LEFT OUT IN THE COLD

an article from wsj, it shows how untrustworthy spy agencies are and govts as well.

Caught up in a terrorist rendition debacle, Robert Lady is wanted in Italy, lost his house and marriage, and says he has been abandoned by the CIA. Miami When the anniversary of 9/11 came around this year, Robert Seldon Lady was moving between lowend hotels around Miami. An international arrest warrant keeps him from returning to his home in Panama. He says he's flirting with bankruptcy, fears for his life, and is “getting pretty desperate.“ His marriage is broken. He blames this hard luck on his former employer, the Central Intelligence Agency. A decade ago, Mr. Lady served on the front lines of America's antiterror efforts after 9/11, heading up the agency's base in Milan. In the 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush credited him and his colleagues, albeit not by name, for dismantling several al Qaeda cells in that Italian city. “We've got the terrorists on the run,“ Mr. Bush said. “We're keeping them on the run.“ Mr. Lady's Italian stint capped a near quarter-century covert CIA career in Latin America, Asia and Europe. Three weeks later and a year before his planned retirement, Mr. Lady helped CIA contractors and agents snatch an Egyptian Islamist off the streets of Milan and deliver him to an interrogation cell in Cairo. This so-called extraordinary rendition--one of 130 or so carried out by the Bush administration--set in train events that soured America's relations with Italy and upended the life and career of Mr. Lady and other CIA agents. Saying “I'm fed up with all this,“ Mr. Lady has some extraordinary steps in mind to change his fate. His actions and outspokenness are going to add to the discomfiture of his former bosses at Langley over this messy episode from the early days after 9/11. On Feb. 17, 2003, Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, a heavyset and bearded man in his early 40s, went missing en route to midday prayers at his mosque in Milan. The CIA and Italian police considered the man, better known as Abu Omar, to be a recruiter for al Qaeda. His family and the Italian police had no inkling where he'd gone. Fourteen months later, Abu Omar emerged from jail, called his wife from Egypt and described his abduction and mistreatment in captivity. Italian authorities listened via a telephone tap on his home phone in Milan and started to look into a kidnapping. Their investigation led to the CIA and its man in Milan. The political mood in Italy, initially sympathetic to the U.S. in the wake of 9/11, turned to outrage when the alleged breach of sovereignty was revealed in 2005. An aggressive magistrate named Armando Spataro got indictments for 26 Americans and five Italians, the first known time that employees of the CIA had ever been prosecuted by a friendly government for doing their jobs. A judge brought separate terrorism charges against Abu Omar, but only the CIA case went to trial. The Americans were convicted in absentia. The debacle came to be known inside the agency as the “Italian job.“ Mr. Lady, who had planned to retire and become a security consultant from a farm house he bought with his life savings in Italy's Piedmont region, received the stiffest sentence--eight years in prison, increased to nine on appeal. Before the case went to trial, Magistrate Spataro sued to seize the house and use the proceeds to pay damages to Abu Omar. Mr. Lady fled Italy in 2005 and lost the property. His 30year marriage, he says, was another casualty. Of all the convicted agents, Mr. Lady is the only one who still faces prison time, which was reduced by the justice ministry to six years in 2012. He's also the only one whom the Italians are actively trying to catch. He was told by the U.S. government that an arrest warrant was issued by Italy last year, though he has not seen it. Two months ago Panama detained him for 24 hours but ignored calls from Italy's justice minister to hold him longer. The U.S. told him to leave his home and business in Panama at his own expense, he says, and lie low in the U.S. for a couple of years. Mr. Lady, who is 59, says he needs to travel internationally to make a living. Over dinner in Coral Gables with me and his lawyer, Tom Spencer, Mr. Lady calls himself “a piñata.“ After retiring from the CIA in 2004, he says he was on his own and an easy target: abandoned by the U.S. and scapegoated by the Italians. The intelligence agency “rallied around the [CIA] leadership to protect them,“ he adds. His cover in Milan was deputy consul working for the State Department, but the U.S. government didn't fight the Italians to honor his diplomatic immunity. The U.S. did assert diplomatic immunity for Jeffrey Castelli, the CIA's station chief in Italy and his boss, but it was eventually revoked by an Italian judge. Mr. Castelli was convicted on kidnapping charges in February and sentenced to seven years in prison, pending an appeal. Washington has never admitted that the agency was behind the rendition. “I'm a victim of American waffling,“ Mr. Lady says. “Italy is a very close ally“ and the U.S. government “should have come up with a solution.“ He says he received some compensation from the government but will only say it wasn't enough to cover his losses. The agency isn't paying his legal or any other costs now, he says. The politics of antiterrorism has changed in the U.S., and rendition is out of official favor even if it is still practiced. Mr. Lady says he has called phone numbers at CIA headquarters that he was once given, but with no luck: “I know they have instructions, `Don't answer him.' It feels bad that I gave them 24 years of my life, and I get treated like that. . . . As far as they're concerned, if I put a gun to my head and blew my head off, they'd be happy. The problem would be over. They would bring out the champagne.“ Telling his story, Mr. Lady layers his bitterness, which inevitably sounds self-serving at times, with an easy Latin manner. (He was born to an American father and Honduran mother and raised in Honduras.) While his travails have gotten a little attention in the U.S., Mr. Lady is a poster child for Bush-era antiterror policy in Italy. He's taking his appeals now to the Italian government. On Sept. 11 this year, he sent a letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to ask for “personal forgiveness and legal pardon.“ Mr. Lady says he saved Italian and American lives by foiling multiple terror attacks. “I can assure you that at all times, I was informed that my activities were in accordance with United States, Italian and International law and vetted by very high officials,“ he wrote in the pardon appeal. Those officials who ordered and approved the Abu Omar rendition were never charged with a crime, he pointed out. Mr. Lady says he won't wait forever for Italy to answer. He's ready to take responsibility--as he says his bosses never have--and turn himself in “on my own terms,“ serve his prison sentence, and get his life back. He may be calling a bluff. Italy has never asked the U.S. to extradite the convicted agents. “If Italy believes they have the political will to arrest a former CIA officer and keep him in jail for six years, my hat goes off to them,“ he says. As the drama has played out, Mr. Lady has been depicted as either the central actor or a marginal CIA dissident. He offers the latter characterization, insisting that he fought the decision to abduct Abu Omar. Sabrina de Sousa, a CIA operative in Rome and Milan who was also convicted in absentia by the Italians, told MSNBC this summer: “Bob absolutely did not want to have this rendition take place.“ Ms. de Sousa still sued Mr. Lady and their boss in Rome, Jeff Castelli, for ruining her career. The case was dismissed. Mr. Lady says he opposed the Abu Omar snatch, but not rendition itself: “I think rendition is the second oldest profession, it has been happening forever.“ He helped organize the capture of drug kingpin Ramón Matta-Ballesteros from Honduras and transfer to the U.S. in 1988, he says. In 1998, Rome asked the U.S. to help extract an Italian mafia boss from his Latin American exile, says Mr. Lady. “He was in a country where he could pay judges and everybody,“ he says, declining to name the country or the don. “We lured this guy to Panama, grabbed him and turned him over to the Italians. No extradition, nothing.“ The abducted man was convicted in Italy, Mr. Lady says. More recently, Italy worked with the CIA to grab an al Qaeda member--a “high-level guy“--and put him into an Egyptian prison “forever,“ he says, but “I can't tell you the details.“ Thinking of his predicament, Mr. Lady says he's struck by “the hypocrisy of this whole thing.“ Bill Clinton approved extraordinary rendition, as has every president since. “In every rendition I have ever been involved in, the local government was a partner,“ Mr. Lady says, and Abu Omar was no exception. Who in Italy knew what about the Omar rendition remains unclear and controversial. The government of Silvio Berlusconi, then in power, denied direct knowledge. The brass at the CIA's Italian counterpart, the SISMI, was aware of the operation. An Italian policeman, who testified that he was tapped by Mr. Lady to take part, stopped Abu Omar on the street to check his documents seconds before American agents threw the cleric into a white van. Mr. Lady denies he recruited the policeman for the rendition, saying “I'm convinced that he was forced to say that so he could get immunity.“ He has no doubts the Italian government was on board. “Everything we did in Italy was joint. Everything,“ he says. “Italy is one of our closest allies. Our only interest in Italy was working on common targets.“ Mr. Lady, who arrived in Milan in 2000, developed close personal relationships with Italian counterterrorism police. He says he brought Abu Omar to the Italians' attention a month before 9/11, identifying him as rising militant. After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, field operatives were under pressure to produce “legitimate, actionable intelligence against terrorists,“ says Mr. Lady. “They were desperate times. We were working endless hours.“ He says his superior, Mr. Castelli, wanted to pull off a no table rendition just to help his own career. He calls Mr. Castelli “human exhaust“ and suggests the feeling was mutual. “Castelli hated me so much,“ Mr. Lady says, “that he wouldn't let me near an operation like that.“ (Mr. Castelli, who has since left the CIA, didn't respond to requests for comment submitted through his office.) The CIA station chief in Rome insisted on grabbing Abu Omar over objections from Mr. Lady and skep ticism in Washington, according to Mr. Lady and Ms. de Sousa. Mr. Lady says Abu Omar was “a bad guy“ but “not a major al Qaeda fig ure.“ His capture, the CIA agent worried, would irritate the Italian police, who had put in time and re sources to monitor him. Once Washington approved the rendition, Mr. Lady says he was told “either do it or get out of Dodge.“ Why not resign? “I was,“ he says with a long pause, “one year away from retirement. Would you throw away 23 years of your career and resign without a pension?“ As Italian investigators showed with excruciating detail, the “Italian job“ was sloppy tradecraft. The sev eral dozen agents brought in for the rendition--many more, says Mr. Lady, than the 20 identified by the Italians--used cellphones and paid hotel bills with credit cards that were easily traced back to them. Italian police raided Mr. Lady's house in 2005. They found a picture of Abu Omar on his computer and a flight reservation to Cairo from Zurich a few days after the IslaZina Saunders mist's rendition. He says he took part in some of the interrogation sessions in Egypt, but never saw Abu Omar tortured. Mr. Lady says the photo came from the Italian po lice and wasn't classified, as press accounts suggested. Still, he made a cardinal mistake of bringing a spy's work home. The Abu Omar case poisoned relations with the Italians and em barrassed the CIA. The fallout has also hurt antiterror efforts, Mr. Lady says: “Politics in Italy has made it so difficult to go after these characters. Throughout Europe you almost have to catch them with a bomb in their hands, and then if it doesn't blow up, they say it's a toy.“ The CIA's bloated bureaucracy has demoralized field agents like him, he adds. After spending several years in the custody of Egypt's Mukharabat without charge, Abu Omar lives to day in Alexandria, Egypt. He's a wanted man in Italy. Stuck in his own legal limbo, Mr. Lady says, “I'm a prisoner, serving time.“ He adds that the agency once told him it had picked up threats against him on al Qaeda Internet message boards. Sometimes, he says, “I wake up in the morning and say I want to shout to everyone, finally tell the truth about everything.“ The classi fied full story would cause a “scan dal,“ in his words. “But I can't. I made a vow and frankly I think I'm going to die with that vow.“ A vow to the CIA, the institution that you say betrayed you? “I made a vow to the flag. The institution, I clean my [expletive] with. My flag, I will never betray. I think the institu tion is betraying my country.“ Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

P Diana Conspiracy

click for better view





www.dailymail.co.uk

Princess Diana, that SAS murder claim - and why it may not be as mad as you think,
says SUE REID

Sue Reid
By
PUBLISHED: 22:13 GMT, 30 August 2013 | UPDATED: 12:44 GMT, 31 August 2013

The final, haunting photo of Princess Diana, taken on the night she died, shows her sitting with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed in the back of a Mercedes car as it roars away from the rear entrance of the Paris Ritz Hotel, heading for the couple’s secret love-nest near the Champs-Elysees.

Diana is twisting her head to peer out of the Mercedes’ rear window, anxiously looking to see if her car is being chased by the paparazzi who had besieged her and Dodi since their arrival in the French capital from a Mediterranean holiday eight hours earlier.

At the wheel is chauffeur Henri Paul. Dodi’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones is in the front passenger seat.
Scroll down for video
Picture 1 above

The haunting last picture taken of Diana shows her peering out the rear window to look for paparazzi. Trevor Ress and chauffeur Henri Paul are also pictured What happened over the next two minutes is central to a new probe by Scotland Yard into an astonishing claim from an SAS sniper, known as Soldier N, that members of his elite regiment assassinated Diana seconds after the Mercedes sped at 63mph into the notoriously dangerous Pont d’Alma road
tunnel.

Many will dismiss Soldier N’s claims as yet another conspiracy theory. After all, millions of words have been written about Diana’s death at 12.20am on Sunday, August 31, 1997. Two inquiries, by Scotland Yard and the French police, have found the deaths were a tragic  accident. An official inquest, which ended five years ago, came to the same conclusion. The world was led to believe the blame lay with the grossly negligent driving of an intoxicated Mr Paul and the pursuing paparazzi.

But — however unlikely they may seem at first glance — I am convinced there is something in Soldier N’s claims.

Ever since Diana’s death at the age of 36, I have investigated forensically the events that led up to the crash and what happened afterwards.

I have spoken to eye-witnesses, French and British intelligence officers, SAS soldiers and to friends of Diana and Dodi. And I have interviewed the Brittany-based parents of the 41-year-old chauffeur Henri Paul. They told me, with tears in their eyes, that their son was not a heavy drinker: his chosen potion was a bottle of beer or the occasional Ricard, a liquorice-flavoured aperitif.

The fact is that too many of these accounts suggest that Diana’s death was no accident.

Picture 2 above
Diana in a hotel lift with Dodi Fayed. Sue Reid believes there may be some truth in he Soldier N's claims

Crucially, my investigations show that the paparazzi who supposedly hounded Diana to her death were not even in the Pont d’Alma tunnel at the time of the car crash.

They also reveal how a high-powered black motorbike — which did not belong to any of the paparazzi — shot past Diana’s Mercedes in the tunnel.

Eyewitnesses say its rider and pillion passenger deliberately caused the car to crash.

In addition, my inquiries unearthed the existence of a shadowy SAS unit that answers to MI6, as well as the names of two MI6 officers who were linked by a number of sources to Diana’s death.

Could the Establishment really have turned Henri Paul and the paparazzi into scapegoats? Could there have been a skilful cover-up by people in powerful places to hide exactly what did happen?

There is little doubt that Diana, recently divorced from Prince Charles, was a thorn in the side of the Royal Family. Her romance with Dodi, though only six weeks old, was serious.

The Princess had given her lover her ‘most precious possession’ — a pair of her deceased father’s cufflinks — and phoned friends, saying she had a ‘big surprise’ for them when she returned from Paris.




Picture 3 above
Dodi had slipped out of the Ritz Hotel, as Diana was having her hair done, to collect a jewel-encrusted ring adorned with the words ‘Tell Me Yes’ from a swanky Paris jeweller. It came from a collection of engagement rings.

Rumours were circulating, too, that the Princess was pregnant. Photographs of her in a leopard-print swimsuit, on holiday in the South of France 14 days earlier, show an unmistakable bump around her waistline.

And, as the Mail revealed after Diana’s death, she had visited — in the strictest secrecy — a leading London hospital for a pregnancy scan just before that photo was snapped.

To add to the disquiet, the mother of a future King of England and head of the Church of England was threatening to move abroad with her Muslim boyfriend and take the royal Princes, William and Harry, with her.

Dodi had bought an estate, once owned by film star Julie Andrews, by the beach in Malibu, California, and shown Diana a video of it. He told her the sumptuous house was where they would spend their married life.

Ostracised by the Royal Family and stripped of her HRH title, Diana was said to be excited by the prospect.

Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, the multimillionaire former owner of Harrods, insists Diana was pregnant by his son and preparing to tell the young Princes about her forthcoming marriage when she returned to Britain on September 1 — the day after the crash — before they went back to boarding school.

However far-fetched it sounds, all the Establishment concerns about Diana were genuine. But could this really have led to her assassination? And if so, how could it have been carried out?

These questions are partially answered by the compelling testimony of 14 independent eyewitnesses near the crash scene that night.





They say Diana’s car was surrounded at the entrance to the Alma tunnel by a phalanx of cars and motorcycles, which sped after the Mercedes.






Picture 4 above
Conspiracy theories have long surrounded Diana's death in Paris in 1997 despite the official finding that it was an accident caused by paparazzi photographers

The assumption has always been that the cars and bikes were carrying the paparazzi. By the Monday morning after the crash, outside the Alma tunnel, a huge message had appeared. ‘Killer paparazzi’ had been sprayed in gold paint on the walls.

No one, to this day, knows who put it there — or why they were not stopped by the French authorities from doing so.

Yet the paparazzi following Diana did not reach the Pont d’Alma tunnel until at least one minute after the crash, so they cannot be to blame.

Indeed, two years later they were cleared of manslaughter charges after the French state prosecutor said there was ‘insufficient evidence’ of their involvement in Diana’s death.

What happened is that the paparazzi had been deceived. In a clever ploy devised by Henri Paul, the Ritz had placed a decoy Mercedes at the front of the hotel to confuse the photographers, which allowed the lovers to slip out of the back door into a similar car.

The last picture of Diana peering from the rear window was taken by a France-based photographer who had seen through the ruse and was standing on the pavement by the hotel’s rear entrance watching as the ‘real’ Mercedes sped off.

Picture 5 above
The allegation that Princess Diana was murdered by the SAS is under investigation Yet that Mercedes was definitely being hotly pursued when in the tunnel. The independent witnesses insist it was being followed not only by the black motorbike, but by two speeding cars, a dark saloon and a white turbo Fiat Uno.

There is no evidence to link these cars or the motorcycle to the paparazzi who had been waiting at the Ritz.

The saloon tail-gated the Mercedes,  which made the chauffeur — thinking, wrongly, he was being pursued by paparazzi — drive even faster and more erratically. Meanwhile, the Uno accelerated, clipping the side of the Mercedes to push it to one side.

This maneuver allowed the black motorbike to speed past Diana’s car, with its two riders wearing helmets that hid their faces.

Witnesses claim that when the bike was about 15ft in front of the car, there was a fierce flash of white light from the motorbike. The suggestion is that this came from a laser beam carried by  the pillion passenger and directed at the car.

The witnesses’ view is that the flash of light blinded Henri Paul temporarily. It was followed by a loud bang as the limousine swerved violently before slamming into the 13th pillar in the tunnel and being reduced to a mass of wrecked metal.

One of those eyewitnesses, a French harbour pilot driving ahead of the Mercedes through the tunnel, watched the scene in his rear-view mirror.

Chillingly, he recalls the black motorbike stopping after the crash and one of the riders jumping off the bike before going to peer in the Mercedes window at the passengers.

The rider, who kept his helmet on, then turned to his compatriot on the bike and gave a gesture used informally in the military (where both arms are crossed over the body and then thrown out straight to each side) to indicate ‘mission accomplished’.

Afterwards, he climbed back on the motorcycle, which raced off out of the tunnel. The riders on the bike, and the vehicle itself, have never been identified.

The harbour pilot, whose wife was with him in the car, has described the horrifying scenario as resembling a ‘terrorist attack’.

So, who could have been driving the bike and the other vehicles that did follow Diana’s car into the Alma tunnel that night?

Picture 6 above
Princess Diana and with Dodi Fayed (pictured together on the night they died) were killed alongside Henri Paul when the car crashed in a Paris tunnel

Could they really have been part of the plot to get rid of Diana and her lover — a plot orchestrated by MI6 or the SAS regiment, as the latest sensational claims suggest?

After Diana’s death, I received a nine-line note in the post containing the names of two MI6 men who have spent their entire careers working at the heart of the British Establishment,  representing the Government as senior diplomats, whom I will call X and Y.

Written in blue felt-tip pen on a flimsy piece of paper ripped from an A4 exercise book, the note said: ‘If you are brave enough, dig deeper to learn about X and Y. Both MI6. Both were involved at the highest level in the murder of the Princess.’ It signed off with the words: ‘Good luck.’

Of course, an unsigned note does not provide firm evidence, or anything like it, that MI6 spies  were operating in Paris that evening or were connected with Diana’s death.

Yet their names came up again when I received a call from a well-placed source within the intelligence services.

Picture 7 above
The families of Henri Paul and Dodi al Fayed (pictured with Princess Diana) have always
believed their was a murder plot

He named the same two men, X and Y, who had overseen the ‘Paris operation’ and said the crash was designed to frighten Diana into halting her romance with Dodi because he was considered an unsuitable partner.

‘We hoped to break her arm or cause a minor injury,’ said my informant. ‘The operation was also overseen by a top MI6 officer known as the tall man, who is now retired and living on the Continent. He admits it went wrong. No one in MI6 wanted Diana to be killed.’

And this week the men’s names were mentioned again, this time by Moscow intelligence.

According to the author of a new book, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR,
knew that X and Y were in Paris on the night Diana died. And after the car crash the SVR set out to find out why.

Gennady Sokolov, whose book The Kremlin vs The Windsors will be published next year, told me this week: ‘Of course our people were following your agents.

They were senior MI6 officers operating secretly in Paris that night, without the knowledge of even French counterintelligence. They left again after she was dead.

‘Her relationship and possible marriage to Dodi was deeply worrying to senior royals in Britain. The Princess’s phone was constantly listened to and she was followed all the time.

‘After the crash, public opinion was deliberately led astray. Scapegoats were created, such as the paparazzi and the drunk driver. There was a dance around Henri Paul, saying he was an  alcohol addict, a virtual kamikaze, who helped to destroy them all. It is total nonsense.

‘From the very beginning, it was clear to me it was not just an accident. My sources in the SVR and other Russian secret services are sure it was a very English murder.

‘They have talked to me about an SAS squad called The Increment, which is attached to MI6, being involved in the assassination.

‘These guys work on the top level without leaving a single trace, and — perhaps — one was on the motorbike following Diana’s car.’ But why did none of this extraordinary story come out at the inquest into Diana’s death, which should have been the final word on it?

It’s true that 14 tunnel witnesses were at least allowed to appear or send their testimonies. But much of their vital information was completely submerged by the sheer volume of evidence  presented over the six months of the hearing.

We heard that chauffeur Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed were killed instantly; that the sole survivor was the bodyguard Trevor Rees Jones, who suffered such devastating facial injuries he has no memory of events in the tunnel, and that with the pulmonary vein in her chest torn, Diana died  nearly four hours later of heart failure and blood loss at Paris’s Pitie Salpetriere hospital.

But we also know that the inquest never unravelled the full truth. More than 170 important witnesses, including the doctor who embalmed Diana’s body (a process that camouflages  pregnancy in post-mortem blood tests) were never called to the inquest.

One radiologist from Pitie Salpetriere hospital, who said that she had seen a small foetus of perhaps six to ten weeks in the Princess’s womb during an X-ray and a later sonogram of her body, was not questioned.

Picture 8 above
Diana with Dodi's father, Mohammed Al Fayed, who has always said that she was pregnant

Instead, she was allowed by the judge heading the inquest, Lord Justice Scott Baker, to send a statement giving her current address in America and no more details.

Crucially, the hearing was cruelly unfair to chauffeur Henri Paul, who was vilified from the beginning.

On the day after the crash, French authorities insisted that he was an alcoholic and ‘drunk as a pig’ when he left the Ritz that night to drive the lovers to Dodi’s Paris apartment near the Champs-Elysees.

It has since emerged that the blood tests on Paul’s body had not been completed when they made the announcement to journalists. Furthermore, the chauffeur had passed an intensive medical examination for flying lessons three days before the crash — his liver showed no sign of alcohol abuse.

A string of witnesses at the Ritz say Paul drank two shots of his favourite Ricard at the bar before taking to the wheel, which was confirmed by bar receipts at the hotel.

However, after a shambolic mix- up over his blood samples (deliberate or otherwise), it was pronounced by a medical expert at the inquest that Paul had downed ten of the aperitifs, was twice over the British driving limit and three times over the French one, when he drove the Mercedes that night.

Today is the 16th anniversary of Diana’s death and there are bunches of fresh flowers on the gilded gates leading to her London home, Kensington Palace. The flowers to commemorate the Princess may be fewer now, but there are still as many questions into her death as ever.

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FIVE rules to better investing

i read a lot on investing and sometimes we come across rules given by pros that  are quite worth adhering to, here below are five by brian hicks of wealth daily:


Note: My rules don't address specific sectors, because sectors that are in favor one decade won't be the next; this is a template for investing in any market sector in any market environment.

1. Protect the cash: That’s how fortunes are made.
   Depending on the market environment, there are times when I make five trades in a day.
   
   But there are also times when there’s no investment to make. I’ve gone days, weeks, even months without deploying investment capital... but when I’m ready, I have a nice big bankroll to use. So be patient.
2. You need to take 100% control.
   As my above experience proves, you need to have 100% control of your financial destiny. If your broker or money manager dismisses your concerns, questions, or objections, fire him immediately.
3. Liquidity.
   Make sure the investments you are in are liquid. If you get stuck in an investment that goes “no bid,” you could be in an investment (housing, for example) for months, even years, with no way out.
4. Trust your instincts.
   If something doesn’t feel right, chances are it’s not. This is why investment newsletters like Wealth Daily exist: The editors at Wealth Daily do not get paid by pitching funds or stocks (like money managers). We get paid by the success of our investment ideas. If you make money from our ideas, you stay with us — if you lose money, you leave us. Pure and simple.
   
   And finally...
5. If you’re going to speculate, go where the boom is.
   This one really is simple. As you know, we’ve been following the boom in the Bakken oil shale and the boom in the Marcellus for years. In fact, we were one of the first investment newsletters to bring this to your attention.
   
   Companies heavily involved in the Bakken are making money hand over fist — and so are the shareholders of those respective companies.

The new American poor: 4 in 5 live in danger of it

this is what is happening now in the usa, not the headline numbers you read from the media, below is a worth reading article from AP.

Debra McCown | AP

Four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.

As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused — on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of race.

(Read more: Poverty rate to hit highest level since 1965: economists)
[Jobless claims up 7,000] PLAY VIDEO CNBC's Rick Santelli reports that initial jobless claims were up 7,000 to 343,000 this week, while durable goods are up 4.2 percent. With Richard Bernstein, Steve Liesman, and Tom Higgins, BNY Mellon's Standish Investment Management.

Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."

"I think it's going to get worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend, but it doesn't generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.

"If you do try to go apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on drugs."

While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government's poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.

(Read more: What is 'wealthy'? $5 million and plenty of cash)

The gauge defines "economic insecurity" as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.

Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones.

"It's time that America comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama's election, while struggling whites do not.

"There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front," Wilson said.

Nationwide, the count of America's poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population, due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white.

More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.

Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.

Buchanan County in southwest Virginia is among the nation's most destitute based on median income, with poverty hovering at 24 percent. The county is mostly white, as are 99 percent of its poor.

More than 90 percent of Buchanan County's inhabitants are working-class whites who lack a college degree. Higher education long has been seen there as nonessential to land a job because well-paying mining and related jobs were once in plentiful supply. These days many residents get by on odd jobs and government checks.

Salyers' daughter, Renee Adams, 28, who grew up in the region, has two children. A jobless single mother, she relies on her live-in boyfriend's disability checks to get by. Salyers says it was tough raising her own children as it is for her daughter now, and doesn't even try to speculate what awaits her grandchildren, ages 4 and 5.

Smoking a cigarette in front of the produce stand, Adams later expresses a wish that employers will look past her conviction a few years ago for distributing prescription painkillers, so she can get a job and have money to "buy the kids everything they need."

"It's pretty hard," she said. "Once the bills are paid, we might have $10 to our name."

Census figures provide an official measure of poverty, but they're only a temporary snapshot that doesn't capture the makeup of those who cycle in and out of poverty at different points in their lives. They may be suburbanites, for example, or the working poor or the laid off.

In 2011 that snapshot showed 12.6 percent of adults in their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in poverty. But measured in terms of a person's lifetime risk, a much higher number — four in 10 adults — falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.

The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, people ages 35-45 had a 17 percent risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk increased to 23 percent during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of poverty jumped from 11.8 percent to 17.7 percent.

Higher recent rates of unemployment mean the lifetime risk of experiencing economic insecurity now runs even higher: 79 percent, or four in five adults, by the time they turn 60.

(Read more: 'Alarming' unemployment could get worse: ILO)

By race, nonwhites still have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90 percent. But compared with the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with more than 76 percent enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or near-poverty.

By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85 percent of all working-age adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.

"Poverty is no longer an issue of 'them,' it's an issue of 'us,'" says Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers. "Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need."

The numbers come from Rank's analysis being published by the Oxford University Press. They are supplemented with interviews and figures provided to the AP by Tom Hirschl, a professor at Cornell University; John Iceland, a sociology professor at Penn State University; the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute; the Census Bureau; and the Population Reference Bureau.

Among the findings:

For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2 million.

Since 2000, the poverty rate among working-class whites has grown faster than among working-class nonwhites, rising 3 percentage points to 11 percent as the recession took a bigger toll among lower-wage workers. Still, poverty among working-class nonwhites remains higher, at 23 percent.

The share of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods — those with poverty rates of 30 percent or more — has increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17 percent of the child population in such neighborhoods, compared with 13 percent in 2000, even though the overall proportion of white children in the U.S. has been declining.

US poverty to hit highest level since 1965

here is an old article from RT, but very much worth reading as the media is not telling you the truth.

US poverty to hit highest level since 1965

Published time: July 22, 2012 17:40
Edited time: July 22, 2012 21:40

Poverty in the US is projected to spread at record levels unseen since the 1960s, affecting many groups including underemployed workers, suburban families and the poorest of America's poor.

­As unemployment aid dwindles and workers grow increasingly discouraged, poverty is reaching every corner of the US. In 2010, a family of four with a pre-tax income of  $22,314 was considered below the poverty line, while an individual with a pre-tax income of $11,139 would have the same status.

The Associated Press surveyed economists, think tanks and nonpartisan academics to estimate the rapidly escalating poverty rate. 2010's poverty rate of 15.1 per cent would only need to increase by 0.1 per cent to surpass what Americans faced in 1965 – but this year, the poverty level is estimated to grow to 15.7 percent.

US poverty reached 22.4 per cent in the late 1950s, and steadily declined throughout the 1960’s.

“I’m reluctant to say that we’ve gone back to where we were in the 1960s,” said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy. “The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon.”

Analysts interviewed by AP estimate that one sixth of the US population – some 47 million people – lived below the poverty line last year. Demographers predict the peak poverty levels to last at least until 2014 “due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 per cent and weak wage growth.”

“I grew up going to Hawaii every summer,” said Colorado resident Laura Fritz, 27, as she filled out aid forms at a county center. “Now I’m here, applying for assistance because it’s hard to make ends meet. It’s very hard to adjust.”

Fritz grew up wealthy until her parents lost most of their money during the housing crisis. While still living in their half-million dollar house, they began to live off of food stamps. Lacking the funds to go to college, the young woman tried joining the army, only to become injured during basic training, she said.

With a baby and a boyfriend who can’t find work, Fritz pays rent with her disability checks and his unemployment checks.

And as the poverty rate remains at its current level, Americans aged 65 and older will suffer most as they become dependent on their Social Security payments.

“I’ve always been the guy who could find a job. Now I’m not,” 56-year old Dale Szymanski told AP. “You keep thinking it’s going to turn around. But I’m stuck.”

And the future looks bleak even to US lawmakers. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee last week that reducing unemployment is “likely to be frustratingly slow.” The chairman predicted that unemployment will still be at 7 per cent or higher by the end of 2014, and that the average increase in new jobs has been shrinking by about 75,000 per month since April.

The outlook is dismal, and some American voters have lost faith in politicians to turn the economy around. But the economy remains the number one issue for voters as the 2012 elections approach, and is expected to continue to dominate the debate.

WHY WE MAY NEED MORE BOND BUYING BY FED, NOT LESS

for many of us or usa citizens, they dont really know what's going on in the usa. there are three municipals, one huge two small, that are going through some sort of bankruptcy process, they are - detroit, the famous calif city menitoned in this blog before - stockton and san bernadino.

with incomes getting lower and real estate recovering only mildly in these muni, they are running out of cash to pay their debt.

if such muni bankruptcies gather momentum, there will be a liquidity crisis, funds drying up for muni with bad finance management and the us federal govt might have to step in, thus causing fed to backtrack on any possibility of tapering.

well, the tapering [whisper not action] might be big ben's motive to make his mark in history now that he is quitting the fed soon. he started the bond buying and he mentioned [not actioned] that it should be stopped, so he wont be blamed like greenspan for his loose money policy, but it cant be stopped as you can see.

RECOVERY and INCOME

we heard so much about the recovery in the us, but other reports are not telling the same story. recovery is very bias towards a small section of the economy esp in sectors related to shale oil/gas operations.

this is why governments all over the world would find their citizens rebelling by the day, it happens even in the us with mcdonald's labor unrest.

read article from cnbc:
   http://www.cnbc.com/id/100980411

Report: Household income below end-of-recession

Published: Thursday, 22 Aug 2013 | 6:24 AM ET

The average American household is earning less than when the Great Recession ended four years ago, according to a report released Wednesday.

U.S. median household income, once adjusted for inflation, has fallen 4.4 percent in that time, according to the report from Sentier Research. The report is based on an analysis of Census Bureau data.

The median, or midpoint, income in June 2013 was $52,098. That's down from $54,478 in June 2009, when the recession officially ended. And it's below the $55,480 that the median household took in when the recession began in December 2007.

The report says nearly every group is worse off than four years ago, except for those 65 to 74. Some groups have experienced larger-than-average declines, including blacks, young and upper-middle-aged people, and the unemployed.

SYRIA

the reasons for war can be imagined [like wmd - weapons of mass destruction, in iraq] or they can be faked like the one in syria, no one really knows who planted or used chemical warfare. but the main reason behind any war move esp in international politics is most likely about money.


checkout an article from a newsletter from wealth daily:

Is America Defending Saudi Interests in Syria?

By Briton Ryle | Wednesday, August 28th, 2013

As usual, when it comes to the Middle East, nothing is ever simple.

The situation in Syria is a perfect example.

As he stepped to the podium on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry's moral outrage at the chemical weapons attack on Syria's civilian population was clear. He's ready to drop bombs.

Of course, any military response won't have United Nations backing. Russia will surely veto any measures before the Security Council. After all, Syria's been a good customer.

But now that Obama's “red line” in the sand has been crossed — on the one-year anniversary of drawing it, no less — some kind of response from the U.S. seems inevitable.

Reports say the bombs could start falling tomorrow.

The U.K. is on board, as Britain is convinced that Assad did it. Turkey's ready to go, with or without any U.N. backing. France is in, too — so long as Uncle Sam takes the lead.

I don't know what's going to happen. Missile strikes seem inevitable.

After the illegitimate war in Iraq, the American people are tired of military action in the Middle East.

Yep, it's never simple in the Middle East...

There's a massive shale formation found in the Kiwi nation that is so huge and untouched, it's literally leaking gas and oil...

Goaded into Moral High Ground?

Over the weekend, former Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the all-important question: Who is the Syrian opposition?

Are they being radicalized by Al Qaeda?

The fact is we don't know whose interests we may be serving if we strike Syria.

Or maybe we do...

I worry that the U.S. is being goaded into taking the moral high ground, and thereby doing someone else's dirty work.

And that someone is Saudi Arabia.

According to the Telegraph, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the head of Saudi intelligence, met with Russia's Putin three weeks ago.

It's reported that he offered Putin cooperation in the oil markets — if Russia stopped backing Syria:

Let us examine how to put together a unified Russian-Saudi strategy on the subject of oil. The aim is to agree on the price of oil and production quantities that keep the price stable in global oil markets...

Bandar reportedly also said:

I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.

A Lebanese news source, Al Monitor, gives more detail, quoting Bandar as saying:

The kingdom can provide large multi-billion-dollar investments in various fields in the Russian market. What’s important is to conclude political understandings on a number of issues, particularly Syria and Iran.

And finally, to seal the deal...

The Syrian regime is finished as far as we and the majority of the Syrian people are concerned. [The Syrian people] will not allow President Bashar al-Assad to remain at the helm. The key to the relations between our two countries starts by understanding our approach to the Syrian issue. So you have to stop giving [the Syrian regime] political support, especially at the UN Security Council, as well as military and economic support. And we guarantee you that Russia’s interests in Syria and on the Mediterranean coast will not be affected one bit.

In the future, Syria will be ruled by a moderate and democratic regime that will be directly sponsored by us and that will have an interest in understanding Russia's interests and role in the region. 

Now, I have no way of knowing if this conversation actually took place. It could be propaganda.

It could also be a pretty clear glimpse of how Saudi Arabia is flexing its oil-might to get what it wants.

And the possibility that the U.S is playing along fills me with unease.

It's Always About Oil

We do not need Middle Eastern oil.

We do not need Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. has become far less dependent on foreign oil than we were just a few years ago. In fact, oil imports are down 50% in two years.

And since our alliance with Saudi Arabia is rooted in oil, we should end it.

Let Saudi Arabia be the region's puppet master, so long as it's not Uncle Sam attached to the strings.

We have the oil we need right here on U.S. oil — in Texas' Permian Basin, California's Monterey Shale, and North Dakota's Bakken.

These oil fields can secure a better future for America. And these oil stocks can ensure a better future for you.

Until next time,

Briton Ryle