Original article by Jerry White, via World Socialist Web Site:

Corporations continue to slash tens of thousands of positions while workers still on the job are working harder for less money, according to reports on the US economy released this week.

For the prologues and an explanation, go here.

I wrote this a couple of years ago, and haven’t decided if it’s worth trying to get published.  It was written as sort of a ‘what if they had an apocalypse and it turned out that the Olympians were the true Gods’ answer to the end timers.  It’s some 70 pages typed single spaced…so it may take a while if there’s any interest here to continue reading it.

BTW: I do claim copyright.

Note: This is a Pony Party, which is an open thread.  Do not rec the Pony Party.

Original article, by John Andrews, via dissidentvoice.org:

Anyone reading these words already knows our political systems are broken beyond repair. They already know that trying to patch them up by changing one political party for another every few years merely conforms to Einstein’s definition of insanity: ‘Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ The great man also said something else worth reapeating: ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them … We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.’

Interactive map of US Military bases and deployments worldwide via motherjones.com

Original article, by Wojtek Orowiecki, Group for a Workers’ Party (GPR), CWI in Poland and sub-headed Government and bosses try to crush the workers’ movement via socialistworld.net:

A wave of strikes and protests has been sweeping through Poland for months, above all due to the galloping price of food and energy. In July there were demonstrations of several thousands of workers in a number of towns and more groups of workers are preparing to strike. However, as we can expect, the government and bosses are not taking this lying down. Changes to the labour code have been announced for September, which make strikes practically impossible. At the same time striking workers are victimised and face the use of force even now.

Original article titled Integrity Bank Becomes 10th U.S. Failure This Year , by Alison Vekshin and Ari Levy, via bloomberg.com:

Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) — Integrity Bank of Alpharetta, Georgia, was closed by U.S. regulators today, the 10th bank to collapse this year amid a surge in soured real-estate loans stemming from the worst housing slump since the Great Depression.

Original article via wsws.org:

After going through the formality of a roll call vote ending in the preordained nomination of Barack Obama as its presidential candidate, the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday turned to the question of “national security,” portraying itself as more competent than the Bush administration in defending the interests of US imperialism abroad, while making it clear that it is prepared to launch new and even bloodier wars than those carried out over the past eight years.

The Democratic Party and the Politics of Lesser Evilism, and International Socialist Organization web book, via internationalsocialist.org:

This book traces the history of the Democratic Party as a party of Southern slaveholders, a party of big business, and as a party playing on populist themes in order to win the votes of workers and the oppressed. He also looks at the party’s latest, neoliberal incarnation under Clinton and the “new Democrats.” As Selfa shows, the party has always played the role of coopter of any left alternative outside the limited framework of the two-party system. Selfa argues convincingly that the current “Anybody But Bush” mantra that has gripped many on the left has once again set back the struggle to organize a genuine independent left political alternative in the United States.