Stephen Lendman

On August 14, Obama did what he does best, deceiving and betraying the public. Again it was on the Gulf disaster, saying:

"Today, the well is capped, oil is no longer flowing into the Gulf, and it has not been flowing for a month....I also want to point out that as a result of the cleanup effort, beaches all along the Gulf Coast are clean and safe and open for business....But I won't be satisfied until the environment has been restored, no matter how long it takes."

False on all counts. The Macondo well was capped, but video and other evidence show continued leakage, an organization called Concerned Citizens of Florida (CCF), saying:

"....government cannot be relied upon to impart all the information that we need to make informed and necessary decisions. We know that they will not (and have not) respond(ed) quickly (and adequately) enough to this unfolding disaster or perform to the standard that is required to meet it head on." Nor will the major media, "act(ing) as a mouthpiece for both government and industry."

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Barry Grey & Stefan Steinberg
WSWS

"In an editorial published Tuesday, the Financial Times gave an unusually frank assessment of the basic social policy underlying the EU-IMF plan for Ireland. Arguing that the scheme will only intensify the European debt crisis, the newspaper wrote: “It would also give an official EU imprimatur on Europe’s dirty secret: public treasuries will do anything to make private bank creditors whole.”

The “dirty secret” of which the Times speaks is the class policy being pursued in every country—from the US to Europe to Japan and Australia—in response to the financial breakdown of 2008: the looting of public funds to pay off the gambling debts of the global financial elite."

After two days of crisis meetings in Brussels, European finance ministers dispatched a team of officials from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund to examine the books of Ireland’s banks and prepare the way for a “rescue” plan that will shred Irish political sovereignty and impose even more savage attacks on the working class.

The European and IMF intervention is being dictated by global bankers, who are seeking to offload huge losses from the meltdown of Ireland’s banking system onto the Irish population and establish a precedent for similar “stabilization programs” in other heavily indebted countries in Europe and beyond.

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Keith Johnson
Revolt of the Plebs

Live every day as if it were your last…
and then some day you’ll be right.
~ H.H. “Breaker” Morant

History is not likely to speak well of today’s Americans. While the people of nations around the globe stand up to their oppressors, Americans sit idly by as their government runs roughshod over their life, liberty and property.

As we speak, large-scale protests and mass demonstrations continue in more than a dozen countries as citizens strike back against injustice, criminality and brutal austerity measures imposed by their corrupt governments.

In the UK, more than 50,000 students recently took to the streets to protest a spike in tuition costs.

In Greece, workers clashed with police outside the Finance Ministry over frozen pensions and cuts in their salaries.

In Germany, tens of thousands demonstrated over the weekend to protest government policies and social inequities in advance of Merkel’s Democrat party’s national meeting.

In early October, thousands of Icelanders stormed their parliament with renewed anger over the deepening financial crisis, and against those responsible for it. Many of their politicians were forced to flee out the back door, where they were pelted with eggs, flour and tomatoes.

In France, transportation and commerce was brought to a virtual standstill throughout vast portions of the country, as angry citizens railed against their government for increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Press coverage of these events gets little attention here in the United States. When the press does cover it, they portray the demonstrators as greedy layabouts who have become dependant on government handouts. In reality, people of these countries know full well that they are being made to do without in order to enrich powerful central banks that conspired with corrupt politicians to loot their economies. The people have had enough, and they’re letting their governments know it.

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Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator

By simply inverting the x-ray images, you can obtain a full-color, positive, naked
image of the person scanned. And every one of these naked photos taken of you
are stored...forever.

There is a growing public resistance campaign across U.S. airports against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for routinely performing creepy pat-downs on passengers of all ages and all backgrounds and also submitting them to naked body scanners that are not only intrusive and unnecessary, but, according to scientists from Johns Hopkins University, are harmful to people's health.

Despite making no difference in airport security and the fight against government manufactured terrorism, the TSA's unpopular screening measures have not yet been terminated by the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that the TSA falls under. But that may change in the near future as there exists the possibility that millions of fed-up Americans will join John Tyner, who refused to be subjected to the TSA's perverted security ritual at San Diego International Airport on Saturday, and take collective action against the government's invasion of their humanity.

Amidst the renewed public scrutiny of the TSA thanks to Tyner's courageous act of dissent, a public boycott campaign against the TSA's invasive and humiliating techniques was started by James Babb and George Donnelly called "We Won't Fly" which urges travelers to refuse to go through naked body scanners on November 24. They /write:

"We are opposed to the full-body backscatter x-ray airport scanners on grounds of health and privacy. We do not consent to strip searches, virtual or otherwise. We do not wish to be guinea pigs for new, and possibly dangerous, technology. We are not criminals. We are your customers. We will not beg the government anymore. We will simply stop flying until the porno-scanners are history."

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.com began a petition to press Congresspersons to investigate the TSA, which is publicly harassing John Tyner for the crime of refusing to be treated like a slave. Sign the petition HERE. Hamsher also wrote an article called, "Investigate the TSA, Not Tyner," explaining the reasons for the petition, and why Tyner must be aggressively supported for his act of resistance.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

Some 15 percent of US households, 17.4 million families or about 50 million people, were too poor to buy adequate food last year, according to a new report from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). More than a third of these households, with as many as one million children, were missing meals on a regular basis, the study found.

The number of families classified as “food insecure” according to the USDA, which administers the food stamp program, has more than tripled since 2006, before the current economic slump which has brought near double-digit unemployment. Because most people are reluctant to admit they have a problem putting food on the table, particularly when they have children, “food insecurity” was calculated from survey questions about skipping meals or running out of food stamps, combined with comparisons of income and food prices.

Virtually the sole cause of food insecurity in America—the largest producer of agricultural and food products on the planet—is lack of money. The poverty rate has risen sharply over the past three years, with an estimated 50 million people living below the official poverty line, which grossly underestimates the income needed for basic necessities.

Highlighting the significant inequalities in food resource availability across US households, the USDA report noted that the typical food-secure household spent a whopping 33 percent more on food than the typical food-insecure household of the same size and household composition.

In keeping with the Obama administration’s policy of minimizing the depth of the social crisis, the USDA official who released the report, Under Secretary Kevin Concannon, said the latest hunger survey showed a “stabilization” of the problem compared to the year before. In other words, just as many people were hungry in 2009 as in 2008, as though that represented “progress” rather than making permanent a level of social misery not seen in America for 40 years.

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