What would you do if a police officer threatened to arrest you for trying to share a sandwich with a desperately hungry homeless woman that really needed it? Such a notion sounds absolutely bizarre, but this is actually happening in major cities all over the United States.

More than 50 large U.S. cities have adopted "anti-camping" or "anti-food sharing" laws in recent years, and in many of these cities the police are strictly enforcing these laws.

Sometimes the goal appears to be to get the homeless people to go away. Apparently the heartless politicians that are passing these laws believe that if the homeless can't get any more free food and if they keep getting thrown into prison for "illegal camping" they will eventually decide to go somewhere else where they won't be hassled so much.

This is yet another example of how heartless our society is becoming. The middle class is being absolutely shredded and poverty is absolutely exploding, but meanwhile the hearts of many Americans are growing very cold. If this continues, what is the future of America going to look like?

When the World Economic Forum released its 2013 Global Risks Report earlier this year, it included an interesting array of proposals which should raise eyebrows and be taken very seriously.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) used risk management exercises to address many of the challenges that we all know about - growing social and political violence, the West's on-going financial collapse, food and water shortages, and the Elite's all-time favorite "global terrorism".

However, they also worked out "proposals for government" and some rather uncanny "X Factors" which, coming as they do from one of the global powers favorite think-tanks, we would do well to read between the lines.

As German playwright Johann W. Goethe once remarked, "coming events cast their shadows forwards". This is particularly true when those shadows are cast by global power brokers in a position to drive and control those coming events, according to their hearts' desire, and here we are talking about the World Economic Forum (WEF), founded in 1971. Chaired by Klaus Schwab, who sits on David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, means he has direct access to the families of Rockefeller, Bush, Soros, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Rothschild, Lazard, Harriman, Montbatten, Warburg, Schiff, Borbón, and Orange.

Indeed, it is from behind these curtains that the global elite are planning to impose a world government on all mankind; by designing, planning, and executing the macro-changes that they need to impose upon all countries - each according to need and in their due time - as the process of privatizing global power rams forwards on a global scale.

Two interesting issues are being highlighted by the elite through the WEF: the re-engineering of national governments, and the introduction of so-called "X Factors" into the collective psyche.

Over the last couple of weeks a western-backed (and armed) military junta slaughtered many hundreds of Egyptians in broad daylight live on television. The death toll, still concealed, may have been thousands.

The west confined itself to disapproving words and calls for "restraint" on "both sides" - even though the victims were unarmed.

In Syria hundreds of people have just been slaughtered in circumstances which are entirely unclear, and the west is about to launch (in our case without parliamentary approval with the prime minister acting from a beach in Cornwall) a military attack with entirely unforseen consequences on Damascus.

There is a "Wag the Dog" element about this, and indeed the war of President Clinton's penis satirised in that masterful award-winning movie has already proved a handy diversion from Egypt before its even started.

It is entirely implausible that the Syrian regime chose the moment of the arrival of a UN chemical weapons inspection team to launch a chemical attack on an insurgency already suffering reverse after reverse on the battlefield and steadily losing international support with each new video showing them eating the hearts of slain soldiery and sawing of the heads of Christian priests with bread knives.

In the absence of conclusive evidence one would have to believe that the Assad regime was mad as well as bad to have launched such a chemical attack at a time when it is in less danger than it has been for almost a year. I do not believe that Bashar is mad.

© Jacquelyn Martin/APBarack Obama addresses the media from his holiday home on Martha's Vineyard.

I voted for Obama reluctantly, but never did I imagine he would become another Richard Nixon

What are you thinking, Mr President?

Is this really the legacy you want for yourself: the chief executive who trampled rights, destroyed privacy, heightened secrecy, ruined trust, and worst of all, did not defend but instead detoured around so many of the fundamental principles on which this country is founded?

And I voted for you. I'll confess you were a second choice. I supported Hillary Clinton first. I said at the time that your rhetoric about change was empty and that I feared you would be another Jimmy Carter: aggressively ineffectual.

Never did I imagine that you would instead become another Richard Nixon: imperial, secretive, vindictive, untrustworthy, inexplicable.

I do care about security. I survived the attack on the World Trade Center and I believe 9/11 was allowed to occur through a failure of intelligence. I thank TSA agents for searching me: applause for security theater. I defend government's necessary secrets. By the way, I also defend Obamacare. I should be an easy ally, but your exercise of power appalls me. When I wrote about your credibility deficit recently, I was shocked that among the commenters at that great international voice of liberalism, the Guardian, next to no one defended you. Even on our side of the political divide, I am far from alone in urgently wondering what you are doing.

As a journalist, I am frightened by your vengeful attacks on whistleblowers - Manning, Assange, Snowden, and the rest - and the impact in turn on journalism and its tasks of keeping a watchful eye on you and helping to assure an informed citizenry.

Part 1

Prince Charles's friend Nicholas Soames threatened Diana six months before her death and warned her to stop meddling in a controversy over landmines, the inquest heard yesterday.

The jury was told that Diana's friend Simone Simmons had listened in on a telephone conversation at the Princess's invitation in February 1997 and heard the then Armed Forces Minister warn her "accidents can happen".

Jurors heard that Diana became embroiled in political controversy after fronting a Red Cross campaign to bring in an international ban on landmines at a time when the British government wanted an exemption for its forces.

Several senior figures in the then Tory administration spoke out against the Princess, accusing her of being a "loose cannon" and interfering in party politics at a time when Labour favoured the ban - and later brought it in.

'I've got to talk to my British colleague,' said the Russian president as he left a key fuel and energy session to take the phone call.

The contents of the call were not immediately revealed but earlier Russia warned the the US and UK that if they launches military strikes without UN approval they will commit a 'very grave violation of international law'.

UK premier David Cameron earlier returned from holiday and convened a session with military aides before the call with Putin.

Britain, France, Turkey and the US say the recent horrific 'chemical' was perpetrated by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, while Russia suggests it was a ploy by rebels aimed at discrediting the Damascus government.

President Bashar al-Assad stressed that Syria is a sovereign country that will fight terrorism and will freely build relationships with countries in a way that best serves the interests of the Syrian people.

In an interview with the Russian newspaper of Izvestia, President al-Assad stressed that "the majority of those we are fighting are Takfiris, who adopt the al-Qaeda doctrine, in addition to a small number of outlaws."

On the alleged use of chemical weapons, President al-Assad said that the statements by the US administration, the West and other countries were made with disdain and blatant disrespect of their own publics' opinion, adding that "there isn't a body in the world, let alone a superpower, that makes an accusation and then goes about collecting evidence to prove its point."

His Excellency stressed that these accusations are completely politicised and come on the back of advances made by the Syrian Army against the terrorists.

Here is the full content of the interview:

The United States helped Saddam Hussein attack Iran with chemical weapons in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, it has been claimed.

Ronald Regan's administration, who supported the Iraqi dictator topple two decades later by the Bush government, fed information to Baghdad that helped them launch strikes.

U.S. officials gave Saddam's army details about the whereabouts of Iranian forces in 1988 knowing that he would deploy chemical weapons, Foreign Policy magazine reported.

Iraq used mustard gas and sarin in early 1988 in four major offensives which helped bring about the end of the eight-year conflict.

During the whole war, up to 20,000 Iranian troops were killed by mustard gas and nerve agents from Iraq and 100,000 were wounded.

They were able to launch the strikes after being given maps, satellite pictures and other intelligence by the U.S.

The Americans have always said that Iraq did not reveal that they would launch chemical strikes.

But documents released in the National Archives and interviews with former serviceman show that the U.S. acquiesced in the use of chemical weapons as they tried to help Saddam with the war.

As US Army veteran Eric Harroun awaits trial in Virginia for allegedly fighting alongside al-Qaeda supporters, the man's father claims he was working for the CIA and was reporting back to the agency from Syria.

Harroun, a 30-year-old American from Phoenix, Arizona, has been charged by the US government for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (namely a rocket propelled grenade launcher) to conduct an attack against the Syrian government. The US Army veteran dubbed by media 'Phoenix jihadist' appeared in numerous videos alongside members of the al-Nusra Front, designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization in December, but which has also been fighting alongside the Syrian opposition to take down the Assad regime. To date, 29 US-backed Syrian opposition groups have linked with al-Nusra, and have signed a petition calling for the support of the Islamist group that the White House believes is a branch of al-Qaeda.