Annette Bernhardt - The Economic Future Looks Dark as the Faux Economic Recovery is Primarily Low-Paying Jobs

By Annette Bernhardt, AlterNet

Posted on November 1, 2011, Printed on November 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152929/the_economic_future_looks_dark_as_the_faux_economic_recovery_is_primarily_low-paying_jobs

Major newspapers last week reported a trend that won’t come as a surprise to working Americans:  incomes are falling.  In fact, median household income, adjusted for inflation, has fallen faster since the recession ended than during the recession itself.  Analysts point to high unemployment and weak economic growth as the culprits, but that is only part of the story. 

Just as the country struggles to confront a seemingly insurmountable jobs deficit, America’s chronic low-wage problem is reasserting itself with a vengeance.  Here are three ways to understand just how severe the problem is.

First, the current recovery is actually deepening our deficit of good jobs. During the Great Recession, the jobs we lost were concentrated in mid-wage occupations like paralegals, health technicians, administrative assistants and bus drivers, making $15 to $20 an hour.  But so far in this weak recovery, employment growth has largely come from low-wage occupations like retail workers, office and stock clerks, restaurant staff and child care aids – most making $8 to $10 an hour.  There has been only minimal growth in mid-wage occupations, and net losses in those that pay higher.

In part, this unbalanced growth is a byproduct of the Great Recession.  The financial crash and bursting of the housing bubble caused big job losses in construction, finance, insurance and real estate, and these better-paying industries are having a harder time coming back than low-wage industries such as retail trade, restaurants, temp agencies, and nursing homes. 

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Truthdig.com - And the Worst Natural Disaster Is …

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/and_the_worst_natural_disaster_is_20111106/

Posted on Nov 6, 2011

An article in The Lancetargues that earthquakes are particularly devastating when compared with other natural disasters. Earthquakes “frequently affect populous urban areas with poor structural standards” and they impair emergency responders. Shifting tectonic plates killed more than 780,000 people in the last decade.

According to a BBC reporton the findings, “Children are often at higher risk of injury and death during earthquakes than adults. In Haiti in 2010, 53 percent of patients were younger than 20 years old and 25 percent were under 5.”

Not all injuries are physical—the same Beeb report says post-quake depression is common—affecting up to 72 percent of survivors—and some people fall prey to suicidal thoughts.

The other thing about earthquakes is that you have no idea when they are coming. Here in Los Angeles we’ve been hearing about “the big one” for decades. Ask a geologist and they’ll tell you that the San Andreas fault is long overdue for a major event—something at or above a magnitude 8.1. An earthquake that size would release twice the energy, reports the L.A. Times, of the last “big one” in California, a 7.9 quake that struck in 1857.

Such an earthquake could strike at any moment. Ask the people who live here if they’re ready for it.

Meanwhile, in Thailand, months of floodinghave killed more than 500 people, and the economic devastation as factories drown and ordinary Thais lose everything could cause more lasting damage long after the flood waters recede.

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Dr. Andrew Weil - The Depression-Inflammation Connection

Dr. Andrew Weil - Founder and director, The Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/depression-and-inflammation_b_1071714.html

The dramatic rise in depression diagnoses over the last two decades is a great challenge to modern medicine. I believe that part of the "depression epidemic" is false -- a creation of aggressive disease-mongering by pharmaceutical companies to promote antidepressant sales. However, it's equally clear that within that trend, there has been a real rise in depression rates.

The reasons for the increase are complex, but one important theory deserves special consideration, because I believe it offers new possibilities for prevention and treatment. At the center of this theory are cytokines -- proteins made by immune cells that govern responses to foreign antigens and germs.

Cytokines have varied effects. One type -- the interleukins -- controls inflammation and produces fever. Another type governs how red and white blood cells in the bone marrow mature. Because of such powerful effects, some cytokines have proved useful as medical treatments, though they can be quite toxic. In 1980, scientists succeeded in inserting a gene for human interferon into bacteria -- this made it possible to mass-produce and purify these proteins. Since then, synthetic, injectable forms of interferon have been in wide use as treatments for several cancers (skin cancers, some leukemias), chronic viral hepatitis and multiple sclerosis.

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Ruth Marcus - Campaign 2012, Welcome to the Slugfest

By Ruth Marcus

http://www.nationofchange.org/campaign-2012-welcome-slugfest-1320595552

Forget hope and change. President Obama’s reelection campaign is going to be based on fear and loathing: fear of what a Republican takeover would mean, and loathing of whomever the Republican nominee turns out to be.

Of course the Obama campaign will attempt to present the affirmative case for his reelection, citing legislative achievements, foreign policy successes and the current flurry of executive actions. But his strategists have clearly concluded that selling the president will not be enough, and the contours of the ugly months ahead are becoming increasingly apparent.

All campaigns are about drawing contrasts. Even when running for reelection with the benefit of a healthy economy in 1996, Bill Clinton campaigned against the imaginary Dole-Gingrich ticket with an early and intense barrage of ads tying the eventual Republican nominee to the unpopular House speaker.

And as much as Obama presented himself as above the regular partisan fray during the 2008 campaign, he was not averse to taking the lower road when it appeared the advisable route.

But running for a second term accompanied by the albatross of 9 percent unemployment inevitably requires an even more brutal technique. In that sense, Obama’s reelection campaign is more reminiscent of George W. Bush vs. John Kerry in 2004, an embattled president managing to win reelection by relentlessly painting his opponent as an out-of-touch flip-flopper.

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Charly Wegman - Israel's Peres Warns Attack on Iran Getting 'Closer'

Published on Sunday, November 6, 2011 by Agence France Presse

http://www.canada.com/technology/Israel+Peres+warns+attack+Iran+getting+closer/5665596/story.html

by Charly Wegman

Israeli President Shimon Peres warned on Sunday that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely, days before a report by the UN's nuclear watchdog on Iran's nuclear programme is due.

"The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option," Peres told the Israel Hayom daily.

"We must stay calm and resist pressure so that we can consider every alternative," he added.

"I don't think that any decision has already been made, but there is an impression that Iran is getting closer to nuclear weapons."

His comments came after he warned in an interview aired by Israel's privately-owned Channel Two television on Saturday that an attack on Iran was becoming "more and more likely."

"The intelligence services of the different countries that are keeping an eye on (Iran) are worried and putting pressure on their leaders to warn that Iran is ready to obtain the nuclear weapon," he said.

In France meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe warned that an attack on Iran would be disastrous.

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César Chelala - Israeli Doctors Are Complicit in the Torture of Palestinian Prisoners

Published on Saturday, November 5, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/05-5

by César Chelala

Two Israeli human rights organizations, the Public Committee Against Torture (PCAT) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) have released a report, Doctoring the Evidence, Abandoning the Victim, in which they claim that medical professionals in Israel fail to document and report injuries caused by the ill-treatment and torture of detainees by security personnel. The report states that the doctors’ behavior is a violation of their ethical code.

The report, based on 100 cases of Palestinian prisoners brought to PCAT since 2007, “reveals significant evidence arousing the suspicion that many doctors ignore the complaints of their patients; that they allow Israeli Security Agency interrogators to use torture; approve the use of forbidden interrogation methods and the ill-treatment of helpless detainees; and conceal information, thereby allowing total immunity for the torturers.”

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Thomas Ferguson - How to Take Back Our Political System From the 1%

By Thomas Ferguson, AlterNet

Posted on November 3, 2011, Printed on November 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152960/thomas_ferguson%3A_how_to_take_back_our_political_system_from_the_1

The following has been adapted from a version of a speech delivered to Occupy Boston by Thomas Ferguson, the father of the "Investment Theory of Politics."

I’m honored to speak to you today about money and politics, but it’s not the first time I’ve been here. This is actually the third time I’ve visited your encampment. The first couple of times I walked around and looked at the signs. Many were priceless; the best tutorials I’ve ever seen on the subject of money and politics. My favorite was the one that advised that Congressmen and women should emulate NASCAR drivers and show us their sponsors. Another styled contemporary capitalism “socialism for the 1%.” And many sharply attacked the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which helped throw open the floodgates to the tidal wave of secret money that is now engulfing American elections. 

I’m a social scientist, so I actually counted: about a third of all the signs that day had money and politics as their themes. It was obvious that you here at Occupy Boston and your colleagues in New York, Oakland, Chicago, and other cities have already grasped the heart of the problem of money and politics in America: that we live in a money-driven political system that works pretty well for the 1%, but no one else. 

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Ann Wright - Israeli Hijacking Of Gaza Freedom Waves Boats "Violent And Dangerous"

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Israeli-Hijacking-Of-Gaza-by-Ann-Wright-111106-780.html

November 6, 2011 By Ann Wright Despite very clear protests from the occupants of the two boats that they did not want to be taken to Israel, they were forcibly removed from the boats in a violent manner. Activists Badly Treated by Israeli Authorities A press release from Irish Ship to Gaza reported that National Coordinator Fintan Lane was able to make a phone call Sunday afternoon, November 6, 2011, from the Israeli prison in which he and 13 other Irish citizens are being held. Israeli attack on freedom waves ships "violent and dangerous" Lane told the Irish Ship to Gaza team in Dublin, "The takeover of the MV Saoirse was violent and dangerous. Despite very clear protests from the occupants of the two boats that they did not want to be taken to Israel, they were forcibly removed from the boats in a violent manner. The whole takeover took about three hours." Lane said Israeli forces hosed down the two boats with high pressure water hoses and pointed guns at the passengers through the windows. Lane himself was hosed down the stairs of the boat. Israelis forced boats to collide and Saoirse almost caught fire

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Medea Benjamin & Robert Naiman - Jailed for Sailing to Gaza, Challenging the Blockade

By Medea Benjamin and Robert Naiman, AlterNet

Posted on November 4, 2011, Printed on November 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152966/jailed_for_sailing_to_gaza%2C_challenging_the_blockade

Two boats full of courageous passengers were on their way to Gaza when they were intercepted on Friday, November 4, by the Israeli military in international waters. We call the passengers courageous because they sailed from Turkey on November 2 with the knowledge that at any moment they might be boarded by Israeli commandos intent on stopping them—perhaps violently, as the Israeli military did in 2010 when they killed nine humanitarian aid workers on the Turkish boat named Mavi Marmara. 

The boats—one from Canada and one from Ireland—were carrying 27 passengers, including press and peace activists from Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia and Palestine. They were unarmed, and the Israeli military knew that. They were simply peace activists wanting to connect with civilians in Gaza, and the Israeli military knew that. Yet naked aggression was used against them in international waters—something that is normally considered an act of piracy.

The passengers on the boats were sailing to Gaza to challenge the U.S.-supported Israeli blockade that is crippling the lives of 1.6 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They were sailing to stand up against unaccountable power—the power of the Israeli government—that has been violating the basic rights of the 5.5 million Palestinians that live inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders or in the Occupied Territories.  They were sailing for us, civil society, who believe in human rights and the rule of law.

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Saul Landau - Drugs R Us, the American Way

COUNTERPUNCH.ORG   NOVEMBER 4-6, 2011

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2011/11/04/DRUGS-R-US/

by SAUL LANDAU

Americans have descended into a legal drug culture, while simultaneously retaining the “illegal” one – at great expense. But the government responds by denying the evidence its own agencies produce.

Last month, a funding “highlights” of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) showed how the Obama administration had decided to emphasize again its focus on law enforcement–not treatment.

For FY 2011, Obama allocated $15.5 billion, more than 3.5 percent more than last year for law enforcement. Treatment allocation barely rose.

Given the Administration’s belief in the law of supply and demand — when there’s demand, there’s a supply — Obama must have gone into a drug-induced stupor for continuing to fund the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. $66 million goes to a so-called drug czar to supervise the production and distribution of ads (see an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9B-h_bU-uI). The ads claim smoking pot can lead to rape. But the ads don’t mention the flood of alcohol commercials on TV and radio, showing how you get babes by buying them beers and extolling the virtues of their products. But, they caution, “DRINK responsibly.” The ads don’t compare drunk driving deaths to high-on-marijuana deaths; or rape due to drinking with sexual aggression caused by marijuana highs! Alcohol wins, hands down.

The pharmaceutical companies pour out their propaganda for mood-altering drugs; some far more powerful than marijuana. Surprised? Why should Obama’s drug policy deal with reality? It’s easier to follow Bush’s priorities. Cops combined with slogans address a major social issue.

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