Unemployment, Homelessness, and Debt: The Plight of the Young

Adnan Al-Daini

“Unemployment sucks. Youth unemployment sucks even more”

It is not a good time to be young. Our youth are bearing the brunt of the economic depression and its self-defeating solution of austerity and cuts. The future to them looks bleak; unemployment, debt and homelessness in various combinations, or all three beckon. Of course these three scourges (unemployment-debt-homelessness) are linked.

Youth unemployment (16-24 years old) is now 20.7 % in the UK. The average across the EU is 22.4%, with Greece and Spain leading the misery index at 52.8 % and 52.7 % respectively.

A report entitled “Youth unemployment: the crisis we cannot afford” produced by ACEVO (Association of Chief Executive of Voluntary Organizations) puts the human cost thus:

“Unemployment hurts at any age; but for young people, long-term unemployment scars for life. It means lower earnings, more unemployment, [and] more ill health later in life. It means more inequality between rich and poor – because the pain hits the most disadvantaged.”

The report quantifies the financial cost as follows:

“The human misery of youth unemployment is also a time-bomb under the nation’s finances. At its current rates, in 2012 youth unemployment will cost the [British] exchequer £4.8 billion (more than the budget for further education for 16-to-19-year-olds in England) and cost the economy £10.7 billion in lost output. But the costs are not just temporary. The scarring effects of youth unemployment at its current levels will ratchet up further future costs of £2.9 billion per year for the exchequer (equivalent to the entire annual budget for Jobcentre Plus) and £6.3 billion p.a. for the economy in lost output. The net present value of the cost to the Treasury, even looking only a decade ahead, is approximately £28 billion.”


Democrats Throw Palestinians Under the Bus

Stephen Lendman

Photo: Schumer calls the Jerusalem platform omission a 'mistake'. Luckily for the delegates, they saw their mistake in time and hastily corrected the platform. You see, AIPAC knows all there is to know about democracy. Paraphrasing Orwell's Animal Farm, we now happily bleat: All animals are chosen, but some are more chosen than others. - Or if you like, "Napoleon is always right." -Ed.

On Wednesday evening, Democrat convention delegates took three voice votes calling Jerusalem Israel's capital. Each time, nays sounded louder than yeas.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa chaired the convention. Despite boos and no votes more audible than yes ones, he declared rewriting platform language policy. Doing so violates international law and justice. Obama caved to AIPAC and other Israeli Lobby organizations. Pandering to Lobby pressure and Israeli lawlessness is policy. Palestinians don't matter so ignore them. Spurning international law is OK.

In 1947, the UN designated Jerusalem an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council. The area includes Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Beit Sahour. It encompasses Christian and Muslim holy sites. After Israel's 1947-48 War of Independence, it was divided between Israel and Jordan. During Israel's 1967 Six-Day War, East Jerusalem was captured and occupied. It remains so lawlessly today.


The Democratic convention: A scripted and empty spectacle

Patrick Martin


Michelle Obama 'loves her husband more now than she did four
years ago
'? The wives & family of all the people that have seen
their loved ones tortured and killed by Obama during his presi-
dency, what would they think about this tasteless spectacle?

The platform is discreetly silent on Obama’s claim of presidential authority to assassinate American citizens. Indeed, the word “drone” makes no appearance in the 80-page document.

As the Democratic National Convention went into its second day Wednesday, the predictable and banal character of this event became increasingly evident. Representing one of the two parties of American big business, the delegates assembled in Charlotte are a million miles away from the real conditions of life facing working people in the United States.

Speaker after speaker has sought to present the Democrats as the party more sympathetic to the plight of workers, young people, the unemployed, the poor, the sick and the elderly. But the speeches, devoid of any actual political content, have only demonstrated the vast social gulf separating the delegates, drawn largely from the more privileged layers of the upper-middle class, and the masses of working people.

Some speakers attempted to bridge the gulf with demagogy, usually of a right-wing populist and nationalist character, like the remarks of former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley on Tuesday.

Others told personal stories aimed at demonstrating their own rise from humble beginnings, like the keynote speaker, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. These accounts, usually of cloying sentimentality, aimed only to distract attention from the right-wing, pro-corporate policies of the Democratic Party.


What Bibi Wants

Philip Giraldi

It is September. And as surely as the swallows are preparing to depart Capistrano, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be arriving in New York. It is an annual ritual, with Netanyahu explaining to a skeptical U.N. General Assembly why Israel is not bound by the rules that most other nations observe. Last year the theme was Palestinian statehood, meaning that the Palestinians should not have any such thing until Israel says it’s okay. This year it is all about Iran, with Netanyahu preparing to “tell the nations of the world in a clear voice the truth about the terror regime of Iran which represents the greatest threat to world peace.”

Bibi will be in the U.S. for at least three days, and it is not certain whether he will meet with either President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney. I believe that he will likely meet with both because he knows that he has them in a vulnerable position that he will want to take advantage of to maximize what he can get out of them. He already has a commitment from Romney to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, which would make the United States the only nation to have its diplomatic mission in the disputed city that Israel claims as its capital, but this time he will be shooting for something much bigger. He wants nothing less than war with Iran, and he expects the United States to provide him with a casus belli, to set a date for the war to begin, and to actually do the fighting for him.


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