SilverSeek.com | This has been one of the worst stretches for gold and silver pricewise in quite some time, no secret there.  I have to go back to when silver was in single digits to find a comparable period.   The question on precious metals investors’ minds is whether this bad stretch is going to continue much longer.  Are the past few months setting the stage for a pronounced rebound in prices or has the tide changed for the worse for an extended period of time?  I think the answer can be found in analyzing the following facts.

Numismaster.com | A man who attended a financial conference earlier this year told me that the famous speaker began his presentation by asking the audience how many thought that the price of gold had peaked. He was stunned that almost everyone other than him raised their hands.

Natural News | The United States has been a stable country for most of its 230-plus years, as well as a global hegemonic power since the end of World War II and the world's primary superpower since the fall of the Berlin Wall and theQ crumbling of the Soviet Union in 1990. That kind of long-term stability has led many Americans - too many, in fact - to adopt an attitude of, "It can't happen here - not to us," attitude.

Reuters |  President Barack Obama's administration has decided to give the Pentagon control of some drone operations against terrorism suspects overseas that are currently run by the CIA, several U.S. government sources said on Monday.

Boiling Post | Amongst the many pieces of evidence that come together to paint this picture of American involvement in helping to protect and even foster Khan’s proliferation network is the extraordinary story of former CIA analyst Richard Barlow, who, as a specialist in counter-proliferation in the 1980s, had a chance to discover and expose the shocking truth: that elements in the highest levels of the intelligence community, the state department, and even the White House knew about Pakistan’s procurement activities but actively turned a blind eye to them. Find out more about this remarkable story in this week’s EyeOpener Video Report.

Extreme Tech | Against all probability, a device that purports to use cold fusion to generate vast amounts of power has been verified by a panel of independent scientists. The research paper, which hasn’t yet undergone peer review, seems to confirm both the existence of cold fusion, and its potency: The cold fusion device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline. Even allowing for a massively conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline — which is currently the best fuel readily available to mankind.

Zero Hedge | Two years ago, Zero Hedge first made the observation that the bulk of Fed reserves (also known simply as "cash created out of thin air" because money is first and foremost fungible no matter what textbook theoreticians may claim, and the only cash allocation preference is the capital allocation IRR analysis) had been parked not with US banks, but with foreign banks with US-based operations. We followed that with more analyses,

PJ Media | More whistleblowers will emerge shortly in the escalating Benghazi scandal, according to two former U.S. diplomats who spoke with PJ Media Monday afternoon. These whistleblowers, colleagues of the former diplomats, are currently securing legal counsel because they work in areas not fully protected by the Whistleblower law.

Anti-War |  Antiwar.com is taking the FBI to court. The website’s founder and managing editor Eric Garris, along with longtime editorial director Justin Raimondo, filed a lawsuit in federal court today, demanding the release of records they believe the FBI is keeping on them and the 17-year-old online magazine.

CNS News | As IRS efforts targeting politically-conservative groups gained momentum, George Soros-funded liberal groups repeatedly called on the IRS to investigate conservative nonprofit organizations. While the first reported instances of extra IRS scrutiny for conservative groups began in Cincinnati in March of 2010, the attacks began to pick up steam on a national level soon after Soros-funded groups began firing off letters to the IRS in October of that year - following the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.

WSJ | The U.S. Senate gets a high-profile visitor this week as Apple CEO Tim Cook will press Congress to simplify corporate tax rates. Marketwatch's Robert Schroeder explains. Apple Inc. AAPL +2.23% paid no corporate income tax to any national government on tens of billions of dollars in overseas income over the past four years, Senate investigators found, a revelation that fuels the debate over whether the U.S. tax code needs an overhaul.

Infowars.com | Incarcerated political activist Adam Kokesh, arrested by police for exercising his First Amendment rights during a pro-marijuana legalization protest on Saturday, has been charged with “assaulting a federal police officer,” despite the fact that the video of the incident shows him not resisting arrest.

RT | America’s ticking debt bomb has been reset. Washington has suspended the debt ceiling, setting a date, and not a concrete dollar sum as a deadline, an unprecedented first in US history. Citing ‘extraordinary measures’, the US Treasury has further delayed tackling America’s debt, and will wait until Labor Day, September 2nd, to revisit the burgeoning crisis. The ceiling has been lifted, and the Treasury has promised it will keep cash pumping into government spending programs beyond the debt limit through a series of emergency cash tools.

Cease Fire | FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds was described as "the most gagged person in the history of the United States" by the American Civil Liberties Union. Was the Sunday Times pressured to drop its investigation into her revelations? A whistleblower has revealed extraordinary information on the U.S. government’s support for international terrorist networks and organised crime. The government has denied the allegations yet gone to extraordinary lengths to silence her. Her critics have derided her as a fabulist and fabricator. But now comes word that some of her most serious allegations were confirmed by a major European newspaper only to be squashed at the request of the U.S. government.