According to latest numbers, 60 million people have been displaced due to violence and inhumane poverty.

In recent months, a major humanitarian catastrophe has made its way into the news—tens of millions, the largest ever recorded by the United Nations, have been forced to take part in a life-threatening journey across land and sea.

While members of the establishment media have used terms such as “swarms” or “tide”, as though they were describing animals or pests, to describe these men, women, and children refugees continue to struggle so that they may gain access to basic human rights, such as stable shelter and food. Islamophobia has also crept its way into reports and into the mouths of politicians, some of whom are refusing to accept Muslim refugees.

Further burdening refugees who are making their way across Europe is the growing right wing. Germany’s National Democratic Party, a neo-Nazi organization, has been responsible for organizing arson at homes of refugees, and leading massive anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim protests. If this wasn’t frightening enough, the NDP is also gaining footholds in the government.

Abby Martin takes us inside the refugee crisis, humanizing the victims, and exposing the parties and people who are using this humanitarian catastrophe in order to push a right wing agenda.

Who Is To Blame For The Refugee Crisis?

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Image by Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

Visits from high-profile public figures are somewhat of a rarity at Hamilton College in upstate New York, so it wasn’t a surprise many students snatched up tickets to see Hillary Clinton last October. And after a talk which may have cost the school up to $300,000 (at her “discounted” student rate), the presidential endorsements quickly echoed across campus.

Her speech at Hamilton was just one of many stops on her lucrative nationwide speaking tour, a relentless self-promoting campaign aimed at earning her a head start in the 2016 presidential race. Across small towns and college campuses, with an acquiescent media fawning over her new book, Clinton hailed the United States as “the greatest force for peace and progress the world has ever known”.

Inserting herself in the collegiate demographic conveniently allows Clinton to rewrite history, absolving her role in some of the nation’s most criminal foreign policy initiatives – from the invasion of Iraq to the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. In fact, Clinton is widely known to be even more of a war-hawk than Sen. John McCain within Obama’s national security circles.

Her war mongering has paid off with heavy backing of the military industrial complex, exemplified by her relationship with Boeing, the world’s second largest defense contractor. In one instance, she set aside ethics guidelines in order to secure a multi-billion dollar deal with the company.

A few of the venues on her tour are particularly revealing. Aside from the usual events open to the public, she’s been paid hefty sums of money to give private speeches to investors at Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group – the former of which has since been revealed as her second largest political donor. Modern-day presidential campaigns can’t be run on a shoestring – the 2012 race exceeded $1 billion in campaign spending and in 2008, Goldman Sachs exceeded every other corporation in spending for Obama.

Hillary Clinton’s list of donor buddies stretches far beyond the 1200 yards of Wall Street, and considering how banks and war are leading the pack, the damage wrought by them does too. If she wins the 2016 election, America is guaranteed four more disastrous years of neoliberalism and war.

Ming Chun Tang

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Abby Martin talks about Clinton’s horrible track record on foreign policy and war mongering on Breaking the Set.

Hillary Clinton 2016: Recipe for Endless War

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Photo by FLICKR user Rona Proudfoot

VICE – The Islamic State, a hardline Sunni jihadist group that formerly had ties to al Qaeda, has conquered large swathes of Iraq and Syria. Previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the group has announced their intention to reestablish the caliphate and declared their leader, the shadowy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the caliph.

Flush with cash and US weapons seized during recent advances in Iraq, the Islamic State’s expansion shows no sign of slowing down. In the first week of August alone, Islamic State fighters have taken over new areas in northern Iraq, encroaching on Kurdish territory and sending Christians and other minorities fleeing as reports of massacres emerged.

Elsewhere in territory it has held for some time, the Islamic State has gone about consolidating power and setting up a government dictated by Sharia law. While the world may not recognize the Islamic State, in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group is already in the process of building a functioning regime.

VICE News reporter Medyan Dairieh spent three weeks embedded with the Islamic State, gaining unprecedented access to the group in Iraq and Syria as the first and only journalist to document its inner workings. In part one, Dairieh heads to the frontline in Raqqa, where Islamic State fighters are laying siege to the Syrian Army’s division 17 base.

VICE: From ISIS to The Islamic State

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Phyllis Bennis, Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses ISIS’ roots, tactics, goals and how the group can be stopped without blowing up more of Iraq on Breaking the Set.

Segment starts at 2:40:

Breaking the Set on ISIS End Game

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