The Daily Treasury Statement released today showed the status of the government’s accounts as of the close of business on Friday, August 23. Because the Treasury does no business over the weekend, the federal government’s debt did not change on Saturday or Sunday.

The statement for August 23 said the federal debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress was $16,699,396,000,000 — or $25 million below the current limit of $16,699,421,000,000. Every Daily Treasury Statement since May 17 has also shown the legally limited debt at $16,699,396,000,000, or $25 million below the limit. During the 100-day period from Friday, May 17 to Sunday, August 25, according to the Treasury, the legally limited debt of the federal government did not change.

On May 17, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent House Speaker John Boehner a letter indicating that the Treasury was then hitting the legal limit on the debt and that he would begin using “extraordinary measures” to allow the government to continue borrowing money without exceeding that limit.

The market for dollar-denominated junk-rated debt has expanded more than eightfold since the end of 1997 from $243 billion, according to Morgan Stanley. That compares with a quadrupling of the investment-grade market to $4.2 trillion as tracked by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch US Corporate Index.

While Federal Reserve policies have pushed investors toward riskier investments to generate high yields, allowing even the neediest companies that might otherwise default to access capital markets, concern is rising that missed payments may soar when benchmark rates begin to increase. Martin Feldstein, a past president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, said last week that low rates should be allowed to rise because they’re driving investors into risky behavior.

“The growth in the market, and volume of supply is less important than quality of issuance,” Adam Richmond, a credit strategist at Morgan Stanley in New York, said in a telephone interview. “When we see a heavy volume of lower-quality deals, that’s when you need to worry a little bit.”

This from a 2010 Genie Energy press release: Claude Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas, commented, “Genie’s success will ultimately depend, in part, on access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and connected to leaders in these sectors. Their guidance and participation will prove invaluable.”

“I am grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity to invest in this important initiative,” Lord Rothschild said. “Rupert Murdoch’s extraordinary achievements speak for themselves and we are very pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie Energy is making good technological progress to tap the world’s substantial oil shale deposits which could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world.”

Hedge funds, meanwhile, are also dumping Monsanto stock, most likely due to sharply increased "negative sentiment." This means people increasingly don't like Monsanto, and that's a direct result of all the growing realizations about the dangers of GMOs, Monsanto's predatory business practices, the company's dangerous experiments that have already unleashed genetic pollution, and the fact that GM corn has been experimentally found to cause widespread cancer tumors in rat studies.

Just the fact that Monsanto's GE wheat trials got out of control and contaminated a wheat field in Oregon - causing Japan and South Korea to ban U.S. wheat imports - has resulted in 150 groups now demanding the USDA keep a tighter lid on Monsanto's GMO experiments. These groups are fed up with seeing the market value of their crops destroyed by sloppy "open field" experiments being conducted by Monsanto that spread genetic pollution across the country and contaminate non-GMO crops.

The use of chemical weapons is beyond the pale, we’re told, and must be met with force to show Assad and the world that it is unacceptable. But it’s important to remember that Washington doesn’t view the use of chemical weapons as unacceptable always and everywhere. The US supported Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its war against Iran throughout the 1980s, even as they knew Saddam was deploying chemical weapons on a scale far more devastating than anything seen in Syria to date.

Indeed, it isn’t enough to say that we supported Hussein while he was deploying chemical weapons; we supplied him with intelligence about what Iranian targets to hit with the expectation that he would attack with chemical weapons. We then proceeded to block Iranian attempts to bring a case against Iraq to the United Nations.

From 2004 to 2007, the Bush administration persuaded the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to define massive, overwhelmingly innocent clusters of communications data as terrorism-related “facilities” subject to authorized US surveillance. In 2009, US officials labeled the Fort Hood shooter a “terrorist” for killing fellow US military personnel. In 2010, the CIA designated the fatal bombing of its drone-war operators in Afghanistan as a “terrorist attack.”

Now the United Kingdom has pushed the definition one step further. It detained David Miranda, the domestic partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for nine hours at Heathrow Airport - threatening him, interrogating him, and confiscating his laptop and other storage devices - under an anti-terrorism law.

According to the UK, this statute authorizes detention and confiscation because Miranda’s documents expose sweeping government surveillance methods and therefore, if released, might help terrorists evade that surveillance. Counterterrorism now justifies the use of force to prevent the exposure of domestic spying.

The Rim Fire is now raining ash on a key reservoir that supplies water and hydro-electric power to San Francisco. City officials say they are moving water to lower reservoirs and monitoring supplies for contamination. The blaze is also threatening thousands of homes and some of California's renowned giant sequoia trees.

On Monday officials said the fire was 15% contained after burning for more than a week - up from 2% containment on Friday. Strong winds are making the fires more difficult to control. "This fire has continued to pose every challenge that there can be on a fire," said Daniel Berlant of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The blaze began on 17 August in the Stanislaus National Forest but the cause is still unknown.

‘The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand began with a cavalcade of automobiles and a squad of suicide bombers: the young men who gathered in Sarajevo with bombs on 28 June 1914 had been told by their handlers to take their own lives after carrying out their mission, and received phials of potassium cyanide to do it with,’ he says in a London Review of Books essay.

‘Behind the outrage at Sarajevo was an avowedly terrorist organisation with a cult of sacrifice, death and revenge: extra-territorial, secretive, scattered in cells across political borders, its links to any sovereign government were oblique.’ Sound familiar?

Al Qaeda stokes the ire of Muslims angry at what they see as the defilement of their lands by the oil-seeking, infidel West. Our retaliation for its September 2001 attack on America with hijacked passenger jets, killing more than 3,000, was to invade Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, costing more than 100,000 Islamic lives on top of our own sad audit of dead and maimed. But 9/11, as Americans call it, did not trigger the Third World War. On the contrary, for a brief moment — before the retaliation began — Americans enjoyed the sympathy of most of the world.

Now, it’s different. America, urged by its European allies, considers action against the ruling Assad regime in Syria, which stands accused of using poison gas to kill hundreds of its people. The West is drawing up a list of targets for Cruise missile strikes aimed at crippling the Assad regime. How will Syria’s main allies, Russia and Iran, respond?

"America knows the limitation of the red line of the Syrian front and any crossing of Syria’s red line will have severe consequences for the White House," said Massoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, reacting to statements by Western officials regarding the possibility of military intervention in Syria, according to Fars.

Although there have been lawsuits against wedding industry businesses that refuse to serve gay couples, attorneys promoting the bylaw changes say they don't know of any lawsuits against churches. Critics say the changes are unnecessary, but some churches fear that it's only a matter of time before one of them is sued.

“I thought marriage was always between one man and one woman, but the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision said no,” said Gregory S Erwin, an attorney for the Louisiana Baptist Convention, an association of Southern Baptist churches and one of several groups advising churches to change their bylaws. "I think it's better to be prepared because the law is changing. America is changing." In a June decision, the US Supreme Court struck down a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as between a man and a woman for purposes of federal law. A second decision was more technical but essentially ushered in legal gay marriage in California.

The bylaw changes are coming at a time when many churches are wrestling with gay marriage in general and are working hard to be more welcoming to gays and lesbians. "It's probably one of the most difficult issues our churches are facing right now," said Doug Anderson, a national coordinator with the evangelical Vineyard Church. "It's almost an impossible situation to reconcile what's going on in our culture, and our whole theology of welcoming and loving people, versus what it says in the Bible."

He said: "I think we're losing the plot actually. I think we haven't really noticed what's happened in Britain." He added: "If people work for the maximum possible benefit for themselves then we will not have trust in industry, in economics, in financial institutions, we will not see marriages last."

He also said institutions, including marriage, broke down "when you begin to lose faith and society becomes very, very secularised". In the interview he argued that the breakdown of marriage had exacerbated child poverty in the UK, "so children get to be the victims". Although he said he had no desire to be "prescriptive" about potential solutions, he offered: "I think a situation where children grow up in stable association with the parents who bought them into being is probably the biggest influence on the eventual shape of a society."

In an article for the Times newspaper, Lord Sacks recently urged ministers to do more to encourage marriage and support stay-at-home mothers. The government "should certainly recognise marriage in the tax system", he wrote. Chancellor George Osborne has already promised a tax break for married couples in his Autumn Statement but his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, are opposed to the move.

Total global military spending in 2012 amounted to $1.7 trillion; NATO partners account for $1 trillion. Developing countries are increasing their defense expenditures but their role is relatively small compared with their total population. USA’s share of global military expenditure in 2012 is 39%, China’s 9.5%, Russia’s 5.2%, UK’s 3.5%, and Japan’s 3.4%. The US spends more than the next top ten countries, on its military budget.

The US is therefore expected to have the capacity for Full Spectrum Dominance over the world. Since military might leads to geopolitical supremacy, the aim of the West and NATO for “complete and total military domination of the world,” is not a far-fetched one.

David Miranda brought a legal challenge against the UK police after it seized his property at Heathrow airport. The high court granted him a limited injunction to prevent the police "inspecting, copying or sharing" the data stored on the property.

The police are allowed to examine the data for national security purposes or if they are investigating whether or not Miranda is himself involved in the commission, instigation or preparation of an act of terrorism. The court also heard that the Metropolitan Police has launched a criminal investigation after analysing the seized data. The investigation is being carried out by SO15, the group within the Met charged with investigating terrorist or extremist actions.

Police analysing the data stores on a laptop and phone seized from Miranda on Sunday had discovered "tens of thousands" of documents and if this "highly sensitive material" was released it would be "gravely injurious to public safety." The documents were found on a laptop, two memory sticks, two DVDs, his phone, a Sony games console, a smartwatch and a hard drive. Steven Kovats QC, who represents home secretary Theresa May, also briefed the court in relation to the documents found. He said the cache of data contains tens of thousands of classified UK intelligence documents "disclosure of which would risk lives."

The ‘Great Transformation’ occurred exclusively from above, organized by the upper echelons of the civil and military bureaucracy under the direction of the Executive and his National Security Council. The ‘Great Transformation’ was not a single event but a process of the accumulation of powers, via executive fiats, supported and approved by compliant Congressional leaders.

At no time in the recent and distant past has this nation witnessed the growth of such repressive powers and the proliferation of so many policing agencies engaged in so many areas of life over such a prolonged period of time (a time of virtually no internal mass dissent). Never has the executive branch of government secured so many powers to detain, interrogate, kidnap and assassinate its own citizens without judicial restraint.

Police state dominance is evident in the enormous growth of the domestic security and military budget, the vast recruitment of security and military personnel, the accumulation of authoritarian powers curtailing individual and collective freedoms and the permeation of national cultural and civic life with the almost religious glorification of the agents and agencies of militarism and the police state as evidenced at mass sporting and entertainment events.

The drying up of resources for public welfare and services is a direct result of the dynamic growth of the police state apparatus and military empire. This could only take place through a sustained direct attack against the welfare state – in particular against public funding for programs and agencies promoting the health, education, pensions, income and housing for the middle and working class.

India’s rupee and Turkey’s lira both crashed to record lows on Thursday following the US Federal Reserve releasing minutes which signalled a wind-down of quantitative easing as soon as next month.

Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, held an emergency meeting on Thursday with her top economic officials to halt the real’s slide after it hit a five-year low against the dollar. The central bank chief, Alexandre Tombini, cancelled his trip to the Fed’s Jackson Hole conclave in order “to monitor market activity” amid reports Brazil is preparing direct intervention to stem capital flight.

The country has so far relied on futures contracts to defend the real – disguising the erosion of Brazil’s $374 billion reserves – but this has failed to deter speculators. “They are moving currency intervention off balance sheet, but the net position is deteriorating all the time,” said Danske Bank’s Lars Christensen.

A string of countries have been burning foreign reserves to defend exchange rates, with holdings down 8 percent in Ecuador, 6 percent in Kazakhstan and Kuwait, and 5.5 percent in Indonesia in July alone. Turkey’s reserves have dropped 15 percent this year. “Emerging markets are in the eye of the storm,” said Stephen Jen at SLJ Macro Partners. “Their currencies are in grave danger. These things always overshoot.”