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Most Americans don’t even know how many countries their government is currently bombing (it was at least seven by 2014). Obama dropped 23,144 bombs in Middle Eastern countries in 2015 alone. By that count, you’d think ISIS would be erased from the face of the planet. Instead, more and more “boots” are being placed “on the ground” in Iraq and Syria all the time. Just because no one has said it’s an official “war” doesn’t make it anything less… and people aren’t even paying attention anymore to whether or not the wars our government is waging are actually Constitutional or not. Now an Army Captain with “ISIS Operation Inherent Resolve” stationed at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait has filed a lawsuit against his Commander-in-Chief over the Unconstitutional war Obama is waging against ISIS. “To honor my oath, I am asking the court to tell the president that he must get proper authority from Congress, under the War Powers Resolution, to wage the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” Army Capt. Nathan Michael Smith says in the 53-page document he filed today in the DC US District Court.

Recent reports detail a Turkish military buildup on the Turkish-Syrian border with various accounts mentioning the deployment of troops, tanks, armored personnel carriers and missile batteries two kilometers from Syrian territory, with 25 tanks from the Mardin 70th Mechanized Brigade engaged in exercises along the border. The Turkish rationale for the military escalation is that forces of the Democratic Union Party, an ethnic Kurdish group that Ankara accuses of being affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party, have assumed control of the Syrian cities of Efrin (Afrin), Kobane and Amude (Amuda) near southeastern Turkey.

The Turkish government has been waging a counterinsurgency war against the PKK for 28 years in Turkey, and over the past decade in northern Iraq, with the active support of the Pentagon and NATO. In fact, the campaign against Kurdish opposition groups is another, unacknowledged, American and NATO war, one to be added to a growing list that includes Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and now Syria.

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly United Nations General Assembly Hall New York City, New York 10:13 A.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen:  We come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope. Around the globe, there are signposts of progress.  The shadow of World War that existed at the founding of this institution has been lifted, and the prospect of war between major powers reduced.  The ranks of member states has more than tripled, and more people live under governments they elected. Hundreds of millions of human beings have been freed from the prison of poverty, with the proportion of those living in extreme poverty cut in half.  And the world economy continues to strengthen after the worst financial crisis of our lives. 

And yet there is a pervasive unease in our world -- a sense that the very forces that have brought us together have created new dangers and made it difficult for any single nation to insulate itself from global forces.  As we gather here, an outbreak of Ebola overwhelms public health systems in West Africa and threatens to move rapidly across borders.  Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition.  The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.

First, all of us -- big nations and small -- must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.  We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest. 

British finance minister George Osborne unveiled fresh austerity measures Wednesday to slash debt, evoking the plight of crisis-hit Greece in the first purely Conservative budget for almost two decades. Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne drastically cut welfare spending to honour campaign promises to forge ahead with austerity, which saw his centre-right Conservative party sweep to an unexpected majority in a May general election and return David Cameron as prime minister.Speaking to lawmakers in his post-election budget statement to parliament, Osborne said welfare spending would be slashed by an accumulated total of £12 billion ($18.4 billion, 16.6 billion euros) by the end of parliament in five years' time. At the same time, the government will introduce a "national living wage" that could reach £9.0 an hour by 2020 that will apply to workers only aged 25 and over. That compares with the current national minimum wage of £6.50 an hour for those aged 21 and over, which will continue to exist alongside the "living wage."

n all, the government plans to save £37 billion over the next five years: £12 billion from welfare cuts, £5 billion from tax changes and reducing evasion, and the rest largely from cuts to government departments, Osborne said.

Osborne confirmed there would be no change to income tax thresholds or value added taxation (VAT) for at least five years.Corporation tax, levied on business profits, will be reduced from 20 percent to 19 percent in 2017 and 18 percent by 2020.

More important, transparency is a good thing. If enrollees don’t want to pay the full cost of Obamacare coverage, that tells us something very important about Obamacare. It means nobody likes the way Obamacare actually works. Forcing the IRS to implement the law as written will thus create an opportunity for real health care reforms that actually reduce the cost of care. Reining in the IRS would affirm the rule of law, and lead to real health care reform. We should all hope for such an outcome.

GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES GR I-BOOK No.  7  THE 9/11 READER The September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks 9/11 Truth: Revealing the Lies,  Commemorating the 9/11 Tragedy

August 2012 The 911/ Reader is part of Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader, which brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter.  To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.

Table of Contents of the 9/11 Reader In Part I, the 911 Reader provides a review of what happened on the morning of 9/11, at the White House, on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, at Strategic Command Headquarters (USSTRATCOM), What was the response of the US Air Force in the immediate wake of the attacks?  Part II focusses on “What Happened on the Planes” as described in the 9/11 Commission Report. Part III sheds light on what caused the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. It also challenges the official narrative with regard to the attack on the Pentagon. Part IV reviews and refutes the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report. Part V focusses on the issue of foreknowledge by Western intelligence agencies. Part VI examines the issue of how foreknowledge of the attacks was used as an instrument of insider trading on airline stocks in the days preceding September 11, 2001. The bonanza financial gains resulting from insurance claims to the leaseholders of the WTC buildings is also examined.

That was before Paris.  Well, in the wake of the attacks, Gabbard has apparently had just about enough of Washington vacillating in the fight against terror just so the US can ensure that ISIS continues to destabilize Assad and now, with bi-partisan support, the brazen Hawaii Democrat has introduced legislation to end the "illegal war" to overthrow Assad.  Gabbard, who fought in Iraq - twice - has partnered with Republican Adam Scott on the bill. Here's AP:  In an unusual alliance, a House Democrat and Republican have teamed up to urge the Obama administration to stop trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad and focus all its efforts on destroying Islamic State militants.   Reps. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat, and Austin Scott, a Republican, introduced legislation on Friday to end what they called an "illegal war" to overthrow Assad, the leader of Syria accused of killing tens of thousands of Syrian citizens in a more than four-year-old civil war entangled in a battle against IS extremists, also known as ISIS.   "The U.S. is waging two wars in Syria," Gabbard said. "The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The second war is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad."

Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington’s Syria strategy.  In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington’s effort to oust Assad “counterproductive” and “illegal” before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "sworn enemies.”  In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting “World War III.” For those who missed it, here’s the clip:

Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington’s Syria strategy.  In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington’s effort to oust Assad “counterproductive” and “illegal” before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "sworn enemies.”  In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting “World War III.” For those who missed it, here’s the clip:

Eighty two percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report released today.  The report is being launched as political and business elites gather for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ‘Reward Work, Not Wealth’ reveals how the global economy enables a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes while hundreds of millions of people are struggling to survive on poverty pay. Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13 percent since 2010 – six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just 2 percent. The number of billionaires rose at an unprecedented rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017. It takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year. It would cost $2.2 billion a year to increase the wages of all 2.5 million Vietnamese garment workers to a living wage. This is about a third of the amount paid out to wealthy shareholders by the top 5 companies in the garment sector in 2016.

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the statutory basis for this "war" - the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) - should be revised (meaning: expanded). This is how Wired's Spencer Ackerman (soon to be the Guardian US's national security editor) described the most significant exchange: "Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, answered, 'At least 10 to 20 years.' . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne Edgecomb, clarified that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today - atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome to America's Thirty Years War." That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the "war on terror" will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week's big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of "endless war". Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war - justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism - that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

I wrote that the "war on terror" cannot and will not end on its own for two reasons: (1) it is designed by its very terms to be permanent, incapable of ending, since the war itself ironically ensures that there will never come a time when people stop wanting to bring violence back to the US (the operational definition of "terrorism"), and (2) the nation's most powerful political and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation. Whatever else is true, it is now beyond doubt that ending this war is the last thing on the mind of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and those who work at the highest levels of his administration. Is there any way they can make that clearer beyond declaring that it will continue for "at least" another 10-20 years? The genius of America's endless war machine is that, learning from the unplesantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible. That is accomplished by heaping all of the fighting burden on a tiny and mostly economically marginalized faction of the population, by using sterile, mechanized instruments to deliver the violence, and by suppressing any real discussion in establishment media circles of America's innocent victims and the worldwide anti-American rage that generates. Though rarely visible, the costs are nonetheless gargantuan. Just in financial terms, as Americans are told they must sacrifice Social Security and Medicare benefits and place their children in a crumbling educational system, the Pentagon remains the world's largest employer and continues to militarily outspend the rest of the world by a significant margin. The mythology of the Reagan presidency is that he induced the collapse of the Soviet Union by luring it into unsustainable military spending and wars: should there come a point when we think about applying that lesson to ourselves?

Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned yesterday that deepening US military involvement in Syria’s civil war would be a “mistake,” warning the outcome would be unpredictable and messy.

Gates’ comments on Syria come amid debate in Washington over whether to step up military support for rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad, even as the administration attempts a new peace initiative with Russia. “I thought it was a mistake in Libya, and I think it is a mistake in Syria, even if we had intervened more significantly in Syria a year ago or six months ago. We overestimate our ability to determine outcomes. “Caution, particularly in terms of arming these groups and in terms of US military involvement, is in order,” he said. “Anybody who says, ‘It’s going to be clean. It’s going to be neat. You can establish safe zones, and it’ll be just swell,’ well, most wars aren’t that way,” he said. Gates, who served under both George W Bush and President Barack Obama, was US defense secretary in 2011 when the United States joined a NATO-led air operation in Libya that helped rebels topple Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi.

WASHINGTON: Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned yesterday that deepening US military involvement in Syria’s civil war would be a “mistake,” warning the outcome would be unpredictable and messy.

The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything.

I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.

I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid.

With my five-year budget, millions of jobs would be created by cutting the corporate income tax in half, by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%, and by cutting the regulations that are strangling American businesses.

America has much greatness left in her. We will begin to thrive again when we begin to believe in ourselves again, when we regain our respect for our founding documents, when we balance our budget, when we understand that capitalism and free markets and free individuals are what creates our nation’s prosperity.

Congress has exempted itself from the prohibition against trading on inside information … the law that got Martha Stewart and many other people thrown in jail. There are many other ways in which the hypocrisy of the politicians in D.C. is hurting our country. Washington politicians say we have to slash basic services, and yet waste hundreds of billions of dollars on counter-productive boondoggles. If the politicos just stopped throwing money at corporate welfare queens, military and security boondoggles and pork, harmful quantitative easing, unnecessary nuclear subsidies, the failed war on drugs, and other wasted and counter-productive expenses, we wouldn’t need to impose austerity on the people. The D.C. politicians said that the giant failed banks couldn’t be nationalized, because that would be socialism. Instead of temporarily nationalizing them and then spinning them off to the private sector – or breaking them up – the politicians have bailed them out to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars each year, and created a system where all of the profits are privatized, and all of the losses socialized. Obama and Congress promised help for struggling homeowners, and passed numerous bills that they claimed would rescue the little guy. But every single one of these bills actually bails out the banks … and doesn’t really help the homeowner.

The Federal Reserve promises to do everything possible to reduce unemployment. But its policies are actually destroying jobs. Many D.C. politicians pay lip service to helping the little guy … while pushing policies which have driven inequality to levels surpassing slave-owning societies. The D.C. regulators pretend that they are being tough on the big banks, but are actually doing everything they can to help cover up their sins. Many have pointed out Obama’s hypocrisy in slamming Bush’s spying programs … and then expanding them (millions more). And in slamming China’s cyber-warfare … while doing the same thing. And – while the Obama administration is spying on everyone in the country – it is at the same time the most secretive administration ever (background). That’s despite Obama saying he’s running the most transparent administration ever.

The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of “espionage”. It seems clear that the people who are actually bringing “injury to the United States” are those who are waging war on basic tenets of transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens – and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they’re doing – rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done.

Just days after arresting French-born Belgium national  and terror suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels, a coordinated terror attack unfolded in the very same city, killing at least 28, and injuring many more.

NBC News has already  announced that European officials are linking the attack to ISIS, though it is unclear whether or not Abdeslam’s network – which carried out the November 2015 Paris terror attacks – was directly involved.

Police in Brussels were still hunting for several other alleged accomplices of Abdeslam, including Najim Laachraoui and Mohamed Abrini. Laachraoui and Abrini, like virtually every other suspect involved in a string of terrorist attacks across North America, Europe, and Australia, were well known to Western security agencies, having both been documented as having traveled to Syria to fight against Damascus under ISIS, with Abrini having been arrested and jailed several times in the past, and Laachraoui already having a 2014 international arrest warrant issued for him in connection to a trial involving recruiting Europeans to fight for ISIS.

So the normal market pressures of downward price and wage adjustments in the recession are partly counter-acted by a new monetary expansion that is delaying the necessary re-coordination of market activities. Thus, given these two pressures, prices do not fall as much as a post-recession adjustment may require and they do not rise as much or as fast as might otherwise occur due to the renewed monetary expansion.