Home · News · News Feb 2014 · Feb 07 2014
Friday February 07, 2014
News Articles

*No Wonder the World Is Terrified of America -- We're the Biggest Threat
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 02/05/14

As the year 2013 drew to an end, the BBC reported on the results of the WIN/Gallup International poll on the question: "Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?"

The United States was the champion by a substantial margin, winning three times the votes of second-place Pakistan.   By contrast, the debate in American scholarly and media circles is about whether Iran can be contained, and whether the huge NSA surveillance system is needed to protect U.S. security. ... Read more

Now Even AIPAC Says It's Not The Right Time To Advance Iran Sanctions Bill
HP | Ashley Alman | 02/06/14

American Israel Public Affairs Committee changed course on Thursday, coming out against an immediate Senate vote on new Iran sanctions, according to a statement obtained by The Hill.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and author of the predominantly Republican-backed sanctions bill, took to the Senate floor Thursday to encourage his colleagues not to let partisan politics drive a vote on the matter. AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, expressed support for Menendez in a statement several hours later: ... Read more

A Whistle-Blower From the Banking Industry
NYT or TRNN | Bill Black | 02/26/14

Erika Brown is not well known, which helps explain why we have seen our most elite banks' leaders produce the greatest financial crime spree in history without a single conviction of the Wall Street elites who drove the crisis. Erika Brown is a whistle-blower. She revealed Bank of America's orders that its employees lie to homeowners to encourage foreclosures rather than loan modifications that could help the borrowers keep their homes.

The sick irony is that this occurred in the context of the Home Affordable Modification Program, which was designed to help save homes and gave the banks a financial incentive to do so. Brown and her colleagues revealed that their orders were to squeeze as much cash as possible out of financially troubled homeowners and then default.

If President Obama invited Erika Brown to be his guest at the State of the Union, he would signal an end to the administration's hostility toward whistle-blowers. The president should use his address to praise her courage and to encourage others to follow her lead -- and he should create a new website and phone bank so that whistle-blowers can come forward with evidence of fraud. He should announce that he has directed the attorney general to make prosecutions of elite frauds a much higher priority, and that he will submit an emergency supplemental budget bill to fully fund the financial regulatory agencies and hire 1,000 new white-collar-crime specialists at the F.B.I.

*California Dries Up as Brown Pushes $15 Billion Tunnel
Bloomberg | Michael B. Marois | 02/03/14

California's worsening drought is raising the stakes for a $15 billion plan endorsed by Governor Jerry Brown to build two 30-mile (48-kilometer) water tunnels under an ecologically sensitive river delta east of San Francisco Bay.

The tunnels, each as wide as a two-lane interstate highway, would ship water more reliably from northern California to thirsty farms and cities in the south. They would also bolster the ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which is on the verge of collapse from feeding water to 25 million people and 750,000 acres (304,000 hectares) of farmland. ... Read more
ABC | California Governor Warns Residents of Serious Drought (01/31/14) [2:05]

Click to zoom chart
U.S Drought Monitor Website
U.S Drought Portal
GlobalChange.gov
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center
A Deepening Drought in the West (slideshow) (02/02/14)
Tom Coburn Call for Constitutional Convention
DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, February 7 [11:13]
DN | Execution Chaos: Witnesses Say Executions Are Botched As States Use Untested, Secret Drug Cocktails (02/07/14) [20:48]
DN | Trial Begins in Case of Man Who Murdered Florida Teen Jordan Davis Over Loud Music (02/07/14) [16:06]
*DN | Affluenza Defense Lands Wealthy Teen in Rehab After He Kills 4 People in Drunk Driving Accident (02/07/14) [8:41]
A wealthy teen who killed four people in a Texas drunk driving accident will not go to jail after a judge ruled this week that instead, he must attend an expensive rehabilitation facility paid for by his parents. The driver was 16-year-old Ethan Couch. He was speeding, with a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit. Couch has admitted to his crime, and in a case that went before a Texas judge, prosecutors sought a 20-year sentence. Instead, Couch was sentenced to 10 years probation after a psychologist claimed he had "affluenza," and testified that his cushy upbringing prevented him from connecting bad behavior with its consequences. We get response from Richard Alpert, the Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted the case against Couch. We are also joined by Boyce Watkins, a Syracuse University professor and the founder of "YourBlackWorld.net." He recently wrote an article titled, "Rich, White Kids Have 'Affluenza,' Poor, Black Kids Go to Prison."
TRNN News
TRNN | How Farm Bill's $8.7 Billion Food Stamp Cuts Hurt Working America (02/07/14) [8:35]
More Videos
Pink goop in Chicken McNuggets? McDonald's Canada answers (02/01/14) [2:44]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday (02/07/14) [1hr]
International News - Friday (02/07/14) [1hr]
Map of Poverty in America
Click to zoom chart
Click to zoom chart
NYT | Interactive Map of Poverty in America
Jon Stewart
*Jon Stewart | 'Daily Show's' Jason Jones Turns Into The Music Man To Sell Koch Bros. To Small Town (02/06/14) [6:14]
Jon Stewart | Bill de Blasio reflects on replacing Mayor Bloomberg and faces his pizza-eating technique's harshest critic (02/03/14) [3:24], Part 2 [5:50]
Jon Stewart | The CBO Report, or Terror on Bulls#%t Mountain (02/06/14) [2:33], Part 2 [2:01], Part 3 [3:54]
MEMES
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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.

02.07.2014. 12:33



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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Newer Documentaries
Documentaries You've Never Seen

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Great YouTube Docs. (small | pop-up)
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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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