In Russia, Pussy Riot are in jail and the leaders of the democracy movement facing criminal indictments. The war in Syria is killing 200 people a day. It's an easy step from all this to the conclusion that 2011, the year it all kicked off, was a flash in the pan. But wrong. Something real and important was unleashed in 2011, and it has not yet gone away. I am confident enough now to call it a revolution.

There is a change in consciousness, the intuition that something big is possible; that a great change in the world's priorities is within people's grasp.

In February 2011, I argued that there was a "new sociological type" at the heart of the global protests: "the graduate with no future". Since then indignados have flooded into Madrid's Puerta del Sol; Occupy camps have sprung up in hundreds of cities across the globe; and student protests in Chile and Quebec have completely changed the political atmosphere there. The anger is undimmed. But the limits of what young protesters are prepared to do have become more obvious.

With Occupy Wall Street, critics point to an emergent self-obsession. "There is a danger. Don't fall in love with yourselves," Slavoj Zizek told the protesters in Zuccotti park. "What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal lives. Will there be any changes then?"

According to numerous high-level insiders, we’re in a dangerous global currency war:

• Current Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann

• St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard

• Outgoing Bank of England chief Mervyn King

• Russian Central Banker Alexei Ulyakeyev

• European Central Bank board member Benoit Coeure

• Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens

• Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega

• Billionaire investor George Soros

• Chinese central bankers and state-run media

• The former president of the Bundesbank – and now UBS chairman – Axel Weber

Indeed, Japan’s escalation of the currency war has caused leaders in the Eurozone, Norway, Sweden, South Korea and many other regions to consider further devaluing their currencies. And James Rickard and Reggie Middleton think that Germany’s demand for its gold is part of the currency war.

And it’s not just conservative voices such as the Journal slamming the currency wars. For example, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich points out that a weak dollar makes everyone poorer, and any new jobs created by a policy of devaluation are low-wage jobs.

More than 70 percent of all the corn, soy, and cotton grown in the US is now genetically modified to withstand glyphosate.

So where do farmers go from here? Well, Monsanto and its peers would like them to try out "next generation" herbicide-resistant seeds — that is, crops engineered to resist not just Roundup, but also other, more toxic herbicides, like 2,4-D and Dicamba. Trouble is, such an escalation in the chemical war on weeds will likely only lead to more prolific, and more super, superweeds, along with a sharp increase in herbicide use. That's the message of a peer-reviewed 2011 paper by a team of Penn State University researchers led by David A. Mortensen.

Mr Cameron paid tribute, during PM's questions, to those who had campaigned for "many years" and the "moving" speeches made by MPs during the debate. MPs were given a free vote on the bill, meaning they were not ordered to vote a particular way by party whips. Their decision to back the bill at second reading signifies that they approve of it in principle. The legislation will now receive more detailed parliamentary scrutiny.

During Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Cameron said: "Last night's vote will be seen not just as making sure there is a proper element of equality, but also helping us to build a stronger and fairer society."

"I thought many of the speeches made last night were very moving, very emotional and I would pay tribute to all those people who have actually made this case, some of them for very many years, saying they want their love to count the same way that a man and a woman's love for each other counts."

"That is what we have opened now in this country and that is why I'm proud it is this government that has brought it forward."

A nauseating whiff came from Barclays today, when it leaked out that it has been under investigation by the Financial Services Authority and the Serious Fraud Office in Britain for illegal fundraising in 2008. Allegedly, the bank secretly loaned £5.3 billion ($8.4 billion) to one of Qatar’s sovereign wealth funds, which then turned around and with great public fanfare pumped that money back into Barclays — a scheme to raise capital on paper to escape a government takeover during the financial crisis.

Then Crédit Agricole, France’s third largest bank, announced €3.8 billion ($5 billion) in write-downs, mostly of “Goodwill” due to the “present macro-economic and financial environment.” Goodwill reflects money paid out for certain items in excess of their value — an expense that, by a quirk of accounting, is temporarily parked as an asset on the balance sheet to be expensed eventually. After the write-off, the bank will still have about €14 billion of Goodwill clogging up its balance sheet, and more write-offs are to come.

Greek banks... oh my! They’re being investigated by Greek financial crime prosecutors for €232 million in loans that they handed out to the ruling parties, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ New Democracy and the Socialist PASOK. “Suspected crimes against the state,” a court official called it. SNS Reaal, fourth largest bank in the Netherlands, was bailed out again — after already having been bailed out in 2008. This time, it was nationalized. The €10 billion package would cost taxpayers initially €3.7 billion. Stockholders and junior debt holders lost out too, but holders of senior debt and covered bonds were made whole.

In Italy, a billowing scandal got new fuel. It kicked off with a criminal investigation into Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Italy’s third largest bank, for alleged market manipulation, false accounting, obstructing regulators, and fraud. The bank used derivatives to hide losses during the financial crisis, but these losses are now seeping from the woodwork. So Standard & Poor’s just cut the bank’s credit rating, fearing that the announced losses may just be the tip of the iceberg.

And on Thursday, Deutsche Bank waded deeper into its quagmire of “matters,” among them the Libor rate-rigging scandal, which might cost it €2.5 billion, and the carbon-trading tax-fraud scandal that broke with a televised raid by police on its headquarters. So, more write-downs are due, and the bank announced a €2.2 billion loss for the fourth quarter. “In 2013,” said co-CEO Jürgen Fitschen reassuringly, “we will be confronted with more developments in these and other matters.”

Weary of all this, the French — whose economy is spiraling deeper into crisis — expressed disdain for their political class; they’re dreaming of authoritarian leadership, a “real leader” who would clean up the mess and “re-establish order.”

A sobering new report by the Corporation for Enterprise Development shows nearly half of US households (132.1 million people) don't have enough savings to weather emergencies, or finance long-term needs like college tuition, health care and housing. According to the Assets & Opportunity Scorecard, these people wouldn't last three months if their income was suddenly depleted. More than 30 percent don't even have a savings account, and another 8 percent don't bank at all.

We're not just talking about people who are living on the poverty line, either. Plenty of the middle class have joined the ranks of the "working poor," struggling right alongside families scraping by on food stamps and other forms of public assistance. More than one-quarter of households earning $55,465-$90,000 annually have less than three months of savings.

And another quarter of households are considered net worth asset poor, "meaning that the few assets they have, such as a savings account or durable assets like a home, business or car, are overwhelmed by their debts," the study says.

“Food products are not always what they purport to be,” Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News. In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.”

In addition, 70% of all ground beef was found to contain “pink slime”. Butchers use “meat glue” to create “bigger” cuts of beef, chicken, lamb and fish, even though it leads to much higher levels of food poisoning: British hamburgers were found to contain horse meat and pork … and it could happen in the US as well.

Indeed, modern red meat is arguably not really meat at all. And selling genetically modified food without labeling them as such is arguably food fraud as well, since a large majority of Americans want genetically modified foods to be labeled, genetically engineered foods have been linked to obesity, cancer, liver failure, infertility and all sorts of other diseases, and the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t even test the safety of such foods.

This trend was predictable because food manufacturers have been trying to hide food inflation in various ways. The inflation in food prices, in turn, has been caused by quantitative easing – printed in an attempt to hide bank fraud – and the use of the printed money for wild speculation by the big banks has driven up food and related commodity prices.

And – instead of fighting for safer food – the Department of Justice and FDA often target whistleblowers and do everything they can to cover up wrongdoing. The Department of Agriculture is no better. And the Feds are treating people who expose abuse in factory farms as potential terrorists … and the states want the same power. Widespread food fraud is the predictable result.

The price freeze applies to every product in all of the nation’s largest supermarkets — a group including Walmart, Carrefour, Coto, Jumbo, Disco and other large chains. The companies’ trade group, representing 70 percent of the Argentine supermarket sector, reached the accord with Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, the government’s news agency Telam reported. As AP reports, "The commerce ministry wants consumers to keep receipts and complain to a hotline about any price hikes they see before April 1."

Perhaps they will. What consumers will certainly do is scramble into local stores to take advantage of artificially-controlled prices knowing very well they have two short months to stock up on perishable goods at today's prices, before the country's inflation comes soaring back, only this time many of the local stores will not be around as their profit margins implode and as owners, especially of foreign-based chains, make the prudent decision to get out of Dodge while the getting's good and before the next steps, including such measures as nationalization, in the escalation into a full out hyperinflationary collapse, are taken by Argentina's female ruler.

On Sunday, January 20, during a news conference in Dublin, Father Tony Flannery became the unlikely face of the modern Irish Catholic. Unlikely, because Flannery supports allowing women and married men to become priests. He embraces the role of lesbians and gays in the Catholic Church. Flannery also questions the legitimacy of the Vatican's hierarchy, and he warns that unless power is decentralized and free thought is encouraged, church attendance in Ireland will continue to stagnate.

These views would seem to be counter to the regular average Irish churchgoer, who, according to numerous polls and surveys, is older and slightly more conservative than the general population. But Flannery has been embraced. The well-known 66-year-old Irish priest has been inundated with e-mails, texts and handwritten letters from supporters all over the country.

"The support is overwhelming," Flannery told DW. "When you think of the effort it takes to write a letter ... I do not feel like I will be isolated should I be forced to leave." Flannery, who resides at the Redemptorist Esker Monastery in the West of Ireland, maintains that if he doesn't sign a statement reversing his positions, the Vatican has threatened ex-communication.

Let's take a typical 24-year-old everyperson. This person lives in Nottingham. There's a one-bedroom flat they want but it costs £120,000. You need a salary of more than £25,000 to get a mortgage for that. But this everyperson has no salary. They're one of the 18.5% of people aged 18-24 in the UK who are out of work. Our 24-year-old has a degree and a £25,000 debt to pay off from university. The everyperson has moved back in with their parents, part of the "boomerang adultescents".

A job is the most pressing requirement but many of those are now going to older workers. The over-50s accounted for 93% of the job increases over the last decade, according to analysis by investment bank Citi. And there's the growing number who put off retiring. Working people of pension age have nearly doubled over the last two decades, reaching 1.4 million in 2011, according to the Office for National Statistics.

In 1957 Harold Macmillan declared: "Most of our people have never had it so good." Today no politician would utter those words.