Home · News · News Apr 2014
Wednesday April 30, 2014
News Articles

Severe Storms In South, Midwest Leave 35 Dead
AP & HP | Melissa Nelson-Gabriel | 04/30/14

... As much as 15 to 20 inches had fallen in Pensacola in a 24-hour period, National Weather Service meteorologist Phil Grigsby in New Orleans said Wednesday morning, with a few more inches expected. Grigsby said aerial rescues were planned, and the county moved boats and jet skis from the beaches to the streets to help. A portion of Interstate 10 north of Pensacola and other roads were closed, and Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for 26 counties. ... Read more

Drought Now Covers Every Last Inch Of California
thinkprogress.org/ | Jeff Spross | 04/26/14

... California's crops and agriculture are also taking a pounding. Mike Wade, the California Farm Water Coalition's executive director, told USA Today that the direct and indirect economic costs of the drought are already estimated at $7.48 billion, including 800,000 acres of farmland left idle and 20,000 job losses. ...

... On top of all this, a recent study out of Utah State University has linked both the drought in the western U.S. and the frigid winter that just hit the eastern U.S. to climate change. The author of the work, climate scientist Simon Wang, looked at a twin set of pressure systems -- one of unusually high pressure off America's Pacific coast, and one of unusually low pressure over the Great Lakes -- called a "dipole." The combined effect is to drive warm and severely dry weather across the southwest, and unusually cold and snowy weather across the northeastern United States. ... Read more

Deja Vu All Over Again: Fannie, Freddie Would Need Another $190 Billion Bailout When Things Go South
ZeroHedge | author | 04/30/14

While it will come as a surprise to exactly nobody, certainly nobody who understand that the US financial system is no better financial shape than just before the Lehman crash as nothing has been fixed and everything that is broken has been merely swept under the rug (for details see Paul Singer's explanation posted last night) of epic-er leverage, the news that when (not if) the US economy succumbs to a severe economic downturn Fannie and Freddie would require another taxpayer funded bailout, one of $190 billion or even more than the first $187.5 billion-funded nationalization of the GSEs, can only bring a smile to one's face. ... Read more

Elliott's Paul Singer On How It All Will End: "Badly, We Guess"
ZeroHedge | author | 04/29/14

... There is something missing in investors' reasoning that leads to their current complacency, and that is an understanding of the circularity of confidence in a fragile system. Since the system is fundamentally unsound, all it would take is a loss of confidence to set off a collapse in the purchasing power of money, a major currency or the global stock and/or bond markets. ...

... In fact, the global financial system is arguably less safe than it was in 2008. The unquestioned creditworthiness of the Developed World governments ended the most intense phase of the 2008 crisis, as the financial system was ultimately all but guaranteed by governments. ... Read more

Two Giant Banks, Seen as Immune, Become Targets
NYTimes | author | 04/30/14

Federal prosecutors are nearing criminal charges against some of the world's biggest banks, according to lawyers briefed on the matter, a development that could produce the first guilty plea from a major bank in more than two decades.

In doing so, prosecutors are confronting the popular belief that Wall Street institutions have grown so important to the economy that they cannot be charged. A lack of criminal prosecutions of banks and their leaders fueled a public outcry over the perception that Wall Street giants are "too big to jail." ... Read more

An "Army of Lobbyists" Is Quietly Fighting for Budget-Busting Corporate Tax Breaks
Bill Moyers | Joshua Holland | 04/03/14

... The 55 cuts, known on Capitol Hill as "extenders," expired at the end of 2013 but in the past have been renewed retroactively on a bipartisan basis with little fanfare. Altogether, according to the Congressional Budget Office, they could cost the federal government $46 billion in revenues in 2014 and as much as $700 billion over the next 10 years. While some of the breaks would help working people, 90 percent of them would benefit the bottom lines of large, US-based multinationals.

A report released on Monday by Americans for Tax Fairness and Public Campaign calculates that, "1,359 individual lobbyists swarmed Capitol Hill to press members of Congress on the issue between January 2011 and September 2013." Lobbyists appeared "12,378 times in quarterly lobbying reports in the period studied -- each report representing from one to dozens of contacts with members of Congress and their staffs during the quarter it was filed." ... Read more
Corporate Lobbying On Tax Extenders And The "GE Loophole.pdf"



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, April 30 [13:24]
*DN | ALEC in the News: Oklahoma Punishes Solar Power Users; Wisconsin Voter ID Law Overturned (04/30/14) [6:08]
DN | "Silenced" Film Explores the Human Toll of Obama's Crackdown on National Security Whistleblowers (04/24/14) [5:28]
*Enemy Of The State (1998) (full movie) [2:12:12]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Mr. Robock: No CO2 Eureka Moment, Just Years of Statistical Analysis (2/5) (04/30/14) [21:18]
TRNN | Robert McChesney: Will New FCC Internet Regulations Strengthen Monopoly Control? (04/30/14) [15:26]
During the Bush years, people all over the world were horrified by America's aggression, human rights abuses and militarism. By 2008, only one in three people around the world approved of the job performance of U.S. leaders. The election of President Obama broadcast his message of hope and change far beyond U.S. shores, and Gallup's 2009 U.S.-Global Leadership Project (USGLP) recorded a sharp rise in global public approval of U.S. leadership to 49 percent. 93 countries have changed their minds about Obama.
TYT News
TYT | Donald Trump HAPPY to Defend Racist Donald Sterling (04/29/14) [6:28]
*TYT | Boehner's Bad Comedy Was Right, But Now He's Sorry (04/29/14) [6:03]
TYT | Ted Cruz Goes For The Kill On John Kerry 'Israel Apartheid State' Dustup (04/29/14) [11:11]
TYT | Torture And Manhood - Does Obama Lack Both? (04/29/14) [8:20]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire | Ring of Fire (full) (04/27/14) [57:00]
*Ring of Fire | Papantonio: Forced Arbitration -- The Breakfast of Corporate Champions (04/30/14) [10:25]
Ring of Fire | More Abysmal SCOTUS (Supreme Court) Decisions (04/29/14) [3:25]
RT News
*RT CrossTalk | Containment 2.0? with Stephen Cohen & John Mearsheimer (04/28/14) [27:42]
What does Washington's "containment" policy mean? What threats does it pose? Will it work against today's Russia? And does this mean Washington has declared a new Cold War? CrossTalking with Stephen Cohen and John Mearsheimer.
RT | Word Apartheid: 'Why can't John Kerry stand behind his statement on Israel?' () [5:54]
RT | Iraq Campaign Carnage: 900 die in a month as key election nears (04/29/14) [3:32]
Jon Stewart - Daily News
Jon Stewart | Jon Stewart Skewers Crazy Talk at the Annual NRA Convention (04/30/14) [6:20]
Max Keiser Show
Keiser Report (E594) Behind the CNN Curtain! (04/29/14) [25:41]
In the second half, Max interviews Chris Cook about a gas coin, tally sticks, compound interest, national debt versus national credit.
Keiser Report (E593) Hot Tips from Losers (04/26/14) [25:45]
Max interviews international businessman and RBS claimant, Neil Mitchell, about the latest in his high-profile battle against GRG and RBS. He suggests the public move their funds from RBS.
Keiser Report (E592) Zombie Banks, Debt Schools (04/24/14) [25:45]
In the second half, Max interviews Jan Skoyles about China's gold, international payment systems, bail-ins and Getting REAL.
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

04.30.2014. 11:52

Tuesday April 29, 2014
News Articles

Tornadoes In Mississippi, Alabama Flatten Homes As Massive Storm Sweeps South
HP & AP | Adrian Sainz | 04/28/14

A dangerous storm system that spawned a chain of deadly tornadoes over three days flattened homes and businesses, forced frightened residents in more than half a dozen states to take cover and left tens of thousands in the dark Tuesday morning.

As the storm hopscotched across a large swath of the U.S., the overall death toll was at least 28, with 11 killed Monday and 17 Sunday in a band stretching from Oklahoma to Alabama. Forecasts showed the storm continuing to move east early Tuesday, with Georgia and Alabama residents waking to sirens, howling wind and pounding rain. ... Read more

VILONIA, ARKANSAS - APRIL 28: New Vilonia Intermediate School that was set to open in August is left to ruins after a strong tornado went through the area on April 27 for the second time in three years on April 28, 2014 in Vilonia, Arkansas.

Bank of America Lost $2.7 Billion in a Maze of Accounting
Bloomberg | Matt Levine | 04/28/14

Last month, Citigroup failed the Fed's stress test because, even though it would meet minimum capital requirements in a severely adverse scenario, the Fed wasn't comfortable with Citi's capital planning process. Meanwhile, Bank of America passed the stress test and was authorized to increase its capital return by about $6.5 billion, because the Fed concluded that (1) Bank of America would meet minimum capital requirements in a severely adverse scenario, even after returning the extra $6.5 billion, and (2) its capital planning process was, you know, adequate.

Wrong and wrong! Bank of America delightfully announced today that it's suspending its capital plan for mathematical ineptitude, and the Fed, um, concurred. BofA can resubmit its plan within 30 days, and will do so; it "expects the requested capital actions to be contained in the revised CCAR submission will be less than the company's previously announced 2014 capital actions." ... Read more

The financial industry is citing modest public pension shortfalls to justify pushing those pensions to invest more money in riskier and riskier high-fee investments--and to do so in secret.

Wall Street's Pension Gamble
Bill Moyers | David Sirota | 04/28/14

In the national debate over what to do about public pension shortfalls, here's something you may not know: The texts of the agreements signed between those pension funds and financial firms are almost always secret. Yes, that's right. Although they are public pensions that taxpayers contribute to and that public officials oversee, the exact terms of the financial deals being engineered in the public's name and with public money are typically not available to you, the taxpayer.

To understand why that should be cause for concern, ponder some possibilities as they relate to pension deals with hedge funds, private equity partnerships and other so-called "alternative investments." For example, it is possible that the secret terms of such agreements could allow other private individuals in the same investments to negotiate preferential terms for themselves, meaning public employees' pension money enriches those private investors. It is also possible that the secret terms of the agreements create the heads-Wall-Street-wins, tails-pensions-lose effect -- the one whereby retirees' money is subjected to huge risks, yet financial firms' profits are guaranteed regardless of returns. ... Read more

*Handful of very large, very dirty plants are responsible for a huge share of America's CO2 Emissions!
magazine | author | date

Our energy comes from 6,000 power plants which together produce about 40 percent of the country's carbon dioxide emissions, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change. But a handful of very large, very dirty plants are responsible for a disproportionate share of the problem.

A new report from two think tanks -- the Frontier Group and the Environment America Research & Policy Center -- takes a look at this small group of heavy polluters. The researchers found that the 50 dirtiest power plants in the U.S. are responsible for 30 percent of the energy industry's CO2 emissions, and a full two percent of all emissions worldwide -- these 50 plants were responsible for more climate change than all but six countries in the world. ... Read more
America's Dirtiest Power Plants.pdf

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, April 29 [12:02]
*DN | As Unrest Grows, Is Ukraine Paying the Price of U.S.-Russian Ties Stuck in Cold War Era? (04/29/14) [21:48]
DN | "As Consumers, We Are Guinea Pigs": Vermont Set to Become First State to Require GMO Food Labeling (04/29/14) [3:37]
TRNN News
TRNN | Mr. Robock tells Paul Jay, he's really a skeptic who tries to be critical and then makes conclusions based on the evidence (Part 1 of 5) (04/29/14) [16:34]
*TRNN | Economist Michael Hudson discusses the popularity of French economist Thomas Picketty's recent book and says his work fails to link the financialization of the economy to the ascent of the 1% (04/29/14) [10:15]
Bill Moyers
Forget about the Machiavellian drama that plays out in the hit series The House of Cards, if you really want to be educated (or frightened) about what goes on in the nation's capital, just let everything you read in Mike Lofgren's essay sink in.

We don't need fictional Frank Underwoods to tell us that Washington is rotten at its core. That's because, as is often the case, the truth is much scarier than fiction.
Danielle Brian on Legalized Corruption
why we should all be paying attention to McCutcheon v. Federal Elections Commission, a Supreme Court case that many are calling Citizens United 2.0.
Money in Politics - Click to zoom
PBS Frontline
*PBS Frontline | To Catch a Trader (01/07/14) [53:41]
FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith goes inside the government's ongoing, seven-year crackdown on insider trading, drawing on exclusively obtained video of hedge fund titan Steven A. Cohen, incriminating FBI wiretaps of other traders, and interviews with both Wall Street and Justice Department insiders.
PBS NOVA | Inside Animal Minds: Who's the Smartest? () [53:07]
TYT News
TYT | Why Is Ex-Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens Pissed Off? (04/26/14) [4:49]
TYT | Tapes Reveal Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Not Just Racist - He's Also Dumb! (04/28/14) [8:16]
TYT | A**hole CEO Fired for Beating his Girlfriend (04/28/14) [3:43]
TYT | Woman Suing Parents of Boy She Killed Over HER Emotional Distress (04/28/14) [4:59]
TYT | Corrupt Politician Actually Arrested & Charged, Michael Grimm Surrenders (04/28/14) [6:08]
TYT | NRA's Wayne LaPierre Lists All The Fears You Should Have, Except... (04/28/14) [12:02]
Other Interesting Information
Click to zoom - Opiums' Golden Route
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

04.29.2014. 11:11

Monday April 28, 2014
News Articles

Tornadoes Kill At Least 17 People In Arkansas, Oklahoma
HP & AP | Andrew Demillo | 04/27/14

Emergency officials were searching for survivors Monday in the debris left by a powerful tornado that carved an 80-mile path of destruction through suburban Little Rock, killing at least 16 people.

The tornado that slammed into Vilonia, about 10 miles west of the state capital, on Sunday evening grew to about half a mile wide and was among a rash of tornadoes and heavy storms that rumbled across the center and south of the country overnight. The National Weather Service warned that more tornadoes, damaging winds and very large hail would strike in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana on Monday. ... Read more

The Power of Piketty's Capital
Bill Moyers | Eric Alterman | 04/25/14

No less remarkable is the fact one can, for once, believe the hype. Beautifully translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Piketty's Capital is simultaneously intellectually rigorous, historically grounded, culturally nuanced and, in important respects, politically visionary. Even nitpicky economists who take issue with some of his interpretations of the mountains of data he and his colleagues assembled feel compelled to shower the book with praise beforehand -- and frequently after as well. Paul Krugman credits Piketty with inspiring "a revolution in our understanding of long-term trends in inequality."

Piketty's central thesis presents a profound challenge to our political system and its response to the economic crisis of the past decade. As he puts it, an "apparently small gap between the return on capital and the rate of growth can in the long run have powerful and destabilizing effects on the structure and dynamics of social inequality." Moreover, "there is absolutely no doubt that the increase of inequality in the United States contributed to the nation's financial instability. ... Read more
Bill Moyers | Paul Krugman: What the 1% Don't Want You to Know () [24:30]

Rand Paul Says Jimmy Carter Was Better on the Budget Than Ronald Reagan
MotherJones | David Corn | 04/24/14

Rand Paul Says Jimmy Carter Was Better on the Budget Than Ronald Reagan (04/23/14) [2:18]
Read more

Who's Responsible for National Debt - Click to zoom
DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, April 28 [9:49]
*DN | Ralph Nader on TPP, GM Recall, Nuclear Power & the "Unstoppable" Left-Right Anti-Corporate Movement (04/28/14) [4:22]
DN | Cowboy Indian Alliance Protests Keystone XL Pipeline in D.C. After Latest Obama Admin Delay (04/28/14) [5:53], Part 2 [5:33]
TRNN News
*TRNN | President Obama returns from East Asia empty-handed after Japan rejects bilateral agreement - but if the TPP moves forward, will it be in the interest of most Americans? (04/27/14) [10:56]
TRNN | Costas Lapavitsas: The crisis triggered by Germany now targets France, as elites debate leaving the Euro (04/27/14) [13:09]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm A Conversation with Congressman Henry Waxman (04/28/14) [1hr]
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
Jon Stewart | Elizabeth Warren (04/24/14) [6:16], Part 2 [9:48]
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver: General Keith Alexander Extended Interview (04/27/14) [9:25]
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (full) (04/27/14) [29:58]
Top Corporate Tax Rate - Click to zoom
*Wealth and Income Ineqality
Click to zoom - Income Inequality
Michigan CEO Pay Rate
Executive Pay Watch (website)
CEO Pay by State (website)

04.28.2014. 15:22

Friday April 25, 2014
News Articles

Everything You Need To Know About The End Of Net Neutrality
HP | Gerry Smith | 04/24/14

It may be the end of the Internet as we know it. That was the reaction from consumer advocates and some websites after the Federal Communications Commission announced new rules governing Internet service on Thursday. The rules effectively put an end to net neutrality, or the idea that all web traffic should be treated equally.

... The FCC insists, however, that the new rules would not harm Internet users. In a blog post Thursday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said there had been “a great deal of misinformation” about the proposal, which he said would not permit “behavior harmful to consumers or competition by limiting the openness of the Internet.” ... Read more

52 Year-Old French Banker Jumps To Her Death In Paris
ZeroHedge | author | 04/24/14

There have been 13 senior financial services executives deaths around the world this year, but the most notable thing about the sad suicide of the 14th, a 52-year-old banker at France's Bred-Banque-Populaire, is she is the first female. As Le Parisien reports, Lydia (no surname given) jumped from the bank's Paris headquarter's 14th floor shortly before 10am. FranceTV added that sources said "she questioned her superiors before jumping out the window," but the bank denies it noting that she had been in therpapy for several years. ... Read more

Meet AISight - The "Pre-Crime"-Detecting Software Being Installed On Global CCTVs
ZeroHedge | author | 04/24/14

If you thought that CCTV cameras tracking your every move in public was bad enough, you’re going to just love AISight (pronounced “eyesight” of course). The invention of a Houston, Texas based company called BRS Labs (which stands for Behavioral Recognition Systems) is headed by former secret service special agent John Frazzini, and this Orwellian surveillance platform brings artificial intelligence to all of those creepy cameras that have been installed everywhere around you. Apparently, this system is currently being installed in Boston, and has already been implemented in Chicago and Washington. The most disturbing part about this platform is that this artificial intelligence defines what is “normal” behavior and anything that falls outside of that narrow band can be flagged for “pre crime” potential. ... Read more
BRSLabs' AISight - The World's Only Behavioral Recognition System for Video Surveillance () [15:44]

An Indictment of the Invisible Hand
Bill Moyers | Jeffrey Madrick | 04/18/14

Thomas Piketty’s 700-page book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has stunned both the economic profession and most political observers. But the economic mainstream is not truly dealing with its most serious implications even as they widely praise his work.

Here in a nutshell is what he argues: Current rates of inequality are closer to historical norms than aberrations. Inequality is likely to stay high and perhaps increase. The normal workings of the free market won’t change this. The only way to rectify the imbalance is more aggressive taxes on property and high incomes to reduce inequality.

All this from an economist with strong mainstream credentials, and whose work in tandem with Emanuel Saez, Tony Atkinson and a few others has profoundly changed how we think about inequality. It was Piketty et al. who showed that a huge amount of income goes to the top 1 percent, and most of that to the top 0.1 percent. We don’t really have an inequality problem. We have stagnating incomes for the bottom 90 percent and a runaway of incomes at the very top. ... Read more

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World's Richest
NYTimes | author | 04/22/14

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction. While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada -- substantially behind in 2000 -- now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, April 25 [53:00]
"Utopian Potential of the Internet": Astra Taylor on How to Take Back Power & Culture in Digital Age (04/25/14) [4:22]
TRNN News
TRNN | Bill Black: New Law Requires Swiss Banks to Report Customers Evading Tax (04/25/14) [4:00]
TRNN | Plaintiff Lisa Parr describes how her family suffered mentally and physically after her home became surrounded with fracking wells (04/25/14) [9:02]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | Ellen Dorsey & Thomas Van Dyck: Putting The Freeze On Global Warming (04/23/14) [24:34]
This week, Bill talks with two leaders who helped inspire the new fossil fuel divestment movement that Tutu is encouraging. Ellen Dorsey is executive director of the Wallace Global Fund and a catalyst in the coalition of 17 foundations known as Divest-Invest Philanthropy. Thomas Van Dyck is Senior Vice President – Financial Advisor at RBC Wealth Management, and founder of the shareholder advocacy foundation, As You Sow.

They are urging foundations, faith groups, pension funds, municipalities and universities to sell their shares in polluting industries and reinvest in companies committed to climate change solutions.
Wealth and Income Inequality
HP | Thomas Piketty Discusses, "Capital In The 21st Century" with Ryan Grim and Alexis Goldstein (04/18/14) [42:49]
CUNY | Capital in the Twenty-First Century (04/23/14) [1:30:02]
The French economist Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics) discussed his new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century at the Graduate Center. In this landmark work, Piketty argues that the main driver of inequality -- the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth -- threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. He calls for political action and policy intervention. Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University), Paul Krugman (Princeton University), and Steven Durlauf (University of Wisconsin--Madison) participated in a panel moderated by LIS Senior Scholar Branko Milanovic.
*Bill Moyers | Robert Reich: Inequality for All (interview) (2013) [56:46]
Robert Reich | Inequality for All (full) [1:30:11]
TYT News
TYT | U.S. Government Killed OUR Internet Today (04/24/14) [7:48]
TYT | Obama Makes Shocking Keystone XL Pipeline Decision (04/24/14) [10:07]
TYT | Pentagon Using Man-Sized Robots For "Humanitarian" Work AND... (04/24/14) [4:55]
TYT | Reagan or Carter? Who Does Rand Paul Think Was The Better President? (04/23/14) [6:11]
*TYT | American? You Might Move To Canada After Watching This (04/23/14) [13:03]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday (04/25/14) [1hr]
International News - Friday (04/25/14) [1hr]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Jon Stewart Rips 'Professor Of Negro Studies' Cliven Bundy (04/24/14) [3:53]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

04.25.2014. 13:00

Thursday April 24, 2014
News Articles

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World's Richest
NYTimes | author | 04/22/14

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction. While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada -- substantially behind in 2000 -- now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans. ... Read more

60% Of China's Water "Too Polluted To Drink"

Koch-Linked Firm Devoted to Grooming "Electable" Candidates Signs Up Arkansas GOP Leader
MotherJones | Andy Kroll | 04/24/14

In January, Mother Jones broke the story of one of the newest affiliates of Charles and David Koch's sprawling political machine, a consulting firm named Aegis Strategic created to identify, recruit, and groom free-market-minded candidates for elected office. Aegis bills itself as a one-stop shop for aspiring politicians, able to handle general consulting, fundraising, direct mail, social media, and more. ... Read more

The IPCC and ExxonMobil Have Very Different Thoughts About Our Future
Bill Moyers | author | 04/23/14

Earlier this month, we noted that shareholders were attempting to push ExxonMobil to recognize the importance of climate change and take into account the risks posed by a warming climate and possible regulations to it's future business. But instead, the oil giant released a report saying that neither climate change nor a government response to it will affect the way the company does business -- in part, because, according to Exxon's assessment, it doesn't seem likely that governments will take action to combat climate change during the next quarter century.

Look at Exxon report page 1 where they state, "we are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become 'stranded.' We believe producing these assets is essential to meeting growing energy demand worldwide, and in preventing consumers -- especially those in the least developed and most vulnerable economies -- from themselves becoming stranded in the global pursuit of higher living standards and greater economic opportunity." On page 2 you see pictures showing how fossil fuels bring improved living standards to the poor around the world. This is their core premise, that demand will increase as they power the world to a brighter future.

The very people Exxon plans to lift out of poverty are in fact at the highest risk of becoming climate refugees. Two very different visions of the future that need to be reconciled. ... Read more

This Is What Winning Looks Like
Vice.com | Ben Anderson | 05/06/13

I didn't plan on spending six years covering the war in Afghanistan. I went there in 2007 to make a film about the vicious fighting between undermanned, underequipped British forces and the Taliban in Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province. But I became obsessed with what I witnessed there--how different it was from the conflict's portrayal in the media and in official government statements.

All I had to do was trek out to one of the many tiny, isolated patrol bases that dot the barren, sunbaked landscape and hang out with British infantry troops to see the chaotic reality of the war firsthand: firefights that lasted entire days, suicide bombers who leaped onto unarmored jeeps from behind market stalls, IEDs buried everywhere, and bombs dropped onto Afghans' homes, sometimes with whole families of innocent civilians inside. ... Read more
VICE | This Is What Winning Looks Like (05/16/13) [1:29:11]

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, April 24 [13:18]
*DN | In Landmark Ruling, U.S. Ordered to Release Memo Behind Targeted Killings of U.S. Citizens (04/24/14) [4:31]
*DN | "Silenced" Film Explores the Human Toll of Obama's Crackdown on National Security Whistleblowers (04/24/14) [5:28]
TRNN News
TRNN | Robert Parry: Evidence For Russian Involvement In East Ukraine Based On Shoddy Journalism (04/24/14) [7:44]
Bill Moyers
Putting the Freeze on Global Warming (preview) (04/23/14) [0:28]
Max Keiser News
I like Max Keiser and his commentary. It is a little cheeky, but the information is great. If you only want to hear the guest interview with Ross Ashcroft, about the housing super bubble in London, please move the progressbat half way. Then view Ross Ashcroft documentary FOUR HORSEMEN.
*Keiser Report (E520) Debtonomics of Suicide(11/07/13) [25:46]
In the second half, Max interviews Ross Ashcroft about the housing super bubble in London and what it means to the rest of the economy to have a rentier class in charge.
*FOUR HORSEMEN is an independent feature documentary which lifts the lid on how the world really works. [1:38:54]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Sexual Assaults On College Campuses And How Colleges And Universities Are Responding (04/24/14) [1hr]
ENRON
*Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) (trailer) [2:00]
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) (full) [58:33], Part 2 [56:00]
*The Crooked E - The Unshredded Truth About Enron (2003) [1:21:16]
Other News
Journeyman | China's Empty Cities House 64 Million Empty Apartments (2011) [14:02]
"There are around 64 million empty apartments in China," claims analyst Gillem Tulloch. It's all part of the Chinese government's efforts to keep its economy booming and there are plenty of people who would love to move in, but the properties are priced out of the market. It's after 2pm and in the new city of Dongguan shop owner Tian Yu Gao is yet to serve a single customer. "It's a bit boring," he sighs. His open shop is a rare sight in the Great Mall: once heralded by the New York Times as proof of China's astonishing consumer culture, today it is an eerie vista of emptiness. "It can't stay this way," insists Tulloch, "when the bubble bursts, it will impoverish vast numbers of people".
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.
VICE | This Is What Winning Looks Like (05/16/13) [1:29:11]
"This Is What Winning Looks Like" is a disturbing new documentary about the ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and corruption of the Afghan security forces as well as the reduced role of US Marines due to the troop withdrawal. We see on-the-ground footage of fighting between the Afghan forces and the Taliban as well as insightful commentary from the documentary's producer, Ben Anderson. There are also exclusive interviews with the US Ambassador and the British Deputy Ambassador to Afghanistan about the prospect of peace in the region.

04.24.2014. 13:11

Wednesday April 23, 2014
News Articles

Paul Krugman: Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
Bill Moyers | Paul Krugman | 04/16/14

Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, isn’t a household name, although that may change with the English-language publication of his magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Yet his influence runs deep. It has become a commonplace to say that we are living in a second Gilded Age -- or, as Piketty likes to put it, a second Belle Époque -- defined by the incredible rise of the “one percent.” But it has only become a commonplace thanks to Piketty’s work. In particular, he and a few colleagues (notably Anthony Atkinson at Oxford and Emmanuel Saez at Berkeley) have pioneered statistical techniques that make it possible to track the concentration of income and wealth deep into the past -- back to the early 20th century for America and Britain, and all the way to the late eighteenth century for France. ... Read more

Georgia Governor Signs 'Unprecedented' Gun Rights Bill
HP | Paige Lavender | 04/23/14

House Bill 60, also known as The Safe Carry Protection Act, will allow licensed gun owners to carry their firearms into public places, including bars, nightclubs, schools, churches and government buildings. ...

... The National Rifle Association has praised the bill as "the most comprehensive pro-gun reform legislation introduced in recent state history" and called it a “historic victory for the second amendment.” ... Read more

Far More Asteroids Have Hit The Earth Than We Thought, Astronauts Say
HP | Benjamin Hart | 04/19/14

On Tuesday, the B612 Foundation, which is devoted to preventing the next deep impact, will present data from a nuclear-weapons test warning satellite showing that far more asteroids have hit earth in the past few years than previously thought, the organization announced on its website.

The data, collected from a nuclear missile detection system that picks up large blasts on earth, shows that since 2001, asteroids have caused 26 explosions on the scale of an atomic bomb. ... Read more

Far More Asteroids Have Hit The Earth Than We Thought (04/20/14) [1:58]

Flash Boys Has Been Dethroned At The Top Of The Amazon Bestseller List By Thomas Piketty's Capital "exposing capitalism's fatal flaw"
ZeroHedge | author | 04/23/14

And to think all it took was 147 years of 'capitalism' for the circle to be complete from Das Kapital's labor-vs-capital Marxist manifesto to Thomas Piketty's Capital "exposing capitalism's fatal flaw"

Hmmm. What could account for that? Could it be the last broadcast of the “Lawrence Welk Show?” Or the blast off of the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon? Or could it have something to do with the mysterious D.B. Cooper, who bailed out of the plane he hijacked, never to be seen again? A timeline of 1971 offers so many possibilities. But, say, what about the possibility that it was in the middle of 1971, in August, that America closed the gold window at which it was supposed to redeem in specie dollars presented by foreign central banks. That was the default that ended the era of the Bretton Woods monetary system.

That’s the default that opened the age of fiat money. Or the era that President Nixon supposedly summed up in with Milton Friedman’s immortal words, “We’re all Keynesians now.” This is an age that has seen a sharp change in unemployment patterns. Before this date, unemployment was, by today’s standards, low. This was a pattern that held in Europe (these columns wrote about it in “George Soros’ Two Cents”) and in America (“Yellen’s Missing Jobs”). From 1947 to 1971, unemployment in America ran at the average rate of 4.7%; since 1971 the average unemployment rate has averaged 6.4%. Could this have been a factor in the soaring income inequality that also emerged in the age of fiat money? Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, April 23 [13:14]
DN | Toms River: How a Small Town Fought Back Against Corporate Giants for Toxic Dumping Linked to Cancer (04/23/14) [4:36]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Larry Wilkerson: As Obama travels to East Asia, the U.S. needs to pursue cooperation with China and push it to settle territorial disputes in international venues (04/23/14) [7:30]
TRNN | Jenny Marienau and Ted Glick discuss the origins of Earth Day, student divestment campaigns, Keystone XL, and the need for collective solutions (04/23/14) [10:10]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire | U.S. Supreme Court doing Corporate America's Bidding (04/23/14) [12:37]
Ring of Fire | Preventable Medical Errors Might Be The Death of You (04/10/14) [11:29]
State of Surveillance
Journeyman | The Frightening New Technology Transforming State Surveillance (04/22/14) [14:07]
Income Inequality
*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]
RSA | Growth is Not Enough () [3:26]
Click to zoom - Income Inequality, Europe vs US
*Wealth Inequality in the World [3:51]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

04.23.2014. 15:55

Tuesday April 22, 2014
News Articles

*U.S. right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists
CNN | Peter Bergen | 04/14/14

On Sunday, a man shot and killed a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and then drove to a nearby Jewish retirement community where he shot and killed a third person. Police arrested a suspect, Frazier Glenn Cross, who shouted "Heil Hitler" after he was taken into custody.

In fact, since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies, including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology. Read more
TYT | Right Wing Terrorists A Bigger Threat, But Not According To The Media (04/19/14) [5:18]

Click to zoom - Major Causes of Death

Click to zoom - Death in America

Happy Earth Day. We Just Reached Another Scary Climate Change Milestone
HP | Kate Sheppard | 04/22/14

In May 2013, it was big news when, for the first time, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit 400 parts per million. Now, researchers say that number has been consistently above 400 for the last month.

"This is higher than it's been in millions of years," said Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory. ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

Is The US Military Preparing For The Collapse Of The Dollar?
ZeroHedge | author | 04/22/14

It almost happened in 2008... but as this excerpt from Casey Research's Meltdown America documentary notes, it appears the US military is preparing for the potential collapse of the US dollar. As Scott Taylor warns, "...if the carrot (of credit worthiness) is fading, and the stick (of military threat) is weak, that empire is going to come down in a hurry..." which leaves a serial economic mis-manager only one option to 'secure' the empire. ... Read more
Is The US Military Preparing For The Collapse Of The Dollar? (04/21/14) [1:44]



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, April 22 [13:25]
Note: DemocracyNow didn't carve up their 1 hour broadcast into smaller YouTube videos, so I present the whole broadcast below. The Earth Day Special: "Fierce Green Fire" Documentary starts about 1 inch in on the Progressbar.
*DN | Earth Day Special: "Fierce Green Fire" Documentary Explores Environmental Movement's Global Rise (04/22/14) []
TRNN News
*TRNN | Investigative journalist Greg Palast: Exclusive Investigation Uncovers How BP Uses Bribes To Do Business (04/22/14) [11:34]
TRNN | Robert Pollin: Deficit hawks were wrong about America's normal level, Congress should pass a financial transaction tax and not more cuts to social spending (04/22/14) [7:12]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Rising Poverty In America: The Causes And Consequences (04/22/14) [1hr]
A half-century ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty. Since then, the percentage of poor Americans has declined, but more than 46 million still live below the poverty line today. That's about 15 percent of the population. Whether the war on poverty was a success or failure is the subject of passionate debate and heavily ideological. Many economists say without the social programs implemented to fight poverty, millions more Americans would be poor. Critics argue those programs took away incentives to work and created an underclass dependent on government subsidies. Diane and guests talk about the causes and consequences of poverty in America.
TYT News
TYT | Proof The US Is An Oligarchy, Not A Democracy (04/17/14) [10:28]
TYT | The Dear Leader Can Read Minds - North Korea Brainwashing (04/20/14) [5:53]
TYT | Students Loans Are HUGE Profit-Centers For The Government (04/20/14) [6:05]
TYT | Right Wing Terrorists A Bigger Threat, But Not According To The Media (04/19/14) [5:18]
Tiny Homes
*How to build a tiny house for $30,000 (slideshow)
10 homes on wheels (slideshow)
Humor ??
Click picture to zoom in
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

04.22.2014. 15:36

Monday April 21, 2014
News Articles

What the 1% Don't Want You to Know
HP | Bill Moyers | 04/18/14

The median pay for the top 100 highest-paid CEOs at America's publicly traded companies was a handsome $13.9 million in 2013. That's a 9 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new Equilar pay study for The New York Times.

These types of jumps in executive compensation may have more of an effect on our widening income inequality than previously thought. A new book that's the talk of academia and the media, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, shows that two-thirds of America's increase in income inequality over the past four decades is the result of steep raises given to the country's highest earners. Read more

Oklahoma Provides a Win for ALEC's 50-State Campaign Against Democracy
Bill Moyers | Joshua Holland | 04/18/14

On Monday, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed a bill that prohibits local governments from boosting their minimum wages or enacting laws mandating benefits like paid vacation or sick leave for working people.

Shadee Ashtari reports for The Huffington Post that "opponents of the measure view the move by Oklahoma Republicans as retaliation against an initiative underway in Oklahoma City, where organizers have been gathering signatures to raise the city's minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10." That may well be a factor, but the legislation has the fingerprints of the National Restaurant Association -- "the other NRA" -- and the American Legislative Affairs Council (ALEC) all over it. ... Read more

John Pilger | The Strangelove Effect - or How We Are Hoodwinked Into Fighting a New Cold War
Truth-out.org | John Pilger | 04/18/14

In 1964, the year Strangelove was made, "the missile gap" was the false flag. In order to build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue an undeclared policy of domination, President John F. Kennedy approved the CIA's propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the United States in the production of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. This filled front pages as the "Russian threat." In fact, the Americans were so far ahead in the production of ICBMs, the Russians never approached them. The cold war was based largely on this lie.

What is certain is that Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap. Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan, well after Osama bin Laden had fled; then destroyed Iraq beneath a false flag; then invented a "nuclear rogue" in Iran; dispatched Libya to a Hobbesian anarchy; and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror by drone. Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, April 21 [11:02]
DN | Exclusive: 4 Years After BP Disaster, Ousted Drilling Chief Warns U.S. at Risk of Another Oil Spill (04/21/14) [4:25]
TRNN News
TRNN | Patrick Bond: Who Will Pay for Climate Change Disaster? (04/21/14) [15:01]
*TRNN | Bill Black: The Savings and Loan Crisis Demonstrates the Importance of Glass Steagall (933) (04/21/14) [5:58]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | What the 1% Don't Want You to Know. Economist Paul Krugman explains how the United States is becoming an oligarchy - the very system our founders revolted against. (04/18/14) [24:30]
Wikileaks
*We Steal Secrets - The Story of Wikileaks () [2:09:40]
Wikileaks () [50:55]
"We Steal Secrets": Alex Gibney's New Documentary Explores the Story () [23:53]
Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges at Moravian College: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies (2013) [1:41:49]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Business Of Legalized Marijuana And Ongoing Health Concerns (04/21/14) [1hr]
TYT News
TYT | Be A Cheerleader, Obama Official Told Elizabeth Warren (04/20/14) [6:06]
TYT | Bloomberg Organizes Big Money To Challenge The NRA (04/20/14) [9:28]

04.21.2014. 12:54

Friday April 18, 2014
News Articles

The U.S. Government: Paying to Undermine Internet Security, Not to Fix It
ProPublica | Julia Angwin | 04/15/14

The Heartbleed computer security bug is many things: a catastrophic tech failure, an open invitation to criminal hackers and yet another reason to upgrade our passwords on dozens of websites. But more than anything else, Heartbleed reveals our neglect of Internet security.

The United States spends more than $50 billion a year on spying and intelligence, while the folks who build important defense software -- in this case a program called OpenSSL that ensures that your connection to a website is encrypted -- are four core programmers, only one of whom calls it a full-time job.

In a typical year, the foundation that supports OpenSSL receives just $2,000 in donations. The programmers have to rely on consulting gigs to pay for their work. "There should be at least a half dozen full time OpenSSL team members, not just one, able to concentrate on the care and feeding of OpenSSL without having to hustle commercial work," says Steve Marquess, who raises money for the project. Is it any wonder that this Heartbleed bug slipped through the cracks? ... Read more

LastPass Heartbleed checker: With news breaking on Monday, April 7th that the Heartbleed bug causes a vulnerability in the OpenSSL cryptographic library, which is used by roughly two-thirds of all websites on the Internet, we want to update our community on how this bug may have impacted LastPass and clarify the actions we're taking to protect our customers. Click here.

Why No Sustained Protests (Yet)?
Truthout | Richard D Wolff | 04/13/14

The post-1945 destruction of the New Deal coalition - unionists, socialists and communists - keeps influencing Americans' lives. Today, its effects help explain why popular actions have been so muted against US economic changes since the 1970s and especially against the bailouts and austerity since the crash of 2008. Those effects also suggest what could reignite sustained protests and demands for change.

  1. First to be destroyed after 1945 were the communists. Coordinated attacks came from business, conservatives, government and media. Most academics and liberals (including many who had supported the New Deal coalition) were complicit in that destruction.
  2. Second went the socialists, largely destroyed by being rebranded as fronts, dupes or simply equivalents of communists. In many places, even liberals who rejected socialists and communists were nonetheless equated to them.
  3. Third to be destroyed were the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and unionism generally (later AFL-CIO etc.). They declined steadily for most of the post-war period.
  4. ...
Read more

*US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study
CommonDreams | Eric Zuesse | 04/14/14

A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study's opening question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is:

"Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy. Read more

Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.pdf

The Great Lakes Are Still Almost Half Frozen, And It Could Affect The Environment For Years
HP | Joseph Erbentraut | 04/17/14

Though more than a month has passed since ice coverage on the Great Lakes reached a near-record high, the amount of ice that still remains could have a big impact on the environment in the months -- and years -- ahead. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, April 18 [12:23]
DN | Gabriel García Márquez in His Own Words on Writing "100 Years of Solitude" (04/18/14) [13:38], Part 2 [19:52], Part 3 [10:13]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | What the 1% Don't Want You to Know: Economist Paul Krugman explains how the United States is becoming an oligarchy -- the very system our founders revolted against. (preview) (04/16/14) [0:42]
The median pay for the top 100 highest-paid CEOs at America's publicly traded companies was a handsome $13.9 million in 2013. That's a 9 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new Equilar pay study for The New York Times.

These types of jumps in executive compensation may have more of an effect on our widening income inequality than previously thought. A new book that's the talk of academia and the media, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, shows that two-thirds of America's increase in income inequality over the past four decades is the result of steep raises given to the country's highest earners. ...
Bill Moyers | Bill Moyers Remembers the Day FDR Died (04/11/14) [2:08]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday (04/18/14) [1hr]
International News - Friday (04/18/14) [1hr]
TYT News
*TYT | Proof The US Is An Oligarchy, Not A Democracy (04/17/14) [10:28]
PBS Call the Midwife Series
PBS | Call The Midwife S03E01 (04/01/14) [53:51]
PBS | Call The Midwife S03E02 (04/06/14) [53:51]
PBS | Call The Midwife S03E03 (04/13/14) [53:51]

04.18.2014. 14:22

Thursday April 17, 2014
News Articles

Fighting for the Four Freedoms
Bill Moyers | author |04/11/14

In January 1941, FDR's State of the Union address made it clear that a fight was inevitable, a fight to preserve, protect and defend four essential freedoms: freedom from fear and want and freedom of speech and religion.

This week, Bill speaks with historian Harvey J. Kaye, author of the new book, The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great, about how FDR's speech was a rallying cry to build the kind of progressive society that Roosevelt hoped for but did not live to see at war's end. ... Read more

Putin Admits Russian Soldiers Were In Crimea, Slams West For Role In Ukraine Crisis
HP & AP | Vladimir Isachenkov | 04/17/14

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday rejected claims that Russian special forces are fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine, but recognized for the first time that the troops in unmarked uniforms who had overtaken Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula before its annexation by Moscow were Russian soldiers.

Putin expressed hope for a political and diplomatic solution of the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War, saying he hopes that he won't have to send Russian troops into eastern Ukraine, which has been engulfed by violent protests against the new authorities in Kiev. He poured scorn at the West, accusing it of trying to weaken and isolate Russia and made it starkly clear that he doesn't fear further Western sanctions. ... Read more

More Proof That American Health Care Prices Are Sky-High
HP | Jeffrey Young | 04/17/14

As anyone who's ever paid a health insurance premium or a hospital bill knows, medical care is expensive. What Americans may not know is that residents of other countries don't pay nearly as much for the same things. ...

... And despite the persistent claims by nearly anyone holding or seeking public office in the U.S. that America has the best health care system in the world, there's scant evidence that we're getting higher-quality medical treatment or enjoying healthier lives than our counterparts abroad. What's more, the U.S. still leaves tens of millions of its own citizens without health coverage, and will continue to do so even a decade into the implementation of Obamacare. ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in
International Federation of Health Plans 2013 Comparative Price Report.pdf

A peek inside the N.C. data center where your old Facebook photos go to 'sleep'
charlotteobserver.com | Joe DePriest | 04/17/14

... Environmentalists have been pressing data centers to cut power consumption. The New York Times reported in 2011 that Google's data centers sucked in almost 260 million watts, or about a quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant.

Construction on one data hall in Facebook's cold storage facility has been completed and two more will be ready by June for a total of 90,000 square feet of storage space, McCammon said. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for THursday, April 17 [13:16]
*DN | "We Are Not Beginning a New Cold War, We Are Well Into It": Stephen Cohen on Russia-Ukraine Crisis (04/17/14) [18:46]
As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in the Ukrainian east after security forces killed three pro-Russian protesters, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in the city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials said the pro-Russian separatists had attempted to storm a military base. The killings came just after the unraveling of a Ukrainian operation to retake government buildings from pro-Russian separatists. Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the authorities in Kiev of plunging the country into an "abyss" and refused to rule out sending forces into Ukraine. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has announced a series of steps to reinforce its presence in eastern Europe. "We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land," Rasmussen said. We are joined by Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. "We are not at the beginning of a new Cold War, we are well into it," Cohen says, "which alerts us to the fact 'hot war' is imaginable now. It's unlikely, but it's conceivable -- and if it's conceivable, something has to be done about it."
*DN | Former Drone Operators Reveal Air Force Plays Key Role in Secret CIA Assassination Campaign (04/17/14) [13:16]
A new documentary film reveals how a regular U.S. air force unit based in the Nevada desert is responsible for flying the CIA's drone strike program in Pakistan. "Drone" identifies the unit conducting CIA strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas as the 17th Reconnaissance Squadron, which is located on the Creech air force base, about 45 miles from Las Vegas. We are joined by the film's director, Tonje Schei, and Chris Woods, an award-winning reporter who investigates drone warfare. Woods is featured in "Drone" and is working on a forthcoming book on U.S. drone warfare.
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | Historian Harvey J. Kaye talks to Bill about why FDR's "Four Freedoms" -- freedom from fear and want and freedom of speech and religion -- are more important now than ever. (04/11/14) [24:33]
FOX | Over the past year, Fox News has relentlessly resisted any efforts to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy. (04/15/14) [1:36]
Charles and David Koch hit a milestone on Wednesday, as a $1.3 billion boost to their collective fortune sent their net worth above $100 billion, according to Bloomberg News.

The brothers are majority stakeholders in Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the U.S., after Cargill Inc. They are now the fifth- and sixth-wealthiest people in the world.

While half the country may not be familiar with the Koch brothers, according to a recent poll, the pair has poured millions into conservative campaigns and causes. The brothers' most recent advertising campaign will target key Senate races in Colorado and Iowa, chastising Democratic candidates Mark Udall and Bruce Braley for supporting the Affordable Care Act.
Facebook facility in Forest City, NC. A peek inside the N.C. data center where your old Facebook photos go to 'sleep' (04/17/14) [3:59]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.
PBS Frontline | Bigger than Enron () [51:30]
C-Span | How Did Enron Make Their Money, Hide Their Finances, Fail and Get Caught? Financial Reporting (2004) [42:20]
We Steal Secrets - The Story of Wikileaks 90 [2:09:41
Acclaimed documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) takes the reins for this no-holds-barred look at one of the most unusual phenomena of early 21st century media.

In 2006, an Iceland-based outfit called The Sunshine Press launched the website WikiLeaks.org. As run by Australian Internet activist Julian Assange, the site's mandate involved regularly publishing top-secret documents and covert information, often regarding governments and their respective military operations. As might be expected, this set off a firestorm between those who admired the organization's bravado and resourcefulness, and those who argued, not unjustly, that the dissemination of data regarding such events as the U.S. war in Afghanistan could put untold numbers of lives at risk. In We Steal Secrets, Gibney relays the story of the WikiLeaks website from the inside, and moves beyond black and white to penetrate a complex network of activity guided by courage and idealism but also allegedly guilty of ethical insensitivity and hypocrisy.
INFOWARS | Learn How The United States Is Behind The Kiev Ukraine Riots (02/20/14) [55:34]
S0 News | Climate, Volcanoes, Solar Analysis (04/16/14) [5:36]

04.17.2014. 12:10

Wednesday April 16, 2014
News Articles

Matt Taibbi: The SuperRich in America Have Become 'Untouchables' Who Don't Go to Prison
AlterNet | Amy Goodman, Matt Taibbi | 04/15/14

Earlier this month, attorney James Kidney, who was retiring from the Securities and Exchange Commission, gave a widely reported speech at his retirement party. He said that his bosses were too, quote, "tentative and fearful" to hold Wall Street accountable for the 2008 economic meltdown. Kidney, who joined the SEC in 1986, had tried and failed to bring charges against more executives in the agency's 2010 case against Goldman Sachs. He said the SEC has become, quote, "an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors. ... Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening," he said.

Well, for more, we turn to our guest, Matt Taibbi, award-winning journalist, formerly with Rolling Stone magazine, now with First Look Media. His new book is called The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. ... Read more

Happy Tax Day, and Why the Top 1% Pay a Lower Rate Than You Do
HP | Robert Reich | 04/15/14

It's tax time again, April 15, when our minds turn toward paying the taxes we owe or possibly getting a tax refund. But what we don't think about enough is whether our tax system is fair. The richest 1 percent of Americans are now getting the largest percent of total national income in almost a century. So you might think they'd pay a much higher tax rate than everyone else.

But you'd be wrong. Many millionaires pay a lower federal tax rate than many middle-class Americans. ... Read more
*Robert Reich | Something everyone should know on Tax Day (04/15/14) [3:33

The Surprising Truth Behind Tax Day: Where Your Taxes Go
Bill Moyers | Robin Claremont | 04/14/14

But what if tax day was something we could be proud of as members of a democracy? Would you feel differently about paying taxes if you knew they were going to support public services that you, your family and your community rely on -- such as public safety, roads and bridges, schools, health care, social services and national parks? Millions of Americans file their federal income tax returns on April 15 each year with no idea what the government actually does with all that money.

This is surprising, considering that individuals are our nation's primary bill payers. Income taxes paid by individuals account for 46 percent of all federal tax revenues, which are projected to be $3.34 trillion in 2015. Other tax revenue comes from payroll taxes paid jointly by workers and employers, accounting for 32 percent and corporate income taxes paid by businesses, which make up 13.5 percent. ... Read more
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Click picture to zoom in

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, April 16 [9:28]
DN | Was Kansas Shooting Avoidable? White Supremacist Was Ex-Informant With Criminal Past & Hateful Views (04/16/14) [22:58]
DN | Killing Nature's Defenders: Study Finds Global Surge in Murders of Environmental Activists (04/16/14) [9:38]
*DN | Who Goes To Jail? Matt Taibbi on American Injustice Gap From Wall Street to Main Street (04/15/14) [20:00], Part 2 [22:20]
*DN | "Years of Living Dangerously": James Cameron, Matt Damon, Harrison Ford in TV Climate Change Series (04/11/14) [16:18]
*Showtime | Years of Living Dangerously Premiere (full) (04/06/14) [59:08]
Lehman Brothers...
*The Last Days Of Lehman Brothers (2011) [59:04]
The Last Days of Lehman Brothers is a British television film. The drama was inspired by the real events that occurred over the weekend leading up to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008. Investment bank Lehman Brothers is in trouble after a turbulent six months and the leaders of the three biggest investment banks on Wall Street met at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. American Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson declares that the company is not too big to fail and that there will be no bailout using public money.
The Fall of Lehman Brothers (2011) [59:04]
TRNN News
TRNN | Gerry Epstein: Raising Big Banks' Leverage Ratio Good, But Not Nearly Enough (04/14/14) [9:55]
TRNN | Nicolai Petro: Ukraine Transitional Gov't Moves Militarily To Reclaim Seized Buildings (04/16/14) [8:55]
TRNN | Derek Monroe: Eastern Ukraine Lacks Political Representation in Kiev (04/16/14) [12:16]
Derek Monroe says that Russian military presence along the western border is more defensive than aggressive; that the country is likely to remain unified; and the new transitional government continues an oligarchic rule that does not represent the interests of ordinary eastern or western Ukrainians.
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Growing Tensions In Ukraine And The Political Motivations Of Vladimir Putin (04/16/14) [1hr]
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
*Jon Stewart | "The Divide" author Matt Taibbi attempts to understand how the judicial system can take pride in letting admitted money launderers for narco-terrorists off scot-free (04/07/14) [6:46]

04.16.2014. 12:57

Tuesday April 15, 2014
News Articles

TurboTax Fights To Keep Tax Filing Harder Than Necessary
HP | ProPublica | by Liz Day | 04/14/14

... "It's alarming and offensive" that the IRS would target the "the most vulnerable Americans," two other letters said. The concept, known as return-free filing, is a government "experiment" that would mean higher taxes for the poor, two op-eds argued

The letters and op-eds don't mention that, as ProPublica laid out last year, return-free filing might allow tens of millions of Americans to file their taxes for free and in minutes. Or that, under proposals authored by several federal lawmakers, it would be voluntary, using information the government already receives from banks and employers and that taxpayers could adjust. Or that the concept has been endorsed by Presidents Obama and Reagan and is already a reality in some parts of Europe.

So, where did the letters and op-eds come from? Here's one clue:

Rabbi Dorff says he was approached by a former student, Emily Pflaster, who sent him details and asked him to write an op-ed alerting the Jewish community to the threat. What Pflaster did not tell him is that she works for a PR and lobbying firm with connections to Intuit, the maker of best-selling tax software TurboTax. ... Read more

Millions of Americans are rushing to file their federal and state taxes today by the midnight deadline. But others are using the day to protest the use of tax dollars to fund war. The War Resisters League estimates at least 45 percent of the 2015 federal budget would be used for current and past military expenses, as well as interest on the national debt, some 80 percent of which stems from military spending. To voice their opposition, some Americans are taking a stand by personally refusing to pay their federal taxes. Lida Shao, a premed student at Columbia University, has been a war tax resister for three years with support from the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. Shao joins us to discuss why Tax Day for her is a day of resistance.

Here's What Fracking Can Do to Your Health
MotherJones | Tim McDonnell | 04/15/14

If you know one thing about fracking, it might be that the wells have been linked to explosive tap water. Of course, a tendency toward combustion isn't the biggest problem with gas-infused water; it's what could happen to you when you drink it. ...

  1. Air pollution near wells: Near gas wells, studies have found both carcinogenic and other hazardous air pollutants in concentrations above EPA guidelines, with the pollution at its worst within a half-mile radius of the well.
  2. Recycled frack water: About a third of the water/chemical/sand mixture that gets pumped into wells flows back up, bringing back not just the toxic fracking chemicals but other goodies from deep underground, including heavy metals like lead and arsenic. Some of this wastewater is treated and recycled for irrigation and agriculture or dumped back into lakes and rivers.
  3. Broken wells: Drinking water supplies can also be contaminated when the cement casings around wells crack and leak, which studies estimate to happen in anywhere from 2 to 50 percent of all wells (including oil wells, offshore rigs, etc.).
Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, April 15 [9:23]
DN | Who Goes To Jail? Matt Taibbi on American Injustice Gap From Wall Street to Main Street (04/15/14) [20:00], Part 2 [22:20]
DN | War Tax Resisters Mark April 15 With Call to Stop Military Spending (04/15/14) [5:24]
TRNN News
TRNN | ACLU's Kade Crockford The Boston Marathon Bombing Shows Why Surveillance State Doesn't Work (04/15/14) [9:56]
TRNN | Deborah James: IMF Will Address Global Inequality, Says Managing Director Christine Lagarde (04/14/14) [17:20]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Ongoing Political Battle For Tax Reform (04/15/14) [1hr]
PBS NewsHour
PBS NewsHour | Pulitzer Prize renews debate over NSA surveillance reporting (04/14/14) [6:41]
Journalism's highest honor was awarded to The Washington Post and The Guardian U.S. for reporting that raised questions about privacy, surveillance and security, despite criticism about whether they should have published the stories in the first place. Gwen Ifill discusses this year's Pulitzer Prize winners with Geneva Overholser of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy.
PBS NewsHour | Examining the pro-Russian campaign in Eastern Ukraine (04/14/14) [8:18]
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
*Jon Stewart | As the Senate declassifies a report on torture abuses during the Bush administration, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld appear more than happy to embrace their twisted legacy (04/07/14) [6:33]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

04.16.2014. 12:56

Monday April 14, 2014
News Articles

Hollywood-style surveillance technology inches closer to reality
Center for Investive Reporting | G.W. Schulz | 04/11/14

COMPTON, Calif. -- When sheriff's deputies here noticed a burst of necklace snatchings from women walking through town, they turned to an unlikely source to help solve the crimes: a retired Air Force veteran named Ross McNutt.

McNutt and his Ohio-based company, Persistent Surveillance Systems, persuaded the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to use his surveillance technology to monitor Compton's streets from the air and track suspects from the moment the snatching occurred. The system, known as wide-area surveillance, is something of a time machine -- the entire city is filmed and recorded in real time. Imagine Google Earth with a rewind button and the ability to play back the movement of cars and people as they scurry about the city. ... Read more
PBS | State of Surveillance: Police, Privacy and Technology (04/11/14) [27:46]

Killing of environmental activists rises globally
magazine | Denis D. Gray | 04/14/14

As head of his village, Prajob Naowa-opas battled to save his community in central Thailand from the illegal dumping of toxic waste by filing petitions and leading villagers to block trucks carrying the stuff -- until a gunman in broad daylight fired four shots into him. A year later, his three alleged killers, including a senior government official, are on trial for murder. The dumping has been halted and villagers are erecting a statue to their slain hero.

But the prosecution of Prajob's murder is a rare exception. A survey released Tuesday -- the first comprehensive one of its kind - says that only 10 killers of 908 environmental activists slain around the world over the past decade have been convicted. ... Read more

Citi Mortgage Originations Drop To Record Low
ZeroHedge | author | 04/14/14

What was worst, and naturally will not be discussed at all by the peanut gallery, about Citi's just announced results is that the amount of Citigroup mortgage originations - that key aspect of the trumpeted "housing market recovery" - did what it has done at every other bank. It plunged. Only at Citigroup, it plunged so badly, it just reached a new record low which at $5.2 billion is a 71% drop from a year ago! Long live the housing recovery... in which nobody seems to be participating. ... Read more

Click picture to zoom in

LISTEN: Alleged Kansas Gunman Frazier Glenn Miller Discusses the Tea Party, Obama, and Ron Paul
MotherJones | Tim Murphy | 04/14/14

In a 2010 radio interview, Frazier Glenn Miller, the man suspected of killing three people on Sunday at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement center in Kansas, said he was interested in the tea party, voiced support for then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and spoke approvingly of Ron Paul, the Texas Republican congressman and presidential candidate. In late April 2010, Miller, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, was a guest on The David Pakman Show, a nationally syndicated left-of-center radio and television program. At the time, Miller was running for US Senate as an independent in his home state of Missouri with the slogan, "It's the Jews, Stupid," and Pakman pressed Miller on his extreme views. ... Read more
EXCLUSIVE: KS Shooting Suspect Glenn Miller Interview & Private Emails; He Likes Ron Paul (04/14/14) [19:05]

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, April 14 [10:42]
DN | "This Award Is For Snowden": Greenwald, Poitras Accept Polk Honor for Exposing NSA Surveillance (04/14/14) [9:40]
DN | "We Won't Succumb to Threats": Journalists Return to U.S. For First Time Since Revealing NSA Spying (04/14/14) [22:24]
DN | Polk Winner on Afghanistan: Slain Journalists, Ghost Polls & Unresolved U.S. Ties to Deaths, Torture (04/14/14) [13:30]
TRNN News
TRNN | Lia Tarachansky and Shir Hever: Has Palestinian Maneuvering Revived Peace Talks? (04/13/14) [12:04]
PBS NewsHour
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change)
*PBS | Latest IPCC report - explained with co-author Prof. David Victor (04/13/14) [13:44]
Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (pdf)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the international body for assessing the science related to climate change. The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to provide policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation.
Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change.pdf
State of Surveillance
PBS | Wide-area surveillance technology can watch a city in real time (04/12/14) [9:00]
Especially between 8:30-15:00 min (1/4-1/2 on progressbar).
*PBS | State of Surveillance: Police, Privacy and Technology (04/11/14) [27:46]
"State of Surveillance" examines new technologies police departments are using to fight crime and the civil liberties concerns raised by these tools.

Law enforcement agencies say that many of the technologies make it easier to solve and, in some cases, even prevent crime. But privacy advocates warn that expanded databases could become dragnets that are increasingly populated with information about law-abiding citizens.
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Violence In Public Places And How It Affects Our Sense of Security (04/14/14) [1hr]
More News
Lehman Brothers...
*The Last Days Of Lehman Brothers (2011) [59:04]
The Last Days of Lehman Brothers is a British television film. The drama was inspired by the real events that occurred over the weekend leading up to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008. Investment bank Lehman Brothers is in trouble after a turbulent six months and the leaders of the three biggest investment banks on Wall Street met at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. American Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson declares that the company is not too big to fail and that there will be no bailout using public money.
The Fall of Lehman Brothers (2011) [59:04]
ENRON
*The Crooked E - The Unshredded Truth About Enron (2003) [1:21:16]
How Did Enron Make Their Money, Hide Their Finances, Fail and Get (2004) [42:21]
Enron: Making Money in the Financial World - Stock Market, Commodity (2005) [54:13]
The Act of Killing
The Act of Killing Official (trailer) (2013) [2:41]
Netflix | The Act of Killing (full) (2012) [2hr 2mim]
The Act of Killing (full) (12/17/13) [2:39:41]
Unfortunately I haven't found and English copy of "The Act of Killing" on YouTube. Will keep looking.
Interview | Werner Herzog and Errol Morris talk about "The Act of Killing" (06/17/13) [12:29]
The Act of Killing website
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.
More News
PBS | PBS NewsHour Friday (04/11/14) [53:56]
PBS | PBS NewsHour Saturday (04/12/14) [25:12]
The Deal (2005) (Full) [1:47:45]
A political thriller steeped in illegal oil trading, the Russian Mafia, and governmental cover-ups.
The Wall Street Code [50:31]

04.14.2014. 12:45

Friday April 11, 2014
News Articles

CIA's 'Harsh Interrogations' Exceeded Legal Authority, Report Finds
HP Reuters | author | 04/11/14

A classified U.S. Senate report found that the CIA's legal justification for the use of harsh interrogation techniques that critics say amount to torture was based on faulty legal reasoning, McClatchy news service reported on Thursday.

The Central Intelligence Agency also issued erroneous claims about how many people it subjected to techniques such as simulated drowning, or "water boarding," according to the news service, citing conclusions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report obtained by McClatchy. ... Read more

What's Wrong With This "Housing Recovery" Picture?
ZeroHedge | author | 04/11/14

We asked this question a quarter ago following the quarterly results by Wells Fargo - America's biggest mortgage lender - but we never got an appropriate answer. So now that the data has been updated for the latest Wells mortgage origination and application numbers, we ask the question again: considering both mortgage originations and applications are crashing to levels not seen since the Lehman crisis, just what is wrong with this "housing recovery" picture? ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

'Heartbleed' Computer Bug Threat Spreads To Firewalls And Beyond
Reuters | author | 04/10/14

Hackers could crack email systems, security firewalls and possibly mobile phones through the "Heartbleed" computer bug, according to security experts who warned on Thursday that the risks extended beyond just Internet Web servers.

The widespread bug surfaced late on Monday, when it was disclosed that a pernicious flaw in a widely used Web encryption program known as OpenSSL opened hundreds of thousands of websites to data theft. Developers rushed out patches to fix affected web servers when they disclosed the problem, which affected companies from Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc to Yahoo Inc. ... Read more
AP | "Heartbleed" Bug Puts Internet Security at Risk (04/11/14) [1:28]

The Coming Nightmare of Wall Street-Controlled Rental Markets
AlterNet | Rebecca Burns | 04/09/14

In a 2011 report, Morgan Stanley analysts proclaimed that America was experiencing a transition from an ownership society to a “ rentership society.” “The combination of falling home prices, limited mortgage credit, continued liquidations and better rental options is fundamentally changing the way Americans live,” says the report, concluding, “We believe this change is only beginning.” For Wall Street firms, the Morgan Stanley report appears to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Seeing a profitable opening in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, investment groups have worked diligently to bring a “rentership society” into being. During the past two years, investors have bought approximately 200,000 single-family homes, mostly foreclosures, in urban areas nationwide, with plans to convert them into rental properties. In Atlanta, one such investment group purchased 1,400 homes on a single day in April of last year. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, April 11 [13:00]
DN | Momentum on Fossil Fuel Divestment Grows As Harvard Professors, Desmond Tutu Call For Action (04/11/14) [15:48]
*DN | "Years of Living Dangerously": James Cameron, Matt Damon, Harrison Ford in TV Climate Change Series (04/11/14) [16:18]
*Showtime | Years of Living Dangerously Premiere (full) (04/06/14) [59:08]
DN | "Imagine Living in a Socialist USA": New Book Envisions Greater Democracy, World Without Capitalism (04/11/14) [11:48]
TRNN News
TRNN | From Exile to Radicalization in Venezuela - Edgardo Lander, in '98, when he saw the whole of the establishment getting together to defeat Chavez, he voted for him even though he had a lot of reasons not to like him (04/11/14) [24:16], Part 2 [22:41]
*TRNN | Michael Ratner: There have been no criminal prosecutions for illegal actions committed by the U.S. in the name of national security since 9/11 (04/11/14) [10:08]
TRNN | From Exile to Radicalization in Venezuela - Edgardo Lander, in '98, when he saw the whole of the establishment getting together to defeat Chavez, he voted for him even though he had a lot of reasons not to like him (04/11/14) [24:16]
TYT News
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday (04/11/14) [1hr]
International News - Friday (04/11/14) [1hr]
Ring of Fire
*Papantonio: XL Opponents Should Thank Nebraska (mar, older) [3:38]
Papantonio: Can We Sue Climate Change Deniers? (mar, older) [8:52]
Papantonio: Testosterone Gels Linked To Heart Attacks, Strokes (feb, older) [10:37]
Big Pharma has convinced men that they need to take medication because their bodies produce less and less testosterone as they get older -- This is part of the LOW T myth that drug companies are using to sell more, unnecessary drugs. Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio discusses this with attorney Daniel Nigh.
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

04.11.2014. 12:15

Thursday April 10, 2014
News Articles

'Gospel of Jesus' Wife' Papyrus Is Ancient, Not Fake, Scientists And Scholars Say
HP | Jaweed Kaleem | 04/10/14

An ancient, business-card-sized papyrus fragment that appears to quote Jesus Christ discussing his wife is real, Harvard University announced Thursday. The fragment caused international uproar when it was revealed by a Harvard historian in September 2012, with prominent academics and the Vatican swiftly deeming it a forgery.

Harvard officials said scientists both within and outside the university extensively tested the papyrus and carbon ink of the badly aged fragment, dubbed the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife." The document, written in Coptic, a language of ancient Egyptian Christians, is made up of eight mostly legible dark lines on the front and six barely legible faded lines on the back. The handwriting and grammar were also examined over the last year and a half to confirm its authenticity. Scientists have concluded the fragment dates back to at least the sixth to ninth centuries, and possibly as far back as the fourth century. ... Read more

Death Squads Galore: U.S.-Backed Assassinations Wreak Global Havoc
AlterNet | Alex Kane | 04/08/14

U.S.-funded Kenyan forces are ramping up a campaign of extrajudicial executions.

Kenya's armed forces, bolstered by millions of dollars in U.S. aid and training, are now turning to death squad tactics against civilians who are sympathetic to an Islamist group based in Somalia.

The group is Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist group that claimed responsibility for a deadly attack last year on the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya's capital. Al-Shabaab is a jihadist group dedicated to Islamic fundamentalism and a strict form of Islamic law, and is reportedly funded by a complex web of supporters abroad, the export of charcoal to Gulf Arab states, the slaughter of elephants for the illegal ivory trade, and according to the United Nations, Eritrea. ... Read more

Marc Faber Warns "The Market Is Waking Up To How Clueless The Fed Is"
ZeroHedge | author |04/10/14

"I think it's very likely that we're seeing, in the next 12 months, an '87-type of crash," warns a somewhat excited sounding Marc Faber, adding that he thinks "it will be worse."

The pain is just getting started as Faber notes that "the market is slowly waking up to the fact that the Federal Reserve is a clueless organization." Internet and Biotech sectors (growth stocks) are "highly vulnerable because they're in cuckoo land in terms of valuations," and fully expects the selling to spread as The Fed "have no idea what they're doing. And so the confidence level of investors is diminishing," and that means we will see a major decline. Read more

Click picture to zoom in


DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, April 10 [11:59]
*DN | As Deportations Top 2 Million, Should Activists Push For Executive Order or Congressional Action? (04/10/14) [29:22]
*DN | Wall Street's Land Grab: Firms Amass Rental Empire, Ousting Tenants & Threatening New Housing Crisis (04/10/14) [14:01]
*DN | Not a Bug Splat: Artists Confront U.S. Drone Operators With Giant Picture of Pakistani Child (04/10/14) [2:39]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Rwanda 20 Years Later: Genocide, Western Plunder of Congo, and President Kagame (04/10/14) [18:57]
*TRNN | Nicolai Petro: Ukrainian Protesters in the East Demand More Autonomy From Kiev Government (04/10/14) [7:19]
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers | Advocate Saru Jayaraman: All Work and No Pay. Did you know the federal minimum wage for millions of restaurant workers is $2.13 an hour? That's not only unfair but unsafe. (04/04/14) [26:46]
Ring of Fire
*Ring of Fire: The Koch's Obamacare Windfall (04/10/14) [5:45]
Ring of Fire: The Koch's Obamacare Windfall (04/10/14) [9:20]
Ring of Fire: Wells Fargo's Foreclosure Fraud Handbook (04/08/14) [12:10]
Ring of Fire: What Motivates Republican Racism? (04/08/14) [11:41]

04.10.2014. 13:38

Wednesday April 09, 2014
News Articles

Why This Year's El Niño Could Grow Into a Monster
MotherJones | Eric Holthaus | 04/07/14

Expect soaring global food prices, monsoons in India, drought in Indonesia, and bush fires in Australia.

The odds are increasing that an El Niño is in the works for 2014--and recent forecasts show it might be a big one. As we learned from Chris Farley, El Niños can boost the odds of extreme weather (droughts, typhoons, heat waves) across much of the planet. But the most important thing about El Niño is that it is predictable, sometimes six months to a year in advance.

That's an incredibly powerful tool, especially if you are one of the billions who live where El Niño tends to hit hardest--Asia and the Americas. If current forecasts stay on track, El Niño might end up being the biggest global weather story of 2014. ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in and read article

There Are 10 Times More Mentally Ill People Behind Bars Than in State Hospitals
MotherJones | Stephanie Mencimer | 04/08/14

Severe mental illnesses, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are brain diseases -- biological conditions like heart disease or epilepsy. Yet in this country, the institutions most likely to be treating people with these illnesses are not hospitals, but rather jails and prisons.

According to a new report from the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit advocacy organization, the United States has fully returned to the 18th-century model of incarcerating the mentally ill in correctional institutions rather than treating them in health care facilities like any other sick people. In 2012, there were roughly 356,268 inmates with severe mental illnesses in prisons and jails, while only 35,000 people with the same diseases were in state psychiatric hospitals. ... Read more

Critical Security Bug 'Heartbleed' Hits Up To 66 Percent Of The Internet
HP | Betsy Isaacson | 04/08/14

As much as 66 percent of the web may have been compromised by a newly revealed security flaw called Heartbleed. So named by the researchers who discovered it, Heartbleed is a bug that affects an important Internet security protocol called SSL. Specifically, it affects one particular implementation of SSL called OpenSSL.

Heartbleed is a bug in OpenSSL. Hackers can exploit Heartbleed to get raw text from emails, instant messages, passwords, even business documents -- anything a user sends to a vulnerable site's server. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, April 9 [12:42]
*DN | Arundhati Roy on Her New Book, "Capitalism: A Ghost Story," and World's Largest Election in India (04/09/14) [10:14], Part 2 [16:47], Part 3 [17:27]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Michael Hudson: West Looks to Carve Up Ukraine & Privatize Industries Held by Kleptocrats (04/09/14) [10:18]
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers | Advocate Saru Jayaraman: All Work and No Pay. Did you know the federal minimum wage for millions of restaurant workers is $2.13 an hour? That's not only unfair but unsafe. (04/04/14) [26:46]
Canada Tar Sands
Enbridge (Tar Sands Pipeline Company), Animation gets hilarious make-over (04/07/14) [1:40]
BC, Canada's Huge Gamble: Enbridge Pipeline (02/11/12) [9:15]
Capitalism | Crony Capitalism | Corporation
The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2003) [2:25:16]
Four Horsemen - Feature Documentary (2014) [1:38:54]
The Deal 2005 (2012) [1:47:45]
A political thriller steeped in illegal oil trading, the Russian Mafia, and governmental cover-ups.

Christian Slater, Selma Blair, Angie Harmon and Robert Loggia star in a gripping tale of assassination, deception and corruption set in the high-stakes world of corporate investment and international oil trading. With America at war and in the grip of a crippling fuel crisis, Wall Street analyst Tom Hanson (Slater) agrees to broker a lucrative deal between a Russian oil cartel and his investment firm's biggest client, led by cold-blooded CEO Jared Tolson (Loggia). While juggling his growing attraction to newly-hired associate, Abby Gallagher (Blair) a Harvard graduate who wants to save the world and has an innovative idea for helping those seeking alternative energy sources further their research. The snake pit of Wall Street is the last place she wants to be, but Gordon convinces her that his company can make her alternative energy dream a reality (because the company can make money by doing so). Tom learns all is not what it seems with the deal. Digging deeper, he and Abby soon find themselves trapped in a dangerous web of treachery and murder that will keep you guessing until the very end.

04.09.2014. 11:18

Tuesday April 08, 2014
News Articles

SEC Goldman Lawyer Says Agency Too Timid on Wall Street Misdeeds
Bloomberg | Robert Schmidt | 04/08/14

James Kidney, who joined the SEC in 1986 and retired this month, offered the critique in a speech at his goodbye party. His remarks hit home with many in the crowd of SEC lawyers and alumni thanks to a part of his resume not publicly known: He had campaigned internally to bring charges against more executives in the agency’s 2010 case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)

... Kidney said his superiors were more focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service than on bringing difficult cases. The agency’s penalties, Kidney said, have become “at most a tollbooth on the bankster turnpike.” ... Read more

Global Rankings Study Depicts an America in Warp Speed Decline
AlterNet | CJ Werleman | 04/08/14

If America needed a reminder that it is fast becoming a second-rate nation, and that every economic policy of the Republican Party is wrongheaded, it got one this week with the release of the Social Progress Index (SPI).

Harvard business professor Michael E. Porter, who earlier developed the Global Competitiveness Report, designed the SPI. A new way to look at the success of countries, the SPI studies 132 nations and evaluates 54 social and environmental indicators for each country that matter to real people. Rather than measuring a country’s success by its per capita GDP, the index is based on an array of data reflecting suicide, ecosystem sustainability, property rights, access to healthcare and education, gender equality, attitudes toward immigrants and minorities, religious freedom, nutrition, infrastructure and more.

While the U.S. enjoys the second highest per capita GDP of $45,336, it ranks in an underperforming 16th place overall. It gets worse. The U.S. ranks 70th in health, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and sanitation and 31st in personal safety. More surprising is the fact that despite being the home country of global tech heavyweights Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, and so on, the U.S. ranks a disappointing 23rd in access to the Internet. ... Read more

ABC News | Extreme Weather: Tornadoes, Flash Flooding Across South (04/08/14) [2:09]
ABC News | Remembering the One and Only Mickey Rooney, died at 93. (04/07/14) [2:04]
ABC News | Anne Hathaway Interview 2014: Actress Is the 'Jewel' of 'Rio 2' (04/08/14) [5:18]
Click picture to zoom in and read article
DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, April 8 [11:27]
*DN | All the President's Bankers: Nomi Prins on Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion (04/08/14) [17:47], Part 2 [4:17]
DN | "We Can't Just Give a Blank Check": Lawmakers Call for Ending Secrecy of U.S. Intel's Black Budget (04/08/14) [10:55] Part 2 [7:47]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Madawi Al-Rasheed: The Multiple Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Part 5 (04/08/14) [16:36]
TRNN | Larry Wilkerson: Republican Presidential Hopefuls Pay Homage to Billionaire Casino Tycoon Sheldon Adelson (04/08/14) [6:29]
Interesting Video
*Growth of a Nation is a ten minute movie which depicts the geographic history of the United States from 1789. [10:00]
Dick Cheney | Halliburton | KBR | Private Contractors
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

04.08.2014. 14:41

Monday April 07, 2014
News Articles

NEW STUDY: 72 Percent of Fox News Climate Segments Are Misleading
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | 04/07/14

According to a Pew study released last year, 38 percent of US adults watch cable news. So if you want to know why so many Americans deny or doubt the established science of climate change, the content they're receiving on cable news may well point the way.

According to a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, misinformation about climate science on cable news channels is pretty common. The study found that last year, 30 percent of CNN's climate-related segments were misleading, compared with 72 percent for Fox News and just 8 percent for MSNBC. The study methodology was quite strict: segments that contained "any inaccurate or misleading representations of climate science" were classified as misleading. ... Read more
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Video: 72 Percent of Fox News Climate Segments Are Misleading () [4:09]

Rand Paul Says Dick Cheney Pushed for the Iraq War So Halliburton Would Profit
MotherJones | David Corn | 04/07/14

Last week, continuing the sometimes catty intraparty feud between Republican hawks and GOPers skeptical of foreign intervention, former Vice President Dick Cheney took a shot at Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). But Paul is not likely to be fazed by criticism from Cheney, for several years ago the Kentucky senator was pushing the conspiratorial notion that the former VP exploited the horrific 9/11 attacks to lead the nation into war in Iraq in order to benefit Halliburton, the enormous military contractor where Cheney had once been CEO. ...

... Cheney's remarks were the latest round in the tussle between the Republican Party's hawks and intervention skeptics. A year ago, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) referred to Paul, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), and other Republicans unenthusiastic about drone strikes as "wacko birds." ... Read more

*Rand Paul Says Dick Cheney Pushed for the Iraq War So Halliburton Would Profit (2009) [3:08]
Rand Paul speaks at WKU (full) (2 of 5) [9:36]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, April 7 [9:04]
DN | Sy Hersh Reveals Potential Turkish Role in Syria Chemical Strike That Almost Sparked U.S. Bombing (04/07/14) [19:41]
DN | 20 Years Later, Rwanda Commemorates Genocide the World Ignored (04/07/14) [15:46], Part 2 [11:48]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Why do the Saudis Want the US to Attack Iran? Part 4 (04/07/14) [12:46]
TRNN | Chris Hedges on "Israel's War on American Universities" (04/07/14) [9:57]
Ring of Fire
Click picture to zoom in
MSNBC Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow: Nuclear Base Scandals Raise Concerns Of 'Rot' (04/07/14) [7:30]

04.07.2014. 18:15

Friday April 04, 2014
News Articles

The Court’s Decision on ‘McCutcheon’ Will Empower the Oligarchs, Say Reformers
Bill Moyers | John Light | 04/02/14

The Supreme Court further opened the doors of our democracy to big money in its ruling today in McCutcheon v. FEC. In a five-four split along ideological lines, the Court ruled that overall limits on individual campaign contributions were unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The Court left in place the cap on donations to a single candidate that conservative donor Shaun McCutcheon also challenged in the case. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas moved to strike that limit down as well. ...

... Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) denounced the ruling saying it would fundamentally undermine American democracy. “The Supreme Court is paving the way toward an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson will control our political process,” he said in a statement. ... Read more
*VIDEO | Bill Moyers | Heather Gerken on Dollars v. Democracy (04/01/14) [24:30]

Watch As HFT Debate Devolves Into Epic Screamfest In Milliseconds
ZeroHedge | author | 04/01/14

The clearly agitated BATS CEO came out swinging, blasting Katsuyama and Lewis "Shame On You," for apparently telling the truth of what occurs in the stock 'market and letting everyone in on it'. The tension grows when he presses Katsuyama on whether he really believes it is rigged... who then erupts "I believe the markets are rigged.. and that you are a part of the rigging." Then the gloves come off "you wanna do this, let's do this!" and then it got worse (or better) ... Read more
VIDEO | I believe the markets are rigged.. and that you are a part of the rigging (short) (04/01/14) [4:11]

Peak Bubble 2.0: The Market Is Now Exactly As Overvalued As It Was At The Last Bubble Peak
ZeroHedge | author | 04/04/14

According to this chart from JPM the market's forward P/E ratio now is precisely 15.2x. What was it at precisely the last bubble peak on October 9, 2007? 15.2x.

Everyone knows what happened next. ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

35 Countries Where the U.S. Has Supported Fascists, Drug Lords and Terrorists
AlterNet | Nicolas J.S. Davies | 03/04/14

The U.S. is backing Ukraine's extreme right-wing Svoboda party and violent neo-Nazis whose armed uprising paved the way for a Western-backed coup. Events in the Ukraine are giving us another glimpse through the looking-glass of U.S. propaganda wars against fascism, drugs and terrorism. The ugly reality behind the mirror is that the U.S. government has a long and unbroken record of working with fascists, dictators, druglords and state sponsors of terrorism in every region of the world in its elusive but relentless quest for unchallenged global power. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, April 4 [12:57]
DN | "The War Comes Home": Deadly Fort Hood Shooting Raises Questions About Treatment of Returning Vets (04/04/14) [15:25]
*DN | Drugging America's Veterans: Painkiller Abuse Spreads As VA Becomes Vets' "Drug Dealer of Choice" (04/04/14) [15:22]
TRNN News
TRNN | TRNN talks to workers at Baltimore's internationally renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital as they prepare for a possible strike in order to obtain a $15 hourly wage (04/04/14) [5:27]
The Corporation | Model Citizen??
The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (trailer) [1:51]
*The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (full) (2003) [2:25:16]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | Heather Gerken on Dollars v. Democracy (04/01/14) [24:30]
Bill Moyers | John Nichols and Robert McChesney on Selling out Democracy (11/11/13) [31:39]
Wall Street - HFT - High Frequency Trading
I believe the markets are rigged.. and that you are a part of the rigging (full) (04/01/14) [23:09]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday (04/04/14) [1hr]
International News - Friday (04/04/14) [1hr]
Jon Stewart - Dialy Show
*Jon Stewart | Donors Unchained - Quid Pro Quo (04/03/14) [5:44], Part 2 [5:09], Part 3 [2:41]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.
The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern-day corporation. This is explored through specific examples. Bakan wrote the book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of the documentary.

The documentary shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from a legal entity that originated as a government-chartered institution meant to affect specific public functions, to the rise of the modern commercial institution entitled to most of the legal rights of a person. The documentary concentrates mostly upon North American corporations, especially those of the United States. One theme is its assessment as a "personality", as a result of an 1886 case in the United States Supreme Court in which a statement by Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite[nb 1] led to corporations as "persons" having the same rights as human beings, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Topics addressed include the Business Plot, where in 1933, General Smedley Butler exposed an alleged corporate plot against then U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt; the tragedy of the commons; Dwight D. Eisenhower's warning people to beware of the rising military-industrial complex; economic externalities; suppression of an investigative news story about Bovine Growth Hormone on a Fox News Channel affiliate television station at the behest of Monsanto; the invention of the soft drink Fanta by the Coca-Cola Company due to the trade embargo on Nazi Germany; the alleged role of IBM in the Nazi holocaust (see IBM and the Holocaust); the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of a municipal water supply in Bolivia; and in general themes of corporate social responsibility, the notion of limited liability, the corporation as a psychopath, and the corporation as a person.

Through vignettes and interviews, The Corporation examines and criticizes corporate business practices. The film's assessment is effected via the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV; Robert D. Hare, a University of British Columbia psychology professor and a consultant to the FBI, compares the profile of the contemporary profitable business corporation to that of a clinically diagnosed psychopath (however, Hare has objected to the manner in which his views are portrayed in the film; see "critical reception" below). The Corporation attempts to compare the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave with what it claims are the DSM-IV's symptoms of psychopathy, e.g. callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect the law. However, the DSM has never included a psychopathy diagnosis, rather proposing antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) with the DSM-IV. ASPD and psychopathy, while sharing some diagnostic criteria, are not synonymous.

04.04.2014. 12:32

Thursday April 03, 2014
News Articles

The Supreme Court Just Gutted Another Campaign Finance Law. Here's What Happened.
MotherJones | Andy Kroll | 04/02/14

The Supreme Court on Wednesday released its decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the blockbuster money-in-politics case of the current term. The court's five conservative justices all agreed that the so-called aggregate limit on the amount of money a donor can give to candidates, political action committees, and political parties is unconstitutional. In a separate opinion, conservative justice Clarence Thomas went even further, calling on the court to overrule Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 decision that concluded it was constitutional to limit contributions to candidates.

In their dissent, the court's four liberal justices called their colleagues' logic "faulty" and said it "misconstrues the nature of the competing constitutional interests at stake." The dissent continues, "Taken together with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, today's decision eviscerates our Nation's campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve." ... Read more

The Supreme Court Just Destroyed Our Democracy in Favor of the Plutocrats
AlterNet | Calvin F. Exoo | 04/02/14

That clanging sound you hear is the Supreme Court, hammering the final nails into democracy's casket. With Wednesday's decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, the court has crossed the line protecting the last vestige of campaign finance reform, and making it official: Rule by the rich is now unfettered. Plutocracy's moment has arrived.

How did we get here? The granddaddy of modern Supreme Court campaign finance cases was Buckley v. Valeo, which decided the fate of the post-Watergate reform amendments to the Federal Elections Campaign Act (FECA).

It was Buckley that first struck down limits on campaign expenditures made independently of a candidate's campaign. That kind of spending, the Court said, is speaking, and is protected by the First Amendment. That misguided opinion has sent us down the long, dispiriting path of unlimited contributions: of independent PACs, followed by soft money, and, most recently, Dark Money and super PACs. ... Read more

Suicide Banker's Widow Blasts Alleged "Cover-Up", Asks "Unbecoming Questions"
ZeroHedge | author | 04/03/14

Having changed her Facebook profile picture to a "V...for Vendetta" face mask, the widow of former Zurich Insurance CFO Pierre Wauthier said she and her family cannot accept Zurich's claim that his death wasn't brought on by undue stress. As Bloomberg reports, Switzerland's biggest insurer said in November that no "undue pressure" was put on Wauthier, who said in a suicide note that then-Chairman Josef Ackermann had created an unbearable working environment. But, his wife is demanding to know why her husband's former boss resigned if he had not accepted blame for the death, and why details of tensions at work were not made public. Her anger is clear, as she blasted "I am not worth talking to... or is it that I would raise unbecoming questions????" ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, April 3 [10:28]
*DN | Sen. Bernie Sanders: Supreme Court Undermines Democracy By Allowing Billionaires to "Buy Elections" (04/03/14) [13:58]
DN | "The Next Citizens United": McCutcheon Opens Floodgates For 1 Percent to Spend Millions on Campaigns (04/03/14) [11:02]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Supreme Court Decision Opens Floodgates for More Campaign Cash (04/03/14) [8:58]
TRNN | Bill Black: Charles Keating, the Financier Behind the Savings and Loan Scandal, Dies at 90 (04/03/14) [11:44]
*TRNN | Ms. Madawi Al-Rasheed: Saudi Arabia helped create a network of terrorism to achieve political aims, "Saudi Arabia and the al-Qaeda Monster", Part 3 (04/03/14) [10:52]
Thom Hartmann
President Jimmy Carter Goes on Record: Bush Didn't Win in 2000 (04/03/14) [1:54]
*The Banksters are now Setting up The Crash of 2016 (2014) [6:43]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Supreme Court Strikes Down Overall Limits On Campaign Contributions (04/03/14) [1hr]
The Supreme Court has struck down overall limits on federal campaign contributions for the first time. It's considered, in some ways, a follow up to the Court's Citizens United ruling four years ago. Like Citizens United, the decision is predicted to significantly increase the role of money in politics--an amount advocates for campaign finance reform say is already way too much. The case came down to a question of whether political contributions are protected by the First Amendment, and if capping them prevents corruption or the appearance of corruption. Diane and her guests discuss the new ruling and the role of money in political campaigns.

04.03.2014. 10:19

Wednesday April 02, 2014
News Articles

The Supreme Court Has Struck Down Overall Campaign Contribution Limits
HP |Paul Blumenthal | 04/02/14

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the aggregate campaign contribution limits, thereby opening the door to even more money in the political system.

The 5-4 ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission was penned by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia. The decision relies heavily on the assertion in the 2010 Citizens United ruling that influence and access are not a corruption concern.

The victory for the Alabama businessman and major Republican Party donor Shaun McCutcheon, who was joined by the Republican National Committee in his challenge, means that a single donor will soon be able to contribute millions of hard dollars -- in limited contributions -- to political parties, candidates and political action committees. ... Read more

Koch Brothers, Using Wealth Against 'Free' Elections to Turn Democracy into Fascism.

'Too Big To Fail' Is Still Alive And Well
Reuters & HP | Mike Dolan | 04/02/14

Although unwritten government guarantees of big banks have been at the heart of taxpayer outrage over being left on the hook for the missteps of giant corporations, few politicians or voters are keen to embrace another 'Lehman moment' or the global economic implosion that ensued.

Tighter regulation on capital buffers and risk-taking, the insistence that banks have 'living wills' for any future workout procedure, creditor 'bail-in' bonds and even the ring-fencing of certain operations within banks have all been preferred routes to limit the exposure of both society and shareholders.

Yet, as an International Monetary Fund study detailed this week, there's still a running assumption that governments would again rescue the biggest banks in the event of another panic. ... Read more

Jon Stewart On HFT: "It's Not American; It's Not Even Capitalism. It's Cheating"
ZeroHedge | author | 04/02/14

Jon Stewart is stunned by the world of HFT (where "stock exchanges sell the right to advance information to high frequency traders [by locating their computers closest to the exchange]") and the mainstream media's immediate jump to defend it "as good for us", but as Michael Lewis explains "anyone whose livelihood is dependent on Wall Street [from CNBC, FOX and even the SEC] is invested in this... it sounds like a conspiracy."

In this excellent interview, The Daily Show doubter asks "we have set a standard for share buying (you can't but 1/100th of a share) so why not set a standard for frequency of trading?" Lewis stoic response sums up our world perfectly, "in a sane world, we would... but the money is too big," and adds that indeed that is what IEX is doing. The HFTs "function on volume and volatility" alone and "they know the prices before you do... which is illegal if it's a person, but as a computer, meh?" ... Read more

Jon Stewart - Daily Show
*Jon Stewart | What is HFT? "HFT is a middle-man in a transaction they have no business being in.. it is totally unnecessary Wall Street intermediation" (04/02/14) [6:43]

Jon Stewart | "It's Not American; It's Not Even Capitalism. It's Cheating", Part 2 [5:25]
DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, April 2 [12:50]
*DN | U.N. Climate Panel Issues Dire Warning of Threat to Global Food Supply, Calls For Action (04/02/14) [9:43], Part 2 [14:39]
*Dragnet Nation: Do Google, Facebook Know More Private Info Than NSA and Soviet-Era Secret Police? (04/02/14) [19:18]
8.2 Earthquake off of Chile | Deadly Ebola
*Sign of Things to Come?: Massive 8.2 earthquake off Chile coast sparks tsunami (04/02/14) [2:14]
*Deadly Ebola outbreak spreads to Guinea (04/01/14) [1:05]
Deadly Ebola Virus Spreading Across Guinea (03/25/14) [3:43]
*PBS NOVA | Ebola: The Plague Fighters (02/22/14) [54:15]
TRNN News
Click picture to zoom in
*TRNN | Ms. Madawi Al-Rasheed: Saudi society appears to be controlled, but beneath the surface, there is widespread disconten, Part 2 (04/02/14) [14:45]
*Krauthammer: Claim of Seven Million Obamacare Enrollees Is 'Phony Number' (04/02/14) [3:39]
"These numbers that they are touting are phony numbers... That's like saying anybody who goes on Amazon, orders a nifty stereo set, puts it in the shopping cart, has purchased the stereo set. I assure you it's not going to show up at your house until you pay for it."

Krauthammer charged that the goal from the beginning was to make health care, "the great liberal objective," a reality by any means necessary. And he found it laughable for Democrats to keep asserting it's the law of the land, because "nothing that's written in the law matters, they decide what the law is every Wednesday morning."
TWA Flight 800
*TRNN | Kristina Borjesson on Why CBS Shut Down Her investigation into Flight 800, Part 2 (03/31/14) [18:35]
Best Evidence: TWA Flight 800 (09/01/11) [42:40]
Seconds From Disaster S02E10 - TWA 800 () [46:07]
Silenced, TWA FLIGHT 800 () [57:06]
Conspiracy Theory: TWA Flight 800 Shot Down? () [44:35]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm New Questions About GM, Government Regulators And Consumer Safety (04/02/14) [1hr]

04.02.2014. 12:40

Tuesday April 01, 2014
News Articles

Michael Lewis On '60 Minutes' Says Stock Market Is Rigged
HP | Ed Mazza | 03/30/14

The U.S. stock market is rigged, with elite traders buying access to a high-speed network that allows them to figure out what you've just ordered, order it first, then raise the price before your order is complete. And according to Michael Lewis, author of a new book about high-frequency trading called "Flash Boys," this form of "front running" is completely legal.

"The insiders are able to move faster than you," Lewis said on "60 Minutes" on Sunday night. "They're able to see your order and play it against other orders in ways that you don't understand. They're able to front run your order." ... Read more

CIA Misled Public About Interrogation Program: Report
Router & HP | author | 04/01/14

The Central Intelligence Agency misled the U.S. government and public for years about aspects of its brutal interrogation program, concealing details about harsh treatment of detainees and other issues, according to a report in the Washington Post.

U.S. officials who have seen a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA interrogation program described damning new information about a network of secret detention facilities, also called "black sites", the Washington Post said.

The Intelligence Committee is responsible for oversight of the CIA. It completed the 6,300-page draft report on the interrogation program more than a year ago but it remains classified. ... Read more

The Stock Market Is Rigged

Cliff notes: Unless you literally own the technological AND physical infrastructure that allows you total & complete privacy & dominant speed in EXECUTING TRADES, in the "new normal" ""STOCK MARKET,"''YOU ARE DELUSIONAL TO THINK YOU CAN BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN PREY, TO BE SWALLOWED QUICKLY & ENTIRELY.

Ponzi, Racketeering, Low Down Filthy Rigged Casino Operations - AKA "Stock Market Trading and/or Investing."

The biggest theft in all of human history, leading to wealth inequality greater than at any time since the 1920s, all enabled by a more sophisticated & technologically advanced form of plain theft & fraud - aided & abetted by FRACTIONAL FIAT RESERVE CENTRAL "BANKS" and bought & bribed REVOLVING DOOR REGULATORY AGENCIES.

Read Michael Lewis' Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt: An Adaptation
ZeroHedge | author | 03/31/14

Before the collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008, Brad Katsuyama could tell himself that he bore no responsibility for that system. He worked for the Royal Bank of Canada, for a start. RBC might have been the fifth-biggest bank in North America, by some measures, but it was on nobody's mental map of Wall Street. It was stable and relatively virtuous and soon to be known for having resisted the temptation to make bad subprime loans to Americans or peddle them to ignorant investors. But its management didn't understand just what an afterthought the bank was -- on the rare occasions American financiers thought about it at all. Katsuyama's bosses sent him to New York from Toronto in 2002, when he was 23, as part of a "big push" for the bank to become a player on Wall Street. The sad truth was that hardly anyone noticed it. "The people in Canada are always saying, 'We're paying too much for people in the United States,' " Katsuyama says. "What they don't realize is that the reason you have to pay them too much is that no one wants to work for RBC. RBC is a nobody."

Before arriving there as part of the big push, Katsuyama had never laid eyes on Wall Street or New York City. It was his first immersive course in the American way of life, and he was instantly struck by how different it was from the Canadian version. "Everything was to excess," he says. "I met more offensive people in a year than I had in my entire life. People lived beyond their means, and the way they did it was by going into debt. That's what shocked me the most. Debt was a foreign concept in Canada. Debt was evil." ... Continue reading

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, April 1 [12:47]
DN | The "Bounty" Police Force? Albuquerque Officers Face Protests, Probe over Spate of Fatal Shootings (04/01/14) [18:49]
DN | Exclusive: Egyptian Activist Alaa Abdel Fattah on Prison, Regime's "War on a Whole Generation" (03/31/14) [15:37], Part 2 [15:37]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Scientist Michael Mann: UN Report Says Climate Change Will Threaten Food Production Worldwide (04/01/14) [10:47]
TRNN | Madawi al-Rasheed: Hypocrisy Dressed Up as "Realism" Justifies American Alliance with Saudi Dictatorship (04/01/14) [16:31]
*TRNN | Gerald Epstein says U.S. banks won't be able to endure another shock to the global economy, and expect to be bailed out when the next crisis hits (03/30/14) [7:52]
TRNN | Michael Ratner: President Obama tries to condemn Russia's annexation of Crimea by justifying the illegal US invasion of Iraq (04/01/14) [8:24]
60 Minutes News
*60Minutes | Is the U.S. stock market rigged? (03/30/14) [14:43]
Tesla and SpaceX: Elon Musk's industrial empire (03/30/14) [13:11]
CBS | CBS News contributor Michio Kaku, a physics professor at the City University of New York, talks to the "CBS This Morning" co-hosts about the possibility that the recent earthquake activity in California could be a sign that a "big one" is coming. (03/31/14) [3:29]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Update On The Affordable Care Act (04/01/14) [1hr]
Environmental Outlook: Gravitational Waves And The Big Bang Theory (04/01/14) [1hr]
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
Jon Stewart | Senior Zionist Billionaire Correspondent Samantha Bee offers insight into the integrity of politicians looking to win financial support from GOP super-donor Sheldon Adelson. (04/01/14) [3:03]

04.01.2014. 13:58



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

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GOOD Short Videos
Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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Lindsey Graham Mashups
Lindsey Graham

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the quiet part aloud on why he’s still so close to former President Donald Trump: because we can use him for our goals. "President Trump has gotten people who wouldn't give me or Romney or anybody else the time of day. They believe he is on their side," the senator told the America First Agenda Summit crowd on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

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Environment & Climate Change
Environment

The term "climate change" is often used to refer specifically to anthropogenic climate change (also known as global warming). Anthropogenic climate change is caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes.

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AI - Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning | Deep Learning
AI - Artificial Intelligence

AIArtificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals including humans. AI research has been defined as the field of study of intelligent agents, which refers to any system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of achieving its goals.

The term "artificial intelligence" had previously been used to describe machines that mimic and display "human" cognitive skills that are associated with the human mind, such as "learning" and "problem-solving". This definition has since been rejected by major AI researchers who now describe AI in terms of rationality and acting rationally, which does not limit how intelligence can be articulated.
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Quantum mechanics | AI - Artificial Intelligence
Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles.  It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science.
Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales. Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid at large (macroscopic) scale.
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Economy, Wall Street and Banksters

Wall Street and Banksters

Wall Street is an eight-block-long street running roughly northwest to southeast from Broadway to South Street, at the East River, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or New York-based financial interests.

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Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, and foreign policy objectives. Means of information gathering are both overt and covert and may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis,.

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Daniel Ellsberg | Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg and Paul Jay explore Ellsberg's latest book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. In the introduction to the book, Ellsberg writes: "No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral or insane. The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted over a half a century is a chronicle of human madness".

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Nukes
Nukes

Nuclear weapons have come a long way and come in all types of different sizes. Some are relatively small while others are enormous, so big they boggle the mind at what they can be capable of, i.e. the Soviet 'Tsar Bomba' is/was 3,000 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.

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Rana Foroohar and Fall of American Business
Rana Foroohar

Ms. Foroohar says financialization delivers stagnant wages, inequality and economic crisis; the Financial Times columnist and author of "Makers and Takers" says the financial sector represents only 7 percent of the U.S. economy, but takes around 25 percent of all corporate profit while creating only 4 percent of all jobs.

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The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick | 2014 | 10 Episodes

Oliver Stone and American University historian Peter J. Kuznick began working on the project in 2008. Stone, Kuznick and British screenwriter Matt Graham cowrote the script. It covers "the reasons behind the Cold War with the Soviet Union, U.S. President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and changes in America's global role since the fall of Communism." Stone is the director and narrator of all ten episodes.

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Kuznick Interviews

Kuznick Interviews

Historian Peter Kuznick says Eisenhower called for decreased militarization, then Dulles reversed the policy; the Soviets tried to end the cold war after the death of Stalin; crazy schemes involving nuclear weapons and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba put the world of the eve of destruction - with host Paul Jay

The Untold History of the United States by Kuznick, Peter.mobi | Book | 6.99 MB

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China Valley of Tunnels

China Valley of Tunnels

A report written by a Georgetown University team led by Phillip Karber conducted a three-year study to map out China’s complex tunnel system, which stretches 5,000 km (3,000 miles). The report determined that the stated Chinese nuclear arsenal is understated and as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads may be stored in the underground tunnel network.

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911
911

On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists attacked the Unites States. They hijacked four airplanes in mid-flight. The terrorists flew two of the planes into two skyscrapers at the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact caused the buildings to catch fire and collapse. Another plane destroyed part of the Pentagon (the U.S. military headquarters) in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Officials believe that the terrorists on that plane intended to destroy either the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Passengers on the plane fought the terrorists and prevented them from reaching their goal. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, THE VIETNAM WAR, tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides--Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as combatants and civilians from North and South Vietnam. Ten years in the making, the series includes rarely seen and digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th Century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, and secret audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.

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Trump's Mashups
Trump's Mashups

Donald Trump talks a lot, but what is he actually saying? VICE News' "Trump Talk" mashup series tries to answer that. And, we're happy to say, it was just nominated for two Webby Awards. Now you can watch all the nominated videos.

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Trump's Sexcapades
Trump's Sexcapades.

Jessica Leeds (1980s)
Kristin Anderson (1990s)
E. Jean Carroll (1995 or 1996)
Lisa Boyne (1996)
Cathy Heller (1997)
Temple Taggart McDowell (1997)
Karena Virginia (1998)
Mindy McGillivray (2003)
Jennifer Murphy (2005)
Rachel Crooks (2005)
Natasha Stoynoff (2005)
Juliet Huddy (2005 or 2006)
Jessica Drake (2006)
Ninni Laaksonen (2006)
Cassandra Searles (2013)
Allegations of pageant dressing room visits(1997)
Mariah Billado,
Victoria Hughes,
and three other Miss Teen USA contestants
Bridget Sullivan (2000)
Tasha Dixon (2001)
Unnamed contestants (2001)
Samantha Holvey (2006)

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Trump's Speeches | Rallys |Interviews
Trump's Speeches | Rallys

Donald Trump talks a lot, but what is he actually saying? Watch Trump at some of his rallys and see what you think.

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