-scale ethnic and cultural cleansing, it is little wonder at whose expense this Lebenstraum-like “free land” will be given.

Eric Zuesse: America Cleanses Southeastern Ukraine of Ethnic Russians
Oriental Review: Genocide in Novorossia and swan song of Ukrainian statehood

Senior NSA executive Thomas Drake is an expert on spying in Stasi Germany … having studied it for years. Drake told Washington’s Blog that the U.S. has adopted the Stasi model: “Collect it all, know it all” [the NSA's model] is actually the Stasi model. It’s not just know everything; we have to be able to keep everything that we want to know, even if we don’t know it yet. It’s a collect it all first mentality … and then we’ll get to know it all. I call it “feeding the beast”. "I keep shuddering because I’m intimately familiar with the East German surveillance state mentality." A lieutenant colonel for the Stasi East German’s – based upon his experience – agrees. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel – who grew up in Stasi Germany – says the NSA is exactly the same. Top American constitutional experts also say that the Obama and Bush administration are worse than the Stasi East Germans.

PressTV: Israeli agencies facilitating 'police state tactics' in US: Analyst

Parliament moves to quit Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; Nazis 'regular reconnaissance visits to nuclear power stations'; Billionaire governor, whose Privatbank is top recipient of new IMF bailout, being placed on international wanted list for 'banned methods of warfare and aggravated murder'. Seek truth from facts with intelligence expert William Engdahl; economist Professor Michael Hudson; former US intelligence officer Scott Rickard; and the prosecutor who put Yulia Timoshenko's partner behind bars, Martha Boersch.

Scott Campbell ■ As technology offers new possibilities for connection, it also offers new means to keep tabs on people. Surveillance has become seemingly ubiquitous, from the NSA reading emails to drones in the skies. As a nation that has for 66 years been ruling over an indigenous population by force, one of the main countries practicing surveillance is Israel. And it is the Israeli defense industry that has been reaping the profits off of the oppression and surveillance of the Palestinian people. One of the top occupation profiteers in Israel is the defense firm Elbit Systems. The largest non-governmental defense company in the country, its revenue stood at $2.83 billion in 2010. Using knowledge and expertise gained from assisting in the occupation of Palestine, Elbit has made millions exporting surveillance and defense materiel worldwide – and increasingly so to Latin America.

ISIS jihadists have declared the captured territories from Iraq's Diyala province to Syria's Aleppo a new Islamic State - a ‘caliphate.' They removed 'Iraq and the Levant' from their name and urged other radical Sunni groups to pledge their allegiance. ● ISIS announced that it should now be called 'The Islamic State' and declared its chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as "the caliph" of the new state and "leader for Muslims everywhere," the radical Sunni militant group said in an audio recording distributed online on Sunday. This is the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 that a Caliph – which means a political successor to Prophet Muhammad – has been declared. The decision was made following the group’s Shura Council meeting on Sunday, according to ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani. The new Islamic State has marked its borders, spanning the territory captured by the group in a bloody rampage, from Iraq's volatile Diyala province to Syria's war-torn Aleppo. The jihadist group has also claimed that they are now a legitimate state.

ZeroHedge: ISIS Declares A Caliphate; Crucifies 9 Syrian Rebels For Being "Too Moderate"
RT.com: Israeli PM Netanyahu endorses Kurdish independence citing chaos in Iraq

Oded Yinon ■ A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties || Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization. [Additional links here and here]