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In the context of technology the only way out is through. Global society is dependent on artificially inflated energy resources-i.e. oil-that are directly leading us toward total collapse. Technology is being used to most efficiently maximize wealth of the largest corporate conglomerates at the expense of the social fabric and a living environment. The biosphere is in fact collapsing. The technology exists to solve our technical problems but the solutions do not seem like they will be effectively put to use. The power structures concentrating money off the status quo are too entrenched. Each human is called on to become more aware.

The loss of America's AAA credit score has sparked panicked sell-offs on global markets. Ratings giants have so far confirmed France's highest status, but investors remain unconvinced its finances are solid enough. Financial journalist Demitri Kofinas says it's not just the banks, but whole countries which are now struggling to make ends meet, with more public unrest on the cards.

The NAACP has just passed a historic resolution demanding an end to the War on Drugs.  The resolution comes as young Black male unemployment hovers near 50 percent and the wealth gap's become a veritable gulf. So why is the forty-year-old "War on Drugs" public enemy number one for the nation's oldest civil rights organization? Well here's why:  it's not extraneous - it's central: the war on drugs is the engine of 21st century discrimination - an engine that has brought Jim Crow into the age of Barack Obama.     Author Michelle Alexander lays out the statistics -- and the stories --  of 21st Century Jim Crow in her ought-to-blow-your-socks off book: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness." I had a chance to sit down with Alexander earlier this summer. We'll be posting the full interview in two parts.     "We have managed decades after the civil rights movement to create something like a caste system in the United States," says Alexander in part one here  "In major urban areas, the majority of African American men are either behind bars, under correctional control or saddled with criminal record and once branded as criminal or a felon, they're trapped for life in 2nd class status."     It's not just about people having a hard time getting ahead and climbing the ladder of success. It's about a rigged system. Sound familiar?  Like the Pew Research Center report on household wealth and the Great Recession -- the NAACP resolution story was a one-day news-blip - despite the fact that it pierces the by-your-bootstraps myth that is at the heart of - you pick it - the deficit, the stimulus, the tax code - every contemporary US economic debate.     White America just maybe ought to pay attention. With more and more Americans falling out of jobs and into debt, criminal records are a whole lot easier to come by than life-sustaining employment.  Contrary to the conventional media version, the "Drug War" story is not a people with problems

Presidents serve the institutional interests of the corporations behind them. A President McCain may have at least triggered a true progressive fight.

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated. Young people have heard of this mythical time - but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981." Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" - to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves. And they've succeeded. On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Aric McBay call for new strategy to stave off environmental catastrophe.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day. And that's even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high. Meanwhile, American banks overloaded with foreclosed properties are demolishing vacant dwellings to get the empty houses off their books. Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 77 percent of Americans say they "feel things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track" in this country. That's the highest percentage since January, 2009.

October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions. Read more.

WAYS TO PARTICIPATE ON NOVEMBER 2 GENERAL STRIKE & DAY OF ACTION called for by Occupy Oakland Occupy Oakland is calling for no work and no school on November 2 as part of the general strike. We are asking that all workers go on strike, call in sick, take a vacation day or simply walk off the job with their co-workers. We are also asking that all students walk out of school and join workers and community members in downtown Oakland. All banks and large corporations must close down for the day or demonstrators will march on them. The Occupy Oakland Strike Assembly has vowed to picket and or occupy any business or school which disciplines employees or students in any way for participating in the Nov 2 General Strike. Please email OccupyOaklandLaborSolidarity@gmail.com if you are the subject of any disciplinary action. Occupy Oakland recognizes that not all workers, students and community members will feel able to strike all day long on November 2, and we welcome any form of participation which they feel is appropriate. We urge them to join us before or after work or during their lunch hours. Below are some action ideas for strike participants to consider:

On Thursday night, with police massing after a surprise march and several arrests, Liberty Plaza had a visitor: Ivan Marovic of the Serbian resistance movement Otpor!, which helped bring down Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Joined by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno from The Yes Men, he made a speech expressing his solidarity with the occupiers and reminded them that the world is, indeed, watching. Afterward, while talking with some of the occupation's organizers, he suggested how to take a different approach in encounters with the police.