"Science Daily" - Can't Buy Me Love: Study Shows Materialistic Couples Have More Money and More Problems

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111013085237.htm  ScienceDaily (Oct. 13, 2011) — New research to be published Oct. 13 confirms The Beatles' lyrical hypothesis and finds that "the kind of thing that money just can't buy" is a happy and stable marriage.

Scholars at Brigham Young University studied 1,734 married couples across the United States. Each couple completed a relationship evaluation, part of which asked how much they value "having money and lots of things."

The researchers' statistical analysis showed that couples who say money is not important to them score about 10 to 15 percent better on marriage stability and other measures of relationship quality than couples where one or both are materialistic.

"Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at," said Jason Carroll, a BYU professor of family life and lead author of the study. "There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other."

The findings will be published Oct. 13 in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy.

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"Mimi Whitefield" - China will displace U.S. as top exporter by 2025, HSBC warns

Posted on Wed, Oct. 12, 2011

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/12/126971/china-will-displace-us-as-top.html

Mimi Whitefield | The Miami Herald

October 12, 2011 

An HSBC forecast released Tuesday projects U.S. trade will rise by $4.4 trillion, up more than 62 percent, over the next 15 years, even as the U.S. share of the world market shrinks.

The inaugural Trade Connections forecast by the London-based banking and financial group predicts that the U.S. share of the world market will fall from 11.3 percent (2010) to 9 percent by 2025, and that China’s share of world trade will reach 13 percent by then to overtake the United States as the world’s top exporting nation.

In the short-term, U.S. traders are jittery. The latest HSBC Trade Confidence Index, which also was released Tuesday, found that only 49 percent of U.S. respondents expected a slight or significant increase in trade volumes over the next six months. That was a 13 percent drop from the response in the first half of the year and the lowest confidence level among U.S. traders since the survey was first conducted in 2009.

Forty-nine percent of U.S. businesses surveyed also felt the world economy would decline over the next six months, considerably more than the 30 percent who thought so during a survey conducted in February and March.

The surveys were released at a “Doing Business in Latin America’’ conference that HSBC organized at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables on Tuesday as well as at an HSBC Trade Summit in Hamburg, Germany.

One of the few bright spots for American traders was Latin America, according to the trade confidence survey. Twenty-seven percent said it represented the best opportunity for business growth in the next six months. That placed it just ahead of China (26 percent) as the best prospect.

The surveys come at a time when the U.S. Congress is considering a bill that would punish countries with artificially low currencies, allowing the imposition of additional duties on products from nations that subsidize exports by undervaluing their currencies.

China began allowing its yuan to trade within a narrow daily band in 2005 and since then it has appreciated by more than 20 percent against the dollar, but critics say it is still undervalued, making Chinese exports cheaper.

"Michael McCarthy" - Why protecting the world's wildlife is good for our wallets

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/why-protecting-the-worlds-wildlife-is-good-for-our-wallets-2364701.html

By Michael McCarthy, The Independent UK

Monday, 3 October 2011

A new world body on wildlife and ecosystems protection being set up by the UN must avoid blaming developing nations, where most of the world's biodiversity loss is occurring, says a top British scientist.

Overconsumption by rich western nations is as big a driver of global environmental degradation as the rapidly growing populations of developing countries, says Professor Bob Watson, a leading figure in setting up the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The new body – modelled on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – will assess how and why the natural world is being degraded, what it will cost society, and what can be done to halt the process.

But it must avoid rows between rich and poor countries, says Professor Watson, an ex-head of the IPCC, who is Chief Scientific Adviser to Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. "If they think this is just the white world, the developed world, telling them what to do, that'll be the end of it ... The climate debate has been, 'you rich countries got rich by using cheap fossil fuels, and now you're telling us not to use them.' We must not get into that," he said. Regional assessments of biodiversity problems must be "owned" by the regions concerned, he said. So if there is a regional biodiversity assessment of Latin America, scientists from Latin America will carry it out, not foreign scientists.

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"Kerry Trueman" - Why Danes Are So Much Happier Than Americans

By Kerry Trueman, AlterNet

Posted on October 9, 2011, Printed on October 11, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152673/why_danes_are_so_much_happier_than_americans

Americans may be deeply divided about what ails our country, but there's no denying we're a nation of unhappy campers.

Danes, on the other hand, consistently rank as some of the happiest people in the world, a fact attributed at least in part to Denmark's legendary income equality and strong social safety net.

Forbes recently cited another possible factor; the Danes' "high levels of trust." They trust each other, they trust 'outsiders,' they even trust their government. 90% of Danes vote. Tea party types dismiss Denmark as a hotbed of socialism, but really, they're just practicing a more enlightened kind of capitalism.

In fact, as Richard Wilkinson, a British professor of social epidemiology, recently stated on PBS NewsHour, "if you want to live the American dream, you should move to Finland or Denmark, which have much higher social mobility."

While we debate whether climate change is real and a tax on unhealthy foods is nanny state social engineering, the Danish are actually trying to address these problems head on.

They can afford to, because they don't spend all their waking hours worrying about whether they're about to lose their job, or their house, or how they're going to pay their student loans, or their health insurance premiums.

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"Mercedes Diane" - Veterans protesting at Smithsonian met with pepper-spray

• By Mercedes Diane ..., DC Civil Rights The Examiner
• http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-washington-dc/veterans-protesting-at-smithsonian-met-with-pepper-spray

Washington, DC -- All too often, when there is criticism of U.S. military actions it is the service members who receive the force of the backlash.  They are called criminals, they are accused of being brainwashed, and it is they that are punished when something goes wrong.  However, many sometimes feel that when they do speak out against U.S. military action, they do so without support and with the threat of being accused of being traitors hanging over their heads.  Veterans, on the other hand, are better positioned to be the voice of military personnel.

By giving first hand accounts of atrocities they’ve witness and the perceived senselessness of those atrocities, they leverage the fact that they have followed orders and have fought to defend freedom of speech and the right to protest.  Nevertheless, yesterday, activist where shocked and outraged to learn that not even veterans are safe from police aggression when employing their Constitutional rights, the very rights they had once laid their lives on the line to protect.

Approximately 50 members of Veterans For Peace (VFP) participated in a march this afternoon from Freedom Plaza to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on the National Mall.  The museum was featuring an exhibit on unmanned drone bombers that a group of about 250 people from the October2011.org encampment at Freedom Plaza intended to protest.

'We had marched from the Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square occupations, taking over the streets of DC.  The museum knew we were coming.  Some of our group got in and dropped a banner.  Hundreds of us did not.  Instead, we were greeted at the door with cans of pepper spray.'  We intended to hold signs and sing inside the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, protesting its promotion of unmanned drones, missiles, and bombs, including its sponsorship by and promotion of weapons corporations.  We don't have any museums promoting health coverage or education or retirement security.' This was the statement given by David Swanson is the author of 'War Is A Lie.'

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"Melissa Gira Grant" - Sex Work to Pay Off College Loans? How the College Debt Racket Sucks Young People Dry

By Melissa Gira Grant, AlterNet
Posted on October 7, 2011, Printed on October 8, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152657/sex_work_to_pay_off_college_loans_how_the_college_debt_racket_sucks_young_people_dry_--_and_led_many_to_occupy_wall_st.

The young man standing next to the “Jail Sallie Mae, Cancel All Student Loan Debt” sign in Liberty Plaza last night could very well end up in jail himself – not for protesting economic injustice and marching on Wall Street, but for doing sex work to pay off his student loans. "My loans are $1,300 a month," he said. "My rent is $1,300 a month. My salary is $2,600 a month. You can see the problem. So I work as a prostitute for food and utilities."

Though he works a day job in the tech sector, it’s not enough to get by. "But it could be worse," he continued. "I could have to do sex work for all of it." 

With the Department of Education estimating that outstanding US student loan debt will soon exceed $1 trillion and job growth stalled, students face the very real prospect that there’s no way to ever pay back their debts. As of this May, new graduates are leaving college with an average of $22,900 in debt each, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, makes the class of 2011 the most indebted in history. They are members of a generation of students who knew taking out loans to finance a degree – or two – was a gamble on their own futures. As Lindsay Personett, a recent graduate from Oklahoma City University, put it at Wednesday’s solidarity march to support the Wall Street occupiers, “Kids are told to get this expensive degree and you’ll get a job. You end up owing too much and owning nothing.”  

Wednesday also saw solidarity walk-outs to Occupy Wall Street from hundreds of students from the New School, New York University, Columbia University, and several CUNY campuses. According to CBS Local, 150 students walked out at Brooklyn College to join the tens of thousands in Foley Square and Liberty Plaza. The student walk-outs are part of a larger national walk-out action, supported by OccupyColleges.org, which spanned at least 100 campuses across the US. Their demands go beyond calls for “job creation.” They are questioning the convergence of interests in the education and financial systems that require them to take on soaring, unforgivable, high-interest debt in order to get an education. The Huffington Post reports: 

"With budget cuts and tuition increases, students' voices are demanding to be heard," said Conor Tomás Reed, 30, a participant in today's walkout. Reed teaches at the City University of New York and is also a student at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "It's a collective roar, and students are beyond disgusted and fed up. The time is especially ripe for this kind of mobilization." 

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"Rodrigue Tremblay" - The Five Macro Crises of Our Times -- The Financial, Energy, Political, Moral and Demographic Crises

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay

Global Research, October 7, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26983

"Men accept change only when it is a necessity, and they see a necessity only in a crisis.”Jean Monnet (1888-1979), French political economist and statesman 

“I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy….. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war." Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th President of the United States (1861-65)

“The faster the present generation draws down the fossil energy legacy upon which persistently exuberant lifestyles now depend, the less opportunity posterity will have to live in anything like the same way or the same numbers. Yet most contemporary political proposals for solving problems of economic stagnation or inequity amount to plans for speeding up the rate of drawdown of non-renewable resources.” William Catton, American environmental sociologist and population ecologist 

"Societies characterized by enduring deep divisions of income and wealth, such as most third-world societies, are wounded societies with little sense of the common good... As America drifts in this direction, ending poverty and redistributing income should be at the top of the national agenda."  Charles Derber, Corporation Nation (p. 203)

 [There are] "three ways to be influential in American politics: make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.” Haim Saban, Pro-Israel billionaire and major political contributor, (2009) 

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"Staff Writers" - Tutu slams S.Africa over Dalai Lama visa row

by Staff Writers
Cape Town (AFP) Oct 4, 2011

http://www.sinodaily.com/reports/Tutu_slams_SAfrica_over_Dalai_Lama_visa_row_999.html

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Tuesday the South African government was worse than its apartheid predecessor and warned he would pray for its downfall after it dithered over a visa for the Dalai Lama.

Anti-apartheid crusader Tutu invited his longtime friend and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner to give an inaugural peace lecture as part of Tutu's 80th birthday celebrations in Cape Town this week.

But the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader cancelled his trip because he had not yet received a visa.

In response, Tutu, widely seen as South Africa's conscience keeper, called a nationally televised news conference and lambasted President Jacob Zuma.

"When we used to apply for passports from the apartheid government, we never knew until the last moment what the decision was," Tutu said.

"Our government is worse than the apartheid government, because at least you were expecting it with the apartheid government," he added.

Tutu said South Africans, who had enjoyed international backing in their struggle against apartheid, should be on the side of other oppressed peoples.

"Our government, representing me, representing me!, says it will not support Tibetans who are being oppressed viciously by the Chinese," Tutu said.

"Hey Mr Zuma, you and your government don't represent me. You represent your own interests.

"I am warning you, one day we will start praying for the defeat of the ANC (African National Congress) government. You are disgraceful. I want to warn you, you are behaving in a way that is totally at variance with the things for which we stood," he said.

"I am warning you that we will pray as we prayed for the downfall of the apartheid government. We will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents us."

In reaction the ANC has asked the "angry" and "emotional" bishop to "please calm down".

"It is very unfortunate that Tutu before even hearing government's side decided to attack the government and the ANC," party spokesman Jackson Mthembu told the Sapa news agency.

"The issue of the Dalai Lama was not even discussed in our structures," he said.

South Africa has insisted normal procedures were followed without outside pressure on the visa application.

"Unfortunately he's decided to pull out of the trip, which is his decision, and we have noted that decision," said foreign ministry spokesman Clayson Monyela.

But Tutu said: "Clearly, whether they say so or not, they were quite determined that they are not going to do anything that would upset the Chinese."

A spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile based in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala said Pretoria had acted out of fear of angering China.

"We are very disappointed that a sovereign nation like South Africa would succumb to Chinese pressure. It is a great pity," spokesman Thubten Samphel told AFP.

South Africa denied the Dalai Lama a visa in 2009, claiming it would detract from preparations for the 2010 World Cup.

"Two years ago the minister... said the Dalai Lama can come any time," said Tutu of foreign affairs minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.

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"Takashi Hirose" - What TEPCO and the Media are Hiding

September 21, 2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/21/what-tepco-and-the-media-are-hiding/

by TAKASHI HIROSE

When did the radiation start to leak from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and how far has it spread?

About this our greatest interest, the Japanese Government announced nothing for several days (at least until March 17) after the earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011.  They just described the facts saying they “….happened” in the past tense, explaining neither the cause of the explosion nor its mechanism. They never talked about expectations of danger. What is “the worst scenario” that this nuclear accident might lead to? A reporter asked this of Edano Yukio, Chief Cabinet Secretary, at a news conference, but whether because Edano couldn’t answer or didn’t want to, he said nothing clearly.

Like the government, most of the media, rather than informing us of the dangers posed by this accident, kept claiming groundlessly that there was none.  The stock phrase used by both Edano and the TV “experts” – “no immediate effects to health” – means what?  That radiation effects start one year or 10 years later?  If the radiation was to have “immediate effects”, that would be a horror.  People would be dropping dead in the streets of acute radiation sickness as they did after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  But that is not what we are talking about. The question is whether radiation taken into children’s bodies is really safe.

The “Experts” Who Were Unable To Foresee a Hydrogen Explosion

This is the first time a genpatsu shinsai syndrome occurred in Japan – or in the world. [Translators’ note: genpatsu shinsai is a new term to describe an unprecedented phenomenon: a combined nuclear power plant (genpatsu) earthquake disaster (shinsai). Rather that attempt an awkward translation, it is rendered here as genpatsu shinsai syndrome.] With the situation changing by the minute, people surely would want to know more about what was likely to happen next, and not just what had already happened at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant.

But was there any medium that was able to foresee what was coming?

On the afternoon of March 12, the day after the earthquake, a hydrogen explosion occurred in #1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Plant and the reactor building suffered severe damage.  This explosion should have been avoided at any cost, because a large amount of radioactive substances was carried away by the blast wind and spread into the atmosphere.

It is because neither the government, nor the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), nor the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC), nor TEPCO was able to predict the explosion that they failed to avoided it.  I was watching this process on TV and thought of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. …. I was on edge, thinking “There’s going to be an explosion!”  I was praying those “experts” on TV would raise the alarm and that the danger could be avoided.  But no one said a thing.

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"Progressive Radio Network Host Danny Schechter, Fridays @ 1pm(EDT)" - ISRAEL AND TURKEY, FRIENDS NO MORE

The first of several News Dissector Reports From Istanbul.
By Danny Schechter
Author of the Crime of Our Time

ISTANBUL TURKEY, September 19:  Let me begin with shvitz, a Yiddish term I believe that refers to special baths.

When the hotel I was staying at in Istanbul advertised that guests were welcome to enjoy the Turkish Bath in their basement, I took them up on it.  There were two other blondish guys in their birthday suits in the small room sweltering in the small room when I got there. They were drinking beer and conversing in a strange language I later identified as Swedish.

I was in town to speak at a session on Internet freedom at the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2011) at Sabanci Center. They were there, as I slowly learned as engineers loaned out to the America’s Westinghouse Corporation to build some nuclear plants in Turkey. Apparently, they were to have been built by the Tokyo Electric company that now has a nuclear disaster of their own on their hands. They were either fired or quit the job in Turkey.

It was something about fears about safety and ongoing risks. Japan is out; the American nuclear industry is in.

So now these shvitzing Swedes have a new job in a country they don’t know much about and also have, as they revealed to me, many prejudices and non-nuclear fears about.

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"Toni Nagy" - How Better Parenting Could Produce Fewer Greedy Bankers and More People Who Care About the Future of the Earth

By Toni Nagy, AlterNet
Posted on September 28, 2011, Printed on September 29, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152563/how_better_parenting_could_produce_fewer_greedy_bankers_and_more_people_who_care_about_the_future_of_the_earth

Here is a theory: everyone who works for Wall Street has serious mommy and daddy issues. Actually, why not extend that to everyone who supports our current corporatized economic system? Think about it. If we didn't spend our money filling the hole in our souls with retail therapy and went to actual therapy instead, we wouldn't be living in a trashcan of a world. Maybe if we changed how we raised our children we could nurture a generation that would actualize true sustainability and economic rationality. Picture the possibility of transforming the world through parenting our kids in a way that prioritizes peace over power, longevity over profit, community over greed. And maybe those children of the future could be wearing those spiffy silver space suits made from recycled tinfoil.

Let's take a minute to really look at how our current system works. Companies make products, but in order for a company to make money they have to stay competitive with the other companies who make the same products. The way they do that is by cutting cost at every possible juncture. They use the cheapest stuff they can get away with and pay people as little as possible, so you end up buying crap made by people who are paid crap. And rather than lose you as a customer, the crap you buy is built to last only the least amount of time you will tolerate and still buy more. I mean I love children, but they are really horrible at sewing because my H&M dress doesn't last more than one washing before it starts coming apart.

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"Henry Giroux" - Corporate Media and Larry Summers Team Up to Gut Public Education: Beyond Education for Illiteracy, Vulgarity and a Culture of Cruelty

Tuesday 27 September 2011

by: Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/beyond-education-illiteracy-vulgarity-and-culture-cruelty/1317131147

NOTE: This article is based on the preface of Henry A. Giroux's latest book, "Education and the Crisis of Public Values: Challenging the Assault on Teachers, Students and Public Education" (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education), published by Peter Lang Publishing; First printing edition (July 30, 2011).

Since the early 1970s, the rich, corporate power brokers and right-wing cultural warriors realized that education was central to creating a viable populist movement that served their interests. Over the last 40 years, the financial elites and their wealthy accomplices have not only mobilized an educational anti-reform movement in the name of "reform" to dismantle public education and turn it over to hedge-fund managers and billionaires; they have also taken a lesson from the muckrakers, critical public intellectuals, left-wing journals, progressive newspapers and educational institutions of the mid-20th century and developed their own cultural apparatuses, talk shows, anti-public intellectuals, think tanks and grassroots organizations. As the left slid into organizing around mostly single-issue movements since the 1980s, the right moved in a different direction, mobilizing a range of educational forces and wider cultural apparatuses as a way of addressing broader ideas that appealed to a wider public and issues that resonated with their everyday lives. Tax reform, the role of government, the crisis of education, family values and the economy, to name a few issues, were wrenched out of their progressive legacy and inserted into a context defined by the values of the free market, an unbridled notion of freedom and individualism and a growing hatred for the social contract.

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"Peter Van Buren" - Freedom Isn’t Free at the State Department

Posted on September 27, 2011, Printed on September 27, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175446/

The Only Employee at State Who May Be Fired Because of WikiLeaks
By Peter Van Buren

On the same day that more than 250,000 unredacted State Department cables hemorrhaged out onto the Internet, I was interrogated for the first time in my 23-year State Department career by State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) and told I was under investigation for allegedly disclosing classified information. The evidence of my crime? A posting on my blog from the previous month that included a link to a WikiLeaks document already available elsewhere on the Web.

As we sat in a small, gray, windowless room, resplendent with a two-way mirror, multiple ceiling-mounted cameras, and iron rungs on the table to which handcuffs could be attached, the two DS agents stated that the inclusion of that link amounted to disclosing classified material. In other words, a link to a document posted by who-knows-who on a public website available at this moment to anyone in the world was the legal equivalent of me stealing a Top Secret report, hiding it under my coat, and passing it to a Chinese spy in a dark alley.

The agents demanded to know who might be helping me with my blog (“Name names!”), if I had donated any money from my upcoming book on my wacky year-long State Department assignment to a forward military base in Iraq, and if so to which charities, the details of my contract with my publisher, how much money (if any) I had been paid, and -- by the way -- whether I had otherwise “transferred” classified information.

Had I, they asked, looked at the WikiLeaks site at home on my own time on my own computer? Every blog post, every Facebook post, and every Tweet by every State Department employee, they told me, must be pre-cleared by the Department prior to “publication.” Then they called me back for a second 90-minute interview, stating that my refusal to answer questions would lead to my being fired, never mind the Fifth (or the First) Amendments.

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"Russ Baker" -Is the Saudi Royal Family Connected to 9/11 Hijackers?

WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

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" Prof. Ludwig De Braeckeleer " - Key Lockerbie Witness Admits Perjury

http://extremeprejudiceusa.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/key-lockerbie-witness-admits-perjury/

Posted: September 17, 2011

by Prof. Ludwig De Braeckeleer

They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear--Ezekiel 12:2

The Lockerbie Affair has taken yet another extraordinary twist. On Friday August 31^st, I received from Edwin Bollier, head of the Zurich-based MeBo AG, a copy of a German original of an Affidavit. The document is dated July 18^th 2007 and signed by who worked as an electronic engineer at MeBo from 1978 to 1994. I have scrutinized the document carefully and concluded that I have no reason to doubt its authenticity or the truthfulness of its content.

Lumpert was a key witness (N° 550) at the Camp Zeist trial, where a three Judges panel convicted a Libyan citizen of murdering 270 persons who died in the bombing of "Pan Am Flight 103″ over Lockerbie.

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"Robert Johnson"- New Cyber Attacks Will Target Power Grids And Major Public Works

Commander of the new U.S. Cyber Command General Keith Alexander said Tuesday that he's most concerned about attacks targeting America's electrical grid, and destroying large public machinery.

Gen. Alexander says cyber-attacks over the Internet are shifting from data theft to physical assaults.

First, he pointed to the 2003 Northeast power outage started by a downed tree branch. Following the initial accident at the pole, the utility company's computer entered "pause" mode, cutting power to people in several states and illustrating the effect an intruder could have on any power grid.

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"Mark Karlin"- Uninsured by Ron Paul, His 2008 Campaign Manager Died Owing $400,000 for Medical Care

Ron Paul knows something about uninsured men dying without health insurance. Kent Snyder, who was Paul's 2008 presidential campaign manager, died on June 26 of that year without any medical coverage. His hospital bills had accumulated to $400,000 at the time of his passing.

The Washington Post noted in an obituary for Snyder, 49 [4]:

Mr. Snyder had been associated with Paul, a Texas Republican with Libertarian leanings, for more than 20 years. He worked as a top aide for Paul in 1988, when the congressman sought the presidency on the Libertarian ticket.

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"EU Observer"- Poland warns of war 'in 10 years' as EU leaders scramble to contain panic

Germany, France and the European Commission are scrambling to contain panic and "quash rumours" about a eurozone break-up amid repeated off-piste messages from other senior EU politicians.

But even amid their desperate efforts, the finance minister of Poland, the country that currently represents the EU to the world as holder of the bloc’s rotating presidency, warned of war on the continent within 10 years if the eurozone collapses.

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"Bernie Sanders"- Is Poverty a Death Sentence?

Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/14-6

The crisis of poverty in America is one of the great moral and economic issues facing our country. It is very rarely talked about in the mainstream media. It gets even less attention in Congress. Why should people care? Many poor people don't vote. They certainly don't make large campaign contributions, and they don't have powerful lobbyists representing their interests

Here's why we all should care. There are 46 million Americans -- about one in six -- living below the poverty line. That's the largest number on record, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. About 49.9 million Americans lacked health insurance, the report also said. That number has soared by 13.3 million since 2000.

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Number of Americans in Poverty Hits Record High

Published on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 by Agence France Presse

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/13-3

The US poverty rate rose in 2010 to 15.1 percent, the highest rate since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday in another sign of a sputtering economy following a deep recession.

The report showed a sharp increase in poverty from 14.3 percent in 2009, and a fourth consecutive rise in the number of people below the poverty threshold, to 46.2 million.

The number of people in poverty was the highest since data collection began in 1959, although the rate was 7.3 percentage points lower than in 1959.

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