Category: World News

Beginning June 15th, pork meat, tobacco, and alcohol as well as energy drinks will be subject to a 100-percent tax, with carbonated drinks subject to a 50-percent levy. Last November, a senior Oman government official said the taxes could generate around US$260 million in annual revenues.

Oman is not a member of OPEC but it is not a minor producer: the average daily rate for April was more than 970,000 barrels of crude and condensate. Its exports go to Asia, with China soaking in almost 84 percent of the total and the rest divided between India and Japan.

Yet like other Persian Gulf producers, the sultanate has suffered its fair share of the 2014 price crisis fallout. Also like others, it has been reluctant to introduce any measures that would be unpopular among the locals, but has in the end found it necessary to risk it. This year, analysts surveyed by Bloomberg say, its current account deficit could swell to 9.1 percent, hence the countermeasures.

Additional taxation, however, is not the only measure Oman is looking to diversify its economy away from oil. It is also pursuing renewable energy projects: the two most recent ones both solar and, interestingly, both to be utilized in the oil industry, Oxford Business Group reported last month.

Despite the oil price-related troubles that no one in the Middle East seems immune to, Oman is doing fairly well. A recent report by the World Bank said Oman will book the highest economic growth among members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2020, at 6 percent, not least thanks to its diversification efforts but also because of the expansion of its oil and gas production.

This article was originally published on Oilprice.com

Among Global Research’s most popular articles in 2016 and 2017 by Mark Taliano author of Voices from Syria, 2017. (Click link to order directly from Global Research)

Two years ago, “Majd” wrote these words on a Facebook posting:

” I am Syrian… living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your goverment. They are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country.

We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them.

The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people… The chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by the USA and the UK,  etc. Everyone knows that here.

American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone.

Every massacre is committed by them. We were all happy in Syria: we had free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank.

Life before the crisis was so beautiful here. Now it is hard and horrific in some regions.

I do not understand how the good and brave American people can accept to bomb my country which has never harmed them and therefore help the barbarian al Qaeda. These animals slit throats and behead for pleasure… they behead babies and rape young kids.

They are satanic. Our military helped by the millions of civilian militias are winning the battle against al Qaeda. But now the USA wants to bomb the shit out of us so that al Qaeda can get the upper hand. 

Please help us American people. They are destroying the cradle of civilization. Stop your government.

Impeach that bankster puppet you have as president… support Ron Paul or Rand or anyone the like who are true American patriots. but be sure of one.thing..if they attack and I think they will….it will be hell.

Be sure that if it were to be a world war, many many will die. Syria can and will defend itself and will sink many US ships. Iran will go to war..Russia and China eventually if it escalates… and all this for what ? For the elites who created al Qaeda through the US government and use it to conduct proxy wars and destabilize countries which do not go along with their new world order agenda !!?

American people…you gotta regain control of your once admirable country. Now everyone hates you for.the.death you bring almost everywhere.

Ask the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Pakistanis, the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Macedonians, the Serbs, the Libyans, the Somalis, the Yemenis, all the ones you [your government] kill with drones everyday. Stop your wars, Enough wars. Use diplomacy, dialogue, help, not force.”

Consistent testimonies from Syrians, as well as well-documented, open-source Western sources, and historical memory, all serve to reinforce the accuracy of the aforementioned testimony.

Syrians are living the horror brought to them by the criminal West.  They can not afford the complacency of shrugging their shoulders in indecision, not when their lives and their ancient civilization is being threatened by Western-paid terrorist mercenaries of the worst kind.

“Our” proxies, slit throats, chop heads, and take no prisoners as we waffle in indecision, ignore empirical evidence, and take the comfortable easy road of believing the labyrinth of lies  promulgated by Western media messaging.

The veil of comfortable confusion, nested in an unconscious belief that our government knows best or that it is patriotic to believe the lies and fabrications implicit in the hollow words of politicians (who no longer represent us) and the false pronouncements of Imperial messengers, is concealing an overseas holocaust.

Western societies are rotting from the inside out because of these lies and this barbarity.  We are protecting a criminal cabal of corporate globalists who do not serve our interests and never will.

Our democracies, which we should be protecting, have long disappeared – except in the hollow words of newspaper stenographers.  Instead we are supporting transnational corporate elites and their delusional projects.

Poverty and disemployment are all soaring beneath the fakery of government pronouncements, as the public domain evaporates beneath words like “efficiency” or the “economy” — all false covers that serve to enrich elites and destroy us.  Internal imperialism at home is a faded replica of the foreign imperialism abroad.

As countries are destroyed, and its peoples are slaughtered — think Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and others — by abhorrent Western proxies — public institutions are contaminated, and ultimately replaced by parasitical “privatized” facsimiles.  Public banking is looted and destroyed in favour of transnational banksterism, World Bank funding, and IMF usury.  Food security is destroyed and replaced by biotech tentacles and engineered dependencies on cash crops and unhealthy food.  Currencies are destroyed, sanctions are imposed, and the unknown, unseen hand of totalitarian control imposes itself, amidst the cloud of diversions and confusions, aided by comprador regimes, oligarch interests, and shrugging domestic populations.

Syria refuses to submit.  That is why the West is taught to hate her, and the rest of the world learns to love and respect her.

Yet, Syria’s struggles are our struggles.  Syria represents international law, stability, and integrity: the same values that western peoples overtly cherish but stubbornly reject, as our countries wilt beneath suffocating veils of lies and delusions.

I support Syria, because I respect what remains of international law.

I support Syria because I reject Wahhabism, Sharia law, and terrorism.

I support Syria because I reject the undemocratic, transnational oligarchies that are subverting our once flourishing, now dead, democracies.

I reject the lies of our propagandizing media, the hollow words of our politicians, and the fake   “humanitarian” messaging that demonizes non-belligerent countries and their populations.

In the name of justice, humanity, and the rule of law, I support the elected government of Syria led by its President, Bashar al-Assad.  Syria, an ancient cradle of civilization, is leading the way towards a better future for all of us.

All we have to do is open our eyes.

Despite record-low unemployment numbers, 32 per cent of Canadians have reported feeling very negatively about their current job security, according to the latest Forum Research poll published Tuesday.

The dour outlook persists in spite of the nationwide unemployment rate hitting a low of 5.4 per cent for the first time since that data was collected in 1976.

“I think what masks everything is the idea about precarious work where someone could be working but we don’t know if that’s an permanent job in the old-fashioned sense or if its precarious,” said Dr Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum Research.

Nearly two-thirds of Canadians, or 65 per cent of respondents, also believe the country has become more expensive to live in, while 29 per cent said it’s neither more nor less expensive.

Precarious work refers to freelancing, contract and part-time work. A Bank of Canada report from February found that almost a third of Canadians participate in precarious work. The report found the majority did so out of necessity rather than choice. The equivalent number of full-time jobs was estimated to be around 700,000.

While there are certainly economic downsides to precarious work, Craig Alexander, the chief economist at Deloitte, sees these downsides more for millennials as they struggle to find full-time jobs. For many baby boomers, it is the opposite.

“For part time work, the majority of the growth is by people aged 55+. A lot of older baby boomers that are leaving their primary careers are staying attached to the labour market in a tangential fashion,” said Alexander. “Similarly, if we look at the share of workers aged 55+ in temporary work we can see that there’s been a significant increase.”

Alexander also notes that Statistics Canada does not produce data on how many people are involuntarily in temporary or contract work.

Aside from precarious work, there are many potential causes for the disconnect between Canadians’ perceptions and the statistics presented. Dr Sherry Cooper, the chief economist at the Dominion Learning Centres, says Canada’s outlook is reflective of global changes.

“The oil sector has been in the doldrums for a long time. And then there’s the risk of trade concerns,” said Cooper. “We saw the trade data improve for the month of April but we’ve been sideswiped by the U.S. tariffs and by the risk of a trade war… we’ve all seen the difficulties in global geopolitical tensions, most of them the result of an unusually unstable U.S. diplomatic stance.”

Cooper’s thoughts regarding the oil sector correlate with Bozinoff’s findings, where 45 per cent of Albertans were feeling job insecurity. The latest report finds Alberta’s unemployment rate at 6.7 per cent, behind only New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Bozinoff also notes that the relationship between perceptions of job security and income levels was a perfectly linear one, with 54 per cent of people making less than $20,000 had a negative feeling, whereas 81 per cent of the wealthiest recipients felt secure.

Canadians are also feeling the pinch in their pocketbooks, with 65 per cent of recipients believing that the country has become more expensive to live in.

Interestingly, the perception of whether or not Canada has become more expensive did not vary by income level.  Voting intentions were also seen to correlate with perceptions around job security.

“You’ll find that supporters of three parties, the Liberals, Greens, and Bloc Québécois are feeling better about their job prospects,” said Bozinoff. “Less likely to feel good about their job security are Conservative and NDP supporters.”

An additional discovery of the poll was that 67 per cent of Canadians feel a recession is imminent within the next three years, with 21 per cent saying it is very likely. Only 12 per cent think a recession is not likely at all. Seventy-five per cent of Albertans think it is very likely. Cooper doesn’t think it is inevitable, but does not rule out the possibility.

“Expansions don’t last forever and for sure if there’s a great deterioration in the trade situation and an all-out trade war then a global recession is possible but it won’t be made in Canada, that’s for sure,” said Cooper.

Alexander is doubtful a recession is in the offing, although political headwinds could trigger a downturn.

“I continue to believe the most likely outcome is continued growth but at a very modest pace. When you are growing at a very slow rate it’s as if your immune system is run down and it makes you more vulnerable to any shocks that come around,” said Alexander. “Unfortunately, all of the big shocks that could create that recession are political in nature.”

The results were derived from a random survey of 1,633 Canadians aged 18 or older, conducted from May 31 to June 2. Forum Research states that the results have a 3 per cent margin of error.

Over a million people have joined a mass protest against the Hong Kong government’s controversial extradition bill, according to organisers.

The march was organised by the Civil Human Rights Front – a coalition of pro-democracy groups.

Protesters march during a rally against a controversial extradition law proposal in Hong Kong on June 9, 2019. Photo: Philip Fong/AFP.

Demonstrators brought Hong Kong Island to a halt, chanting “Scrap the evil law,” “Oppose China extradition” and “Carrie Lam resign,” in reference to the Chief Executive.

Police urged protesters to march from Victoria Park before the 3pm start-time to ease overcrowding.

The MTR also enacted crowd control measures, with protesters still leaving Victoria Park up to four hours after the start time. Protesters were still arriving at the end-point seven hours after the protest began.

Police opened up all lanes on Hennessey Road after initially refusing to do so.

Photo: Tom Grundy/HKFP.

Lam declined to answer questions at a public appearance in Ocean Park on Sunday afternoon.

The organiser turnout figure would make it the largest protest Hong Kong has ever seen, surpassing the turnout seen at mass rallies in 1989 and 2003.

Photo: InMediahk.net.

The protesters marched towards the legislature over an issue that has underscored divisions in society over trust in the legislature and the Chinese judicial system.

‘Nonsense’

Hong Kong’s government first proposed legal amendments in February to allow the city to handle case-by-case extradition requests from jurisdictions with no prior agreements, most notably China and Taiwan.

The plan would enable the chief executive and local courts to handle extradition requests without legislative oversight and could reach a final vote before the current legislative period ends in July.

The government has said the law will allow it to close a legal “loophole,” but lawyers, journalists, foreign politicians and businesses have raised concerns over the risk of residents being extradited to the mainland.

Photo: Tom Grundy/HKFP.

HK Lau, a retired civil servant in his 60s, told HKFP he believed the passing of the extradition law would mean the end of the One Country Two Systems principle.

“Communist China has never changed,” Lau said. “If anything has changed it is that they are richer and more powerful, and now it’s spreading.”

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“The problem is that we had too many migrants and we lost the spirit of openness there was initially,” said Trifoli.

Former mayor Domenico “Mimmo” Lucano encouraged migrants and refugees to come to the village to counter a gradual decline of inhabitants and workers and show how migrant integration could be done.

But now he is no longer even a member of the town council after his left-backed list lost in the elections, and he has been barred from the town.

Colourful, multi-ethnic murals can still be seen on walls, testimony to the experiment that took place here and the hopes for migrant integration it spawned in Italy and beyond, before it failed amid alienated locals and allegations of fraud.

“They were fighting among themselves, they didn’t want the crucifix, or the creche,” Falchi said of the migrants.

“It’s not racism, it’s just that this is our home. We welcome them and then they make problems.”

Locals are reluctant to talk about the past or discuss the predicament of the village, which, like so many in Calabria is seeing its youth leave in search of work as the elderly slowly die off.

“People wanted things to change. After 15 years of talking only about welcoming and refugees, they got tired,” said mayor Trifoli.

“Taking in refugees gave Riace prestige around the world but its inhabitants lost interest.”

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The TSA lets illegal aliens board with a Form I-862, Notice to Appear…

(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) In violation of its own policies, the Transportation Security Administration(TSA) is allowing illegal aliens to fly on commercial airlines without proper identification, a privilege not afforded to American citizens. The TSA lets illegal aliens board with a Form I-862, Notice to Appear, which informs them about their immigration court date—a court date that about 40 percent of illegal aliens will never attend, the Center for Immigration Studies reported The TSA allows 15 different forms of identification for security purposes, but Form I-862 is not among them, The Washington Examiner reported. A group of Republican Congressmen sent a letter to Kevin McAleenan, the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, to inquire about the TSA’s guidelines for transporting illegal aliens. “Some of us have heard additional, unverified stories of groups of aliens being allowed to bypass TSA screening altogether and board flights prior to both the traveling public and federal law enforcement, the latter of whom are normally allowed to board first,” wrote Reps. Biggs, Babin, Gaetz, Cloud, Roy, Gosar, Duncan, and Hice, according to a press release.

They asked what, if any, form of identification illegal aliens need to board planes. “Are aliens who are not traveling in ICE custody permitted to use a Form I-862 or any other form of identification that is not among the 15 acceptable forms identified by TSA?” the group wrote. They also inquired about where DHS is transporting the illegal aliens, who is funding their air travel, what health screenings they undergo, and whether they have to pass through “TSA screenings, including x-rays or full body scans and search of baggage,” as Americans citizens do.

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The operation tracked financial movements from October 2018 through current dates in an attempt to determine the sources of funding for the migrant caravans. According to their statement, the UIF identified a group of individuals that made several questionable international financial transactions from the cities of Chiapas and Queretaro during the times that the migrant caravans were moving through those places.

Mexican authorities followed the path of the caravans and the financial operations from Queretaro to the border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Ciudad Acuna, Piedras Negras, and Reynosa. Based on that information, Mexican authorities were able to trace the source of the funds to the U.S., England, Cameroon, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, the statement revealed.

Based on the result of the investigation, the UIF moved to freeze the accounts in Mexico of the 26 individuals and entities that are believed to have helped fund the migrant caravans or contributed to human smuggling organizations, the SHCP statement revealed.  While authorities did not name the individuals or the entities whose assets they froze, they revealed that they would be filing complaints with Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office for prosecution.

The action comes at a time when Mexican officials are meeting with their U.S. counterparts in an attempt to keep the Trump administration from levying tariffs on international commerce as a punitive measure over the country’s lax approach to migration. The threat of tariffs has led to a series of posturing and threats from both sides, Breitbart News reported.

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They are bullying their way to America and the Democrats welcome them with this and more!  When will it stop!  I know there are other people who would like to be in this country.  If we are giving free rides let’s do it for everyone.

The purchase implements the welcome policy set by a bipartisan panel in Congress, which in February directed the Department of Homeland Security to help the migrants — despite the impact on Americans’ wages, schools, and neighborhoods — instead of helping Americans by giving the agency the legal authority needed to block the migration.

The purchase request was posted May 31 and is numbered 20113222-a. It asks for diapers, baby wipes, and showers shoes. For example, the first item on the shopping list is “DISPOSABLE DIAPERS, SIZE 2 144 per case ALL ITEMS WILL HAVE 5 DELIVERIES DELIVERY JUNE 15 800 BOXES JULY 1 800 BOXES AUGUST 1 800 BOXES SEPTEMBER 1 800 BOXES SEPTEMBER 30 800 BOXES.”

The 2.2 million diapers are being bought with funds provided in the February border spending bill for the DHS. The bill included “$192,700,000 for improved medical care, transportation, and consumables to better ensure the health and safety of migrants who are temporarily in [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] custody,” according to a congressional Explanatory Statement of the provisions. The money is also being used to fly migrants from the border to their target job sites and homes in the United States.

The budget deal — and the resulting diaper spending and flights — were negotiated by several GOP and Democratic leaders. They included Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, Texas Rep. Kay Granger, Tennessee Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, Georgia Rep. Tom Graves, and Mississippi Rep. Steven Palazzo.

The diaper purchase request, numbered 20113222-a, spotlights the agency’s gradual conversion from a border protection force to a migrant aid force.

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