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They just want to steal our money.

The Greek default has turned out to be the proverbial dog that didn't bark. The lesson for Europe - and for the US - is clear: it is time to stop listening to what banks say, and start focusing on what they do. We must re-evaluate the distorted political economy of the financial sector, before the excessive power of the few imposes even larger costs on everyone else.

In the two weeks since the New York Police Department cleared New York's Zuccotti Park of its camping protesters, the Occupy Wall Street movement has increasingly turned its attention to Washington. Last week, some 50 marchers arrived at McPherson Square from New York and then marched on the Capitol. Yesterday, Occupy DC targeted congressional Democrats at a campaign fundraiser. Now, protesters say they plan to Occupy Congress on Jan. 17, in the "largest Occupy protest ever!"

In my last column, I argued that the real significance of Occupy Together is not its effectiveness in pressuring the 1%'s state to enact reforms, but rather in showing the 99% our own strength. We're an entire society in ourselves, the producers, and we don't need the 1% - it's they who would starve without us.

If black kids are doing drugs less often than white kids, why are they being arrested so much more?

Since its inception, Google has tried to implement the image of the white hat company, even taking the motto "Don't Be Evil," but even this has been changed to "Google don't be Evil," as the mantra of anti-Google activists. Well, now they really have something to worry about!

The White House moved the location of the G8 summit from Chicago to the Presidential retreat Camp David, they say, "to have a more intimate setting." Meanwhile in Chicago, Occupy protesters had planned a large protest to speak out against the war and poverty agenda. This video is a dramatization of what the G8 summit COULD be, if our representatives chose to represent the future. For if we do not end extreme poverty now, someday, someone else will. Please share this video if you want to be a member of that great generation that for the first time had it within its power to end poverty, and did so.

The media has been lasciviously describing every blood-flecked cranny of the murder spree in Northumbria this week, while blankly ignoring the most important question - did we help to pull the trigger? Every time there is a massacre by a mentally ill person, like Derrick Bird's last month, journalists are warned by psychologists that, if we are not very careful in our reporting, we will spur copycat attacks by more mentally ill people. We ignored their warnings. We reported the case in precisely the way they said was most risky. Are we now seeing the result?

No serious person denies that Reagan's 1981 tax cuts and military increases threw the country into a pattern of borrowing and borrowing that we have not escaped. When Reagan took office the national debt was $995 billion. When Reagan left office it was $2.87 trillion and climbing fast. No serious person denies that Bush's 2001 tax cuts and continued military increases dramatically worsened the problem. Bush's last budget year ended with a record single-year deficit of $1.4 trillion. As the country discusses what to do about the borrowing the elephant in the room is that everyone understands that restoring top tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and cutting the military budget in half would solve the problem completely. But we can't do that. We can't even discuss it. And we all know why. And we all know why. It is because the Reagan Revolution transformed the country from a democracy to a plutocracy -- a country run by and for the wealthy. Such sensible and simple ideas are considered off-limits. To even bring up the idea of restoring tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and cutting military spending invites terrible consequences. The speaker risks becoming the target of the money's noise machine: Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge, Fox. Smears. Humiliation. Banishment. Or the noise machine cranks up a campaign of misinformation, convincing people --especially DC people -- that what they see in front of their eyes just isn't so. Repeat it enough and it becomes solid knowledge. We all know this is the way it is. So don't tell me that "we don't have the money" to keep 300,000 teachers from being laid off, or to help the long-term, mostly older unemployed workers get something to live on and keep their health care. The money is right there in front of us, but the Congress is bought and paid for. What do we do? We have to demand representatives who represent us, not make excuses for representing the wealthy. The unfortunate, poor and disadvantaged must count every bit as much as the

Sometimes inequality is bad for almost everyone, and sometimes only for certain people; sometimes it is worst for the people at the bottom, and sometimes it is just as bad for the people at the top. Different societies are equal or unequal for different reasons, sometimes by necessity, sometimes by choice. More equality is a good thing and it's an idea that's worth defending. It would be nice if there were more politicians willing to stand up and defend it, however they saw fit.

The popular cultural representation of the U.S. media is that they are adversarial to, and independent of, state and corporate power. This well cultivated and consciously promoted image quickly dissolves under the lens of scrutiny.

LEARN THE REAL TRUTH AT http://rabbithole2.com Bombs, explosions, secondary explosions, explosive devices....how many more times do we need to hear these words being said by 9/11 witnesses before we start asking questions about what really happened on that awful day? All of the individual news reports in this video can be found on YouTube and other video sites. This video shows that many actual 9/11 witnesses heard and saw explosions going off inside the towers, long before they actually fell. These witnesses include police, firemen and reporters. And what is even more shocking is the fact that all of this has been largely ignored by the mainstream media after the day itself. For those debunkers who wish to keep saying that the explosions were caused by gas lines, please save your breath. All of the three buildings that were blown up on 9/11 were all Class-A buildings. This means that gas lines were not permitted because the buildings had to comply with the safety regulations set out for Class-A buildings. So there were no gas lines! We really need to wake up to the facts and ask questions. If we don't, what does that say about us? Sorry about the sync loss with the audio. All of these news clips are available elsewhere on YouTube as well as in the archives of the main news media sites.

"The danger of Christianity in America is twofold. First, it is a negative influence on decisions which affect the entire country and, two, Christian nationalism threatens to turn the country into more of a theocracy than it already is, at the cost of non-Christians in America and around the world. Islam only poses a true threat to freedom in the countries where it has legal clout-for the same reasons Christianity is dangerous in Christian countries. Outside of Islamic governments, Islam poses little threat to the rights of Americans and others. That sounds rather insane to say, but consider that Islam's only threat to America lies in its few radical extremists' ability to cause fear by taking lives. Yet the actual number of lives they take is small compared to even the seasonal flu."

Official policy, not lack of educator imagination, not laziness, not union obstinacy, not anything else, is the main reason schools function very much as they did a century ago. Put the blame where it belongs. There are several reasons why most charters differ little or not at all from traditional public schools. Here are four:

A new study by a University of Chicago professor reveals the obvious about what actually causes Terrorism

The deceit and propaganda which justify both wars are identical, as are the harms they cause

Two of the largest cable news providers, Fox and CNN, have laid claim to the title of "most trustworthy" this year. Both reference recent polls to back up these claims (Fox / CNN) but how does the media or news agencies like them establish or develop trust and how do they define it? More importantly, how do we (the audience) define it?