The fundamental facts of the presidential race at this moment are that unemployment is high, the economy is by far the most important issue to American voters, and President Obama's handling of economic questions is overwhelmingly unpopular. Republican presidential hopefuls Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and others are hammering the president daily on matters of job creation and economic growth.

Now some of Obama's activist allies and supporters in the press are engaged in a sharply focused effort to change the subject. Even as economic anxieties continue to rise, some of the nation's premier political journalists are consumed with the alleged influences of obscure religious philosophers on Republican candidates; on questions of creationism, evolution, and the age of the Earth; and on the fantasy that a Republican president might transform the United States into an Iranian-style theocracy.

For example, the Daily Beast/Newsweek recently published an article titled "A Christian Plot for Domination?" claiming that Perry and Bachmann are "deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism" known as Dominionism. A widely discussed article in the Texas Observer claimed that Dominionists -- a "little-known movement of radical Christians" -- are readying an "army of God" to "commandeer civilian government," with Perry the "vessel" for their ambitions. Finally, the New Yorker published a long article claiming that Bachmann believes "Christians, and Christians alone, are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns."

Facial recognition technology has become more advanced, and it's increasingly popping up in two realms: law enforcement and commerce.

Earlier this summer Facebook rolled out facial recognition software that identifies users even when they appear in untagged photos. Like every other time the social networking site has introduced a creepy, invasive new feature, they made it the default setting without telling anyone.

Once people realized that Facebook was basically harvesting biometric data, the usual uproar over the site's relentless corrosion of privacy ensued. Germany even threatened to sue Facebook for violating German and EU data protection laws and a few other countries are investigating. But facial recognition technology is hardly confined to Facebook -- and unlike the social networking site, there's no "opt-out" of leaving your house.

Body scanners being trialled at a German airport ahead of a planned nationwide roll-out were so inaccurate that the whole scheme has been scrapped, a government official has announced.

The so-called backscatter scanners had an error rate of 54 percent during their year-long trial at Hamburg Airport, The Local reported.

The controversial screening devices are similar to the "naked scanners" already in the US at several major airports.

But the German models proved unusable, returning false results triggered by folds in clothing and even by perspiration.

30,000 arrests planned

One month after major disturbances were provoked by the August 4 police killing of Mark Duggan in north London, the Metropolitan Police in the capital are intensifying raids on working class communities.

Entire neighbourhoods have been sealed off, with riot police smashing down doors and dragging people away. So far this has resulted in over 2,000 arrests in London alone, averaging approximately 100 a day since the riots began. The media, tipped off in advance, has filmed the build-up, the actual raids and the spectacle of youth being thrown into police vans.

A police source told the Sunday Times that the police are hunting 30,000 people they say were involved in the disturbances. Nationally, 40,000 hours of CCTV footage will be examined and senior police officers are expecting the investigation to last for years.

A retired Chinese general recently revealed that his country might be planning a surprise missile attack on the United States. The public comment of Xu Guangyu came in response to WikiLeaks revelations that last year Washington had warned its allies beforehand of China's test of a missile interceptor.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a classified cable sent last January 9th, instructed American embassies in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand to notify those countries of upcoming Chinese launches two days later. The cable included details of the launch sites for the interceptor and the target, the models of the missiles, the purpose of the test, and the test date.

Yesterday, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post carried comments from Xu, now at the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, to the effect that American satellites would have detected activity at the launch sites but that some of the information in the cables - specifically the types of missiles and the day of the test - must have come from a source on the ground. WikiLeaks's release of this cable, revealing one or more American spies in China's strategic missile corps, is perhaps the website's most significant compromise of US security to date.

Court documents illustrate how US contracted out secret rendition transportation to a network of private companies

The scale of the CIA's rendition programme has been laid bare in court documents that illustrate in minute detail how the US contracted out the secret transportation of suspects to a network of private American companies.

The manner in which American firms flew terrorism suspects to locations around the world, where they were often tortured, has emerged after one of the companies sued another in a dispute over fees. As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the mass of invoices, receipts, contracts and email correspondence - submitted as evidence to a court in upstate New York - provides a unique glimpse into a world in which the "war on terror" became just another charter opportunity for American businesses.

As a result of the case, the identities of some of the corporations involved in the rendition programme have been disclosed for the first time, along with the names of some of the executives who knew the purpose of the flights.

Many of the 70,000 "third country national"(TCN) service workers employed in Afghanistan and Iraq "recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses," reports Sarah Stillman in a June 6th article in The New Yorker magazine titled "The Invisible Army." In fact, the system resembles nothing so much as a twisted form of modern slavery.

"These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, (and) eat at meagre chow halls..." she reports. "A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law."

Since the U.S. invasions, more than 2,000 contractor fatalities and 51,000 contractor injuries have been reported in Iraq and Afghanistan as the soaring casualty rates "are now on a par with those of U.S. troops in both war zones," Stillman writes.

Do you ever get the feeling that the middle class in America is shrinking? Well, you are not imagining things. A confluence of very troubling long-term economic trends has created an environment in which the middle class in America is being absolutely shredded. Today, most American families would be absolutely thrilled if they could live as well as past generations did. The dream of receiving a solid education, getting a good job, owning a beautiful home and enjoying the good things that America has to offer is increasingly becoming out of reach for a growing number of Americans. The reality is that even though our population has grown, there are less jobs than there used to be. A much higher percentage of the jobs that remain are low income jobs. Millions of middle class American families are desperately trying to hang on as inflation far outpaces the growth of their paychecks. Millions of others have fallen completely out of the middle class and are now totally dependent on the government for survival. We once had the largest, most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now way too much unemployment, way too much inflation, way too much greed and way too much debt are all starting to catch up with us. America is changing, and not for the better.

When most of us were growing up, we understood that there was an unspoken promise that if we got good grades, stayed out of trouble, worked really hard and did everything we were told to do, the system would reward us.

Well, today there are millions of Americans that have done all of those things but don't have anything to show for it.

As large numbers of hard working people continue to fall out of the middle class, there is a growing sense that "the system" has betrayed us all.

Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy is dying. The endless prosperity that we all enjoyed in the past is gone and it is never going to come back.

The following are 34 pieces of evidence that prove that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking......

An unnamed NATO official admitted that Britain and France have deployed ground troops inside the Libyan territory, but said it would be "unfair to call them NATO forces."

Meanwhile, the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said there is "direct evidence" that British and French Special Forces were carrying out ground operations in Libya in violation of UN Security Council resolution 1973.

The resolution, passed in March, authorized a no-fly zone over Libya to protect civilians.

NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said last week the alliance had no troops on the ground in Libya, and would not have any after the regime fell.