Link: http://socialistworker.org/2010/10/13/the-squeeze-on-workers

Corporate America is taking advantage of the bleak employment picture to carry out an offensive to further drive down wages and living standards for workers. THE LATEST government statistics on employment and jobs are in--and they're appallingly bad. Not only has hiring in the private sector slowed down--again--but public-sector jobs are evaporating at a record pace. According to the Labor Department, companies added just 64,000 jobs last month--down from 93,000 in August and 117,000 in July. Overall, the economy shed 95,000 non-farm jobs in September, with 159,000 government jobs lost at all levels. Local governments cut employment at the fastest rate in almost 30 years.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/gate-o13.shtml

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates used a defense ministers meeting in Hanoi Tuesday to reassert US “national interests” in the maritime disputes roiling relations between China and its neighbors. The forum for the Pentagon chief’s assertion of American power in the region was a one-day conference convened by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The meeting was attended by defense ministers and other representatives from ASEAN’s ten member states, as well as the US, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and India.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/pers-o13.shtml

With less than three weeks remaining in the 2010 election campaign, President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are seeking to stave off a major electoral defeat by making a last-minute, fraudulent appeal to popular hostility towards Wall Street and big business. In his remarks Sunday to a rally in Philadelphia, largely drawn from the ranks of the trade union bureaucracy, Obama attacked “millionaires and billionaires,” “Wall Street banks,” “corporations”, the “oil industry,” the “insurance industry” and “credit-card companies.”

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/corn-o13.shtml

Driven by frenzied trading on the Chicago Board of Trade, US corn prices rose by 8.5 percent on Friday, the largest one-day increase since 1973. Over a two-day period, corn increased by more than 15 percent before easing slightly to 12.7 percent, a two-year high. Wheat, soybeans and other basic agricultural products have also soared, threatening a global food crisis like that of 2007-08.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/13-7

Living Planet report shows planet's resources are being used at 1.5 times the rate nature can replace them. The Earth's population is using the equivalent of 1.5 planets' worth of natural resources, but the long-term decline of animal life appears to have been halted, a WWF report shows. Humans are consuming the Earth's resources faster than the planet can sustain, according to a report by WWF. (Photograph by: Handout, AFP/Getty Images)The latest Living Planet report, published today by the conservation group, also reveals the extent to which modern Western lifestyles are plundering natural resources from the tropics at record levels.

Link: http://www.truth-out.org/californias-perfect-storm64167

The United States today faces an economic crisis worse than any since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Nowhere is it sharper than in the nation’s schools. It’s no wonder that last year saw strikes, student walkouts, and uprisings in states across the country, aimed at priorities that put banks and stockbrokers ahead of children. California was no exception. In fact, other states looked on in horror simply at the size of its budget deficit—at one point more than $34 billion. The quality of the public schools plummeted as class sizes ballooned and resources disappeared in blizzards of pink slips. Fee increases drove tens of thousands from community colleges and university campuses.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/148410/dianne_feinstein_tries_to_play_the_big_villain_in_the_fight_for_legal_pot_/

Feinstein is the poster figure against Prop 19, trotting out lame-duck allies and hackneyed, incorrect arguments. Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein signed the dotted line on California's Proposition 19, which would responsibly decriminalize cannabis for personal use after ballot results this November. But she signed the wrong side, becoming co-chair of the No on 19 Campaign -- the latest in a long line of out-of-touch positions by Feinstein in California politics.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26577.htm

Scroll through the right-wing blogosphere, or listen in at a tea party rally, and you'll find angry people ranting about an out-of-control federal government that's redistributing the nation's wealth to the undeserving poor. Those rants do have one point right: The federal government is shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars into programs that redistribute wealth. But these "wealth-building" programs aren't redistributing wealth from the top to the bottom. They're actually shifting more wealth to the top.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26582.htm

The Fed has has hinted that it will launch a second round of quantitative easing (QE) sometime after its November 2 meeting. The anticipated intervention has been widely criticized, but for all the wrong reasons. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke knows that adding another $1 to $1.5 trillion to bulging bank reserves will likely have little effect on aggregate demand. Nor will it lower unemployment now hovering at 9.7%. It will, however, send a message to trading partners (re: China) that the Fed is serious about reducing destabilizing trade imbalances that siphon-off domestic stimulus, increase unemployment and keep the dollar perilously overvalued. In other words, the Fed's action is the first volley in what is likely to be a protracted currency war that leads to the final demise of Bretton Woods 2.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26578.htm

In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies": specifically, "American direct intervention in the Muslim world" through our "one sided support in favor of Israel"; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, "the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan"

Link: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21424

A "false front" building from the Old West. Towns built false fronts to make the town look more substantial and prosperous than it really was. The tidal wave of evidence showing that the giant banks have engaged in fraudulent foreclosure practices is so large that the attorneys general of up to 40 states are launching investigations.

Link: http://theintelhub.com/2010/10/13/family-farm-ordered-to-destroy-50000-pounds-of-cheese/

As the big banks continue their push to control our food supply, occurrences like this will become more and more common. People who stand up to the FDA and their Monsanto thugs are basically considered terrorists. Without Food Freedom we have no freedom! Our health should not be put in the hands of the very people who make millions of dollars a year from genetically engineered foods, foods that have been scientifically proven to cause numerous health problems.

Link: http://theintelhub.com/2010/10/13/france-in-uproar-over-sarkozy-plans-for-retirement-age/

Sarkozy Stands Firm As Pension Protests Escalate. President Nicolas Sarkozy could face the greatest challenge of his presidency in the next few days as a month-old protest against pension reform swells towards outright confrontation. More than 3 million demonstrators – one in 20 of all French people – marched yesterday against the President’s plans to raise the standard retirement age from 60 to 62. Tens of thousands of students joined the marches for the first time, threatening to radicalise the protests and broaden them into a rebellion against a deeply unpopular presidency.

Link: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/link.asp?ID=13601&URL=http://www.henrymakow.com/interest_-_our_invisible_slave.html

Let's say you want to buy a house and go the bank and get a loan. Say 200k. The simple truth is, after thirty years you will have payed back 600k. 200k for the principal and 400k (!!) in interest. Now this might be ok, or at least somewhat understandable, if you were borrowing this money from somebody else, who has been saving it. But as we know, this is not the case. The money is produced the moment the loan is granted by the bank. In a computer program. By pressing a few buttons.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/afghanistan-taliban

Wounded patients flooding into hospitals, says Red Cross, while fighting is stopping the sick getting basic medical care. The number of Afghan civilians hospitalised for serious war wounds has doubled in 12 months in Kandahar, the focus of an ongoing US-led campaign against Taliban strongholds.

Link: http://www.rense.com/general92/screws.htm

The Congress of the United States went on overtime during the Columbus Day holiday to pass a piece of legislation that will block any increase in Social Security payments for 58 Million recipients in the coming year. The irony of doing this on a day that is a travesty in itself was masterful.

Link: http://www.opinion-maker.org/2010/10/americans-want-end-to-an-insane-war/

Not American, but it’s always a Zionist Israeli war that the American people have to pay for through their blood and money. Raja Mujtaba. Pakistan is contiguous to Pashtun belt of Pakistan and is not connected with non-Pashtun areas in the west, centre and north. Whole of northern Afghanistan is attached with three Republicans states of Central Asia while western Afghanistan is fastened with Iran. Apart from geographic contiguity, 42% Pashtuns of 28 million population of Afghanistan share religious, ethnic, linguistic and cultural ties with 15.42 million Pashtuns of 174 million population of Pakistan.

Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53148

The floods that affected 20 million people in Pakistan and the devastating six- week heat wave in Russia in recent months are tragic climate events -- and they're closely linked.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/video/americas/2010/10/2010101215525889351.html

President Reagan once famously quipped that everyone who supports abortion has already been born. In the same vein it is worth noting that all the policymakers who don’t think we should worry about 9.6 percent unemployment have jobs.