Middle East

While influential voices like the Pope are correct that this is a travesty, the policies promoted by him and other government officials will only make this worse. Offering assistance to migrants by rescuing them when they become troubled or allowing migrants to remain without changing the underlying bureaucratic issue will only create greater incentives for more and more people to take the same dangerous routes. Risk compensation has to be considered — the greater the safety mechanisms in place, the more risky the behavior will become. Unfortunately, the current solutions presented by officials will likely result in boats even more overloaded with people and even greater numbers traversing dangerous jungle passes.

Reports that the official unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent may appear to vindicate the policies of easy money, corporate bailouts, and increased government spending. However, even the mainstream media has acknowledged that the official numbers understate the true unemployment rate. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, few in Washington, DC acknowledge that America’s economic future is endangered by excessive spending, borrowing, taxing, and inflating. Instead, Congress continues to waste taxpayer money on futile attempts to run the economy, run our lives, and run the world.

The world is becoming increasingly chaotic and the American people are seeking a leader who can bring order, make tough decisions, and capture the zeitgeist of this moment in history. They are in search of a prophet generation (Boomer) Grey Champion, whose arrival marks the moment of darkness, adversity and peril as the Fourth Turning careens towards its climax. The Grey Champion doesn’t necessarily have to be a good person, but they must lead and display tremendous confidence in their cause and path. Franklin, Lincoln, and FDR have many detractors, but during their Fourth Turnings, they most certainly led, casting aside obstacles (sometimes illegally) and enduring dark days and bleak prospects for success. Is there someone of that stature ready to lead the American people now?

According to Reuters "Russia has positioned about a half dozen tanks at a Syrian airfield where it has been steadily building up defenses." The sources of this material escalation: two U.S. officials...  speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. Just like the "sources" on all Greek developments over the past 5 years. We can only hope the "anonymous" US officials will soon provide photographic evidence of their claims.

We Americans are in something approaching complete denial about how truly horrible our nation’s recent impact on the rest of the world has been. We are universally hated, even by those who have their hands out to receive their Danegeld, and the world is undoubtedly shaking its head as it listens to the bile coming out of the mouths of our presidential candidates. Shakespeare observed that the “evil that men do lives after them,” but he had no experience of the United States.

While we await for thr Russian secret service to leak photos of Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Syria, thereby stirring the pot on the latest and greatest proxy war in the middle east, one which would promptly disintegrate any last remaining shred of "victory" from Obama's alleged coup in restoring relations with an Iran, which couldn't even wait for the signing of the "Nuclear" deal before turning its back on Obama and siding with Putin in Syria, we were particularly amused to learn that just yesterday Iran announced it has discovered an unexpectedly high reserve of uranium and will soon begin extracting the radioactive element at a new mine.

"We have tortured and killed and maimed and raped around this planet. We don't operate under international law... who in their right mind would consider the United States or the West in general to be in any position to punish anybody? All of these players, these politicians are nothing more than puppets, they don't serve the people there is no real democracy, they serve the rich and powerful who run the world and that would be the bankers who control the money supply. The bankers make huge amounts of money....wars are great for them and ultimately they control the politicians. Psychopaths are running the world." - Ken O'Keefe, former US Marine

The Pentagon has erupted in “revolt” amid claims from 50 intelligence analysts that senior defense officials manipulated intelligence reports to downplay the severity of the Islamic State’s increasing upper-hand in the Middle East.

"The story that (Aylan's father) told is untrue. I don't know what made him lie, maybe fear. He was the one driving the boat right from the start. When they set off five minutes in he was looking left and right, worried, then he was speeding. Even his wife was screaming at him to slow down." Iraq-based Zainab Abbas, via her Sydney-based cousin Lara Tahseen, told Ten News she paid $10,000 for the voyage.

"One-by-one, the oil-majors will start to participate, then others will follow. While it might take some time to establish itself due to choppy markets and regulatory hurdles as well as the fact that it would introduce a foreign exchange element to crude futures, it is overdue for a Chinese contract to established."

We're beginning to believe the nation will not be unified behind a common cause when the coming financial eruption unleashes molten lava of chaos, punishing economic distress, civil strife, class warfare, race wars, and ultimately global war. As Strauss and Howe foretold, the establishment (aka corporate fascist military industrial surveillance state) has seen a sequential loss of popular trust as their blatant corruption, sociopathic stranglehold on the levers of power, and unrelenting greed have angered the critical thinking aware citizens of this country. The next leg down in this Greater Depression will sever the remaining trust, disintegrating any remaining support for the existing civic order. What comes next will be heavily dependent upon whether the 5% to 10% of liberty minded believers in the Constitution are able to gain the trust of the masses.

As part of the refugee crisis in which tens of thousands of innocent Syrians have been displaced and seeking European asylum, it was only a matter of time before one or more was "found" to be ISIS terrorists in order to perpetuate the fear and crisis narrative. A crisis which Brussels would never go to waste. That time has arrived after a report by German RTL and carried by NewObserver that "an ISIS terrorist posing as an "asylum seeker" has been arrested by German police in a “refugee” center in Stuttgart, and German customs officers have seized boxes containing Syrian passports being smuggled into Europe."

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Wednesday became the latest elected leader to use the plight of refugees in building a rhetorical case for military escalation towards Syria, despite numerous calls for wealthy nations to extend refuge - not bombs - as the humanitarian crisis worsens.

Fostering dependence on irresponsible banks and a still very vulnerable banking sector will make the entire western financial and economic system even more vulnerable.

• One Volatile Week Could Seal Fed Stance After Years of Low Rates (BBG)
• Fed to dominate week of central bank meetings (Reuters)
• 30 years on, parallels with Plaza but currency universe very different (Reuters)
• Wal-Mart's Suppliers Are Finally Fighting Back (BBG)
• China's Rising CPI, Deepening PPI Deflation Challenges PBOC (BBG)
• Petrobras spending plan already obsolete, new cuts likely (Reuters)
• Bank of Montreal to Buy GE Capital’s Transportation-Finance Unit (WSJ)