By Robert Stevens - 20 August 2011

In the aftermath of the riots that swept London and other cities in England last week, the Conservative/Liberal government is actively planning the imposition of curfew powers covering wide geographical areas...Home Secretary Theresa May announced that giving the police further powers to clear streets and establish “no-go” areas are under discussion.

"Karl Marx had it right. At some point capitalism can destroy itself because you cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand, and that's what's happening." -- Nouriel Roubini

Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel's Security Agency) have long, odious histories of committing false flag operations.

By Alexander Billet - August 20th, 2011

Perhaps the players have been switched out, along with some minor script changes, but the story remains the same: moral depravity, tied up to one degree or another in hip-hop culture, seeking to invade a respectable, mannerly western civilization and rot it from the inside. It doesn’t take a political mind to see how racist this is...Fortunately, this line of thought hasn’t gone unchallenged.

By Jacopo Ponticelli and Hans-Joachim Voth - Tuesday 16 August 2011

In a recent study, we focused on the link between austerity measures and unrest. We analyzed a large number of countries, over almost a century, to unearth some empirical regularities. In two studies, we analyzed unrest in 28 European countries from 1919 to 2009, and in 11 Latin American countries since 1937. What we found is a clear and positive statistical association between expenditure cuts and the level of unrest.

They appear daily like weeds on all topics. As a result, New York Times reports aren't fit to read, let alone print. August 18 was no exception, publishing lies about Libyan insurgent victories.

By Niall Green - WSWS

As with the NATO war against Libya, the US and its European allies are seeking to intervene in Syria in order to secure a better strategic foothold in the region, while intimidating the mass working class opposition to capitalist dictatorship that has emerged across the Middle East, resulting in the overthrow of former Western allies Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia.

By Bill Boyarsky - August 11, 2011

As President Barack Obama tried to calm a United States facing the threat of financial disaster, riots raged across the Atlantic in London and other British cities. Could it happen here, as our nation adopts British-style austerity and suffers through worsening unemployment? It certainly could, just as it has in the past.

By Ian Sample - Common Dreams

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim...Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilization growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat...

By Raul Rodriguez - Saturday, August 20, 2011

One in four California households with children reported food hardship, according to a new analysis of Gallup data released last Thursday by the Food Research and Action Center...“It sends a clear signal of economic distress, particularly for families with children...The answers to the question reveal there are times that these families are going without eating a meal, or the parents are skipping a meal for their children, or children are skipping meals.”

August 14, 2011 - Linchpin

"The motivation behind the formation of Hamilton CopWatch is...the same drive which has given rise to CopWatch groups across this continent and beyond for over the past 20 years: a deeply felt need to construct cooperative sources of protection against police abuse. In the face of a local police force whose daily operations threaten the safety, well-being and dignity of our communities, we have been compelled out of necessity to seek out our power in numbers, as an organization dedicated to placing a greater degree of accountability upon cops in our neighbourhoods."

By Tom Eley - 20 August 2011

Two striking Verizon workers, Susanna Short, 37, and Leabern Kennedy, 44, arrested on a picket line in the town of Norton, in southwest Virginia on August 8, could face up to 18 months in jail and a $3,500 fine, according to local press accounts. The women were arrested for allegedly blocking a vehicle of a strike-breaker from entering a Verizon parking lot.

By Paul Street - August 19, 2011

Anti-government rhetoric is often a ruse...State-capitalist elites within and beyond England and the U.S. only want to shrink...the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the non-affluent majority. Under the corporate, imperial and neo-liberal wisdom that reigns across the all too narrow ideological spectrum in both the U.S. and the UK...the portions [of the state] that serve the opulent minority and dole out punishment for the poor and enemies of empire and inequality at home and abroad...remains well fed.

What do you call a country that persecutes occupied people and one-fifth of its own population for not being Jewish? An illegal occupier for over 44 years, suffocating over 1.6 million Gazans under siege! A nation practicing torture, persecution, and racism as official policies! A modern day Sparta, glorifying wars and violence!