Jeff Faux: Lower Everyone's Wages and Living Standard

William Greider calls a "really important book" that tells the "astonishing story of how class works." Calls for a bipartisan "Grand Bargain" on taxes and spending for the next decade ring out daily, if not hourly, from the politicians and pundits who dominate our political media. But the national discourse is silent on the tacit agreement both parties have already made on the future that lies ahead for the majority of working Americans: A dramatic drop in their living standards! The United States can no longer satisfy the three great dreams that have driven most of its domestic politics since the end of World War II. The multinational corporate class's of limitless profits, the military industrial complex's dream of global hegemony, and the dream of the people for rising incomes and expanding opportunities. One out of three? Certainly. Two out of three? Maybe. All three? NO! So far, Corporate America gets priority boarding in the economic lifeboat, with the safest seats reserved for Wall Street. Four years after the crash, the financial sector remains heavily subsidized with cheap federal loans that it uses to buy higher yielding bonds, speculate in exotic IOU's and pay outrageous salaries to those on top. Larger than ever, they are more "too big to fail." As a result, Wall Street continues to divert the nation's capital away from investment in sustainable high quality jobs in America. Next in line is the Pentagon, and its vast network of corporate contractors, members of Congress with military facilities in their districts, and media propagandists for he empire. The administration, along with some libertarian Republicans, insist that military spending will not be spared in the coming era of austerity, and has proposed modest cuts over the next decade!

Dave Lindorff: We Can't Afford Accidents in the Persian Gulf

Things are getting out of hand in the Persian Gulf. The murderous cannon firing by nervous and trigger happy Navy personnel on the supply ship USS Rappahannock off the coast of Dubai earlier this week, which killed an Indian fisherman and wounded three of his companions as they motored past the US vessel, shows how easily a deadly and hard to stop new war in the Gulf region, this time between the US and Iran, could start. This time it was a fishing boat carrying Indians from Tamil Nadu state. Next time, however, it could as easily be an Iranian patrol boat, or even just an Iranian fishing boat that gets shot up or sunk by nervous US sailors. If that happens, then what? Would Iran and its military sit tight and accept such an act, as the country did when the US shot down a civilian Iranian airliner in 1988? Maybe, and maybe not! I suppose if the US were to shoot up an Iranian civilian vessel, and then apologized adequately, there might be no consequences, but then, the record suggests that the US doesn't have an easy time apologizing for such atrocities. Look at what it took to get a US apology for the murderous actions, in broad daylight on a crowded street, of CIA contract worker Raymond Davis in Pakistan. He slaughtered two young Pakistanis with gunshots to the back and execution shots to the head, and his later arrest by Pakistani police led to the running down and killing of another innocent Pakistani man by other CIA officers racing to rescue Davis in their SUV. Only months later, when he was facing trial on murder charges, did the US stop demanding his release and finally, finally apologize and pay a death compensation payment to the families of those killed!

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: War On All Fronts!

Washington's three front war: Syria, Lebanon, Iran in the Middle East, China in the Far East, Russia in Europe: The Russian government has finally caught on that its political opposition is being financed by the US taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy and other CIA/State Department fronts in an attempt to subvert the Russian government and install an American puppet state in the geographically largest country on earth, the one country with a nuclear arsenal sufficient to deter Washington's aggression. Just as earlier this year Egypt expelled hundreds of people associated with foreign funded non governmental organizations (NGOs) for instilling dissent and meddling in domestic policies, the Russian Duma (parliament) has just passed a law that Putin is expected to sign, that requires political organizations that receive foreign funding to register as foreign agents. The law is based on the US law requiring the registration of foreign agents. Much of the Russian political opposition consists of foreign paid agents, and once the law passes, leading elements of the Russian political opposition will have to sign in with the Russian Ministry of Justice as foreign agents of Washington. The Itar-Tass News Agency reported on July 3 that there are about 1,000 organizations in Russia that are funded from abroad and engaged in political activity. Try to imagine the outcry if the Russians were funding 1,000 organizations in the US engaged in an effort to turn America into a Russian puppet state: In the US the Russians would find a lot of competition from Israel! The Washington funded Russian political opposition masquerades behind human rights and says it works to open Russia. What the disloyal and treasonous Washington funded Russian political opposition means by open Russia is to open Russia for brainwashing by Western propaganda.    

Pam Martens: How the High Wizards of Finance Gutted Our Schools and Cities

Wall Street banks have hollowed out our communities with fraudulently sold mortgages and illegal foreclosures, and settled the crimes for pennies on the dollar. They've set back property records to the early 1900s, skipping the recording of deeds in county registry offices, and using their own front called MERS. They lobbied to kill fixed pension plans and then shaved a decade of growth off our 401(K)s with exorbitant fees, rigged research and trading for the house. When much of Wall Street collapsed in 2008, as a direct result of their corrupt business model, their pals in Washington used the public purse to resuscitate the same corrupt financial model, allowing even greater depositor concentration at JP Morgan and Bank of America through acquisitions of crippled firms. And now, Wall Street may get away with the biggest heist of the public purse in the history of the world. You know it's an unprecedented crime when the conservative Economist magazine sums up the situation with a one word headline: "Banksters." It has been widely reported that Libor, the interest rate benchmark that was rigged by a banking cartel, impacted $10 trillion in consumer loans. Libor stands for London Interbank Offered Rate, and is supposed to be a reliable reflection of the rate at which banks are lending to each other. Based on the average of that rate, after highs and lows are discarded, the Libor index is used as a key index for setting loan rates around the world, including adjustable rate mortgages, credit card payments and student loans here in the US. But what's missing from the debate are the most diabolical parts of the scam: How a rigged Libor rate was used to defraud municipalities across America, inflate bank stock prices, and potentially rig futures markets around the world. 

Tom Burghardt: Spying on Americans through Cellphones!

What most Americans are blissfully unaware of is the fact that they carry in their pockets what have been described as near perfect spy devices - their cellphones. When Congress passed the FISA Amendment Act (FAA) in 2008, a privacy killing law that gutted First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections for Americans, while granting immunity to giant telecoms that assisted the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrant-less wiretapping programs, we were assured that the government "does not spy" on our communications. Yet scarcely a year after FAA was signed into law by President Bush, The New York Times revealed that under "Hope and change" huckster Barack Obama, NSA continued the previous regime's illegal practices, intercepting "private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress lat year." The wholesale vacuuming up of private communications by the sprawling Pentagon bureaucracy were described by unnamed "senior officials" as the "over-collection" of domestic communications of Americans" in other words, a mere technical "glitch" in an otherwise "balanced" program. But what most Americans are blissfully unaware of is the fact that they carry in their pockets what have been described as near perfect spy devices: their cellphones. Earlier this week, The New York Times disclosed that "cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations."     

Ben Schreiner: On the Verge of An All Out War? Massive Military Build Up.

The familiar menace of US war drums have resumed at a fevered pitch, as Iran finds itself once again firmly within the Pentagons cross hairs. According to multiple reports, the US is currently in the midst of a massive military build up in the Persian Gulf on a scale not seen in the region since prior to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The military surge reportedly includes an influx of air and naval forces, ground troops, and even sea drones. Lest one forgets, the US already has two aircraft carriers and their accompanying striker groups in the region. A growing sense of Iran war fever can also be seen mounting in Washington. For instance, in an effort to foil ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 -the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, a bipartisan group of 44 US Senators recently sent a letter to President Obama urging the administration to focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions, and making clear that a credible military option exists. Such hawkish posturing occurs despite the fact that the US intelligence community finds no evidence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, the ostensible reason behind Western sanctions and threats of attack. Moreover, as an April Pentagon report states, Iran's military doctrine remains one of self defense, committed to slow an invasion, and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities. Compare this to the US military doctrine rife with notions of global power projection, and one sees where the credible threat lies. The nuclear issue, though, is but a pretext used to veil US imperial designs in the region. 

The Economist: Syria's Crisis - Damascus Attacked!

Syria's regime is looking increasingly wobbly. State television says a bomb attack on a security building in the capital, Damascus, this morning killed the defense minister, Dawood Rajiha, senior military aide Hassan Turkomani, and Asef Shawkat, perhaps the regime's main security man and brother in law to President Bashar Assad. A rebel offensive on the city has led to fierce clashes over the past three days, and this latest attack has dealt a blow to the regime's morale. Lightly armed opposition fighters have shown surprising resilience against the government's better equipped army in the Damascene districts of Midan and Qaboon, bringing the fight right to the seat of power. Today's blast appears to have hit the coterie of security men that has been directing the crackdown in Syria that has left at least 16,000 dead since March last year. Other security officials, including the national security chief and the interior minister, are reported to have been injured. Both the Free Syrian Army and an Islamist opposition group have claimed responsibility for the bombing. Some in the capital say the attacker may have been an insider, turning on other members of the regime. Many residents are worried about the likely response from the government, which has put on a show of bravado. It quickly brought in tanks and helicopters to respond to the recent fighting in the capital, sending civilians fleeing. Residents say elite troops have been moved into the city center to guard the television station and government buildings.