From the Trenches World Report

Investment Watchblog

White House again calls for federal employee raise

With the House set to start voting over the next several days on the first of the spending bills for the upcoming fiscal year, the White House has again called for a federal employee raise to be paid in January. “The Administration urges the Congress to provide the proposed 1.0 percent pay increase for Federal civilian employees. As the President stated in his [fiscal year] 2014 Budget, a permanent pay freeze is neither sustainable nor desirable,” the administration said in policy statements on pending bills to fund the Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs departments.   Continue reading “SHOCKING: White House Wants ANOTHER Raise!?!”

Snippits and Snappits – by Noor al Haqiqa

QUESTION:

You’re on duty by yourself walking on a deserted street late at night. Suddenly, an armed man with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, raises the knife, and lunges at you. You are carrying a Glock 40 and you are an expert shot, however you have only a split second to react before he reaches you. What do you do?   Continue reading “Police Dilemma: Joke (or maybe not)”

RT News

Monsanto claims it has no idea how its herbicide-resistant strain of wheat made its way onto an Oregon field. The global biotech giant based in Missouri says it abandoned research on it in 2004 and is mystified by its emergence nearly a decade later.

Monsanto tested the GMO varieties in 17 US states between 1998 and 2004. Although it also tested the GM wheat in Oregon, the company claims it destroyed all of the material upon the conclusion of the program and that it never grew the wheat strain on the farm where it was found last month.   Continue reading “Monsanto can’t explain how GMO wheat survived”

Bloomberg – by Hans Nichols

President Barack Obama is targeting Iran’s currency for the first time under sanctions authorized yesterday as the U.S. increases economic pressure on the Islamic Republic to halt its nuclear program.

Obama signed an executive order that would impose penalties on “foreign financial institutions that knowingly conduct or facilitate significant transactions for the purchase or sale of the Iranian rial,” according to a statement yesterday from White House press secretary Jay Carney. It was the ninth executive order that Obama has signed sanctioning Iran, which will hold presidential elections June 14.   Continue reading “Obama Authorizes New Iran Sanctions Targeting Currency”

McClatchy – by Sheera Frenkel

Lew Rockwell – by William Norman Grigg

Nearly twenty years ago, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh – still basking in his agency’s residual glory from the Mt. Carmel Massacre of April 1993 – visited Moscow to sign a joint cooperation accord with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). After touring the Lubyanka Square headquarters of the Russian secret police, Freeh observed that “Our nations have more in common than ever before.”   Continue reading “The FBI: An American Cheka”

Newsmax – by Lisa Baron

Secretary of State John Kerry says that the U.S. will sign a controversial United Nations treaty on arms control in spite of bipartisan opposition from lawmakers.

Kerry released a written statement on Monday saying the U.S. “welcomes” the next phase for the treaty, which the U.N. General Assembly approved on April 2 but which gun rights advocates on Capitol Hill fear could lead to new gun control measures domestically, reports Fox News.   Continue reading “Kerry Says US Will Sign UN Arms Treaty, Ignores Congressional Opposition”

RT News

After spending 24 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, a Chicago man has filed a lawsuit claiming that police subjected him to violent torture methods that made him urinate blood to force him to make a false confession.

James Kluppelberg was released from a southern Illinois prison in May 2012 after his case was dismissed, 24 years after he was convicted and locked up for an arson-murder. The man was charged with setting a March 1984 fire that killed a woman and her five children – a felony crime that Kluppelberg confessed he committed.   Continue reading “Exonerated Chicago man claims police tortured him into confession”

RT News

As New York City continues to rebuild and reimburse those residents displaced by Hurricane Sandy at least one man, a US Army veteran, was refused help because of a strict federal law that prevents someone from collecting aid on their property.

Vito Colucci Sr., a Staten Island resident who served in the Korean War, was living with his son’s family in New Jersey when Hurricane Sandy hit at the end of October. Colucci was diagnosed with dementia two years ago and submitted an application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) three days after the storm ravaged his Staten Island home, according to the New York Daily News.    Continue reading “FEMA refuses Hurricane Sandy aid to elderly US Army veteran”

RT News

An internal watchdog claims the IRS spent $50 million on ‘inappropriate’ conference funds during a three-year period – news that serves to further embarrass the agency in wake of its targeting of conservative groups.

The Internal Revenue Service allegedly spent nearly $50 million on about 200 employee conferences between 2010 and 2012, during which it frequently provided its workers with presidential hotel suites and allowed them to take dance classes and attend baseball games, according to excerpts from an inspector general’s report slated to be released Tuesday.    Continue reading “IRS wasted $50 mln on luxury hotels, alcohol and baseball tickets”

Raw Story – by Ben Quinn, The Guardian

Heads of big tax-avoiding firms set to attend secretive group’s four-day summit being held near Watford

George Osborne and his Labour shadow, Ed Balls, are on a list of those attending this week’s UK summit of the secretive Bilderberg group alongside the heads of Amazon and Google, both of which are under unprecedented political pressure over their companies’ aggressive tax avoidance policies.   Continue reading “Amazon and Google chiefs join other corporate tax avoiders at annual Bilderberg confab”

The Truth Wins – by Michael T. Snyder

Would you eat a sandwich that contains meat from a chicken that had been fed a steady diet of maggots?  Would you eat a burger that comes from a cow that had been fed lots of gummy worms and expired candy?  Would you eat a burger that is made out of recycled human poop?  Those are just some of the bizarre solutions to the global food crisis that scientists are currently working on.  And without a doubt, we are rapidly approaching a day of reckoning as far as the global supply of food is concerned.    Continue reading “Scientists Plan To Feed Maggots To The Cows And Chickens That We Eat”

Wake Up America – by Susan Duclos

Flashback- January 2013: NBC News “New York lawmakers on Tuesday approved the toughest gun control law in the nation, expanding the state’s existing assault weapons ban and addressing gun ownership by those with mental illnesses in the first major legislative action in response to the Newtown, Conn., school massacre.”   Continue reading “25 Shot In 48 Hours In New York- Bloomberg, Cuomo, How Are Those “Strict” Gun Laws Working For You?”