Nothing has changed for soldiers since World War II, only now we try to drug away the terror, or train it away with video games, propaganda and even more lies.

We are a nation that utilizes preemptive war to accomplish our financial and political objectives. This is fact. We are a nation run by people so bereft of conscience and normal human empathy that we most damage those willing to live and die in service of our current society, or more accurately, in service of what they think our current society is. I read this article on the drugging of soldiers recently and realized that the men they are writing about represent a few tiny drops in the ocean of suffering that we as a society have created through war and the aftermath, through inhuman designs and inhuman acts. This ocean of suffering is all but ignored by the people in positions of power who have the resources to address it, those who run the very government organizations that design the wars. Pathological individuals in positions of power send young men and women to war. Pathological individuals in positions of power abandon these same young men and women to the streets or psychotropic medication, or both, when they return.

After ending up on the US government's no-fly list under suspicion of terrorism, an American Airlines employee had to stop going to work after being with the airline for 13 years. The no-fly list sent the now-unemployed man spiraling into debt.

Luis Montano ended up on the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) no-fly list in August and has struggled financially ever since. The American Airlines employee was told to "go home" after the government prohibited him from boarding a plane. As an airline employee labeled as a potential terrorist, the man could not fulfill the duties that his job demanded.

"[I was] in shock," Montano said. "Just like, I couldn't understand how you can just be put on a list for no reason, haven't been contacted by the government."

Montano had spent 13 years working for American Airlines as a gate agent, in cargo operations, and at the company's Florida headquarters. Now, he is struggling to pay his bills and his employers told him he could lose his job permanently.

"Two months without work because of being on the no-fly list," he told NBC Miami. "I basically have been doing a lot of research concerning the TSA's no-fly list. I have been trying to basically reach out for help."

Help came in the form of the news media. After NBC's Team 6 Investigators contacted TSA, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI, he was removed from the no-fly list and told in a letter that he was no longer considered a potential terrorist.

After a Florida man picked up a garden hose to try to extinguish a fire that engulfed his neighbor's house in flames, he was brutally tasered by police in front of his two children.

After laying in a puddle while the electricity surged through his body, 42-year-old Daniel Jensen is now emotionally distraught from the experience. He recounted the incident to a WTSP News reporter with tears in his eyes and a cracking voice.

"It was horrible. I was laying in a puddle of water being electrocuted," he said. "And here's the people trying to protect us. And I'm trying to protect my family and neighbors and they're the ones that are bringing harm to me. I don't understand it."

Jensen and his wife, residents of Pinellas Park, woke up from a nap at 6 p.m. on Nov. 8 to the sound of an immense fire engulfing their neighbor's house. Grabbing his fire extinguisher, the husband and father of two ran outside in his underwear and sprayed it at the flames that were engulfing the home. The flames had already reached the fence that separated the two houses and the wind was blowing them towards the corner of Jensen's home.

Once the fire extinguisher was empty, the panicked man, concerned about his family inside the house, grabbed a garden hose to continue his attempt at extinguishing the fire. The police were there, but firefighters had not yet arrived at the scene.

"I was calling for my daughter. I was getting no response," he said. "So I came out, grabbed the hose and started to spray her room... until I heard she was out. [The police] kept telling me just let it go, that's what insurance is for. That wasn't acceptable to me."

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.

Savita Halappanavar's death has renewed calls for Irish law to be modified to allow termination if mother's life is at risk.

A woman of Indian origin has died after doctors in Ireland refused to perform an abortion, telling her that "this is a Catholic country", sparking widespread outrage and renewed calls for immediate reforms to the Irish law to allow termination if the life of the mother is at risk.

Savita Halappanavar (31), who was a dentist, was 17 weeks pregnant when she died from septicaemia, according to an autopsy carried out two days after her death on Oct 28. Her family said she asked several times for her termination as she had severe back pain and was miscarrying but doctors at University Hospital Galway refused on the grounds that abortion was illegal in Ireland.

Her husband Praveen Halappanavar said he was certain that his wife would have still been alive if the termination had been allowed.

It was her first pregnancy, he said, and she was "on top of the world" before she started suffering back pain. When the pain persisted, she asked her consultant if she could be "induced" but was told "no".

"They said unfortunately she can't because it's a Catholic country. Savita said to her [consultant] she is not Catholic, she is Hindu, and why impose the law on her. But she said, 'I'm sorry, unfortunately it's a Catholic country,' and it's the law that they can't abort when the foetus is [alive]," he said.

The hospital has launched an internal investigation in addition to a separate inquiry ordered by Ireland's Health Service Executive.

A Thursday hearing for the man charged with the Colorado movie theater killings was postponed Wednesday after his lawyers told a judge James Holmes would be unable to attend because he was sent to a local hospital Tuesday.

Court documents filed Wednesday gave no details of Holmes' condition. The documents said only that it "renders him unable to be present in court for (Thursday's) hearing."

However, the Denver Post reports sources say Holmes injured himself by ramming his head into a wall at the Arapahoe County jail. Other sources tell the paper Holmes received an MRI at the hospital.

Jail officials refused to comment whether Holmes was back in lock up, citing safety and privacy concerns.

Arapahoe County District Judge William B. Sylvester postponed the hearing, which was scheduled to discuss pretrial motions and media requests for information under state open records laws. The hearing will now be held on December 10.

Svetlana Peunova, who predicted that lizards from planet Nibiru will visit Earth, has registered a party called "Volya" (Will in Russian).

The party appeared in a list of political organizations on the Justice Ministry website.

The party's website states that the West is at war with Russia.

"There is an unannounced war against our country," Peunova writes. "It is carefully hidden by the mass propaganda. But the results are obvious: population losses during the reform years are comparable to Russia's losses in the Great Patriotic War [WWII]."

Peunova also wrote that Russia has become a colony.

"We will have to eat genetically modified food that will lead to infertility because those are the terms in the WTO," Peunova wrote in her party program.

People everywhere are sick and tired of what the government is doing and have been growing more frustrated by the day.

Along the way it has been fun and interesting to see the kinds of creative things that people do to undermine or peacefully work against the various systems of oppression that we are forced to live under.

This week one such plot made the news, in a situation where 15 people in different areas of the country each filed petitions to secede from the United States government.

One of these petitions has actually reached the threshold needed to be considered for a response from the white house.

Not long after the story hit the news the petition in Texas gained a ton of support and quickly reached the 34,000 signatures that was needed to break the threshold.

Tell me what actual benefit you receive from living the "normal" lifestyle - a 2-hour commute to work each day, spending 8 hours in a corporate cubicle that removes your individuality and creativity, to receive a paycheck from which the government has taken its huge and undeserved bite from leaving almost enough to cover your bills and expenses - just so that you can live in the kind of house and drive the kind of car that your friends and relatives think you should live in and be driving.

We all must admit that for some strange reason we don't really understand, we feel a profound sense of accomplishment when we get approved for a mortgage, get a new credit card, or get the "big promotion" at work. There is a scene in the movie Brazil, (a version of 1984), in which Michael Palin lifts his mask as he is about to begin torturing Jonathan Pryce and says glibly, "Confess quick - you don't want to ruin your credit rating!"

We strive, we sacrifice health, family, and well-being for the opportunity to be a better slave.

Florida - The fire was all around Dan Jensen.

He could see it. He could smell it. He could hear it.

It was close enough to touch. It was burning down his neighbor's house. It was creeping toward Jensen's own fence 10 feet away, and he started spraying the fire with his hose.

Police ordered Jensen to get back, and he complied.

But after a few minutes passed without firefighters arriving, a frustrated Jensen stepped forward and leaned down to grab the skinny gray garden hose once again.

That's when he heard the order.

"Hit 'em! Take him down! Tase him!"

Within moments, Jensen was on the ground. He felt electric.

"It was all over me," Jensen said. "Crawling all over me."