Massive anti-austerity strikes and protests swept across Europe as millions took to the streets to express their frustration over rising unemployment and dire economic prospects. Many rallies ended with violent clashes with police.

Workers marched in 23 countries across Europe to mark the European Day of Action and Solidarity.

General strikes had been called in Spain and Portugal, paralyzing public services and international flights, in Belgium and France transport links were partially disrupted by strikes and demonstrations, in Italy and Greece thousands of workers and students marched through the streets.

Other EU countries, such as Germany, Austria and Poland, saw well attended union-led rallies.

The Europe-wide strike action, the largest in a series of protests against the austerity policies, was coordinated by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and promoted on Twitter under the "#14N" hashtag.

Decades of extreme weather crippled, and ultimately decimated, first the political culture and later the human population of the ancient Maya, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers that includes two University of California, Davis, scientists.

The collapse of the Maya is one of the world's most enduring mysteries. Now, for the first time, researchers have combined a precise climatic record of the Maya environment with a precise record of Maya political history to provide a better understanding of the role weather had in the civilization's downfall.

Their findings are published in the Nov. 9, 2012 issue of the journal Science.

"Here you had an amazing state-level society that had created calendars, magnificent architecture, works of art, and was engaged in trade throughout Central America," said UC Davis anthropology professor and co-author Bruce Winterhalder. "They were incredible craftspersons, proficient in agriculture, statesmanship and warfare - and within about 80 years, it fell completely apart."

To determine what was happening in the sociopolitical realm during each of those years, the study tapped the extensive Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project, run by UC Davis Native American Language Center director and linguist Martha Macri, a specialist in Mayan hieroglyphs who has been tracking the culture's stone monuments for nearly 30 years.

"Every one of these Maya monuments is political history," said Macri.

A disturbing shift has occurred over the weekend in Britain.

A very noticeable pressure has been building against Britain's elite establishment composed of politicians, highly paid media executives and celebrities, over the ugly issue of pedophilia and child abuse - a crime which has, for generations, been allowed to be carried out in secret.

Since Friday's assessment of David Cameron's most embarrassing TV challenge by seemingly harmless personality Philip Schofield, the whole national conversation is now being engineered by Downing Street and top media executives, to rotate away from Jimmy Savile and MP Tom Watson's call for a rooting out of organized pedophilia in government - and over to protecting the allegedly fragile reputations of hereditary elites like Lord McAlpine, who according to major newspaper editors and TV pundits, have suddenly become victims of a 'witch-hunt' for paedophiles.

Following a rather obvious, internally staged damage control event, where the embattled BBC Director General George Entwistle went on BBC Breakfast Show and the Radio Four Live programs to fall on his sword for 'bad journalism' over last week's Newsnight set-up - Entwistle resigns. Now the government are crying witch-hunt. It's an attempt to apply a new spin to the old spin, where the public are now expected to feel sorry for Lord McAlpine and any other 'proper person' like him, for being accused of child abuse, or pedophilia.

This is the latest effort by Downing Street spin doctors and certain media executives and hired writers, to shut down any serious debate on paedophiles in power, and close the doors on any more fruitful external or internal investigations.

The Deeper Questions Behind the Ambassador's Murder ... and the CIA Boss' Sudden Resignation

While the GOP is attacking (and Dems defending) the Obama administration in connection with the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, there is a deeper story.

Sure, it is stunning that the State Department never requested backup or that people such as Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer allege that President Obama personally watched in real time the attacks as they occurred via video feeds from drones flying over the Benghazi consulate.

But these claims only can be assessed - and the whole confusing mess only makes sense - if the deeper underlying story is first exposed.

Many Syrian Terrorists Come from Libya

The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya's Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.

According to a 2007 report by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center's center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda's main headquarters - and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq - prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi:

A campaign trail of broken promises

Promise: Barack Obama promised to end the US occupation of Iraq and get US troops out by the time he became president.

What actually happened: Barack Obama left behind 18,000 State Department personnel to run the garrison fortress in Baghdad (officially an 'embassy'), America's largest in the world, along with thousands of armed private contractors who protect US corporate interests in the country. US Special Forces continue to be deployed to Iraq to ensure the puppet regime's full compliance.

Promise: Barack Obama promised to end the decades-long embargo on Cuba when he became president.

What actually happened: Obama Quietly Renews U.S. Embargo on Cuba, September 13th, 2011

Promise: Barack Obama praised the 2008 Supreme Court Boumediene v. Bush decision, which ruled that Gitmo detainees - who had been caged indefinitely without charge or trial - could challenge their detentions in US courts. Further, he promised to close the Guantanamo Bay torture facility altogether when he became president, and to restore habeas corpus.

The reverence for the former CIA Director is part of a wider religious-like worship of the national security state.

A prime rule of US political culture is that nothing rivets, animates or delights the political media like a sex scandal. From Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, and Eliot Spitzer to John Edwards, Larry Craig and David Vitter, their titillation and joy is palpable as they revel in every last arousing detail. This giddy package is delivered draped in a sanctimonious wrapping: their excitement at reporting on these scandals is matched only by their self-righteous condemnations of the moral failings of the responsible person.

All of these behaviors have long been constant, inevitable features of every political sex scandal - until yesterday. Now, none of these sentiments is permitted because the newest salacious scandal features at its center Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned yesterday as CIA Director, citing an extramarital affair.

In an exclusive interview with RT, President Bashar Assad said that the conflict in Syria is not a civil war, but proxy terrorism by Syrians and foreign fighters. He also accused the Turkish PM of eyeing Syria with imperial ambitions.

Assad told RT that the West creates scapegoats as enemies - from communism, to Islam, to Saddam Hussein. He accused Western countries of aiming to turn him into their next enemy.

While mainstream media outlets generally report on the crisis as a battle between Assad and Syrian opposition groups, the president claims that his country has been infiltrated by numerous terrorist proxy groups fighting on behalf of other powers.

In the event of a foreign invasion of Syria, Assad warned, the fallout would be too dire for the world to bear.

Not even a full day had passed before newly reelected President Obama ordered another drone strike in Yemen. Huffington Post:

On Wednesday morning, as many Americans sifted through the voter data and exit poll numbers of President Barack Obama's reelection the night before, the Twitter feeds of close watchers of Yemen lit up with reports of another sort of presidential event: an apparent U.S. drone strike had killed several individuals in that country.

There was no way of being certain if the strike was indeed American, or for that matter if it was a drone strike at all, although it had all the markings of one.

"All signs (after dark, suspicions of locals, target) point to Sanhan strike being a US drone," Yemen-based freelance journalist Adam Baron wrote on Twitter.

Several other analysts concurred.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. If it were a American strike, of course, it would have to have been authorized by Obama.

The same party wins every time. Duopoly power rules. America is a one party state with two wings. Each replicates the other. On major issues mattering most, not a dime's worth of difference separates them.

The late Gore Vidal explained it as well as anyone. Some of his best comments included:

"Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates."

"Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so."

"By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over."

"Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be."

"The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."

"We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth."

"Where are all the bright, honest intelligent Americans?"