It wasn't long after he met the man called Shareef that Khalifa Al-Akili began to sense he was being set up. Within days of their seemingly chance meeting, Shareef was offering to drive Akili, a 34-year-old Muslim living in East Liberty, Pennsylvania, to the local mosque for prayers. Shareef told Akili he was "all about fighting" and "had a lot of resources at his disposal." But when Shareef began to probe Akili about his views on jihad and asked him if he could obtain a gun, Akili grew nervous. "I begin to try to avoid him, but would still see him due to the fact that he lived two minutes' walking distance from my apartment," Akili said later. In January of this year, Shareef showed up with a "brother" who called himself Mohammed and was keen to meet Akili. Mohammed told Akili that he was a businessman from Pakistan involved in jihad. "He kept attempting to talk about the fighting going on in Afghanistan, which I clearly felt was an attempt to get me to talk about my views," Akili recalled. "I had a feeling that I had just played out a part in some Hollywood movie where I had just been introduced to the leader of a terrorist sleeper cell."

Out of curiosity, Akili did an Internet search on the cellphone number he'd received from Mohammed. Much to his surprise, he discovered that the man was, in fact, an FBI informant named Shahed Hussain, who had played a pivotal role in at least two major terrorism-related sting operations in recent years. In a lengthy posting on his Facebook page recounting these events, Akili wrote, "I would like to pursue a legal action against the FBI due to their continuous harassment." He also set up a press conference in Washington with Muslim civil liberties groups to publicize his fear that he was being entrapped. But it was too late. In mid-March, Akili was arrested and charged with being in possession of a .22-caliber rifle at a shooting range several years earlier, an act deemed illegal because of a decade-old drug conviction. Though his arrest was on nonterrorism-related charges, at his bond hearing FBI agents and US Attorneys told the judge they'd seen unspecified "jihadist literature" at his apartment and also alleged that he'd told one of the informants of his desire to go to Pakistan and join the Taliban. The judge ordered Akili held without bail.

An American author says agents of the CIA and MI6 are directing armed groups to carry out massacres inside Syria, Press TV reports.


Stephen Lendman, writer and radio host from Chicago, said the CIA and MI6 "special forces" are in Syria now, directing massacres.

"They go after pro-Assad loyalists," Lendman stated in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

"There is no question this is a Washington-orchestrated war."

Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

- All Quotes by Joseph Stalin

Know Your Enemy

I recall wanting to read Mein Kampf as a young kid, although to this day I have only read excerpts. I wanted to know what made this guy tick, what his thoughts were. How could someone justify such horrific actions. As I have progressed into adulthood I have only become more and more convinced that books written by psychopath killer dictators should be required reading for every single human being on the planet. In a similar vein, I remember hearing the argument back in high school that people should not read Machiavelli's The Prince. The argument was that if people read a manual on devious thoughts, and the application of ruthless behavior to achieve one's selfish ends, that it would permeate society and lead us all into a darker place. As soon as I heard this, of course, the first thing I did was head to the book store to buy it. I recall my reaction to the treatise vividly.

There is a dangerous person running for President in 2012, and his name is Baritt Obamney. I normally try not to attack specific candidates for political office, but Baritt Obamney is so offensive to American sensibilities that I had to share this warning with my fellow Americans. In 2012, we must vote against Obamney for President.

And why? Because here is what Obamney believes in, based on his actions and voting record:

- Big, bigger and even BIGGER government! The bigger the government, the better.

- GMOs: Obamney is a huge supporter of Monsanto and the biotech industry that produces genetically modified seeds. He wants all Americans to eat foods laced with pesticides grown by the crops themselves! This is all part of the mass poisoning plan to keep America sick and incapable of resisting tyranny.

Nervous Greeks are withdrawing up to 800 million euros ($1.01 billion) a day and stocking up on canned food as they fear the country will be forced to leave the eurozone after this Sunday's election.

Greek citizens fear the ramifications of a return to the country's previous currency, the drachma, if the radical left-wing party and strong election contender SYRIZA wins this weekend.

Bankers said daily withdrawals from the major banks were hitting €500-€800 million ($631.8 million-$1.01 billion), Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, retailers say consumers are stocking up on non-perishable foods like pasta and canned goods.

A 2010 Rockefeller Foundation document entitled "Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development" outlines a scenario which results in the death of 13,000 during the 2012 Olympics.

Rise of Authoritarianism

The first worrying prediction begins in 2012 when 'the pandemic the world had been anticipating for years', finally hits, infecting nearly 20 percent of world population and claiming 8 million lives. Due to this pandemic, the Rockefeller Foundation outlines how the public will welcome a more authoritative government and a tighter control across all aspects of life, including Biometric IDs for all citizens.

In this excerpt from The Happiness Diet, discover how Procter & Gamble convinced people to forgo butter and lard for cheap, factory-made oils loaded with trans fat.

Before highways and before railroads, America conducted her commerce via steamship over water through a system of rivers, canals, and lakes. In the 1800s, Cincinnati was the heart of the developed United States. At the time it was known to the world as Porkopolis. That's because not so long ago, the most widely consumed meat in this nation was swine.

This was before refrigeration. The biggest enemy of 19th-century butchers was spoilage. Eating cows didn't make a whole lot of sense: Distributing the meat of a freshly killed 1,500-pound animal before it went bad was difficult without roads and temperature-controlled trains. But pigs are fatty, which makes them excellent for salt curing because they don't lose flavor.

What can one say about people who continue to support war criminals among their elected representatives? It is easy to blame the presidents and the Congress and the media for endless war and rising body counts around the world. They are indeed responsible for promoting mass killing as an acceptable, indeed beneficial means of living among the world's people.

It is true that Americans have far less input into their government's decisions than they seem to think. They play a very small role in choosing elected officials, including the president. The power of money means that rich people and corporations call the shots to a greater extent than citizens of a so-called democracy are willing to admit.

But the people do still have the right to their own opinions. We can proclaim what we do and do not like. When the president feeds a story to the New York Times which proclaims that he gladly accepts responsibility for killing people, he believes that said story will increase his support among voters.

Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year - the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war.

The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan - about 50 percent more - according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.

The numbers reflect a military burdened with wartime demands from Iraq and Afghanistan that have taken a greater toll than foreseen a decade ago. The military also is struggling with increased sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other misbehavior.

Because suicides had leveled off in 2010 and 2011, this year's upswing has caught some officials by surprise.

The reasons for the increase are not fully understood. Among explanations, studies have pointed to combat exposure, post-traumatic stress, misuse of prescription medications and personal financial problems. Army data suggest soldiers with multiple combat tours are at greater risk of committing suicide, although a substantial proportion of Army suicides are committed by soldiers who never deployed.

The unpopular war in Afghanistan is winding down with the last combat troops scheduled to leave at the end of 2014. But this year has seen record numbers of soldiers being killed by Afghan troops, and there also have been several scandals involving U.S. troop misconduct.

Let's start by laying down the baseline premise: inequality in America has been widening for dec­ades. We're all aware of the fact. Yes, there are some on the right who deny this reality, but serious analysts across the political spectrum take it for granted. I won't run through all the evidence here, except to say that the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is vast when looked at in terms of annual income, and even vaster when looked at in terms of wealth - that is, in terms of accumulated capital and other assets. Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society. (Many at the bottom have zero or negative net worth, especially after the housing debacle.) Warren Buffett put the matter correctly when he said, "There's been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won."

So, no: there's little debate over the basic fact of widening inequality. The debate is over its meaning. From the right, you sometimes hear the argument made that inequality is basically a good thing: as the rich increasingly benefit, so does everyone else. This argument is false: while the rich have been growing richer, most Americans (and not just those at the bottom) have been unable to maintain their standard of living, let alone to keep pace. A typical full-time male worker receives the same income today he did a third of a century ago.

From the left, meanwhile, the widening inequality often elicits an appeal for simple justice: why should so few have so much when so many have so little? It's not hard to see why, in a market-driven age where justice itself is a commodity to be bought and sold, some would dismiss that argument as the stuff of pious sentiment.

Put sentiment aside. There are good reasons why plutocrats should care about inequality anyway - even if they're thinking only about themselves. The rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position. Widely unequal societies do not function efficiently and their economies are neither stable nor sustainable. The evidence from history and from around the modern world is unequivocal: there comes a point when inequality spirals into economic dysfunction for the whole society, and when it does, even the rich pay a steep price.

Let me run through a few reasons why.