Link: http://blog.eyeblast.tv/2011/01/msnbc%E2%80%99s-brewer-people-are-taking-their-own-lives-when-pensions-fail/

MSNBC host Contessa Brewer said that people are taking their own lives when their pensions fail. She said “we’re hearing horrific stories, John, about people who are taking their own lives” when the plans they have made for their senior years don’t work out.

Link: http://www.activistpost.com/2011/01/7-reasons-food-shortages-will-become.html

Food inflation is here and it's here to stay. We can see it getting worse every time we buy groceries. Basic food commodities like wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice have been skyrocketing since July, 2010 to record highs. These sustained price increases are only expected to continue as food production shortfalls really begin to take their toll this year and beyond.

Link: http://www.iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/240799

According to comments from administration officials, the Obama Administration’s $50 billion projection for 2012 war funding is going to be blown apart, with a closed-door meeting putting the actual funding request closer to the $120 billion range. The figure will be slightly less than the $159 billion war funding request for 2011, but as the overall military budget for 2012 will be considerably larger than the record 2011 budget, it is really only a question of officials having shuffled certain funding into different categories. Even as America collapses economically it's leaders seek only to wage more war and death on humanity.

Link: http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/jen-marlowe-one-family-in-gaza-video.html

Just months after the Israeli assault that killed 1,390 Palestinians, I visited Gaza. Among dozens of painful stories I heard, one family stood out. I spent several days with Kamal and Wafaa Awajah, playing with their children, sleeping in the tent they were living in, and filming their story.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27216.htm

Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Thursday said the body scans and enhanced security pat-downs at US airports are eating away at Americans' freedoms and called the agency that conducts them a "basketcase." "The TSA is a basketcase, collectively," Nader said at the first US conference on controversial new security measures that are being rolled out at airports around the United States.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/thomas01072011.html

This year, 2011, marks the beginning of baby boomers receiving Social Security checks and they should be alerted of past perennial Republican attempts to partially privatize the program.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01072011.html

Torture is now solidly installed in America’s repressive arsenal, not in the shadows where it has always lurked, but up front and central, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians. Rituals of coercion and humiliation seep through the culture, to the extent that before Christmas American travelers began to rebel at the invasive pat-down searches, conducted by the TSA’s airport security teams, groping around bosoms and crotches.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/07-5

Statement by Physicians for National Health Program. A nationwide organization of doctors who favor a single-payer health care system today rejected calls by Republican leaders to repeal the new health law, noting that the law contains modest benefits for patients that should not be spurned.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/07-6

A major part of a presidential press secretary's job is to cover up his boss's violations of our rule of constitutional law by denying they happened. Yet, on Dec. 25, Robert Gibbs actually said on CNN's "State of the Union" (reported the next day on politicolive.com) that "it's unfortunate that some terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay need to be held indefinitely without trial." Welcome to Guantánamo, the President's king puppet's Private Prison

Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/149436/here_we_go_again%3A_obama_picks_big_bank%2C_big_telecom%2C_and_big_pharma_lobbyist_to_be_chief_of_staff/

Obama ushers a telecom lobbyist, chief architect of NAFTA and current Midwest chairman of JP Morgan Chase into the #2 job in the White House. Rahm Emanuel is off running for mayor of Chicago, but his ghost will soon be making a return to the White House in the form of fellow Chicagoan Bill Daley, who President Obama is naming as Rahm’s replacement today. The post is currently filled by low-key Obama aide Pete Rouse. Obama picked nobody, he is the chief executive slave over all of the lessor American slaves and he does exactly what he is told to do.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/environment/149440/%27aflockalypse%27%3A_here%27s_why_we_should_really_be_concerned_about_the_huge_bird_and_fish_die-off/

The massive death toll of dead birds and sea life should draw attention to the countless other species on the brink of extinction. By now, we've all seen the news reports of the "Aflockalypse." The New Year came in with a bang in Beebe, Arkansas when thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky. As news reports of the eerie incident spread, similar stories began surfacing all over the world: Massive fish kills by the thousands in Brazil, New Zealand, the Arkansas River and the Chesapeake; more bird deaths in Louisiana, Kentucky and Sweden; and tens of thousands of dead crabs (aptly named dead devil crabs) washing ashore in the U.K.

Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson308.html

The Drug War is a disgrace. The Drug War is racist, and the Drug War is evil. Few readers will disagree with these statements, or at least those readers who already are inclined already to see the Drug War as being yet another government tool of oppression.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/01/20111715534422791.html

New US jobless figures suggest that while the unemployment rate has dropped, the economy is still in for tough times. US employers hired far fewer workers than expected in December, showing the world's biggest economy was still struggling to gain momentum, despite the unemployment rate dropping to a more than 18-month low. Unemployment fell to 9.4 per cent, the lowest since May 2009, on Friday down from 9.8 per cent in November. But part of the decrease was due to jobless giving up the search for work.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/07/rise-and-fall-republican-revol

Elizabeth Schulte explains how Newt Gingrich and the Republican "revolutionaries" who took over Congress in 1994 rapidly became the most hated men in U.S. politics.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1344899/Shift-magnetic-north-pole-affects--Tampa-airport.html#ixzz1ANJpqG00

Changes in our planet's core are causing the north magnetic pole to speed towards Russia at nearly 40 miles a year. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1344899/Shift-magnetic-north-pole-affects--Tampa-airport.html#ixzz1AQBOyMVs