Home · News · News Dec 2013 · Dec 23 2013
Monday December 23, 2013
News Articles

The Taper, The Inflation, And The American People's Matrix Of Lies
ZeroHedge | Howard Kunstler | 12/23/13

Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke pulls one last dead rabbit out of his hat -- it suffocated while the head-fake taper percolated in Ben's brain lo these many months of jive talkin'. As the year turns, the central bank will supposedly monetize $10 billion less debt per month -- $75 billion down from $85 billion -- with $5 billion each deducted from the US Treasury stream and the rotten mortgage barrel. Was there a catch?

John H. Makin saying that the Fed's actual purchase of debt paper amounted to an average $94 billion a month through the year 2013, not $85 billion? I have averred often in this space to the Fed's ability to conduct back-door buying operations of all kinds of janky financial crapola -- and in a world where claims on promises to pay hugely exceed anyone's ability to pay or re-pay, there's as much of it out there as there are plastic grocery bags floating in the horse latitudes of the Pacific Ocean. The Fed can hose up bad paper all the live-long day and apparently get away with mis-reporting what it is doing, and is the country any the worse for it? ... Read more

How Goldman Quickly Found The Volcker Rule Loopholes
ZeroHedge | author | 12/23/13

The ink on the final Volcker Rule has not dried yet, and already the TBTF armies of lawyers have found all the loopholes in the rule they need to continue prop trading as if nothing has changed. Enter Goldman Sachs which as the WSJ reported, is raising a new fund, to which it will contribute 20% in capital, which will make investments in commercial real estate-backed loans including office buildings, hotels, and shopping centers. "Goldman has raised more than $1 billion for the new fund, according to people briefed on the matter. The fund aims to boost that total to $2 billion, and Goldman expects to invest "up to 20% of total equity commitments," according to September marketing documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal." Just how did Goldman get the green light to allocated up to $400 million for what is clearly a prop trading bet: "because regulators excluded many real-estate loans from the tough restrictions on investment funds, allowing Wall Street firms to continue making concentrated bets--sometimes risky ones--with their own capital." In other words, when it comes to reflating the precious real estate bubble, anything goes. ... Read more

Do We Have the NSA on the Run, or Is a Much Worse Surveillance State in the Making?
AlterNet | Zaid Jilani | 12/20/13

While it may look like the NSA and surveillance state are on the run -- it's too soon to break out the applause. The White House panel's recomendations also included the suggestion that data collected on individuals should be held by telecommunications providers or a private third party. There is a threat that this surveillance state may simply reconstitute itself into an increasingly privatized apparatus that the government can access through fees and subpoenas.

VICE's Megan Neal reports that so-called "data brokers" -- firms that spy on Americans' behavior and then sell that information to businesses looking to profit off of it -- have become a $156 billion industry. Neal notes that the Senate Commerce Committee recently published a report looking into how these data marketers spy on Americans -- the report shows how these firms label Americans under various categories depending on their financial security and other demographic categories, including "Ethnic Second-City Strugglers" and "X-tra Needy." ... Read more

Note:
I have highlighted three separate people today, Ralph Nader, John Perkins, and James Corbett. I have used videos of theirs for years, especially John Perkins since it was his book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" that got me interested in creating my websites. Today, I stumbled across James Corbett's short videos: "The Last Word on Terrorism", "The Last Word on Overpopulation" and "The Last Word on Osama Bin Laden", they are short but full of great information. Ralph Nader... what can I say. He always makes for good interviews and has thoughtful solutions on how to fix our society.
Ralph Nader
TalkingStickTV | Ralph Nader | Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! (05/08/10) [1:14:16]
Ralph Nader | "The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas For Our American Future" (10/21/12) [1:18:55]
Thom Hartmann | Ralph Nader | "The Seventeen Solutions" (11/01/12) [58:02]
DN | Ralph Nader | American Fascism: How Big Business Has Taken Control of the U.S. Government (06/24/13) [20:56]
Ralph Nader | The Road to Corporate Fascism (02/03/12) [54:16]
DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, December 23 [14:27]
More News
*David Suzuki speaks about overpopulation () [3:26]
CNN | Glenn Greenwald "Dick Cheney Engaged In Some Of The Most Radical & Criminal Conduct In The U.S." (12/23/13) [7:09]
TRNN News
TRNN | Bill Black: Federal judge Jed Rakoff criticized the Justice Department?s failure to prosecute Wall Street executives for the financial crash (12/23/13) [4:18]
TRNN | Nuclear expert and researcher Joseph Mangano explains his research in connecting the increase of hyperthyroidism in newborns on the West coast to the Fukushima nuclear disaster (12/23/13) [12:10]
Ring of Fire Radiocast
*Ring Of Fire | Global Elites Terrified By Income Inequality (12/19/13) [12:26]
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers | Michelle Alexander: Locked Out of the American Dream, tells Bill about an emerging movement that aims to end mass incarceration and its impact on America. (12/20/13) [35:25]
After civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander published her book The New Jim Crow in 2010 on our dehumanizing system of incarceration, she ignited a national conversation about justice in America and sparked a movement. In her book, Alexander explores how the war on drugs, "get-tough" sentencing policies and racism has created a caste system similar to that of our segregationist past.

Since then, Alexander has traveled the country to meet advocates and everyday Americans working to end mass incarceration in America -- home to 25 percent of the world's prisoners, despite representing only five percent of the world's population.
John Perkins - Economic Hitman
*TalkingStickTV | John Perkins | Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (12/18/09) [53:35]
John Perkins | The Secret History of the American Empire (12/18/09) [1:24:23]
James Corbett
corbettreport.com | The Last Word on Overpopulation (02/15/11) [10:10]
*corbettreport.com | The Last Word on Terrorism (02/22/11) [10:44]
corbettreport.com | The Last Word on Osama Bin Laden (05/24/11) [14:12]
60 Minutes
60 Minutes | Susan Rice on contending with crisis (12/22/13) [14:12]
From her first day on the job as President Obama's national security advisor, Susan Rice has had to contend with one crisis on top of the other: the Edward Snowden leaks, the chemical weapons attack in Syria, Egypt, Iran, China, Russia…you name it.

During her four years as the U.S. ambassador to the UN, she had a reputation, as one magazine put it, for being "whip-smart, energetic, abrasive, charming, funny, combative, and frequently undiplomatic."   And yet the president wanted to name her to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. But then she walked into the Benghazi buzzsaw. ...
*60 Minutes | Medical marijuana: Will Colorado's "green rush" last? (12/22/13) [12:55]
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.

12.23.2013. 13:56



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

Note: To view a video, click on code at left of the title

I'm still working on this

GOOD Short Videos
Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

Note: To view a video, click on code at left of the title

I'm still working on this

Newer Documentaries
Documentaries You've Never Seen

Note: To view a video, click on code at left of the title
Documentaries (small | pop-up)
Documentaries (big | full screen)
Good YouTube Documentaries

Note: To view a video, click on its name/title
Great YouTube Docs. (small | pop-up)
Good YouTube Docs. (big | full screen)

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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