September 28, 2014
from David Ruccio
This map of the world’s billionaires—all 2,325 of them (an all-time record high), with a total wealth of $7.3 trillion (which is higher than the market capitalization of all the companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average)—comes from the new census by Wealth-X and UBS
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“Police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.”—Kristian Williams, activist and author
September 11, 2014 “ICH” – “Rutherford Institute” – If you don’t want to get probed, poked, pinched, tasered, tackled, searched, seized, stripped, manhandled, arrested, shot, or killed, don’t say, do or even suggest anything that even hints of noncompliance. This is the new “thin blue line” over which you must not cross in interactions with police if you want to walk away with your life and freedoms intact.
The following incidents and many more like them serve as chilling reminders that in the American police state, “we the people” are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”
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As the Barack Obama administration seeks reliable allies to confront the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL)– the official U.S. Department of Defense nomenclature for the newest radical Islamist bogeyman that has eclipsed “Al Qaeda” as global “public enemy number one” – the United States is on the precipice of falling into another Middle Eastern quagmire.
The deeper one digs into the operations surrounding the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL), or, as it is variably called, “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham” (ISIS), “Al Dawlah” (the State), or “Da’ish” (a concatenation of “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham,” the more the Islamist insurgent group’s links to Western and Israeli intelligence are revealed. ISIL is an outgrowth of the Organization of Jihad’s Base in the Country of the Two Rivers or Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. As with the current leader of ISIL, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, questions surrounded the background of Zarqawi.
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The Signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
In the light of the frequent disagreements witnessed nowadays in the transatlantic Western community as concerns the NATO Alliance and its relevancy, especially as it concerns Russia’s intentions toward the Baltic countries, the question arises: does the idea of the West include a community of values and if so which are they? Could it be that the disagreements arise out of ignorance as to what those common values might be? One of them is undoubtedly the idea of democracy which goes back to the ancient Greeks. Why then the vehement disagreements and misunderstandings? Let us briefly explore the issue searching for historical data, theory and practice.
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The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.
The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”
During the 1970′s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least, there is Al Qaeda.
Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980′s. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.
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September 24, 2014
from David Ruccio
The Wall Street Journal uses this chart to illustrate a story on a new report issued by Morgan Stanley on “Inequality and Consumption.”*
Morgan Stanley’s research suggests weaker-than-usual consumption at the lower end of the income ladder helps explain why this economic recovery has been particularly anemic.
“It has taken more than five years for U.S. households to ‘feel’ like they are in recovery,” write economists Ellen Zentner and Paula Campbell in the report, entitled “Inequality and Consumption.”
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Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran
HANE HARRIS AND MATTHEW M. AID | Tuesday, August 27, 2013, 22:17 Beijing
FROM 4TH MEDIA NEWS and FOREIGN POLICY EXCLUSIVE
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The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand.
The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.
