USA - Confirming what many had suspected when viewing the sudden and intense collapse into anarchy that occurred in Charlotte this week, Todd Walther, spokesman for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police told CNN's Erin Burnett: "This is not Charlotte that's out here. These are outside entities that are coming in and causing these problems. These are not protestors, these are criminals."
UNITED NATIONS - The third leg of the world's intractable depression is yet to come. If trade economists at the United Nations are right, the next traumatic episode may entail the greatest debt jubilee in history. It may also prove to be the definitive crisis of globalized capitalism, the demise of the liberal free-market orthodoxies promoted for almost forty years by the Bretton Woods institutions, the OECD, and the Davos fraternity.
UNITED NATIONS - King Felipe VI’s call for Britain to return Gibraltar to Spain has drawn a scathing response from the British overseas territory’s government, with officials blasting the monarch’s “18th century mentality.” The Gibraltarian government was responding to a speech by the king at the UN General Assembly in New York. “On this first occasion at the UN after Brexit, to end the colonial anachronism of Gibraltar with an agreed solution between both countries to restore the territorial integrity of Spain and bring benefits to the people of Gibraltar and the Spanish area of Campo de Gibraltar,” the king said.
UNITED NATIONS - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to come “speak to the Israeli people at the Knesset in Jerusalem,” during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
USA - President Barack Obama affirmed this week that the Declaration of Independence recognizes that “individual human beings” have “God-given rights.” Yet, he insisted this was a “radical idea” at the time of the founding. Were he right — which he is not — history would see it as one radical idea Obama did not devoutly pursue.
USA - US film director Oliver Stone on Thursday accused President Barack Obama's administration of implementing a surveillance system worse than that of the feared Stasi secret police in East Germany. Obama "has created… the most massive global security surveillance state that's ever been seen, way beyond East Germany's Stasi, way beyond that. In the name of one thing - terrorism - to change all the rules is not a marginal response, it's an extreme response," he told reporters. "Let's beware of fascists and tyrants who tell us 'we are going to protect you'. I don't want that."
USA - The Obama Administration released a concerning new report this month with recommendations that would chip away at Americans’ religious liberty. The recommendations appear to be thinly veiled attempts to deny Americans their First Amendment right to religious freedom. Commission Chairman Julian Castro wrote some very hostile words in his personal statement in the report: “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia or any form of intolerance … today, as in past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality. In our nation’s past religion has been used to justify slavery and later, Jim Crow laws.”
USA - Former Assistant Treasury Secretary (in the Reagan Administration) Dr Paul Craig Roberts has a stark warning for the world. Dr Roberts says, “We changed our nuclear doctrine. It used to be we used nuclear weapons only in retaliation. There was no first use, but the George W Bush regime, the Neocons, changed our nuclear doctrine. It’s now a pre-emptive first strike.”
USA - A fresh transatlantic trade war is in the offing after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruled against the European Union in a long-running legal battle over billions of pounds of state aid to aviation giant Airbus.
EUROPE - The European Union appeared more fractured than ever today after a powerful group of eastern states laid down a series of demands over migration and the economy. Members of the influential Visegrad group, which comprises of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, rejected migrant quotas and blasted the overbearing EU Commission with an incendiary ultimatum.
MIDDLE EAST - “Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel. But Israel must recognize that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land. We all have to do better,” the US president said at the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
USA - Charlotte officials say they are preparing for more protests today following a night of violence over a police officer’s fatal shooting of an African-American man Tuesday in the University City area. The dead man was identified as Keith Lamont Scott, 43.
USA - Americans are dipping into their savings, if they have any, even more than they did last year, a new survey finds. Nearly 70 percent of Americans report having less than $1,000 in savings, and the pattern touches all age groups. Even those making $100,000 to $149,999 a year had less than $1,000 or nothing at all in savings 44 percent of the time, according to GoBankingRates.com, which released its findings Monday.
Spendthrift habits seem to have increased from last year, when the Los Angeles-based financial website found 62 percent of more than 5,000 adults had less than $1,000 in savings. This year’s survey asking the same question to more than 7,000 adults, 69 percent of whom said their savings account total lacked a comma. Half of those, 34 percent, had saved a big fat goose egg, an increase of 6 percent from the year prior, when 28 percent reported having $0 in savings.
USA - Do you remember the old Saturday Night Live sketches in which comedian Chris Farley portrayed a motivational speaker that lived in a van down by the river? Unfortunately, this is becoming a reality for way too many Americans. As the middle class has shrunk and the cost of living has increased, a lot of people have decided to quite literally “live on the road”.
USA - All over America sick and twisted people are dressing up like creepy clowns in order to frighten the living daylights out of others. This trend started back in August, and since then social media has helped it spread like wildfire. So far there have been creepy clown sightings in 11 different states, and Mississippi and Kentucky have been added to the list since my last article. A lot of young kids seem to think that this is a great idea for a “prank”, but authorities are taking the creepy clown phenomenon very, very seriously because in recent days the threats of violence have become much more chilling. Individuals posing as “creepy clowns” on social media are openly naming specific schools that they plan to target and are threatening to commit horrific acts of violence. That may sound like an interesting plot for a Hollywood horror movie, but in real life these kinds of threats have very serious consequences.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this section are not our own, unless specifically stated, but are provided to highlight what may prove to be prophetically relevant material appearing in the media.