New York - America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity, and others view it in much the same light. But, while we can all think of examples of Americans who rose to the top on their own, what really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual's life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents?

Nowadays, these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe - or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data.

This is one of the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries - and its gap with the rest has been widening. In the "recovery" of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators - like wealth, health, and life expectancy - are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.

It would be one thing if the high incomes of those at the top were the result of greater contributions to society, but the Great Recession showed otherwise: even bankers who had led the global economy, as well as their own firms, to the brink of ruin, received outsize bonuses.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has approved a new organizational framework, a plan designed as a "first step" towards standardized cyber operations, according to documents obtained by Defense News.

The framework outlines a command structure that places more authority for both offensive and defensive operations under the geographic combatant commanders and creates Joint Cyber Centers (JCC) to serve as a link between combatant commanders and U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) Combat Support Elements that will provide intelligence information and operational know-how.

In a memorandum marked "For Official Use Only" dated May 1, Panetta authorized the implementation of the transitional framework, called the Joint Staff Transitional Cyberspace Operations Command and Control Concept of Operations, and directed the secretaries of the military departments, chiefs of the military services, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, CYBERCOM commander, and Department of Defense chief information officer among others, to act with haste.

There is no doubt that the elite have always sought to carefully manufacture news and to control the beliefs of the masses through their interests in funding education and in owning media distribution channels for centuries. There is a wealth of history that chronicles the elite's desires to control and sway public opinion by manufacturing news versusthe honorable journalism pursuit of reporting news in a fair and accurate manner. For example, in 1917, Congressman Oscar Callaway stated, as documented in the Congressional Record:

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"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States. These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 170 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest newspapers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interest of the purchasers."

"This contract is in existence at the present time, and it accounts for the news columns of the daily press of the country being filled with all sorts of preparedness argument and misrepresentations as to the present condition of the United States Army and Navy and the possibility and probability of the United States being attacked by foreign foes. This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served. The effectiveness of this scheme has been conclusively demonstrated by the character of stuff carried in the daily press throughout the country since March, 1915. They have resorted to anything necessary to commercialize public sentiment and sandbag the national congress into making extravagant and wasteful appropriations for the Army and Navy under the false pretense that it was necessary. Their stock argument is that it is 'patriotism' They are playing on every prejudice and passion of the American people."

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the massacre was carried out at a farm by pro-regime shabiha militiamen armed with guns and knives after regular troops had shelled the area.

Reports and images of the incident spread rapidly on Twitter and other social networks but were impossible to verify independently given the lack of media access to much of Syria.

Online pictures showed charred corpses lying amid rubble and a dead child who had apparently been shot in the face.

The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), an activist network, had earlier reported shelling in al-Qubair and neighbouring Maazarif, with "dozens martyred and wounded." The villages are about 12 miles from Hama.

Opposition activists said women and children were among the dead when al-Qubair came under heavy tank fire before shabiha fighters moved in on the ground and shot and stabbed dozens of people to death. The LCC counted 78 victims, 35 of whom were said to be from one family.

As many are now well aware, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is pushing for the integration of drones into the national airspace, especially for use by law enforcement and unsurprisingly a bill was passed and signed into law doing just that.

This is disturbing to some, for good reason. It has become clear that when you give the federal government an inch, they will take a mile. This can be seen quite plainly in the so-called war on terror and how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has rapidly expanded into a massive agency which regularly violates our rights.

It can also be seen in how some entities will simply give themselves ludicrous powers over the personal information of Americans, such as the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which not long ago gave itself the power to keep the personal information of Americans - with absolutely no links to terrorism whatsoever - for a whopping five years.

A new report from CBS Los Angeles has revealed some disturbing truths regarding the United States military's use of drones in American airspace and their sharing of data with various government entities and law enforcement agencies.

While it is far from news to most that the military is working with law enforcement in this regard, as evidenced by the launching of a military drone from a military base in order to conduct a domestic law enforcement operation, the documents obtained by CBS Los Angeles reveal some new information.

The New York Times has revealed that President Barack Obama hosts a "Terror Tuesday" secure PowerPoint-style teleconference attended weekly by his top 100 intelligence and security officials. After the meeting he goes through a "nominating process" by viewing the "baseball cards" showing suspected terrorists, before personally deciding who is to be assassinated by drones; he also, in some cases, explicitly approves killing the suspect's family if it should be in the vicinity of the strike.

No one should be surprised by what the article reveals. The journalists describe a president "quite comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States" whose drone wars have increased in number and lethality since he ascended to the Oval Office. As a result, it has been plausibly suggested that killing by machine will become the low-intensity warfare option of the future for every nation that can afford the technology, following the lead of the United States.

Knowing that drone strikes are taking place at some place in the world on an almost daily basis and that they have become the chief U.S. counterterrorism tool, one could only conclude that the White House was in the loop on the decision-making. Obama's explanation for his personal involvement - a Harry Trumanesque "buck stops here" decision that he as president wants to take the moral responsibility for the policy - would be more convincing if he would also take legal responsibility for ordering assassinations. As a lawyer, he understands that he might somehow someday wind up in jail if he accepts legal culpability, whereas moral responsibility in Washington won't buy a cup of coffee.

Climate change alarmists are hard at work, pushing their agenda of man-made global warming which ultimately leads to global carbon taxing through the governance of the UN.

Daniel Sarewitz, professor of science and society and co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, asserts that:

There is not any serious debate about whether anthropogenic climate change is happening. Scientists are certain about that, and it is unfortunate that the national debate is lagging so far behind.

The move toward convincing the general public that man-made CO2 is responsible for global warming partially stems from a study from 2000 which was co-authored by James Hansen, a prominent eco-fascist. Hansen's team admits that, "rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases . . . not by the products of fossil fuel burning, CO2 and aerosols." And then admonishes that the method of controlling emissions output should "focus on air pollution has practical benefits that unite the interests of developed and developing countries. However, assessment of ongoing and future climate change requires composition-specific long-term global monitoring of aerosol properties."

As Hansen states that global warming is not man-made, he still desires to see global governance over emissions regulation and carbon taxation mandated by international law to reduce this imaginary problem.

On a popular online deal today, I saw vitamin infused 'chocolate candy'. These delicious nicely packaged candied morsels are infused with probiotics, calcium, and vitamin D3, then they are covered in creamy milk chocolate.

Sounds good? Maybe a bit like yogurt with probiotics?

Are these getting us psychologically ready for 'special' future medical food, that is, without a 'need' for vaccines?

The latest insanity continues. Chillingly, according to the Houston Chronicle, researchers at Texas A&M University have unveiled a new line of genetically modified (GM) goats that produce a malaria vaccine directly in goat milk.

It is disturbing to think that this 'edible vaccine' will be in the milk of a living being. Yes, no more needles might make some people happy, while making new revenues for pharmaceutical companies.

The old news is that genetically modified mosquitoes (to prevent malaria) have already been 'created' and then released in the wild.These 'flying vaccines' were introduced into the Cayman Islands (2009) and Malaysia (2010). In 2012 they are looking to release the GM mosquitoes in the Florida Keys, (the first place in US).

Wild mosquitoes are essential in the food chain, but, where are the long-term studies for GM mosquitoes ? These living experimentally modified creatures, 'manufactured' by Oxitec, were put into the wild, the food chain, without the consent of citizens. Think of what happens when bats eat the GM mosquitoes? No one knows..... However, it is coincidental that bats now have a mysterious outbreak responsible for bat deaths.

While cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits, a study claims
The vast profits made from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich "consuming" countries - principally across Europe and in the US - rather than war-torn "producing" nations such as Colombia and Mexico, new research has revealed. And its authors claim that financial regulators in the west are reluctant to go after western banks in pursuit of the massive amount of drug money being laundered through their systems.

The most far-reaching and detailed analysis to date of the drug economy in any country - in this case, Colombia - shows that 2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the country, while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates, and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries.

"The story of who makes the money from Colombian cocaine is a metaphor for the disproportionate burden placed in every way on 'producing' nations like Colombia as a result of the prohibition of drugs," said one of the authors of the study, Alejandro Gaviria, launching its English edition last week.

Another conference over. Charlie Skelton talks to some of the 800 activists outside the gates to find out what they learned

What a Bilderberg it's been. Big names, big money, big decisions, big crowds. Somewhere around 800 activists outside the gates (up from about a dozen in 2009), and inside? Well, here's what we learned.

A Mitt Romney attendance?

Four eyewitnesses on the hotel staff told me Willard Mitt Romney was here at Bilderberg 2012. My four eyewitnesses place him inside. That's one more than Woodward and Bernstein used. Romney's office initially refused to confirm or deny his attendance as Bilderberg is "not public". They later said it was not him.

So, was he being crowned, or singing for his supper? Will Mitt Romney follow in the august footsteps of Clinton, Cameron and Blair to have attended Bilderberg and then shortly become leader? Four years ago, Senator Obama shook off his press detail and nipped (many think) into Bilderberg. This exact same hotel.