The sharp rise in income inequality across the world is one of the most worrying developments of the past 200 years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said on Thursday. ● In a flagship report tracking wellbeing in eight world regions over two centuries, the OECD noted that personal incomes had diverged in the last 30 years as GDP (gross domestic product) per head had risen. "It is hard not to notice the sharp increase in income inequality experienced by the vast majority of countries from the 1980s. There are very few exceptions to this," said OECD economists in the report. Income inequality, as measured by pre-tax household income across individuals within a country, declined in most Western countries from the end of the 19th century until about 1970, when it began to rise.

PressTV: The pay gap between CEOs and workers is much worse than you realize

Tony Cartalucci ■ Just as the US admitted shortly after the so-called "Arab Spring" began spreading chaos across the Middle East that it had fully funded, trained, and equipped both mob leaders and heavily armed terrorists years in advance, it is now admitted that the US State Department through a myriad of organizations and NGOs is behind the so-called "Occupy Central" protests in Hong Kong. [...] Of course, NED and its many subsidiaries including the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute do no such thing as "promoting democracy," and instead are in the business of constructing a global network of neo-imperial administration termed "civil society" that interlocks with the West's many so-called "international institutions" which in turn are completely controlled by interests in Washington, upon Wall Street, and in the cities of London and Brussels.

legitgov: Hong Kong's 'Occupy Central' is US-backed Sedition
Moon of Alabama ■ The (NED Financed) Hong Kong Riots
Peter Symonds ■ Student leaders threaten to escalate Hong Kong protests
China warns of ‘unimaginable consequences’ if pro-democracy campaign demonstrations continue

Israel is continuing its push for [its illegal] expansions into the occupied territories, with anti-settlement group Peace Now reporting the government had quietly approved 2,610 new settler homes in the occupied East jerusalem neighborhood of Gival Hamatos. ● The plan for the homes was initially proposed back in December of 2012. The Jerusalem municipality sat on the plan nearly two years, and then offered no announcement with its approval. The timing of the revelation was inconvenient to the Netanyahu government, coming just hours before the prime minister met with President Obama. Obama was critical of the plans to expand settlements, saying that they imperil the peace process. Jerusalem officials insisted the plan’s approval was a “technicality” [i.e. stealing other people's land is routine] and that the new constructions would "contribute culturally to the city". The new settlement would connect the Gilo settlement and Talpiot, and mean there would no longer be connections between the Palestinian city of Bethlehem and the Palestinian neighborhoods left in occupied East Jerusalem.

Earlier this morning, Ukrainian forces shelled a school playground in the rebel capital city of Donetsk, killing at least 10 people, one of whom was identified as a rebel fighter, and the others all civilians. ● The attack occurred shortly after the school-day began, so none of the students themselves were at the playground at the time. The school’s biology teacher, along with one of the students’ parents, were among the slain, however. The Ukrainian military, as usual, inexplicably claimed that the rebels had launched the attack, on a school in their own territory, while the rebels insisted that the military was targeting their fighter, and that the death toll was higher, with two other unidentified victims among the slain.

Itar-Tass: Ukrainian soldier admits killing civilians in Luhansk || Sergei Litvinov, a private of the Dnieper battalion has admitted killing women and children in the Luhansk region for remuneration offered by tycoon Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Russia’s Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said on Wednesday. The Russian Investigative Committee has brought official charges against Sergei Litvinov for murdering innocent civilians during the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. “Litvinov has testified that he personally killed peaceful civilians, including women and children who were not linked to the military conflict, in the villages of Melovoye, Shirokiy, Makarovo and Kamyshnoye /in Ukraine’s Lugansk region/ on the basis of information provided by anonymous sources,” Vladimir Markin, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, said, adding Litvinov had received remuneration from oligarch Igor Kolomoisky’s personal funds for committing the murders.

The Republicans and Democrats play for the same Corporate American team. It is all window dressing to keep us divided cheering for our 'Red' team wedge issue or our 'Blue' team wedge issue while they rob us blind. Sorry, there is no change. It is the same basic course of action only it is now delivered with a more eloquence. The players of each team will never enact any accountability on each other. It is the people of this country that must demand that. We encourage you to copy and repost this and any of our videos in the hope of educating more people. Every ripple counts.

Carl Herman ■ Psychopaths: the perfect academic word for US political, economic “leadership”
Cora Currier ■ The Gov't Wants Guantanamo Force-Feeding Hearing Kept Secret

US Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus says an American warship is headed to the Persian Gulf to conduct air operations against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. ● The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and the rest of the strike group are set to relieve the USS George H.W. Bush, which has been stationed in the region since June. The Pentagon launched airstrikes against ISIL targets in Iraq last month. A US-led coalition began military campaign against the group in Syria in September. Mabus told reporters in Washington on Tuesday that US warplanes have conducted about 25 percent of over 260 bombing missions over Iraq and Syria since the bombing campaign began August 8. “We can stay for as long as we need to stay based on the normal rotation of our ships,” Mabus was quoted as saying by Stars and Stripes. “It is sustainable for as long as we need to be there.”

RT.com: US tanks arrive in Baltics, Poland requests greater US military presence

A Michigan mother says that she is devastated because Kalamazoo County is foreclosing on her home after brain bruises from a car accident caused her to miss a single tax payment two years ago. ● A Michigan mother says that she is devastated because Kalamazoo County is foreclosing on her home after brain bruises from a car accident caused her to miss a single tax payment two years ago. Deborah Calley told WITI that she paid cash for her dream home in 2010. She had thought that it would make raising two children easier while she was recovering from the traumatic car accident. But that dream was shattered when she was notified that the county was foreclosing on her home over a missed property tax payment. “When I paid the taxes in 2012 right there in Richland, no one said, ‘Oh, well you still owe money for 2011,'” Calley said. “So, I didn’t really have a clue. I thought I was right on time.”

An estimated 35,000 pacific walrus have been spotted ashore on a beach in north-west Alaska. ● Unlike seals, the mammals cannot swim indefinitely and are now coming ashore in record numbers as they struggle to find sea ice for resting in the Artic. They use their tusks to "haul out," or pull themselves onto an ice floe or rocks. ● The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) photographed the huge gathering about five miles north of Point Lay. Point Lay is an Inupiat Eskimo village 300 miles southwest of Barrow and 700 miles northwest of Anchorage. The enormous herd was spotted during NOAA's annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey, said spokeswoman Julie Speegle. The survey is conducted with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency that oversees offshore lease sales. ● Pacific walrus spend winters in the Bering Sea. Females give birth on sea ice and use ice as a diving platform to reach snails, clams and worms on the shallow continental shelf. As temperatures warm in summer, the edge of the sea ice recedes north. Females and their young ride the edge of the sea ice into the Chukchi Sea, the body of water north of the Bering Strait. In recent years, sea ice has receded north beyond shallow continental shelf waters and into Arctic Ocean water, where depths exceed two miles and walrus cannot dive to the bottom.

Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to scrap the Human Rights Act if the Conservatives are re-elected in Britain’s 2015 general election. The controversial proposal has stoked the ire of civil rights groups across the nation. ● Speaking on the final day of the Conservative Party’s four-day conference, Cameron pledged to do away with the Act and replace it with a British “bill of rights.” However, the prime minister did not explicitly confirm that a future Conservative government would withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights – a move that would have far-reaching repercussions for Britain’s relationship with Europe. Legal experts and civil liberties campaigners suggest the PM’s pledge to repeal the Act could radically transform Britain’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). ● Kate Allen, head of Amnesty International, denounced the PM’s proposal, emphasizing the Human Rights Act has historically been a bedrock of social, legal, and economic protection. “It’s disappointing to hear the PM vowing to scrap the Human Rights Act when it has done so much good. We should be defending it,” she said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that more than 400 bodies have been discovered in mass graves near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. “This is obviously a war crime. Already more than 400 bodies have been discovered in [mass] graves outside Donetsk and we hope that western capitals will not hush up these facts [because] they’re horrific,” Lavrov said.

Nearly 40 years ago, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger mapped out secret contingency plans to launch airstrikes against Havana and “smash Cuba,” newly disclosed government documents show. ● Mr. Kissinger was so irked by Cuba’s military incursion into Angola that in 1976 he convened a top-secret group of senior officials to work out possible retaliatory measures in case Cuba deployed forces to other African nations, according to documents declassified by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library at the request of the National Security Archive, a research group. The officials outlined plans to strike ports and military installations in Cuba and to send Marine battalions to the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay to “clobber” the Cubans, as Mr. Kissinger put it, according to the records. Mr. Kissinger, the documents show, worried that the United States would look weak if it did not stand up to a country of just eight million people.

New York Daily News: "I think we are going to have to smash Castro"
Cuban News Agency: Former US State Secretary Henry Kissinger Planned to Attack Cuba in 1976

Why should we care? Why should we pay attention to this? ■ I think most Americans have no idea of the scale and scope of mass incarceration in the United States. Unless you’re directly impacted by the system, unless you have a loved one who’s behind bars, unless you’ve done time yourself, unless you have a family member who’s been branded a criminal and felon and can’t get work, can’t find housing, denied even food stamps to survive, unless the system directly touches you, it’s hard to even imagine that something of this scope and scale could even exist. But the reality is that today there are more African Americans under correctional control in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the civil war began. More black men are disenfranchised today as a result of felony disenfranchise[ment] laws. They were denied the right to vote in 1870, the year the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting the laws that denied the right to vote on the basis of race.

Frontline: Solitary Nation + Prison State (Videos)
Lance Tapley ■ The Worst of the Worst: Supermax Torture in America
Stephen Lendman ■ Filling Prison Beds for Profit + Torture in US Prisons

The cruel decision by judge Steven Rhodes is an object lesson for the entire working class. Rhodes exposed the logic of the capitalist system, the ruthlessness of the corporate and financial aristocracy that oversees it and the class character of all the institutions of the state. ● In a ruling on Monday, the federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy of Detroit declared that workers, youth and retirees have no “fundamental right” to water, as he threw out a lawsuit challenging the city’s policy of shutting off tens of thousands of residents from one of the most fundamental necessities of life. Attorneys for the plaintiffs, which included victims of the water shutoffs, argued that irreparable harm had been inflicted on their clients and residents of Detroit. If the policy continued, they contended, it could lead to the outbreak of disease and death. Rhodes acknowledged that such harm had occurred and that “water is a necessary ingredient for sustaining life.” Nevertheless, he insisted, a finding of irreparable harm “does not suggest that there is a fundamental enforceable right to free or affordable water. There is no such right in law. Just as there is no such affordable right to other necessities of life such as shelter, food and medical care.”