With the Holiday Christmas shopping season off to a slow start according to preliminary retail sales numbers and with the stock market sitting near all time highs, one can’t help but wonder what will happen when investors realize the economy isn’t really doing as well as we’ve been told by the experts. The evidence suggests that we can expect devastating global economic changes in 2014 as a result of our national debt, further impoverishment of the working class, and massive new tax burdens resulting from President Obama’s health care legislation. The fundamentals, by most accounts, are indicative of an economy on the cusp of a total detonation within the next year. Now, with the prospect of an abysmal shopping season for retailers because of tapped out consumers, the first quarter of 2014 could cause serious problems in financial markets as a result of lackluster performance in corporate earnings. What’s more, the trajectory of our stock markets over the last eighteen months has been eerily reminiscent of markets back in 1929, right before the crash that led to a decade’s long depression in America.

Michael Snyder: Why Are So Many Wealthy People Building Futuristic High Tech Security Bunkers?

The U.S. military will no longer disclose to the media and public whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike, a spokesman said Wednesday, eliminating what had long been an unofficial barometer of conditions at the secretive military outpost. ● Hunger strikes have been employed by men held at Guantanamo since shortly after the prison opened in January 2002 and the U.S. has long disclosed how many are refusing to eat and whether they meet military guidelines to be force fed. Officials have now determined it is no longer in their interest to publicly disclose the information, said Navy Cmdr. John Fiolstrat, a spokesman for the military's Joint Task Force-Guantanamo.

Fred Mazelis: US officials will no longer to provide information on Guantánamo hunger strikers ■ The latest policy and its Orwellian defense (“the welfare of the detainees!”) are in some ways the logical extension of the longstanding practice of brutal force-feeding of hunger striking prisoners, in which a nasogastric feeding tube is forced into their stomachs, causing great pain. The practice has been widely denounced as a form of torture. The American military had earlier concluded that force-feeding was necessary because it feared that deaths caused by the protests would focus greater worldwide attention on the inhuman conditions at Guantánamo, as well as the by now well-known fact that the vast majority of the detainees are guilty of nothing, even by the legally dubious standards of the US “war on terror.” Apparently the US government has now decided that it would be even more effective to pretend that the remaining 162 prisoners at Guantánamo do not exist.

Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama. | The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The US National Security Agency has considered spying on Australian citizens without the knowledge or consent of the Australian intelligence organisations it partners with, according to a draft 2005 NSA directive kept secret from other countries. The draft directive leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals how the NSA considered the possibility of "unilaterally" targeting citizens and communication systems of Australia, New Zealand and Canada – all "5-Eyes" partners which it refers to as “second party” countries.

L'Espresso: Revealed: How the Nsa Targets Italy

UK security agency GCHQ gaining information from world's biggest internet firms through US-run Prism programme. | The UK's electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence from the world's biggest internet companies through a covertly run operation set up by America's top spy agency, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. The documents show that GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, has had access to the system since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from it last year. The US-run programme, called Prism, would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside the UK. The use of Prism raises ethical and legal issues about such direct access to potentially millions of internet users, as well as questions about which British ministers knew of the programme.

John Chan: Biden lectures Chinese leaders on “human rights” In a provocative move that will further strain already tense relations with China, US Vice President Joe Biden made a point of sharply criticising the Chinese government over “human rights” in a speech yesterday to American business leaders in Beijing. Biden called on China to “open its politics and society as well as its economy,” so that people could “speak freely” and “challenge orthodoxy” and “newspapers can report the truth without fear of consequences.” He declared: “We have many disagreements, and some profound disagreements [with China], on some of those issues right now, in the treatment of US journalists.” Biden’s call for “human rights” in China is deliberately provocative. “Human rights” has been the political banner under which US imperialism has ruthlessly prosecuted its interests around the world, including waging wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. As the US has strengthened its military alliances and strategic partnerships as part of the “rebalance to Asia,” it has sought to justify this menacing network as the partnership of Asian “democracies” such as Japan, Australia and India, in opposition to the “authoritarian” regimes of China and Russia.

Biden’s remarks came [after] a tense four and a half hour meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday focussed China’s recently proclaimed air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea. China’s declaration of the ADIZ was in response to mounting pressure from the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” which has encouraged Japan to take a more assertive role in Asia. Beijing’s inclusion of the disputed islets in its ADIZ was a rather reckless step calculated to advance its claims over the uninhabited rocky outcrops. The US has exploited the issue both to intensify pressure on China, and consolidate its military alliances with Japan and South Korea. The Biden-Xi meeting did nothing to resolve the tensions.

In a rather chilling remark, he did not rule out war, but declared instead that “there’s nothing inevitable about a conflict with China.” In that context, he criticised China’s “sudden” announcement of an ADIZ as causing “significant apprehension in the region.” Biden’s threat was clear. Unless Beijing is prepared to accommodate to the dictates of the US imperialism, including guaranteeing the rights of American capital in China, the US will mobilise its diplomatic and military resources to thwart the interests of its potential rival, including through the means of war.

A curious crowd grew. Police officers arrived and tried to corral Mr. Broadnax, a 250-pound man. When he reached into his pants pocket, two officers, who, the police said, thought he was pulling a gun, opened fire, missing Mr. Broadnax, but hitting two nearby women. Finally, a police sergeant knocked Mr. Broadnax down with a Taser. The shootings once again raised questions about the police use of firearms in crowded areas and drew comparisons to a shooting a year ago, when officers struck nine bystanders in front of the Empire State Building when they killed an armed murder suspect. Initially Mr. Broadnax was arrested on misdemeanor charges of menacing, drug possession and resisting arrest. But the Manhattan district attorney’s office persuaded a grand jury to charge Mr. Broadnax with assault, a felony carrying a maximum sentence of 25 years. Specifically, the nine-count indictment unsealed on Wednesday said Mr. Broadnax “recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death.”