The people aren't powerless in the face of extreme inequality.

In the coming weeks, millions of Americans will take to the streets as part of the "99 Percent Spring," echoing last year's "Arab Spring."

At the root of this discontent are the extreme inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity that have emerged over the last four decades.

The richest 1 percent now owns over 36 percent of all the wealth in the United States. That's more than the net worth of the bottom 95 percent combined. This 1 percent has pocketed almost all of the wealth gains of the last decade.

In 2010, the 1 percent earned 21 percent of all income, up from only 8 percent in mid-1970s. The 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

These trends among the 1 percent are bad for the rest of us. Concentrated wealth translates into political clout -- the power to use campaign contributions to rent politicians and tilt the rules of the economy in their favor.

Websites dramatizing the "We are the 99 percent" movement are full of personal stories of young people who are saddled with debt and no futures, and middle class families that have seen the American Dream collapse around them, losing jobs, homes, and hopes for the future.

"I used to dream about becoming the first woman president," one woman wrote. "Now I dream about getting a job with health insurance."

Reading these stories, I'm struck that the underlying conditions that have squeezed millions of Americans aren't going away. The current political system, captured by large corporations and the wealthy, is incapable of responding to their needs.

America absolutely loves Wal-Mart. 100 million customers visit Wal-Mart every single week in this country. But is Wal-Mart good for America? That is a question that most people never stop and ask. Most of us love shopping in big, clean stores that are packed with super cheap merchandise, but the truth is that Wal-Mart is destroying America in a lot of ways.

As you will see below, Wal-Mart has destroyed tens of thousands of small businesses and countless manufacturing jobs over the past couple of decades. Wal-Mart has become a gigantic retail behemoth that sells five times more stuff than any other retailer in the United States. Unfortunately, about 85 percent of all the stuff sold at Wal-Mart is made overseas.

What that is costing the U.S. economy in terms of lost jobs and lost revenue is incalculable. But Wal-Mart is a perfect example of where our economic system is headed. Our economy is becoming completely and totally dominated by highly centralized monolithic predator corporations that ruthlessly crush all competition and that will stoop to just about anything in order to cut costs.

In the future, will we all be working for gigantic communal entities that funnel all of the wealth and economic rewards to a very tiny elite? That sounds very much like how communist China works, and red-blooded Americans should want no part of that. America is supposed to be about free enterprise and competition and working together to build up this country, and Wal-Mart is destroying all of that.

The following are 20 facts about Wal-Mart that will absolutely shock you....

Secrets of Scientology marriage counseling-- Katie was right to stay far away from it.

There seemed to be more public derision than sorrow yesterday greeting the news that Katie Holmes had filed divorce papers in New York while her husband Tom Cruise was in Iceland filming a movie.

There was consensus among the tabloids that this split is over Katie's concerns about the couple's child, Suri, and Tom's religion, Scientology. She's seeking sole custody, which suggests this could be a long, tough fight between the celebrity duo.

If Katie is attempting to pull Suri out of Tom's strange world before the girl gets any older, we asked several of our ex-Scientologist sources to explain what, at 6 years old, Suri was about to get into.

We talked with them about the oddities of Scientology schooling, and about the religion's form of counseling -- called auditing -- which can begin as young as Suri's age. But what may have convinced Katie to run was the frightening prospect that faces all Scientology kids beginning at 6 years old: a form of interrogation known as "sec checking."

[See also: there was more blockbuster Scientology news yesterday, involving the defections of L. Ron Hubbard's granddaughter, Roanne Horwich, and the father of church leader David Miscavige, Ron Sr., who each have escaped from Scientology's secretive international headquarters -- "Int Base" -- east of Los Angeles. And: Our open letter to Tom Cruise.]

There are many things that set Scientology apart from other organizations. Its "auditing," for example, was developed by founder L. Ron Hubbard when he published Dianetics in 1950. That summer, it became a brief fad in the United Sta tes to use Hubbard's technique of counseling to help another person go into a kind of semi-trance and "remember" the experience of their birth. Within a couple of years, Hubbard was encouraging people to go back even farther and remember past lives, and the process was enhanced with the introduction of a device called an "e-meter" that measures skin galvanic reaction.

At the same time, Hubbard was building Scientology as a highly regimented, formal organization, and some of the techniques he had developed to counsel people were turning out to be very effective as measures of control.

A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization.

Scientology said it would fight the criminal charges recommended by investigating prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen, who said that up to 12 unidentified people should face charges.

Van Espen's probe also concluded that Scientology's Brussels-based Europe office and its Belgian missions conducted unlawful practices in medicine, violated privacy laws and used illegal business contracts, said Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman at the Federal Prosecutors Office.

"They also face charges of being ... a criminal organization," Pellens said in a telephone interview.

This morning, officers of the Delhi Police reached Sanal Edamaruku's house to arrest him. They came upon directions of a Delhi court to execute an arrest warrant issued by a Mumbai Metropolitan Magistrate Court (second highest Criminal Court). If Sanal had been at home, he would be in jail now....

The officers were informed that Sanal is presently out of Delhi and traveling. They insisted on details of his whereabouts, addresses and contact numbers. Some hours later, they came again to press for information, to no avail.

What will happen next?

With this dramatic turn of events, Sanal Edamaruku's persecution has reached a dangerous new level. Exposing the "miracle" (watch video [in Hindi] below) of the water-dripping crucifix at the Velankanni church in Mumbai as a plumber's problem, he incurred Catholic fury beyond all trademark forgiveness. Highly alarming is the fact that the Catholic side has managed to secure considerable support from Indian government agencies. The Catholic Church is representing only a small minority of believers in India. But it is backed by a powerful worldwide apparatus, driven by great ambitions to conquer India and make up for its losses in the western world. I don't want the Dark Ages to come to India! Sanal says in the controversial TV program, drawing the battle lines

In the ongoing conflict, Sanal has the evidence-based factual truth on his side - regarding capillary action as well as regarding church history. Moreover, he enjoys the full support of the Indian Constitution that explicitly obliges all citizens to develop "scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform". And then, of course, there is the right to Freedom of Expression (Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.) on his side of the balance tray.

Paris, France -- A French court on Tuesday convicted the Church of Scientology and six of its members of organized fraud, but stopped short of banning the church.

The court also fined the members as much as 400,000 euros ($595,000) each.

The decision follows a three-week trial in May and June, during which two plaintiffs said they were defrauded by the organization, which is classified as a sect in France.

The Church of Scientology has about 45,000 followers in France, and some of them were in court Tuesday.

The FBI is investigating the Church of Scientology over allegations of human trafficking, it is claimed.

Federal investigators have been interviewing former members of the controversial organisation, which counts Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its followers, over allegations of enslavement and violent treatment.

According to the New Yorker magazine, the FBI is also investigating allegations surrounding David Miscavige - the group's leader and the best man at Cruise's wedding - who has been accused of repeatedly hitting youngsters.

In an interview with the magazine, Hollywood director Paul Haggis spoke out for the first time over his embittered decision to leave Scientology.

'I was in a cult for 34 years. Everyone else could see it. I don't know why I couldn't,' said Mr Haggis, who wrote Million Dollar Baby and Casino Royale.

Nicolas Sarkozy predicted that French police would come looking for him days before his marital home with Carla Bruni and his office was raided as part of an ongoing illegal campaign funding scandal.

Fraud squad officers and an investigating magistrate yesterday searched the Paris home of Mr Sarkozy and his wife, as well as the office he moved into since losing his re-election bid in May. Reports of a raid at the offices of a law firm where he is an associate were denied this morning.

Mr Sarkozy lost his judicial immunity as head of state two weeks ago.

Magistrates are investigating claims that house staff of Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the L'Oréal cosmetics empire and France's richest woman, handed over brown envelopes stuffed with cash to Mr Sarkozy and his aides to finance his successful 2007 presidential campaign.

On holiday in Canada since Monday, Mr Sarkozy has made no public comment on the raids. But Le Parisien quoted him as telling friends in recent days: "I know they'll come looking for me. Nothing will come of it all."

He has previously dismissed suggestions he received illegal payments as an electoral "stink bomb".

Mr Xenophon, an Independent senator from South Australia, used parliamentary privilege to detail a host of serious allegations against the church made by former members.

Among them were claims that the Church of Scientology engaged in extensive criminal activity, including assault; imprisonment; the covering up of sexual abuse; embezzlement of church funds and blackmail. It was also claimed that the church had exerted pressure on some members to undergo abortions.
"Scientology is not a religious organisation; it is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs," Mr Xenophon told the senate.

"The letters received by me which were written by former followers in Australia contains extensive allegations of crimes and abuses that are truly shocking - crimes against them, and crimes they say they were coerced into committing.

"There are allegations of false imprisonment, coerced abortions and embezzlement of church funds."

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is reported to be furious about a book by one of his own UMP insiders, depicting him as a vengeful, sexually manipulating tyrant.

Marie-Cécile Guillaume's novel, The Monarch, His Son, His Fief, is causing a row within France's conservative ranks, for her lightly fictionalized tale about Mr Sarkozy's blinding thirst for power.

The book, to be published on June 14, fleshes out acts of "political violence," including threats and "back-stabbing," by a Sarkozy-based character and his entourage, which Ms Guillaume observed while working as cabinet director for Patrick Devedjian, a UMP legislator in the wealthy Paris suburb of the Hauts-de-Seine - Mr Sarkozy's electoral heartland.

Mr Devedjian, who has had strained relations with Mr Sarkozy since he lost out on a government post in the former administration, is described as a heroic figure opposite a self-obsessed, twitching "Rocky" and "The Monarch".

Ms Guillaume has said the book includes real dialogue and has not denied the identity of her fictional characters in interviews.