The Dow and the S&P both had their worst January in history.

The working man and woman have been ripped off by local, state, federal, and sales tax, as well as legalized usury in the form of high interest credit cards, bank loans, auto and health insurance premiums, surcharges, and a host of other fines, tolls, charges, and penalties, along with inflation and stagnant pay, leaving the average working stiff in hock up to his eyeballs.

This situation will become worse as the other economic dominos begin to fall. Those we trusted in business and government have conspired against their fellow citizens, ruining a once vibrant and healthy economy, putting into peril all working Americans. With the implementation of "Free Trade" agreements, millions of Americans lost good jobs and many are now living just above the poverty level.

Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity — and can change the ads accordingly.

The South Korean government took control of Korea Exchange, the
privately held company that owns and operates the country's stock exchanges, by invoking a monopoly law to designate it a publicly run firm.

FBI officials say they've noticed an alarming rise in the number of local bank robberies - some committed by thieves who just want to pay their bills.

Jainet Rios said two dozen agents broke down her family's front door with their guns drawn Tuesday. Agents were chasing a drug suspect, but they had the wrong house. Officials apologized to the family and fixed the door.

The family said that is not enough.

On January 27th media headlines trumpeted that Palestinians had broken the latest cease-fire: a bomb had killed one Israeli soldier and injured two or three.

Virtually every media outlet reported this action as a major breach in the ceasefire that had begun on January 18th: CNN, AP, NPR, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, ABC, CBS, the Christian Science Monitor, the LA Times, the McClatchy Newspapers, etc, all pinned the resumption of violence on Palestinians.

There’s just one problem. Israeli forces had already violated the ceasefire at least seven times:

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian farmer in Khuza'a east of Khan Yunis on Jan 18

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian farmer east of Jabalia on Jan. 19

As I write, Israel is using a military designed to fight hostile countries to fight a hostile population. In the modern world, this has seldom worked. To defeat a country you destroy its military and capture its territory. But Gaza has little military to destroy, no tanks or aircraft, and Israel already owns its territory. The IDF can invade but, afterward, the population will still be there, and still be hostile. Stabbing jello doesn’t buy you much.

The Canadian government apologized and paid Arar $10.5 million in compensation but the Americans have refused to clear his name.

Troopers were called to the home of Brian Hinkle on Rosemont Avenue in Franklin Township after reports he was in possession of property stolen from an area home sometime last week. Hinkel served as a police officer in the 1980's.

What do we as Americans teach our children, our grandchildren? Well, the lesson of the day is crime pays. Yes, crime definitely pays, 100 percent. If George W. Bush and Dick Cheney walk free into society, then two law breakers are Scot-free.

Across the US, people have been reacting to dire financial circumstances with extreme acts, including murder, suicide and suicide attempts, self-inflicted injury, bank robberies, flights from the law, and arson, as well as resistance to eviction and armed self-defense, says Nick Turse.

Four days before leaving office, and ten days before House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) subpoenaed him to testify, President Bush's White House Counsel instructed Karl Rove not to appear before Congress or turn over any documents relating to his time at the White House.

President Barack Obama issued a withering critique Thursday of Wall Street corporate behavior, calling it "the height of irresponsibility" for Wall Street employees to be paid more than $18 billion in bonuses last year while their financial sector was crumbling.

Attorneys for US citizen Jose Padilla -- who was convicted of material support for terrorist activities in 2007 -- say that high-level Bush Administration officials knew their client was being tortured during the time he was held an enemy combatant in a South Carolina brig, because of the command structure and that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld employed in approving harsh interrogation tactics.

Claiming victory in a devastating 22-day war with Israel in which 100 Palestinians were killed for every Israeli who died, the militant group is reasserting control over the enclave and resuming its central political challenge to the moderate Abbas.

Several thousand Hamas supporters rallied in Gaza on Friday in support of the call to abolish the PLO, made two days ago by the group's exiled leader, Khaled Meshaal.

It might be hoped that we have learned our lessons concerning such things as genocide and ethnic cleansing but as Gaza clearly indicates, we have not. Let me state unequivocally that there is only one kind of holocaust that should ever be on anyone’s mind and that is the holocaust taking place in present time. It is a sad and strange irony-as I have pointed out many times before- that those who have franchised their own holocaust into a brisk and international industry; a blue chip listing on the stock exchange, are the perpetrators of the present genocide.

How would you characterize a physician who refused to tell a patient that he or she was deathly ill? An attorney who didn't warn a client that he was facing dire consequences in an upcoming trial? A dentist who not only refused to pull a rotten tooth but who counseled the patient to "stick with it" and implied that the tooth would get better?

I'd call them crooks. The same goes for bankers and brokers who saw the current financial tsunami coming and deliberately turned their backs on their clients.

Still, there may be a nugget of something to ponder in a statement he made attempting to explain things at the Vatican. In a statement to the weekly pilgrimage audience in the Vatican, in which he attempted to make amends to the Jewish population of the earth, he said: “May the Shoah be a warning to everyone against oblivion, denials or reductionism.” (Shoah is Hebrew for Holocaust.) Those three activities—obliviousness, denial and reductionism—might well account for the egregious harm done to this nation by the Bush administration.

North Korea declared all military and political agreements with South Korea "dead" Friday, warning it would not honor past accords if Seoul continues to push the Koreas to the brink of war.

The top Republican on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee raised a fresh challenge on Thursday to a former Raytheon Co lobbyist nominated to be the deputy secretary of defense.
Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, in a letter to White House budget chief Peter Orszag, said he could not fathom President Barack Obama's nomination of William Lynn, let alone a waiver he was granted from newly ordered ethics standards that Obama issued as one of his first acts in office.

As snowstorms blew into this Northwest city and the economy iced over in December, the occupants of a shelter nestled among industrial buildings on the north side prayed for divine intervention.