Home · News · News Jun 2013
Friday June 28, 2013
News Articles

NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama
TheGuardian | Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman | 06/27/13

The Obama administration for more than two years permitted the National Security Agency to continue collecting vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans, according to secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

Comment:This is a complex and convoluted story so you should read the article and make your own conclusion...
Read more

The next Libor? Everything you need to know about the oil price fixing scandal
Reuter | Shane Ferro | 06/19/13

The Wall Street Journal has a painstakingly detailed article out today on how oil prices are benchmarked, and how those benchmarks can be manipulated. The EU has been investigating major oil companies, as well as the industry publication that sets the daily benchmark price, since last month. If the probe turns up damning evidence, this could be the biggest price-fixing scandal since Libor. ... Read more

Edward Snowden: in defence of whistleblowers
TheGuardian | Daniel Ellsberg | 06/25/13

No government or bureaucracy loves a whistleblower. Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared. The more serious the leak, the fiercer the pursuit and the greater the punishment.

Comment: Some people think Edward Snowden is a spy, some people think Edward Snowden is a hero. Up to this point I don't think he has exposed much more than information that embarrasses the United States (catches the US in the candy jar). What I worry about if Edward Snowden gets extradited to the US, he will not be treated to a fair trial, but will have a secret trial, hidden from the public, and quickly disappear into a bottomless pit of our prison system (or worse). I think if the government could/would guarantee a fair public trial we (the public) would learn a lot of interesting, unknown, hidden facts that would make our opinion of Edward Snowden less harsh.
Read more

The Best Second Passport For Edward Snowden Is...
ZeroHedge | author | 06/28/13

Ron Paul recently said on his Facebook page:
"My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the US Government views you and me as the enemy."

Snowden has been demonized by just about every government official on record. US Secretary of State John Kerry called Snowden's actions "despicable and beyond description," while US Senator Lindsey Graham said, "I hope we'll chase him to the ends of the earth…   Words like "hanging" and "treason" are floating around the mainstream media. It's incredible. The issue no longer has anything to do with the criminality of the government spying programs. But whether Snowden should be shot or hung. Read more

*Hyeonseo Lee: My escape from North Korea (04/01/13) [12:16]
Comment: this is probably the reason why Congress doesn't think there is a jobs problem.

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, June 28 [8:18]
DN | Senate Bill Creates Path for Undocumented Immigrants, But at Cost of Radically Militarized Border (06/28/13) [14:48]
DN | Horace Campbell: Obama Takes "Imperial Tour" of Africa As World Honors Ailing Mandela (06/28/13) [8:19]
*Dirty Wars author Jeremy Scahill: is journalism being criminalised? (06/26/13) [6:19]
In the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden's leak of NSA files, Jeremy Scahill, author of Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield and featured reporter in the new documentary film of the same name, says under the Obama administration journalists are being intruded upon and whistleblowers are being charged with crimes. Scahill is also a national security correspondent for the Nation.
*This is Google Drive Where I Can Share All My Ideas with NSA [0:31]
All your stuff, in one place. Upload the photos, videos, documents, and other files that you want to share with the NSA. NSA can access everything you have, your word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday 06/28/13 [1hr]
International News - Friday 06/28/13 [1hr]
TYT News
MSNBC Chris Hayes - All In News
Chris Hayes | How Rick Perry is working to turn Texas blue (06/27/13) [14:18]
Chris Hayes | The Twitterverse reacts to Rachel Jeantel at the Zimmerman trail (06/27/13) [7:58]
*Chris Hayes | Unequal responses to leaked information (06/27/13) [5:31]
Chris Hayes | Immigration reforms and DOMA (06/27/13) [7:29], Part 2 [4:33]
Humor
John Oliver Blasts Republicans' DOMA Reaction
Fun Recipes
Carrot hotdogs
Burger from last nights dinner
*All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren't
Terrorist by Extremist - Click to zoom
Terrorist by Class - Click to zoom
Terrorist by Type/Event
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 vidoes, I save the links in this section so I can find them at a later time.
C2CAM | Underground Government Bases (11/01/12) [1:09:05]
"Blade Runner" Actress Mary Sean Young talks about the Elites on Red Ice Radio (05/06/12) [1:08:06]
Lost Walt Disney UFO Documentary [43:24]
DC | Billion Dollar Secret [1:40:05]
American military Groom Lake Base better known as Area 51 is the place for testing most advanced military technologies. It is also keeping secret that is in the very heart of most conspiracy theories. Numerous UFO sightings above the desert represents or some are interconnected with US government black programs while or the others is the proof of the aliens.
Escape From Area 51 J-Rod Full Documentary Watch Now! UFO Sightings [48:18]
Escape From Area 51 J-Rod Incredible Testimony from Michael Schratt, military aerospace historian,In this Open Minds Production, Michael Schratt provides specifics regarding Dr Dan Burisch's alleged interaction with an extraterrestrial known as "J-Rod".

This historically significant account of human/ET contact allegedly took place at the super-secret S4 facility located 12 miles south of Area 51. Also included are details drawings of the flight simulator on level B, along with a very accurate schematic layout of the cafeteria, file department, communications and transportation logistics to the facility.

06.28.2013. 14:32

Thursday June 27, 2013
News Articles

*Heat Wave May Threaten World's Hottest Temp. Record
climatecentral.org | Andrew Freedman | 06/26/13

A brutal and potentially historic heat wave is in store for the West as parts of Nevada, Arizona and California may get dangerously hot temperatures this weekend and into next week. In fact, by the end of the heat wave, we may see a record tied or broken for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth. ... Read more
Heat Wave - Click to zoom

*How TV News Gets All the Eye-Gluing (Eye-Candy) Benefits of Climate Change without Having to Deal with It
AlterNet | Tom Engelhardt | 06/24/13

Here's a nifty trick that's been on my mind lately. In case you hadn't noticed, the weather news this season has been pretty grim. Tornados so large and destructive that they would have given Dorothy pause, 500-year European floods, massive rainstorms rolling across the land, record heat in California and Alaska, late snowfalls that boggle the imagination, wildfires that dwarf past ones in the American West. I could go on, but why bother since anyone who has been watching primetime TV news can't but notice that staggering weather has been the lead or second story much of the time all spring and into the summer.

All of this weather has a new, made-for-TV label. It's now regularly called "extreme weather" or "severe weather." .... The trick is that, as a label, "extreme weather" has managed (with rare exceptions) to obviate the need even to mention that any of this could have the slightest thing to do with climate change ... Read more

Sallie Mae Receives Billions in Taxpayer Subsidized Credit, Charges Students 25-40 Times More
http://theeverlastinggopstoppers.com/ | James | 06/24/13

On Monday, a day before a Senate Banking Committee hearing that will examine private student loans, freshman Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren continued her relentless attack on fraud and abuse in our banking system when she sent a letter to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Acting Director Ed DeMarco, requesting information on Federal Home Loan Bank Financing of banks that then use the money to fund private student loans at a much higher rate.

According to a press release, Sallie Mae has been borrowing from a Federal Home Loan Bank at a rate ranging from 0.23%-0.34% interest. The rate Sallie Mae charges for fixed-rate student loans is 25-40 times higher. ... Read more

Ecuador offers U.S. rights aid, waives trade benefits
Reuters | Alexandra Valencia | 06/27/13

Ecuador's leftist government thumbed its nose at Washington on Thursday by renouncing U.S. trade benefits and offering to pay for human rights training in America in response to pressure over asylum for former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

"Ecuador will not accept pressures or threats from anyone, and it does not traffic in its values or allow them to be subjugated to mercantile interests," government spokesman Fernando Alvarado said at a news conference.   In a cheeky jab at the U.S. spying program that Snowden unveiled through leaks to the media, the South American nation offered $23 million per year to finance human rights training. ... Read more

*Research Shows that Monsanto's Big Claims for GMO Food Are Probably Wrong
AlterNet | Jill Richardson | 06/25/13

Oops. The World Food Prize committee's got a bit of egg on its face--genetically engineered egg. They just awarded the World Food Prize to three scientists, including one from Syngenta and one from Monsanto, who invented genetic engineering because, they say, the technology increases crop yields and decreases pesticide use. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Monsanto and Syngenta are major sponsors of the World Food Prize, along with a third biotech giant, Dupont Pioneer.)

... But that's not actually the case. A new peer-reviewed study published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability examined those claims and found that conventional plant breeding, not genetic engineering, is responsible for yield increases in major U.S. crops. Additionally, GM crops, also known as genetically engineered (GE) crops, can't even take credit for reductions in pesticide use. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
The Real News Network (TRNN)
Environmentalist Nafeez Ahmed : I think one has to assess what Obama is saying here against his track record in relation to other issues, such as the NDAA, such as drone strikes, such as the NSA PRISM issue. All of these issues show that Obama is very good at mobilizing very powerful rhetoric which can be quite convincing and in fact effectively diffuses and confuses potential opposition to his decisions, to the Democratic Party, and so on and so forth. But in fact what he actually does in practice can often be very, very different. And whether that's a result of him personally or whether it's because of the inevitable structures of power in which he's operating is, you know, a debate that we can have, but the facts do speak for themselves that Obama often says things that his--and his administration tends to the do the opposite, and that often bears the stamp of his approval. I'm concerned that this could happen again in Keystone.
*TRNN | Nafeez Ahmed: Environmental activists need to redouble efforts to demand Obama reject Keystone XL, abandon hydrofracking, and adopt tougher emission standards (06/27/13) [14:01]
TRNN | Dr. Heiner Flassbeck: The Paradox of the Creditor Debtor Relationship - Germany the Debtor Nation (06/26/13) [8:35]
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Richard Somerville, a world-renowned climate scientist and author of "The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change," discusses the scientific case for urgent action to limit climate change. Series: "Perspectives on Ocean Science".
Climate Change
*The Scientific Case for Urgent Action to Limit Climate Change (05/20/13) [59:00]
*Evidence Of The Extreme Climate Change (11/16/12) [7:47]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Far-Reaching Effects Of Supreme Court Rulings (06/27/13) [1hr]
Pakistan
BBC | The Death of Osama Bin Laden (2012) [29:25]
BBC | Secret Pakistan (11/02/11) [59:03], Part 2 [58:59]
BBC | The Day Clinton Stopped Pakistan from Nuking india (07/04/99) [15:55]
Vice | Pakistan After Bin Laden (08/10/12) [23:11]
More News Articles

*Goodbye, Miami
RollingStone | Jeff Goodell | 06/20/13

By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin

When the water receded after Hurricane Milo of 2030, there was a foot of sand covering the famous bow-tie floor in the lobby of the Fontaine­bleau hotel in Miami Beach. A dead manatee floated in the pool where Elvis had once swum. Most of the damage occurred not from the hurricane's 175-mph winds, but from the 24-foot storm surge that overwhelmed the low-lying city. In South Beach, the old art-deco­ buildings were swept off their foundations. Mansions on Star Island were flooded up to their cut-glass doorknobs. A 17-mile stretch of Highway A1A that ran along the famous beaches up to Fort Lauderdale disappeared into the Atlantic. ... Read more

Rising Seas: A City-by-City Forecast
RollingStone | author | 06/20/13

Depending on geology, vulnerability, ocean currents and political leadership, some regions will be hit harder than others. Researchers recently discovered that the Atlantic coast between North Carolina and Massachusetts is a particular hot spot, with the sea rising three to four times faster than the global average. Among the U.S. cities most at risk: ... Read more

The 10 Dumbest Things Ever Said About Global Warming
RollingStone | Brooke Jarvis | 06/19/13

...
5). God buried fossil fuels "because he loves to see us find them."
...

Read more

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 run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find vidoes I have passed up, I save the links in this section so I can look-up the videos at a later time.
Weather (Climate) Change
Skywatcher: Weather Modification, Cloud Seeding, Chemtrails? [28:28]
The Great Debate: CLIMATE CHANGE - Surviving The Future (02/15/13) [1:31:42], Part 2 [51:43]
Join an exciting panel of scientists and leaders affiliated with NASA, NOAA, The Earth Institute, E3G, and The Global Institute of Sustainability for what is sure to be a lively conversation on the future of the nation and the world in our changing climate. The Origins Project at ASU is proud to host esteemed scientists and intellectuals Prof. Jim Hansen, Prof. Susan Solomon, Prof. Wallace Broecker, Mr. John Ashton CBE, and Prof. Sander Van Der Leeuw as they discuss these controversial issues in the field of climate change.

Interesting Videos
Project Camelot: Michael Schratt Part 1 [56:59], Part 2 [1:11:55]
HC | Greenbrier Underground Bunker [10:00]
Other Videos
Andre The Giant - Larger Than Life [43:55]

06.27.2013. 13:08

Wednesday June 26, 2013
News Articles

*Why I'm More Afraid of "Terrorism" Than Actual Terrorism
Care2.com | Kevin Mathews | 06/24/13

"Terrorism!" Ever since 9/11, it's a word that has come to instill fear in American people, myself included. However, as I watch our civil liberties disappear in the name of "terrorism," I've become significantly more afraid of the word being used for political gain than actual terrorist attacks.

I'm all for keeping American citizens safe, I just question whether so-called "National Security" is actually attempting to do that. Last year, 17 Americans died in terrorist attacks (mainly abroad), whereas 30,000 Americans died from gun violence. If the politicians are so concerned with safety, why are they unwilling to pass even the slightest gun control measures?

It goes deeper than guns, though: 45,000 people die of a lack of affordable health care annually, yet we still debate that issue endlessly. Those are exponentially more lives that could more easily be saved. Statistics also show that you are 8 times more likely to be killed by the police than terrorists, yet the government does little to tackle the growing problem of police brutality. You are six times more likely to die from hot weather than terrorists, yet the government is still minimally addressing global warming. You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than a terrorist incident, yet the National Cancer Institute operates on a budget of about $5 billion annually… an amount that pales in comparison to the $636 billion spent on the "war on terror" in Afghanistan.

Just two days after the Boston marathon bombing, an explosion in West, Texas killed five times as many people. The accident was the result of gross workplace negligence. The fertilizer plant in question not only had over 1,000 times the legal limit of explosives on site, but also failed to implement sprinklers or fire safety precautions. Moreover, the government hadn't performed inspections on the plant for six years; during its last inspection, it slapped it with a laughable $2,300 fine for not having proper safety procedures in place. ... Read more

Quote of the Day
"When YOU do IT, it's WRONG -- when I do IT, it's DIFFERENT."

Evil is always exempt from prosecution.

Stocks gone wild: Why are investors so panicked?
CNBC | John W. Schoen | 06/24/13

Stock markets have been in turmoil since Fed chairman Ben Bernanke last week suggested that if the economy continues to perk up the central bank will remove a least some of the low interest rate punch bowls that banks and businesses have been drinking from for years. And while part of Monday's stock drop could be blamed on worries about China's economy, the world's second largest, it came against a backdrop of fears about what the Fed may do later this year. ... Read more

Nuclear waste clean-up delayed and billions over budget
CBS | Carter Evans | 06/19/13

The new Secretary of Energy has been on the job only four weeks, but he made a beeline Wednesday to see his biggest headache for himself. Ernest Moniz went to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.

Hanford made the plutonium for American nuclear weapons from the Manhattan Project in World War II until 1987. Now, highly radioactive waste is leaking, and a project to clean it up has stalled.

The clean-up at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation costs U.S. taxpayers $2 billion every year. This winter, engineers discovered six new leaks of radioactive material from underground tanks.   "There's something on the order of 1,000 gallons a year that are leaking now from these six tanks," says Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

The government's clean-up plan involves pumping 56 million gallons of waste out of 177 tanks, mixing it with liquid glass and sealing it in canisters. ... Read more

Hanford Cleanup Story
ABC & AP | author | 06/24/13
Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, June 26 [10:52]
*DN | Obama's Climate Plan: A Historic Turning Point or Too Reliant on Oil, Coal, Natural Gas? (06/26/13) [11:04]
MSNBC Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Killing off the Voting Rights Act (06/25/13) [13:04], Part 2 [7:13]
*Chris Hayes | How the Supreme Court just kicked off the 2014 election (06/25/13) [3:48]
Chris Hayes | Obama outlines what can be done on Climate Change... without Congress (06/25/13) [7:20], Part 2 [8:34]
Nuclear Issues/Problems
Fukushima - Japan
Fukushima: Strontium now in Groundwater (06/19/13) [9:18]
Seconds From Disaster - S05E01 - Fukushima (02/16/13) [44:58]
Hanford, Washington - USA
*Hanford Nuclear Reservation (06/19/13) [3:06]
Nuclear Waste - Disposal
Nuclear Waste Disposal [52:47]
Steve Wozniak co-founder of Apple Computer
CNN | Piers Morgan talks with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak about the NSA leak (06/21/13) [1:47]
MoxNews | Piers Morgan talks with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (06/21/13) [13:24]
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, from 1984 talking about computing, and the Mac (1984) [1:49:42]
More News

So When will Dick Cheney be charged with Espionage? His Crime was the Same as Snowden's
Informed Comment | Juan Cole | 06/22/13

The US government charged Edward Snowden with theft of government property and espionage on Friday.

Snowden hasn't to our knowledge committed treason in any ordinary sense of the term. He hasn't handed over government secrets to a foreign government.

His leaks are being considered a form of domestic spying. He is the 7th leaker to be so charged by the Obama administration. All previous presidents together only used the charge 3 times.

Charging leakers with espionage is outrageous, but it is par for the course with the Obama administration.

The same theory under which Edward Snowden is guilty of espionage could easily be applied to former vice president Dick Cheney.

Cheney led an effort in 2003 to discredit former acting ambassador in Iraq, Joseph Wilson IV, who had written an op ed for the New York Times detailing his own mission to discover if Iraq was getting uranium from Niger. (The answer? No.)

Read more

Climate Change ??
Muir Glacier Before - late 1800s - Click to zoom
Muir Glacier Now 2005 - Click to zoom
Muir Glacier had retreated more than 31 miles. Although this picture was taken from the same location as the early black-and-white photograph, the glacier is completely out of view. There's an abundance of vegetation looking to the west, and the beach in the foreground is now covered by pebbles, which came from sediment deposited by Muir Glacier and by melting icebergs on the ground.


The Alpse Before 1960 - Click to zoom
The Alps Now 2005 - Click to zoom
The Swiss peak, pictured on August 18, 2005, is eroding as a result of melting glacier water at the summit. The water sinks into cracks and creates even bigger fissures after several cycles of freezing and thawing.
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Nuclear Issues/Problems
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster Video What Happened at Fukushima (06/18/13) [49:23]
Nuclear Power and Bomb Testing and Waste Disposal narrated by Robert Redford (older) [52:35]
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository (after closure of Germany's Repository for radioactive waste Morsleben and the Schacht Asse II Salt Mine) licensed to permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years that is left from the research and production of nuclear weapons. It is located approximately 26 miles (42 km) east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in eastern Eddy County.
911 Videos
9/11 conspiracy - The 5th Estate, show exposes Holes in official story (rerelease 2012) [44:55]
Many American's don't realize that a high percentage of Canadians (in certain polls greater then American's) don't believe the official story behind 9/11 & that the highly regarded Canadian investigative journalism show "The 5th estate" has produced 2 documentaries looking into some of the more highly suspicious claims and circumstances of the events leading up to, and preceding 9/11.
9/11 In Plane Sight - Directors Cut [1:12:12]
9/11 Video Clips Dan Rather Would Rather Not Show You [5:14]
Pentagon 757 vaporized human flesh did not [10:36]
Inside 9/11 - Who controlled the planes? [6:42]
What Happened to the Planes and Passengers on 9/11 [14:49]
Other Videos
The Osama bin Laden Shooter: Behind the Story [6:08]
The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden [18:12]
(Interview) Navy SEAL on Obama: "They're Just Saying Things That Will Get Them Reelected But Will Get Us Killed" [4:42]
Dishonorable Disclosures Documentary (08/15/12) [22:01]
Intelligence and Special Operations forces are furious and frustrated at how President Obama and those in positions of authority have exploited their service for political advantage. Countless leaks, interviews and decisions by the Obama Administration and other government officials have undermined the success of our Intelligence and Special Operations forces and put future missions and personnel at risk.

06.26.2013. 12:58

Tuesday June 25, 2013
News Articles

*There's a New Fascism on the Rise, and the NSA Leaks Show Us What It Looks Like
AlterNet | John Pilger | 06/21/13

The power of truth-tellers like Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media.

In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, wrote: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as The Pentagon Papers, revealing that the invasion of Vietnam was based on systematic lying. Four years later, Frank Church conducted sensational hearings in the US Senate: one of the last flickers of American democracy. These laid bare the full extent of the invisible government: the domestic spying and subversion and warmongering by intelligence and "security" agencies and the backing they received from big business and the media, both conservative and liberal. ... Read more

Financialization = Inequality
ZeroHedge | author | 06/25/13

There are a number of factors behind the widening canyon of economic inequality, but the primary driver is financialization. Financialization has given those with capital and access to financier expertise ways to skim great wealth from the system without creating any value whatsoever.

In other words, financialization isn't a consequence of having capital: it's the consequence of having access to unlimited credit, leverage and low-risk, low-tax skimming operations (for example, tax codes enable hedge funds to declare income as low-tax long-term capital gains). ... Read more

Several years ago England voted vulture capitalism as illegal. But of course in the US vulture capitalism is well and thriving.

Vulture Capitalists Battle Argentina Over Decade-Old Debt Default
HP | Christina Wilkie | 06/20/13

... Investors buy up distressed debt on the secondary market at a deep discount -- often pennies on the dollar -- and then sue the issuer of the debt in an attempt to force full repayment. Referred to as "vulture capitalists" by their detractors, these investors can turn a bond purchased for 10 cents into a repayment of a full dollar, a phenomenal return on investment. ...

... Among the investment funds listed as members of ATFA is Elliott Management, a hedge fund controlled by billionaire and major Republican donor Paul Singer. According to documents filed by Argentina in a New York federal court lawsuit that Elliott Management has brought against the country, an Elliott subsidiary, NML, paid approximately $48.7 million in 2008 for the Argentine debt in question. Now, the company is demanding that Argentina repay it $1.44 billion, including interest. ... Read more

Shadow Banking - $67 Trillion

Why would banks want to keep all these mortgages on their books when they can blow them out to Freddie and Fannie, who in turn sell them to the market in the form of agency MBS (mortgage backed securities). And who are the buyers? The usual suspects of course - insurance firms, mutual funds, etc., and of course the biggest buyer of them all - the Fed. In fact the holdings of MBS on Fed's balance sheet just hit a record. Mortgages are simply making their way from banks' balance sheets onto the Fed's balance sheet in the form of MBS.

The data from Freddie and Fannie confirms this trend, with the first quarter of this year showing the largest MBS issuance volume in two years. As much as people don't like to think about it this way, Freddie and Fannie are the biggest "shadow banks" around. ...

How Did We Get Here - Click to zoom

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, June 25 [14:04]
*DN | Insider Threat: Government Employees Urged to Tattle On Coworkers In Effort to Stop Classified Leaks (06/25/13) [19:02]
As the media focuses almost exclusively on Edward Snowden's possible whereabouts, more details on the Obama administration's crackdown on whistleblowers have come to light. A new investigative report has revealed the administration's crackdown on leaks extends far beyond high-profile cases like Snowden or the Associated Press, to the vast majority of government agencies and departments -- even those with no connection to intelligence or national security. For nearly two years, the White House has waged a program called "Insider Threat" that forces government employees to remain on the constant lookout for their colleagues' behavior and to report their suspicions.
DN | Eve Ensler on New Memoir & Confronting Gender Violence with Congolese Activist Christine Deschryver (06/25/13) [12:55]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Widespread Protests In Brazil (06/25/13) [1hr]
TYT News
TYT | Obama's Youth Base Slipping Away From Him (06/24/13) [6:29]
*TYT | The Vulture Capitalists Plan to Smear Argentina (06/23/13) [6:14]
TYT | What Do You Like More - Congress or Root Canals? (06/23/13) [4:02]
*TYT | Michael Hastings and The War on Journalism (06/23/13) [4:51]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Where in the world is Edward Snowden (06/24/13) [15:25]
Chris Hayes | Jon Stewart meets his Egyptian counterpart (06/24/13) [4:10]
*Drone Strikes 2004-2013 - Click to zoom

*Future NSA surveillance ??
1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surveillance platform by DARPA [4:41]
Shadow Banking
RT | "Shadow" Banking's Parasites! [2:30]
*Thom Hartmann |What Lurks in the Shadows of Wall Street? [6:15]
Max Keiser | about the Shadow banking System [2:42]
Shadow banking Simplified [9:06]
Derivatives
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Continuity of Government
Presidential Emergency Facility Sites
Site Code NameOther NameLocation
CrownThe White HouseWashington, D.C.
CartwheelFort RenoWashington, D.C.
CrystalMt. WeatherBerryville, Virginia
CorkscrewLamb's KnollFrederick County, Maryland
CowpuncherMartinsburgRoundtop Summit, Virginia
CannonballCross MountainMercersburg, Pennsylvania
CactusCamp DavidThurmont, Maryland
CreedSite R (Raven Rock)Waynesboro, Pennsylvania
The Undisclosed Location Disclosed: Continuity of Government Sites as Recent Past Resources
"Back To The Bunker" by William M. Arkin, Sunday, June 4, 2006
Cold War Legacy - Nuclear Warfare - Cost to the US
Click to zoom

06.25.2013. 13:45

Monday June 24, 2013
News Articles

Today's NSA Brought to You By a Decade of Republican Fear-Mongering
HP | Bob Cesca | 06/21/13

On his show recently, while the NSA story was blazing its way through the tubes, Rush Limbaugh said, "So there is clearly -- somewhere, somehow, in some form or another -- a coup taking place, and there is an assault on privacy, and there are assaults on people because of their politics and their ideology. It is taking place; it's undeniable." ... Got to read the article to see/feel the hypocrisy ... Read more

On the Espionage Act charges against Edward Snowden
TheGuardian | Glenn Greenwald | 06/22/13

Who is actually bringing 'injury to America': those who are secretly building a massive surveillance system or those who inform citizens that it's being done?

Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, there were a grand total of three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That's because the statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now seven such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined. How can anyone justify that? ... Read more

US warns Moscow not to let Edward Snowden escape Russia
TheGuardian | Spencer Ackerman | 06/24/13

Confusion surrounds Snowden's whereabouts as journalists report NSA whistleblower was not on plane bound for Havana

The Obama administration urged Russia not to allow the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden to leave the country, as his attempted escape to South America descended into confusion and farce on Monday.   John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said it would be "deeply troubling" if China and Russia had failed to detain Snowden knowing he was a fugitive from American justice.   The White House insisted that the extradition paperwork it had submitted to Hong Kong, where Snowden had been holed up until Sunday, was in order and that he should not have been allowed to leave. Read more

*National Debt
The National Debt has surpassed 16 Trillion and rising, but how did it get so high and who should shoulder the blame?

Who's Responsible for Most of the National Debt?
Click to zoom
How Much is the National Debt?
national debt

Who Owns Most of the National Debt?
Click to zoom

How Republicans stopped worrying and learned to love big government
WashingtonPost | Ezra Klein | 06/21/13

Here's what I don't understand: How can Republicans who think themselves skeptical of the federal government also believe it capable of predicting the path of the economy 30 years into the future while locking down the border and picking through all electronic communications?

Consider the budget projections of just the past few years. In 2001, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the government would wipe out its debt in 2006 and be $2.3 trillion in the black by 2011. But after a recession, the Bush tax cuts, 9/11, two wars and the financial crisis, the reality was rather different: We were $10.1 trillion in the red. ... Read more
Click to zoom

*Decline and fall: how American society unravelled
TheGuardian | George Packer | 06/19/13

Thirty years ago, the old deal that held US society together started to unwind, with social cohesion sacrificed to greed. Was it an inevitable process -- or was it engineered by self-interested elites?

In or around 1978, America's character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

This unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left large numbers of Americans -- black people and other minorities, women, gay people -- out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress, courts, churches, schools, news organisations, business-labour partnerships. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a nonviolent mass uprising led by black southerners, but it drew essential support from all of these institutions, which recognised the moral and legal justice of its claims, or, at the very least, the need for social peace. The Roosevelt Republic had plenty of injustice, but it also had the power of self-correction.

Americans were no less greedy, ignorant, selfish and violent then than they are today, and no more generous, fair-minded and idealistic. But the institutions of American democracy, stronger than the excesses of individuals, were usually able to contain and channel them to more useful ends. Human nature does not change, but social structures can, and they did. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, June 24 [14:05]
*DN | Where is Edward Snowden? Glenn Greenwald on Asylum Request, Espionage Charge; More Leaks to Come Part 1 (06/24/13) [13:17], Part 2 [12:29]
DN | WikiLeaks Attorney Praises Ecuador For Considering Snowden Asylum Request Despite U.S. Pressure (06/24/13) [16:50]
DN | A Debate With Journalist Chris Hedges & Law Scholar Geoffrey Stone on NSA and Edward Snowden (06/12/13) [27:59]
Greenwald Rips David Gregory For Wondering "If Other Journalists Should Be Charged With Felonies" (06/23/13) [1:15]
Meet the Press
Meet the Press [30:23]
Surveillance
*1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surveillance platform by DARPA [4:41]
Climate Change
Climate Change and Global Disasters () [4:11]
Flooding in Alberta takes lives (06/22/13) [1:20]
*Earth Days (2009 older but good) [1:51:09]
TRNN
*TRNN | Fred Branfman: Former Gov't Officials Say Foreign Policy Making US Less Safe (06/24/13) [12:59]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Diplomatic And Legal Twists In NSA Leaker Case (06/24/13) [1hr]
In this June 21, 2013 file photo, a banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, is displayed at Central, Hong Kong's business district. The Hong Kong government says Snowden, wanted by the U.S. for revealing two highly classified surveillance programs, has left for a "third country." The South China Morning Post reported Sunday, June 23, 2013 that Snowden was on a plane for Moscow, but that Russia was not his final destination. Snowden has talked of seeking asylum in Iceland.
Continuity of Government
Peter Dale Scott 2010 "Continuity of Government" (2010) [58:25]
TRNN | Peter Dale Scott: "I do know for a certainty that there has been a cover-up of 9/11" Part 1 (09/10/10) [7:56]
TRNN | Peter Dale Scott: 9/11 and Continuity of Government Part 2 (09/11/10) [16:39]
*A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 (hint 2053) - by Isao Hashimoto [14:25]
*Drone Signature Strikes - Brave New Foundation
*BraveNewFoundation | Signature Strike Investigationt (06/19/13) [13:05]
BraveNewFoundation | Robert Greenwald discusses Obama's drone policy on The Ed Showt (06/12/13) [3:25]
*Tavis Smiley | Jeremy Scahill: Dirty Wars (GOOD Interview) (05/14/13) [25:00]
TYT News
*TYT | Our Drone Strikes Terrorize and Kill the Innocent (06/21/13) [8:26]
"Jalal Manzar Khail was at home on March 17, 2011 as dozens of men from two bickering tribal groups met a couple miles away to settle a dispute.

All day long, American drones loomed in the sky above. "It's very normal," Khail said, speaking in Urdu through a translator with the United Kingdom legal charity Reprieve. "You see them during the day, you see them during the night -- they're always hovering."

Most Americans haven't been told the truth about signature strikes - the kind of deadly drone attacks that target almost indiscriminately. Our forces are responsible for killing innocents, then later claiming any adult male struck a "combattant." But that's not what we've been told by John Brennan and our military leaders. The Brave New Foundation sheds some stark perspective in a new documentary.
TYT | Gohmert: Food Stamp Users Are Fat, Not 'Starving' (06/21/13) [4:27]
*TYT | Bill O'Reilly Outrageously Defends Obama's Drone Strikes (06/21/13) [6:53]
"Bill O'Reilly and Kirsten Powers sparred about drones on Wednesday's "O'Reilly Factor," when the Fox News host said he wanted to know why "far-left loons" who oppose drones and Guantanamo are "so crazy."

"Only crazy people don't want drones, Bill?" Powers asked. O'Reilly asked how else, if not by using drones, people should "protect" themselves against terrorists."

Bill O'Reilly is no stranger to stubbornly standing by simple views not supported by actual facts. He got into a heated debate with Kirsten Powers, and by all accounts thought he'd won in supporting Obama's indiscriminate drone program.
TYT | 'Former Terrorist: Slams Obama For War Crimes (06/21/13) [6:47]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Edward Snowden charged with espioage (06/21/13) [10:12]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Greg Hunter | NSA Spying, Rep. Jeff Duncan Tours DHS - Sees IRS agents Training with AR-15's and More (06/13/13) [8:27]
Continuity of Government
Peter Dale Scott 2010 "Continuity of Government" (2010) [58:25]
TRNN | Peter Dale Scott: "I do know for a certainty that there has been a cover-up of 9/11" Part 1 (09/10/10) [7:56]
TRNN | Peter Dale Scott: 9/11 and Continuity of Government Part 2 (09/11/10) [16:39]
America's Cold War Infrastructure
A Secret Landscape - America's Cold War Infrastructure (website)
More Up To Date Cold War Infrastructure
Camp David - Raven Rock Mountain Complex (website) (06/14/13)
About the Raven Rock Mountain Complex (website)
Dooms Day Plans
Americas Doomsday Plan | Continuity of Government [42:02]
Prophets of Doom [1:30:00]
After the Tribulation [1:53:11]
The Last Days on Earth [1:26:50]
Military Weapons
NatGeo | America's Secret Weapons (DARPA) [45:41]
World Ending Event
NatGeo | Evacuate Earth [1:29:59]
Toronto Hearings on 9/11 (2011)
Full Length
9/11 The Toronto Hearings - 2011 (Full Length) [5:14:33]
Individual Segments
9/11 - The Toronto Hearings - Day 1 [1:08:49]
9/11 - The Toronto Hearings - Day 2 [1:09:01]
9/11 - The Toronto Hearings - 09/11/11 - Peter Dale Scott [1:16:26]
9/11 - The Toronto Hearings - Day 4 [51:31]
there are many more segments
WashingtonPost | Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret (article) (03/01/02)
World War Z
World War Z - Audio Book
Max Brooks - World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War Part 1 [56:57], Part 2 [58:49], Part 3 [1:00:38], Part 4 [1:14:57], Part 5 [59:32], Part 6 [49:40]
Zombie Survival Guide - Audio Book
The Zombie Survival Guide audiobook Part 1 [1:11:33]
Part 2 [1:17:51], Part 3 [1:25:24], Part 4 [1:15:27], Part 5 [1:17:43], Part 6 [], Part 7 [54:19]
Interview with Max Brooks
Max Brooks discusses World War Z, the movie [4:55], Part 2 [27:12]
Max Brooks about writing, the movie based on his book, World War Z, and growing up as the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft.
Other Movies
Final Days Of Planet Earth (2006) Daryl Hannah, Campbell Scott [2:51:57]

06.24.2013. 13:08

Friday June 21, 2013
News Articles

*The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 06/19/13

It's long been suspected that ratings agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's helped trigger the meltdown. A new trove of embarrassing documents shows how they did it.

But what about the ratings agencies? Isn't it true that almost none of the fraud that's swallowed Wall Street in the past decade could have taken place without companies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's rubber-stamping it? Aren't they guilty, too? ... Read more

*Dow Suffers Biggest Drop Of 2013 As Markets Continue To Panic About The Fed
HP | Mark Gongloff | 06/20/13

Does it feel unusually hot to you today? That is because all of your money is on fire, thanks to the Federal Reserve.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled on Thursday by 353.87, or more than 2 percent, to 14,758.32, the index's worst single-day selloff since November 2011. All 30 of the Dow's components were in the red. Thursday's pummeling followed a 200-point drop on Wednesday, adding up to the worst two-day selloff since November 2011. The broader S&P 500-stock index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq both fell 2 percent, as well. ... Read more

*The Terror Con: How Keeping Americans Terrified Is Making Corporations Big Bucks
AlterNet | Robert Scheer | 06/19/13

For defense contractors, the government officials who write them mega checks, and the hawks in the media who cheer them on, the name of the game is threat inflation. And no one has been better at it than the folks at Booz Allen Hamilton, the inventors of the new boondoggle called cyber warfare.

Booz Allen, whose top personnel served in key positions at the NSA and vice versa after the inconvenient collapse of the Cold War, has been attempting to substitute terrorist for communist as the enemy of choice. A difficult switch indeed for the military-industrial complex about which Dwight Eisenhower, the general-turned-president, had so eloquently warned us. ... Read more

6 Unbelievable Ways the Big Banks Are Scamming You
AlterNet | Dave Johnson | 06/19/13

It is going on five years since the financial crash and three years since President Obama signed the meager Dodd--Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and the big banks are still scamming and conning and ripping off their customers. What a huge surprise

Of course, no one at the top was prosecuted and the banks were allowed to settle a host of charges (which meant that their shareholders, not the executives who made the decisions, paid the fines). The bad behavior gave these giants a competitive advantage, driving out what good companies there were. So the costly and destructive bad behavior, schemes, cons and scams continue. ...

  1. Falsifying Paperwork, Blitzing, Lying About Payments to Force Homeowners Into Foreclosure
  2. Bank Protection "Service" Puts Consumers at "Greater Risk Of Harm"
  3. Transaction Ordering
  4. Forced Arbitration
  5. Marketing Refinancing That Costs People
  6. Banks Trying To Kill the CFPB
Read more

Booz Allen, the World's Most Profitable Spy Organization
Bloomberg | Drake Bennett | 06/20/13

In 1940, a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy began to think about what a war with Germany would look like. The admirals worried in particular about the Kriegsmarine's fleet of U-boats, which were preying on Allied shipping and proving impossible to find, much less sink. Stymied, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox turned to Booz, Fry, Allen & Hamilton, a consulting firm in Chicago whose best-known clients were Goodyear Tire & Rubber (GT) and Montgomery Ward. The firm had effectively invented management consulting, deploying whiz kids from top schools as analysts and acumen-for-hire to corporate clients. Working with the Navy's own planners, Booz consultants developed a special sensor system that could track the U-boats' brief-burst radio communications and helped design an attack strategy around it. With its aid, the Allies by war's end had sunk or crippled most of the German submarine fleet. Interesting Read ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, June 21 [14:14]
DN | The FBI's License to Kill: Agents Have Been Deemed "Justified" in Every Shooting Since 1993 (06/21/13) [14:11]
*DN | FBI's Use of Drones for U.S. Surveillance Raises Fears over Privacy, Widening Corporate-Gov't Ties (06/21/13) [16:09]
*DN | The Other James Gandolfini: "Sopranos" Actor Remembered (06/21/13) [7:00]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Bill Black: Ex Employees Say-Bank of America Rewarded Fradulent Forelcosures (06/21/13) [13:56]
It is amazing that Brazil can get a million demonstrators out in the streets for a 20cent bus fare (I realize they have a lot more issues), while the US Congress wants to spend 30 billion dollars on adding to our boarder fence (see Chris Hayes below) and it probably won't even register with the US voter.
TRNN | A million people across Brazil say "is not about 20 cents" (06/21/13) [4:37]
Aljazeera News
Aljazeera | Inside Story - US talking to the Taliban (06/20/13) [25:06]
Aljazeera | The Stream - #ChangeBrazil: Beyond the bus fare (06/20/13) [35:31]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday 06/21/13 [1hr]
International News - Friday 06/21/13 [1hr]
TYT News
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
*Chris Hayes | Senate Republicans trying to buy off their base (06/20/13) [14:15]
*Chris Hayes | Matt Taibbi reveals financial crisis smoking gun (06/20/13) [7:30]
Chris Hayes | Farm Bill dies, but hipocracy still lives in the House (06/20/13) [4:07]
Chris Hayes | Casinos: The hard sell and the ugly truth (06/20/13) [7:41], Part 2 [6:03]
OTher News
Aljazeera | Inside Story - US government department under scrutiny? (06/14/13) [25:01]
Aljazeera | earthrise - Growing fish and vegetables symbiotically in the Mid West (08/03/12) [24:54]
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 run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find vidoes I have passed up, I save the links in this section so I can look-up the videos at a later time.

06.21.2013. 11:12

Thursday June 20, 2013
News Articles

Markets Sell Off Sharply After Bernanke Talks Of Quantitative Easing Slowdown
HP | Mark Gongloff | 06/19/13

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sent tremors through U.S. financial markets on Wednesday when he announced that the Fed plans to pull back on its extraordinary efforts to help the economy later this year.

Though Bernanke insisted Fed policy had not changed and said he was merely trying to explain the Fed's thinking process more clearly, traders read his words as a loud-and-clear signal to sell -- illustrating a long-standing communication problem between policymakers and markets. ... RIGHT! ... Read more

Emerging Markets Crack as $3.9 Trillion Funds Unwind: Currencies
Bloomberg | Ye Xie | 06/20/13

Investors are pulling money from emerging markets at the fastest pace in two years as slowing economic growth and the prospect of less global stimulus sink stocks, bonds and currencies from India to Brazil.

... "These are pre-quake tremors: something big is coming," Stephen Jen, the co-founder of hedge fund SLJ Macro Partners LLP, said in a phone interview from London on June 12. "There's tremendous deceleration in emerging markets. You may see crisis-like price actions without having a crisis." ... Read more

Surveying The Global Damage
ZeroHedge | author | 06/20/13
Click to zoom
Read more

*Decline and fall: how American society unravelled
TheGuardian | George Packer | 06/19/13

Thirty years ago, the old deal that held US society together started to unwind, with social cohesion sacrificed to greed. Was it an inevitable process -- or was it engineered by self-interested elites?

In or around 1978, America's character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

This unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left large numbers of Americans -- black people and other minorities, women, gay people -- out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress, courts, churches, schools, news organisations, business-labour partnerships. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a nonviolent mass uprising led by black southerners, but it drew essential support from all of these institutions, which recognised the moral and legal justice of its claims, or, at the very least, the need for social peace. The Roosevelt Republic had plenty of injustice, but it also had the power of self-correction.

Americans were no less greedy, ignorant, selfish and violent then than they are today, and no more generous, fair-minded and idealistic. But the institutions of American democracy, stronger than the excesses of individuals, were usually able to contain and channel them to more useful ends. Human nature does not change, but social structures can, and they did. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, June 20 [13:58]
*DN | Did U.S. Gov't Lie About TWA Flight 800? Ex-Investigators Seek Probe as New Evidence Emerges. (06/20/13) [10:32], Part 2 [21:20]
Seventeen years ago TWA Flight 800 crashed off Long Island, killing all 230 people aboard. The official government investigation blamed mechanical failure, but now a group of former investigators are petitioning the National Transportation Safety Board to reopen the probe, saying the original report was falsified. Was the plane accidentally shot down by the U.S. Navy conducting a nearby exercise or was it a terrorist attack? We speak to the filmmakers behind a new documentary on the crash, "TWA Flight 800," former CBS news producer Kristina Borjesson and Tom Stalcup, a physicist and co-founder of Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization. We also play an extended excerpt of the film "Shadows of Liberty," which also explores the controversy.
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Health Insurance Exchanges (06/20/13) [1hr]
TRNN Show
*TRNN | Sasha Breger Bush: Wall Street Getting Rich At Expense of Farmers and the Poor (06/20/13) [8:41]
This is old news, but it is always good to hear it again and to realize that it is still going on and is getting worst. Laws and regulators obviously won't be implemented... so it is up to the middle class people to get educated and take some action.
TRNN | Bob Pollin: Obama Fails to Reappoint Serious Regulator to CFTC (06/20/13) [9:42]
If President Obama was serious about regulation and closing the income gap, he would have reappointed Gary Gensler.
Aljazeera News
*Aljazeera | Head to Head - Meddling in other people's business? () [47:32]
From Bosnia in 1994 to Syria today, via Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Mali, is western military intervention ever justified? In this episode of Head to Head at the Oxford Union, Mehdi Hasan challenges one of the world's most renowned public intellectuals, Bernard-Henri Levy, on the rights and wrongs of liberal intervention, and the difference between humanitarian concerns and the pursuit of special interests.
Meddling in other people's business (articles)
More News Articles

2013 Alaska Heat Wave: Record-Breaking Temperatures Bake 49th State
HP | Rachel D'Oro | 06/19/13

A heat wave hitting Alaska may not rival the blazing heat of Phoenix or Las Vegas, but to residents of the 49th state, the days of hot weather feel like a stifling oven -- or a tropical paradise.

... All-time highs were recorded elsewhere, including 96 degrees on Monday 80 miles to the north in the small community of Talkeetna, purported to be the inspiration for the town in the TV series, "Northern Exposure" and the last stop for climbers heading to Mount McKinley, North America's tallest mountain. One unofficial reading taken at a lodge near Talkeetna even measured 98 degrees, which would tie the highest undisputed temperature recorded in Alaska. ... Read more
Unusual Heat Wave Bakes Alaska (06/19/13) [1:36]

TIPS ON PUMPING GAS
  1. Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline.
  2. When you're filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping.
  3. Fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine.
  4. If there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up, so you don't get the dirt that normally settles on the bottom of the tank.
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 run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find vidoes I have passed up, I save the links in this section so I can look-up the videos at a later time.
Seven Year Old Surgeon - Extraordinary People [46:44]
World's Fattest Woman - 728 lbs - Susanne Eman [1:22]
The Most Anorexic Woman In The World! Or Skinniest Woman in the world? [2:21]
Abby and Brittany Joined for Life [49:07]
Abby and Brittany Hensel are two vivacious, funny and outgoing girls on the brink of their 22nd birthday. They're also conjoined twins. In this groundbreaking series, the extraordinary two young Americans tell us about their lives in their own words. As they graduate from college, travel through Europe and find their first teaching job, there is rarely a dull moment.

06.20.2013. 01:00

Wednesday June 19, 2013
News Articles

Secret To Prism Program: Even Bigger Data Seizure
AP | Stephen Braun | 06/15/13

... Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis. ... Read more

Fisa court oversight: a look inside a secret and empty process
TheGuardian | Glenn Greenwald | 06/18/13/span>

Since we began publishing stories about the NSA's massive domestic spying apparatus, various NSA defenders -- beginning with President Obama - have sought to assure the public that this is all done under robust judicial oversight. "When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls," he proclaimed on June 7 when responding to our story about the bulk collection of telephone records, adding that the program is "fully overseen" by "the Fisa court, a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them". ...

Read more

Edward Snowden's live Q&A: eight things we learned
The Guardian | Glenn Greenwald | 60/18/13

On Monday the whistleblower Edward Snowden gave an exclusive live Q&A to the Guardian to answer questions about the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history and revelations about government surveillance. Here are some key things we learned:

  1. There is very little information on private individuals the intelligence services cannot get access to.
  2. Snowden waited to release the documents, hoping Obama would bring change.
  3. He fears that the US will stop at nothing to silence him.
  4. Snowden is confident he has the public on his side.
  5. But he is less impressed with the media response.
  6. Encryption offers protection.
  7. He isn't too upset about being called a traitor by Dick Cheney.
  8. And if Snowden had been planning to defect to China he'd be petting a phoenix right now.
Read more

There's A Plan To Bury Nuclear Waste A Kilometre Away From Lake Huron
Vice Magazine | Michael Toledano | date

Choosing a site to permanently store Canada's nuclear waste is all about finding the community that is most willing to host it. Ontario Power Generation and the federal Nuclear Waste Management Organization are planning to build two underground storage facilities called Deep Geological Repositories, fill them with radioactive waste over approximately 40 years, and then abandon them until the waste is decommissioned 100,000 years from now. ... Read more

Medical group recognizes obesity as a disease
USAToday | Nanci Hellmich | 06/19/13

The American Medical Association decided Tuesday to recognize obesity as a disease, requiring a range of medical interventions to advance obesity treatment.

... About a third of adults in this country are obese, which is roughly 35 or more pounds over a healthy weight. A third of children and teens are overweight or obese. Obesity increases the risk of many other diseases including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. ... ... If obesity continues to grow, about 42% of Americans may end up obese by 2030, according to a projection from researchers with RTI International, a non-profit organization in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. ... Read more

Incredible 3D Chalk Art: The Best Apocalyptic Pavement Murals
HP | author | 06/18/13

Nothing spices up an average stroll down the sidewalk like the sudden feeling you're about to plummet into an unexpected, fiery inferno, right? ... Read/See more
Click to zoom



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, June 19 [12:16]
DN | Mass Protests Sweep Brazil in Uproar over Public Services Cuts & High Costs of World Cup, Olympics (06/19/13) [5:58]
*Aljazeera | Head to Head - Is the US a force for good in the world? (06/15/13) [47:31]
Mehdi Hasan goes head to head with Thomas Friedman on the morality of America's global role. Is the US a force for good in the world?
Biggest spy data centre to open in US State (06/13/13) [2:24]
US spying tactics spark fears in Canada (06/13/13) [1:58]
Aljazeera News
*Aljazeera | Afghanistan: The price of revenge - Part 1 (06/06/13) [45:21]
Aljazeera | Afghanistan: The price of revenge - Part 2 ( 06/06/13) [45:57]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Larry Wilkerson: Edward Snowden - War on Whistleblowers "Only Builds Better Whistleblowers" (06/18/13) [11:23]
TRNN | Paul Buchheit : Why Aren't the 50% Living in Poverty Protesting in the Streets? (06/04/13) [8:59]
TYT News
TYT | Who's The 'Traitor' - Dick Cheney or Edward Snowden? (06/17/13) [3:16]
*TYT | PRISM - Just The Beginning of Spying on You (06/18/13) [6:32]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Impact Of Sequestration (06/19/13) [1hr]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In

06.19.2013. 09:21

Tuesday June 18, 2013
News Articles

3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so
USA Today | author | 06/16/13

When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief

Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way. ... Read more

Inside 'Prism' Success: Even Bigger Data Seizure
HP | Stephen Braun | 06/15/13

In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers. ...

... But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort.   Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. ... Read more

New Leak Indicates Britain and U.S. Tracked Diplomats
NYTimes | Scott Shane | 06/16/13

A new set of classified documents disclosed Sunday suggested that Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has provided a trove of documents to The Guardian newspaper, had obtained a wider range of materials about government surveillance than had been known, including one document revealing how American and British intelligence agencies had eavesdropped on world leaders at conferences in London in 2009. ... Read more

G20 summits: Russia and Turkey react with fury to spying revelations
TheGuardian | Julian Borger | 06/17/13

Turkey, South Africa and Russia have reacted angrily to the British government demanding an explanation for the revelations that their politicians and senior officials were spied on and bugged during the 2009 G20 summit in London.

... The Guardian revealed that the UK secret wiretapping agency, GCHQ, targeted Mehmet Simsek, the Turkish finance minister and a former Merrill banker, during a G20 economics meeting hosted in London in September 2009. It also considered monitoring the communications of 15 named members of his staff and of Turkey's central bank. ...

... oscow Russian officials said the Guardian revelation that US spies had intercepted top-secret communications of Dmitry Medvedev at a G20 summit in London in April 2009 would further harm the struggling US-Russia relationship and cast a shadow over the G8 summit in Northern Ireland on Monday and Tuesday. ... Read more

The Making of a Global Security State, The Five Uncontrollable Urges of a Secrecy-Surveillance World
TomDispatch | Tom Engelhardt | 06/16/13

1. The Urge to be Global
2. The Urge to Make You Transparent
3. The Urge to Make Themselves Opaque
4. The Urge to Expand
5. The Urge to Leak
Read more

Fracking Is Already Straining U.S. Water Supplies
ThinkPrograss | Tom Kenworthy | 06/15/13

As the level of hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells in the United States has intensified in recent years, much of the mounting public concern has centered on fears that underground water supplies could be contaminated with the toxic chemicals used in the well-stimulation technique that cracks rock formations and releases trapped oil and gas. But in some parts of the country, worries are also growing about fracking's effect on water supply, as the water-intensive process stirs competition for the resources already stretched thin by drought or other factors.   Every fracking job requires 2 million to 4 million gallons of water, according to the Groundwater Protection Council. ... Read more

PRISM Is Just Part Of A Much Larger, Scarier Government Surveillance Program
AP | BusinessInsider | Stephen Braun | 06/15/13

Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world's largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.   The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.

... Inside Microsoft, some called it "Hoovering" -- not after the vacuum cleaner, but after J. Edgar Hoover, the first FBI director, who gathered dirt on countless Americans.   This frenetic, manual process was the forerunner to Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies. As laws changed and technology improved, the government and industry moved toward a streamlined, electronic process, which required less time from the companies and provided the government data in a more standard format. ...

... But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
DN | Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, June 18 [14:15]
*DN | Glenn Greenwald: As Obama Makes "False" Surveillance Claims, Snowden Risks Life to Spark NSA Debate (06/18/13) []
*Charlie Rose | President Obama On NSA leaks, Syria, Iran & China. (06/17/13) [50:47]
US wildfires destroy scores of homes (06/14/13) [1:21]
*USAToday | 3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so (06/17/13) [9:11]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | Lawrence Lessig: Big Brother's Prying Eyes (06/14/13) [56:47]
Whatever your take on recent revelations about government spying on our phone calls and Internet activity, there's no denying that Big Brother is bigger and less brotherly than we thought. What's the resulting cost to our privacy -- and more so, our democracy? Lawrence Lessig joins Bill to discuss the implications of our government's actions.
PBS | Frontline
PBS Frontline | Syria Behind the Lines (04/03/13) [53:41]
Syria Behind the Lines Articles
PBS Frontline | Al Qaeda in Yemen, Frontline investigates how Al Qaeda and affiliated militants have seized areas in southern Yemen -- and are winning some popular support (05/29/12) [28:28]
Al Qaeda in Yemen Articles
CBS | 60 Minutes News
*60 Minutes | Taking down Colombia's "super cartel" (06/16/13) [13:03], Part 2 [7:39]
Sniffing For Bombs: Meet America's most elite dogs (04/21/13) [13:30]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm *How The FBI And Police Are Using Facial Recognition Systems (06/18/13) [1hr]
JSOC
JSOC - Americas Assassination Division (2009) [7:54],
Discovery | Special Operations Americas Secret Soldiers [15:01], Part 2 [15:00]
Dispatches | Americas Secret Killers [48:00]
The Daily Show
John Oliver | Slams GOP For Backing NSA, Not Gun Control: 2nd Amendment Wins! (06/11/13) [8:55]
More News Articles

*Rotting, Decaying And Bankrupt -- If You Want To See The Future Of America Just Look At Detroit
ZeroHedge | author | 06/17/13

Eventually the money runs out. Much of America was shocked when the city of Detroit defaulted on a $39.7 million debt payment and announced that it was suspending payments on $2.5 billion of unsecured debt, but those who visit my site on a regular basis were probably not too surprised. Anyone with half a brain and a calculator could see this coming from a mile away.

But what Detroit is facing is not really that unique. In fact, Detroit is a perfect example of what the future of America is going to look like. We live in a nation that is rotting, decaying, drowning in debt and racing toward insolvency. Already there are dozens of other cities across the nation that are poverty-ridden, crime-infested hellholes just like Detroit is, and hundreds of other communities are rapidly heading in that direction. So don't look down on Detroit. They just got there before the rest of us. ...

  1. Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, and in 1960 Detroit had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.
  2. Over the past 60 years, the population of Detroit has fallen by 63 percent.
  3. At this point, approximately 40 percent of all the streetlights in the city don't work.
  4. Some ambulances in the city of Detroit have been used for so long that they have more than 250,000 miles on them.
  5. 210 of the 317 public parks in the city of Detroit have been permanently closed down.
  6. According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit.
  7. Approximately one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.
and the list goes on-and-on-and-on. I encourage you to read the full article. Read more

Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
War on Terror
Task Force Devil: New War on Terror (2006) [44:31]
Fracking
The problem I have with fracking is that a lot of environmental laws were relaxed during Dick Cheney's administration, i.e. "Halliburton Rule".

What I think should happen in all these environmental cases is: 1) the laws should be kept in tact. 2) Exhaustive testing should be done by the EPA, where fracking, etc. is going to happen, and a baseline should be established. 3) Testing instruments should be part of all well heads and tied back to a central monitoring facility. 4) A fracking company should be forced to hold a percentage of their profits in escrow for future problems. 5) After the fracking is done, and if there appears to be a problem, new testing should be done by the EPA, and if there is a change the fracking company should be forced to correct any problem back to the baseline.

There needs to be laws that have consequences that are more expensive then just the "cost of doing business" for a company.
Gasland: Dangers of Natural Gas Extraction (Extended Trailer) (2010) [10:58]
60 Minutes | Fracking - The Coal Seam Gas Land Grab (Australia) (06/15/11) [17:53]
FRACKING -- A Process That Destroys Our Underground Water Supplies (article)
*Fracking Hell: The Untold Story (2006) [17:53]
An original investigative report by Earth Focus and UK's Ecologist Film Unit looks at the risks of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale. From toxic chemicals in drinking water to unregulated interstate dumping of potentially radioactive waste that experts fear can contaminate water supplies in major population centers including New York City, are the health consequences worth the economic gains?

Marcellus Shale contains enough natural gas to supply all US gas needs for 14 years. But as gas drilling takes place, using a process called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," toxic chemicals and methane gas seep into drinking water. Now experts fear that unacceptable levels of radioactive Radium 226 in gas development waste.

Fracking chemicals are linked to bone, liver and breast cancers, gastrointestinal, circulatory, respiratory, developmental as well as brain and nervous system disorders. Such chemicals are present in frack waste and may find their way into drinking water and air.

Waste from Pennsylvania gas wells -- waste that may also contain unacceptable levels of radium -- is routinely dumped across state lines into landfills in New York, Ohio and West Virginia. New York does not require testing waste for radioactivity prior to dumping or treatment. So drill cuttings from Pennsylvania have been dumped in New York's Chemung and other counties and liquid waste is shipped to treatment plants in Auburn and Watertown New York. How radioactive is this waste? Experts are calling are for testing to find out.

New York State may have been the first state in the nation to put a temporary hold on fracking pending a safety review, but it allows other states to dump toxic frack waste within its boundaries.

With a gas production boom underway in the Marcellus Shale and plans for some 400,000 wells in the coming decades, the cumulative impact of dumping potential lethal waste without adequate oversight is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And now U.S. companies are exporting fracking to Europe.
This video takes the opposite view from Gasland and has some good interviews.

I believe both sides of an argument should be investigated and the truth ferreted out. What I worry about is supporting a technology that is irreversible if it is found to be faulty, i.e. nuclear energy with all the nuclear waste, and GMOs... where the genie won't be able to be put back in the bottle if the food is found to be harmful.

Truthland: Dispatches from the Real Gasland (06/12/12) [34:29]
Bail-In in Japan
NSA Scooping Up All Data, Japanese Bankster Bail-Ins, Less Peace in the World (06/13/13) [16:50]
Alan Greenspan
An Overview of the Global Debt Crisis (11/10/11) [59:37]
Travel by Bus
Travel by Bus [1:43]
MEGABUS expands down the East Coast to Orlando, Florida (11/16/11) [1:24]
Mysterious Island Part 1 () [1:25:05], Part 2 [1:25:15]

06.18.2013. 11:28

Monday June 17, 2013
News Articles

'Dirty Wars' Is Our Responsibility
HP | Dawn V. Woollen | 06/14/13

... Since 9/11 we have largely trusted the government to keep us "safe" with actions in plain sight, including invading Iraq and airport body scanners. But mostly we have trusted the government with actions we don't know about, actions that exist in the shadowy no-man's-land of "Top Secret" and "National Security." We have been largely content with this arrangement as long as we are kept safe from the "bad guys."   But at what cost to us, to the people targeted and to our shared humanity? Who exactly determines who the bad guys are? And is there such a thing as a "clean" war, as President Obama claims?

These are some of the questions I left the movie theater asking myself after seeing Dirty Wars, the incredible documentary by Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley. Dirty Wars is a detective story that unfolds in countries we know in name only, places we hear about but will likely never visit, and from the people who populate these faraway lands from which we are so disconnected. In the movie we discover what our government is doing covertly, without our knowledge, while glimpsing the impact on those affected... and on our future. ... Read more

'Dirty Wars' uncloaks U.S. forces
SF Examiner | Anita Katz | 06/14/13

In "Dirty Wars," journalist Jeremy Scahill examines the ascent and actions of the Special Joint Operations Command, the super-secret military force that performs drone strikes, targeted assassinations and other lethal operations in its function as a paramilitary arm of the U.S. president.

It begins in Gardez, Afghanistan. A night raid has killed a police commander and two pregnant women.   Interviews with the family, plus some sleuthing, reveal that American fighters performed the attack and the victims were not terrorists. Scahill discovers that the then-unknown SJOC conducted the raid. The attack was one of about 1,700 such incidents.

A picture emerges of SJOC as a deadly force that acts with approval from the U.S. government and NATO without accountability or congressional oversight. It operates in 75 countries, including many where no war exists. ... Read more

Atmospheric carbon dioxide reaches 400 parts per million concentration milestone
WashingtonPost | Jason Samenow | 05/10/13

For the first time in human history, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million (ppm). The arrival at this threshold represents a powerful symbol of the growing human influence on the Earth’s climate.

Manmade emissions of carbon dioxide have increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from around 270 to 280 ppm in the late 1700s to today’s record high level of 400 ppm. Measurements of CO2 trapped in air bubbles from ice cores in Antarctica indicate today’s levels are unsurpassed in at least 800,000 years. Read more
Click to zoom

How Spy Agency Contractors Have Already Abused Their Power
TheNation | Lee Fang | 06/11/13/span>

I reread this article again yesterday... it is really reveling on how contractors are misusing the information they are gathering

Read more

Colorado Is Burning Even Worse Than Last Year
MotherJones | James West | 06/13/13

The Black Forest fire is the most destructive fire in the state's history, and has completely destroyed at least 379 homes, according to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. At least two people have been killed.

... Is climate change making wildfires worse? Big wildfires like Colorado's thrive in dry air, low humidity, and high winds; climate change is going to make those conditions more frequent over the next century. We know because it's already happening: A University of Arizona report from 2006 found that large forest fires have occurred more often in the western United States since the mid-1980s as spring temperatures increased, snow melted earlier, and summers got hotter, leaving more and drier fuels for fires to devour. ... Read more

US spy operation that manipulates social media
TheGuardian | Nick Fielding | older 03/17/11

Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.   A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, June 17 [14:15]
*DN | As World Awaits U.S. Reaction to NSA Leaks, Movement Emerges to Support Edward Snowden in Hong Kong (06/17/13) [19:20]
DN | Long Before Helping Expose NSA Spying, Journalist Laura Poitras Faced Harassment from U.S. Agents (06/17/13) [6:56]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm New Developments in the Middle East (06/17/13) [1hr]
Aljazeera News
Aljazeera | Jeremy Scahill investigates the disastrous American War in Yemen (03/15/12) [25:01]
Aljazeera | 101 East - The Pacifist War (06/14/13) [25:16]
In the waters of the East China Sea, a daily show of aggression is displayed around the uninhibited Senakaku/Diaoyutai Islands. Coast guards from China and Japan play a dangerous game of cat and mouse as both sides try to lay claim to the disputed resource-rich territory. The concern is - that the two powers are riding towards war.
*Aljazeera | People & Power - America's War Games (04/25/13) [25:01]
The United States' military expenditures today account for about 40 percent of the world total. In 2012, the US spent some $682bn on its military - an amount more than what was spent by the next 13 countries combined.
Aljazeera | People & Power - Attack of the Drones (07/18/12) [24:50]
The US government's growing reliance on aerial drones to pursue its war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere is proving controversial. As governments are increasingly relying on drones, what are the consequences for civil liberties and the future of war?
Aljazeera | Fault Lines - Robot wars (12/26/12) [24:50]
TYT News
TYT | Is Climate Change Action Doomed? (06/09/13) [5:10]
Business of War
*Vice | The Business of War: SOFEX (07/05/12) [20:10]
SOFEX is where the world's leading generals come to buy everything from handguns to laser-guided missile systems. It stands for "Special Operations Forces Exhibition Conference" and it's essentially a trade-show where just about anyone with enough money can buy the most powerful weapons in the world.
MSNBC | Weekend Programs
MSNBC | Why don't Repubicams vote down the $955 Billion Farm Bill? (06/16/13) [16:08]
*MSNBC | Bamfort: NSA chief has temendous power (06/16/13) [5:12]
MSNBC | Recent leaks raise suspicion within security agencies (06/16/13) [3:57]
MSNBC | Do private contractors pose a danger to government security? (06/16/13) [8:46]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Obamacare victory in Arizona (06/14/13) [10:52]
Chris Hayes | Not so fast on Syrian intervention (06/14/13) [6:42]
Chris Hayes | Why you should know Art Pope (06/14/13) [8:04]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow
*Rachel Maddow | Leaks, unofficial news leave world guessing at US plans for Syria (06/14/13) [12:44]
MSNBC | Meet the Press
There are 18 videos for this Sunday's Meet the Press show on MSNBC's website. Thus I decide t point to the site and let you choose the videos you want to view.
Meet the Press | Linsy Graham speaks on Syria and immegration (06/14/13) [10:52]
*JSOC - Joint Special Operations Command

'Top Secret America': A look at the military's Joint Special Operations Command
WashingtonPost | Dana Priest | 09/02/11

The CIA's armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of America's enemies in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

CIA operatives have imprisoned and interrogated nearly 100 suspected terrorists in their former secret prisons around the world, but troops from this other secret organization (JSOC) have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many, holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since 9/11, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA has managed. "We're the dark matter. We're the force that orders the universe but can't be seen," a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit. ... Read more



Rank and Name Start End
LTG Stanley McChrystal September 2003 June 2008
VADM William H. McRaven June 2008 June 2011
LTG Joseph Votel June 2011 Present

JSOC from Wikipedia
JSOC is a component command of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and is charged to study special operations requirements and techniques to ensure interoperability and equipment standardization, plan and conduct special operations exercises and training, and develop Joint Special Operations Tactics. It was established in 1980 on recommendation of Col. Charlie Beckwith, in the aftermath of the failure of Operation Eagle Claw.[1] It is located at Pope Army Air Field and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, USA.

Jeremy Scahill about Obama's JSOC (05/04/13) [8:22]
CNN | JSOC - Americas Assassination Division (03/31/09) [7:54]
Global Journalist: 'Dirty Wars' tells the story of covert US operations (02/28/13) [29:49]
ReasonTV | Jeremy Scahill's "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield" (06/13/13) [41:31]
Aljazeera | Jeremy Scahill: The Stream - Uncovering America's 'dirty wars' (04/29/13) [36:10]
DN | Jeremy Scahill: WikiLeaks Docs Helped Me Expose the U.S. "Dirty Wars" (04/24/13) [1:52]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Jeremy Scahill
Thom Hartmann | America's "Dirty Wars" Part 1 (04/29/13) [8:57], Part 2 [3:59], Part 3 [7:03], Part 4 [11:26]
Congressman Jack Kingston, Rob Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill during the Defense Appropriations sub-committee (05/10/07) [1:05:47]
BBC | Dirty War (movie set in London)
BBC | HBO: Dirty War (11/05/12) [1:30:08]
Stanley A. McChrystal
CFR | HBO History Makers Series with Stanley A. McChrystal (10/07/11) [1:00:34]
Stanley A. McChrystal, former commander of the United States and International Security Assistance Forces Afghanistan and Joint Special Operations Command's premier military counterterrorism force, discusses his experiences in Afghanistan.
McRaven

Collateral Murder
Collateral Murder in Iraq by Wikileaks (06/06/10) [17:47]
RT | Surviving "Collateral Murder": Solder relives infamous WikiLeaks video (04/05/13) [5:19]
Iraq The Dirty War
*BBC | The Iraq War Regime Change BBC full documentary 2013 Historical ,political and factual (10/14/09) [59:26]
The people at the top of the CIA and Saddam's foreign minister describe just how the US and Britain got it so wrong about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before the invasion.   Tony Blair recounts how he flew to President Bush's private retreat at Camp David to go head to head with Vice President Dick Cheney. Colin Powell explains how he came to make his disastrous presentation to the United Nations. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw describes how he - and even President Bush himself - tried to persuade Tony Blair that to join in the invasion was political suicide.
Vice | In Saddam's Shadow: Baghdad 10 Years After the Invasion (03/22/13) [27:39]
Chechnya The Dirty War
*Chechnya The Dirty War 2005 (10/14/09) [48:15]
JSOC Definition
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is officially described as a "joint headquarters designed to study special operations requirements and techniques; ensure interoperability and equipment standardization; plan and conduct joint special operations exercises and training; and develop joint special operations tactics" but this description is economical with the truth. Joint Special Operations Command serves as a standing Joint Special Operations Task Force responsible for unique special missions: execution, planning, training, tactics, and equipment development.

Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was established in 1980 and is located at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina and at nearby Fort Bragg, NC. JSOC is a joint headquarters designed to study special operations requirements and techniques; ensure interoperability and equipment standardization; plan and conduct joint special operations exercises and training; and develop joint special operations tactics.

Although JSOC's stated purpose is to provide a unified command structure for conducting joint special operations and exercises, it is widely reported that JSOC is actually the command responsible for conducting US counter-terrorism (CT) operations. JSOC is reported to command the US military's Special Missions Units (SMUs). These SMUs are tasked with conducting CT operations, strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas, and special intelligence missions.

The full text of PDD-25 is reported to exempt the Joint Special Operations Command from the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 18USC Sec.1385, PL86-70, Sec. 17[d]. which makes it illegal for military and law enforcement to exercise jointly.


Other Videos
Yemen
Socotra Island - Yemen - Land of Dreams (06/13/12) [15:13], Part 2 [4:46]
Afghanistan
Camp Victory Afghanistan - U.S/ANA () [1:25:01]
Vice | This Is What Winning Looks Like (05/27/13) [1:29:11]
Fraud Scam/Stealing - peanuts to Wall Street
Vice | How to Get Away with Stealing (07/31/12) [25:29]
If the fraud industry were its own country, it would have the fifth strongest economy in the world, just ahead of the UK. Come and meet the fraudsters who're making a killing from the fastest growing crime on Earth.
Nuke Black Market
Vice | How to Buy Nukes on the Black Market (07/06/12) [8:49]
Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti shop for dirty bombs in the Bulgarian black market. After you see the relative ease with which they were able to meet a real, in the flesh, black market arms dealer, you'll be stocking up on gas masks and radiation sickness pills. We know we are.
Militias - Michigan
Vice | One of America's Most Notorious Militias (11/02/12) [22:21]

06.17.2013. 11:56

Friday June 14, 2013
News Articles

Everything is Rigged: This Time, It's Currencies
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 06/13/13

I'll get into this in more detail later (I'm on deadline for a magazine feature), but this story just landed. Given the LIBOR story, the Interest Rate Swap manipulation story, the Euro gas price manipulation story, the U.S. energy price manipulation story, and (by now) countless others of the "Everything is Rigged" variety, this screams out for immediate notice. Via Bloomberg:

... This time the rates allegedly being rigged are in the foreign-exchange or "FX" markets, meaning that if this story is true, it would almost certainly trump LIBOR for scale/horribleness.

As one friend of mine who works on Wall Street put it, "It's endless! This is the biggest market in the world." Bloomberg suggested the story is just the tip of the iceberg: ... Read more

it's the same thing: Insiders rigging benchmark rates, shaving money from basically everyone on earth, systematically and over periods of many years.

NSA head: Leaks have caused U.S. ‘great harm’
Washington Post | Ellen Nakashima | 06/12/13

The head of the National Security Agency defended his agency’s broad electronic surveillance programs Wednesday, saying that they have helped thwart dozens of terrorist attacks and that their recent public disclosure has done “great harm” to the nation’s security.

Facing his first public grilling since it was revealed that the NSA has secretly collected millions of telephone records as well as e-mails and other Internet data, Gen. Keith Alexander sought to aggressively rebut congressional and other criticism of the Obama administration’s anti-terrorism tactics. ... Read more

Connecting the Dots on PRISM, Phone Surveillance, and the NSA’s Massive Spy Center
Wired Magazine | James Bamford | 06/12/13

Physically, the NSA has always been well protected by miles of high fences and electrified wire, thousands of cameras, and gun-toting guards. But that was to protect the agency from those on the outside trying to get in to steal secrets. Now it is confronting a new challenge: those on the inside going out and giving the secrets away. ... Read more

How Spy Agency Contractors Have Already Abused Their Power
TheNation | Lee Fang | 06/11/13

“I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the president if I had a personal email.” —Edward Snowden, Booz Allen Hamilton whistleblower, during his interview with The Guardian.   Could the sprawling surveillance state enable government or its legion of private contractors to abuse their technology and spy upon domestic political targets or judges?

This is not a far off possibility. Two years ago, a batch of stolen e-mails revealed a plot by a set of three defense contractors (Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal) to target activists, reporters, labor unions and political organizations. The plans— one concocted in concert with lawyers for the US Chamber of Commerce to sabotage left-leaning critics, like the Center for American Progress and the SEIU, and a separate proposal to “combat” WikiLeaks and its supporters, including Glenn Greenwald, on behalf of Bank of America— fell apart after reports of their existence were published online. But the episode serves as a reminder that the expanding spy industry could use its government-backed cybertools to harm ordinary Americans and political dissident groups. ... Read more

You Wouldn't Believe Bank of America's Latest Scam
AlterNet | Thom Hartmann | 06/12/13

The American banking industry is back and more dangerous than ever before.   According to the FDIC, U.S. banks posted a record $40.3 billion profit in the first three months of the year.   This staggering profit tops the previous first-quarter profit record that was set more than six years ago, before the financial crisis and big-bank caused Bush Great Recession.

So, now that the big banks have fully recovered from the financial crisis that they themselves caused, and are raking in massive profits yet again, you would think that they’d be extra careful not to cause another financial meltdown, right?   Wrong.

It’s appears that big bank Bank of America is up to the same old dirty tricks that helped contribute to America’s financial meltdown in the first place.   According to the American Banker magazine, Bank of America is using a misleading sales pitch and a flood of fine print to sell you and me on mortgage refinancing plans. ...

... The mailer talks about annual savings of more than $4,000 if borrowers refinance their mortgages, but according to National Consumer Law Center attorney Andrew Pizor, the refinancing offer would actually add more than $37,000 to the cost of a borrower’s loan. ... Read more

In 2006, a UN report revealed that the world’s richest 1% own 40% of the world’s wealth, with those in the financial and internet sectors comprising the “super rich.” More than a third of the world’s super-rich live in the U.S., with roughly 27% in Japan, 6% in the U.K., and 5% in France. The world’s richest 10% accounted for roughly 85% of the planet's total assets, while the bottom half of the population – more than 3 billion people – owned less than 1% of the world’s wealth.
DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, June 14 [11:32]
*DN | James Bamford on NSA Secrets, Keith Alexander's Influence & Massive Growth of Surveillance, Cyberwar (06/14/13) [20:52]
DN | Breast Cancer Patients Declare Victory as Supreme Court Bars Patenting of Human Genes (06/14/13) [18:36]
NSA Videos
Highlights of NSA’s Senate hearing (06/13/13) [3:27]
CHAMP lights out Video [2:09]
TYT News
*TYT | Snowden Leak "Tip of the Iceberg" of NSA Surveillance Program (06/13/13) [4:02]
Homeland Security Committee member Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D - California) on C-Span today stated the information leaked by Edward Snowden is the "tip of the iceberg" of the full NSA surveillance program.
*TYT | How Spy Agency Contractors Have Already Abused Their Power (06/12/13) [6:59]
"Could the sprawling surveillance state enable government or its legion of private contractors to abuse their technology and spy upon domestic political targets or judges This is not a far off possibility. Two years ago, a batch of stolen e-mails revealed a plot by a set of three defense contractors (Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal) to target activists, reporters, labor unions and political organizations. The plans— one concocted in concert with lawyers for the US Chamber of Commerce to sabotage left-leaning critics, like the Center for American Progress and the SEIU, and a separate proposal to "combat" WikiLeaks and its supporters, including Glenn Greenwald, on behalf of Bank of America— fell apart after reports of their existence were published online. But the episode serves as a reminder that the expanding spy industry could use its government-backed cybertools to harm ordinary Americans and political dissident groups..."
*TYT | Edward Snowden: American Hero or Traitor? (06/11/13) [10:03]
"The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell."   Edward Snowden has revealed himself be the whisteblower who exposed the NSA's secretly-ordered blanket mass surveillance. Many pundits are calling him a traitor, while others call him a hero for alerting Americans to an unconstitutional privacy-violating program.
*TYT | Caught Lying About The NSA, James Clapper Tries To 'Clarify' (06/12/13) [3:43]
TYT | Bill O'Reilly & Sean Hannity Massive Hypocrisy On NSA Surveillance (06/13/13) [3:47]
TYT | Bill O'Reilly & Sean Hannity Record Breaking Hypocrisy on Fox News (06/13/13) [3:24]
TYT | Chemical Weapons Used In Syria (06/13/13) [5:13]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday 06/14/13 [1hr]
International News - Friday 06/14/13 [1hr]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
*Chris Hayes | The bizarre battle lines in the war over NSA spying (06/13/13) [17:43]
Chris Hayes | White House: Syria has used chemical weapons (06/13/13) [6:15]
Chris Hayes | Landmark Supreme Court ruling on patenting human genes (06/13/13) [4:43], Part 2 [6:00]
Jon Stewart | Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert | suggests an alternate form of communication for people who don’t want to be caught up in government surveillance efforts. (06/13/13) [8:04]
Jon Stewart | Jon Stewart Tears Apart Obama, DOJ For Prosecuting Whistleblowers And Potheads But Not Bankers. (05/23/13) [8:51]
NSA Utah Data Center Super Computer
NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
NSA Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah Click to zoom
NSA Utah Data Center Super Computer
Titan Super Computer (2013) [3:31]
How NSA Spys On You With Utah Data Center Super Computer (03/23/13) [9:38]
NSA Whistle Blower
NSA Whistle-blower Reveals "Stellar Wind" Spying on You - code named The Program (03/29/13) [8:28]
60Minutes | U.S. v. Whistleblower Tom Drake (older) [14:28]
Tom Drake, a former NSA senior executive indicted last year for espionage after leaking to the media allegations that the nation's largest intelligence organization had committed fraud, waste and abuse will appear in his first television interview.
RT | NSA Whistleblower William Binney: Everyone in US under virtual surveillance, all info stored, no matter the post (12/02/12) [12:29]
RT talks to William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades. Virtual privacy in US, Petraeus affair and whistleblowers' odds in fight against the authorities are among key topics of this exclusive interview.
"The NSA Is Lying": U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails Says NSA Whistleblower (04/20/12) [14:37]
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 run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find vidoes I have passed up, I save the links in this section so I can look-up the videos at a later time.
NatGeo | The world's biggest cave (2010) [45:44]
National Geographic presents The World's Biggest Cave, a TV special that gives us a close-up look at Son Doong, a huge recently-discovered underground labyrinth in Vietnam.
NatGeo | Down To The Earth's Core [1:31:09]
NatGeo | Into The Lost Crystal Caves [1:30:00]
America's Book Of Secrets: The Pentagon (03/28/13) [40:56]

06.14.2013. 11:34

Thursday June 13, 2013
News Articles

Edward Snowden: US government has been hacking Hong Kong and China for years
South China Morning Post | Lana Lam | 06/13/13

US whistle-blower Edward Snowden yesterday emerged from hiding in Hong Kong and revealed to the South China Morning Post that he will stay in the city to fight likely attempts by his government to have him extradited for leaking state secrets.

In an exclusive interview carried out from a secret location in the city, the former Central Intelligence Agency analyst also made explosive claims that the US government had been hacking into computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland for years. ... Read more

NSA: Senators Who Back NSA Spying Oppose Gun Background Checks For Infringing Rights
HP | Michael McAuliff | 06/12/13

Just months after many U.S. senators opposed tougher background checks for gun buyers on the grounds that they would tread on Americans' liberties, many of them are standing behind the far more intrusive intelligence-gathering programs of the National Security Agency.

Senators -- mainly Republicans -- argued during the debate after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre that instituting broader background checks would violate the Second Amendment, infringe on privacy, and be the first step toward taking away people's guns. ... Read more

Quote of the Day: Senators: Background Checks Are Bad, But NSA Spying Is Good

NSA Director Says Programs Key to Stopping Attacks
WSJ | Siobhan Hughes | 06/12/13

WASHINGTON--National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander said that he would work to try to declassify secret court opinions that make possible the agency's collection of most Americans' phone records, while also defending the government's controversial surveillance programs as critical to stopping terrorist attacks.

"We need to bring as many facts as we can out to the American people," Mr. Alexander told the Senate Appropriations Committee. "We want to tell you what we're doing….but I don't want to jeopardize the security of our country or our allies." ... Read more

NSA surveillance played little role in foiling terror plots, experts say
TheGuardian | Ed Pilkington | 06/12/13

Lawyers and intelligence experts with direct knowledge of two intercepted terrorist plots that the Obama administration says confirm the value of the NSA's vast data-mining activities have questioned whether the surveillance sweeps played a significant role, if any, in foiling the attacks. ... Read more

Earlier Denials Put Intelligence Chief in Awkward Position
NYTimes | Scott Shane | 06/11/13

For years, intelligence officials have tried to debunk what they called a popular myth about the National Security Agency: that its electronic net routinely sweeps up information about millions of Americans. In speeches and Congressional testimony, they have suggested that the agency's immense power is focused exclusively on terrorists and other foreign targets, and that it does not invade Americans' privacy.

But since the disclosures last week showing that the agency does indeed routinely collect data on the phone calls of millions of Americans, Obama administration officials have struggled to explain what now appear to have been misleading past statements. Much of the attention has been focused on testimony by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, to the Senate in March that the N.S.A. was not gathering data on millions of Americans. ... Read more

Bond bubble threatens financial system, Bank of England director warns
TheGuardian | Jill Treanor | 06/12/13

Andy Haldane fears the bursting of 'the biggest bond bubble in history' after electronic money printing exercises by the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve in the US.

A key Bank of England policymaker has warned of the risks to global financial stability when "the biggest bond bubble in history" bursts.   In a wide-ranging testimony to MPs, Andy Haldane, Bank of England director of financial stability, admitted the central bank's new financial policy committee is taking too long to force banks to hold more capital and appeared to criticise the bank's culture under outgoing governor Sir Mervyn King.Haldane told the Treasury select committee that the bursting of the bond bubble -- created by central banks forcing down bond yields by pumping electronic money into the economy - was a risk "I feel acutely right now". ... Read more

RBS resignation of Stephen Hester causes debate to rage
TheGuardian | Jill Treanor | 06/12/13

City surprise at chief executive's exit as politicians are accused of getting 'sticky little paws' on bank's future

The debate about the future of Royal Bank of Scotland was raging on Wednesday night after the surprise resignation of the bailed out bank's chief executive Stephen Hester. His departure is intended to clear the way for what will be one of the biggest ever public sell-offs.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, who opposes a rapid sale of the taxpayer's 81% stake, said the bank needed to focus more lending to small businesses and supporting the economy. ... Read more



*Videos I found Really Realistic
Shadow Company: Private Military Company (2006) [1:25:32]
America`s Secret Soldiers:Special Forces [44:51]
Restrepo [1:33:42]
Movie Trailers
THE EAST: Official Trailer (04/26/13) [1:42]
In THE EAST, Sarah Moss (Brit Marling) is a brilliant operative for an elite private intelligence firm whose top objective is to ruthlessly protect the interests of their A-list corporate clientele. She is assigned to go undercover to infiltrate an anarchist collective known for executing covert attacks upon major corporations. Living amongst them in an effort to get closer to their members, Sarah finds herself unexpectedly torn between two worlds as she starts to fall in love with the group's charismatic leader, finding her life and her priorities irrevocably changed.


DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, June 13 [13:00]
*DN | Chris Pyle, Whistleblower on CIA Domestic Spying in 70s, Says Be Wary of Attacks on NSA's Critics (06/13/13) [19:33]
DN | A Mexican Migrant's Death Portends Dangers of Harsh "Border Security" in Senate Immigration Bil (06/13/13) [16:44]
Fat, Bald, White Guy - holding onto power
TRNN News
*TRNN | Phyllis Bennis: Will any amount of surveillance make Americans secure when US foreign policy is based on global hegemony? (06/13/13) [8:49]
PBS | Frontline
*PBS Frontline | Syria Behind the Lines (06/11/13) [53:41]
Top Secret America


Military Contractors - Click to zoom
Security Contractors - Click to zoom
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
*Chris Hayes | Plot thickens in real-life spy story unfolding in the news (06/12/13) [14:45]
Chris Hayes | Silicon Valley and the National Security State (06/12/13) [7:50], Part 2 [4:39]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow
*Rachel Maddow | NSA power augmented by weak Congress (06/12/13) [13:30]
PBS Frontline - Inside the National Security State
"This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security," Obama said in a 2007 speech in Washington. "It is not. There are no short cuts to protecting America, and that is why the fifth part of my strategy is doing the hard and patient work to secure a more resilient homeland."

But Obama appeared to change his approach almost as soon as he was elected in 2008. "His people made it clear that in the terrorism arena, he was going to be as tough, if not tougher, than the Bush people," former CIA general counsel John Rizzo told FRONTLINE in June 2011. "He was going to be extraordinarily aggressive."

The following four PBS | Frontline videos help us see inside the NSA's intelligence apparatus.
PBS Frontline | Spying on the Homefront (older) [56:10]
"It is inevitable that totally innocent Americans are going to be affected by these programs," Suzanne Spaulding, a former CIA senior attorney, told Frontline. In this 2007 film, we investigate the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping of American citizens - and how the NSA started building a secret outpost inside AT&T's San Francisco office.
PBS Frontline | Cheney's Law (older) [56:15]
The NSA program to spy on Americans was so controversial within the Bush administration that it led to a dramatic showdown at the hospital bed of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was suffering from acute pancreatitis. Ashcroft was supposed to reauthorize the program every 45 days, but this time, he refused on the advice of his then-deputy James Comey -- who is now Obama's expected nominee to head the FBI. Find out what happened next in this 2007 film:


PBS Frontline | Top Secret America - from 9/11 to the Boston Bombings (04/13/13) [53:51]
"NSA sucking down information from computer networks, from radios, from telephone calls all over the world, so much information that no human being could ever go through it on a daily basis," he told FRONTLINE. In the full film below, go inside the NSA's intelligence operations at home:
PBS Frontline | A Perfect Terrorist [53:40]
Is the NSA eavesdropping worth it? Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the program has helped the U.S. foil terror plots, as well as aided in the capture of David Coleman Headley, a onetime U.S. government informant who helped to plot the 2008 attack on Mumbai. In this 2011 film, FRONTLINE and ProPublica tracked Headley's strange path from informant to terrorist.

06.13.2013. 11:11

Wednesday June 12, 2013
News Articles

Meet the contractors analyzing your private data
Salon | Tim Shorrock | 06/10/13

Private companies are getting rich probing your personal information for the government. Call it Digital Blackwater

From Narus, the Israeli-born Boeing subsidiary that makes NSA's high-speed interception software, to CSC, the "systems integrator" that runs NSA's internal IT system, defense and intelligence, contractors are making millions of dollars selling technology and services that help the world's largest surveillance system spy on you. If the 70 percent figure is applied to the NSA's estimated budget of $8 billion a year (the largest in the intelligence community), NSA contracting could reach as high as $6 billion every year. ...

  1. Booz Allen Hamilton
  2. SAIC
  3. Northrop Grumman
  4. Raytheon
  5. CACI International
  6. Palantir Technologies Inc.
and hundreds of smaller companies scattered around the Washington Beltway. Read more

How Spy Agency Contractors Have Already Abused Their Power
Nation | Lee Fang | 06/11/13

"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the president if I had a personal email." --Edward Snowden, Booz Allen Hamilton whistleblower, during his interview with The Guardian.   Could the sprawling surveillance state enable government or its legion of private contractors to abuse their technology and spy upon domestic political targets or judges?

This is not a far off possibility. Two years ago, a batch of stolen e-mails revealed a plot by a set of three defense contractors (Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal) to target activists, reporters, labor unions and political organizations. ... Read more

Boy, all you have to do is see who-owns-who, and the spinning (revolving) door in the intelligence world to realize why they need to keep this secret. They are protecting their paychecks.

Pentagon Five-Year Cybersecurity Plan Seeks $23 Billion
Bloomberg | Tony Capaccio | 06/10/13

A Pentagon cybersecurity budget outline calls for spending almost $23 billion through fiscal 2018, as efforts are expanded on initiatives from protecting computer networks to developing offensive capabilities.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this month cited "the growing threat of cyber-intrusions, some of which appear to be tied to the Chinese government and military." His predecessor, Leon Panetta, said last year that "a cyber-attack perpetrated by nation states or violent extremist groups could be as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11." ... Read more

Guess who owns Booz Allen Hamilton... Carlyle Group. Ring a bell?

NSA revelations put Booz Allen Hamilton, Carlyle Group in uncomfortable limelight
Washington Post | Jonathan Ernst/Reuters | 06/11/13

The Carlyle Group has spent years attempting to shed its image as a well-connected private equity firm leveraging Washington heavyweights in the defense sector. Instead, it nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries.

The recent disclosures involving National Security Agency surveillance on U.S. citizens by an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a Virginia consulting firm that is majority owned by Carlyle, has thrust two of Washington's most prominent corporate entities uncomfortably into the limelight, bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits. ...

... Booz Allen, which employs 24,500, had a net profit of $219 million on revenue of nearly $5.8 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31. For the same period ending in 2010, the year the company went public, the company earned $25 million on $5.1 billion in revenue. ... Read more

They keep saying Edward Snowden is a publicity seeker. Do they listen to these guys interviews? They make much more sense then the people calling them traitors.

27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send A Chill Up Your Spine
ZeroHedge | author | 06/11/13

Would you be willing to give up what Edward Snowden has given up? He has given up his high paying job, his home, his girlfriend, his family, his future and his freedom just to expose the monolithic spy machinery that the U.S. government has been secretly building to the world.

There is a reason why government whistleblowers are so rare. And most Americans are so apathetic that they wouldn't even give up watching their favorite television show for a single evening to do something good for society. Most Americans never even try to make a difference because they do not believe that it will benefit them personally. Meanwhile, our society continues to fall apart all around us. ...

27 thinks that should scare you about the NSA... Read On ... Read more

Salmon Confidential--How a Canadian Government Cover-Up Threatens Your Health, and the Entire Ecosystem
mercola.com | Dr. Mercola | 04/13/13

Many environmental experts have warned about the unsustainability of fish farms for a decade now, and we have documented those objections in many previous articles. Unfortunately nothing has yet been done to improve the system.

Salmon Confidential is a fascinating documentary that draws back the curtain to reveal how the Canadian government is covering up the cause behind British Columbia's rapidly dwindling wild salmon population. A summary of the film reads: ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, June 12 [11:41]
*DN | More Intrusive Than Eavesdropping? NSA Collection of Metadata Hands Gov't Sweeping Personal Info (06/12/13) [13:43]
*DN | Is Edward Snowden a Hero? A Debate With Journalist Chris Hedges & Law Scholar Geoffrey Stone (06/12/13) [28:06]
*DN | Digital Blackwater: How the NSA Gives Private Contractors Control of the Surveillance State (06/11/13) [23:21]
*Tim Shorrock Asks Why It Took the Washington Post So Long to Investigate the US Intelligence System (older) [11:40]
*Spies for Hire: Carlyle Group to Become Owner of "One of America's Largest Private Intelligence Armies" (older) [27:14]
"Spys for Hire" book by Tim Shorrock (preview)
Jeremy Scahill: Killing Anwar al-Awlaki (04/22/13) [3:45]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Leakers Versus Whistle-Blowers (06/12/13) [1hr]
Guests
Jesselyn Radack - national security & human rights director, Government Accountability Project.
Matthew Cooper - editor, National Journal Daily.
Scott Fredericksen - managing partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner, and a former federal prosecutor and independent counsel.
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | Glenn Greenwald on the High Cost of Government Secrecy (04/26/13) [24:45]
Columnist Glenn Greenwald explains what the Boston bombings and U.S. drone attacks have in common, and how secrecy leads to abuse of government power.
*Bill Moyers | Richard Wolff: Taming Capitalism Run Wild (06/07/13) [52:53]
Economist Richard Wolff talks about battling rampant capitalism and fighting for economic justice.
*Lawrence Lessig Joins Bill in the Studio [18:19]
Strike the Roots website
60 Minutes News
*60 Minutes | Hospitals: The cost of admission (06/09/13) [15:18]
60 Minutes | God's Architect: Antoni Gaudi's glorious vision (06/09/13) [13:18]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow
*Rachel Maddow | Senators move to advance surveillance debate with sunlight (06/11/13) [11:37]
More Great Information
56 Healthier Burger Recipes for Summer (website)
Salmon Confidential -- How a Canadian Government Cover-Up Threatens Your Health, and the Entire Ecosystem [1:09:52]
Animation | Humor
Corporations are People [1:51]
iEvade: Apple just released another groundbreaking new product that is already changing the world. [1:21]
Alternate Lifestyle
Slab City
A Visit to Salvation Mountain [3:35]
Living Without Laws: Slab City, USA [20:45]
American Nomads: A BBC Documentary called America Nomads. People who roam the South West free from the bonds and chains of normal every day life [1:29:00]
Slab City - Wikipedia
Slab City or The Slabs (located at 33°15'32?N 115°27'59?W) is a snowbird campsite in the Colorado Desert in southeastern California, used by recreational vehicle owners and squatters from across North America. It takes its name from the concrete slabs that remain from the abandoned World War II Marine barracks of Camp Dunlap.

Several thousand campers, many of them retired, use the site during the winter months. These "snowbirds" stay only for the winter, before migrating north in the spring to cooler climates. The temperatures during the summer are unforgiving (105,110 and as high as 120 degrees F); nonetheless, there is a group of around 150 permanent residents who live in the Slabs all year round. Some of these "Slabbers" derive their living by way of government checks (SSI and Social Security and Social Security Disability) and have been driven to the Slabs through poverty. Others have moved to The Slabs to learn how to live off the grid and to be left alone. Still others have moved there to stretch their retirement income.

The site is both decommissioned and uncontrolled, and there is no charge for parking. The camp has no electricity, no running water, no sewers nor toilets, and no trash pickup service. Many campers use generators or solar panels to generate electricity. Supplies can be purchased in nearby Niland, California, located about four miles (6 km) to the southwest of Slab City.
Into The Wild
Into the Wild is a 2007 American biographical drama film directed by Sean Penn. It is an adaptation of the 1996 non-fiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer based on the travels of Christopher McCandless across North America and his life spent in the Alaskan wilderness in the early 1990s. The film stars Emile Hirsch as McCandless with Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt as his parents and also features Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart, and Hal Holbrook.

I added "Into the Wild" movie, because they spend some time at Slab City. In December 1991, McCandless arrives at Slab City in the Imperial Valley region of California, and encounters Jan and Rainey again. There, he meets Tracy Tatro (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who shows interest in McCandless, but he rejects her because she is underage. After the holidays, McCandless decides to continue heading for Alaska, much to everyone's sadness.
Into the Wild Movie Trailer [2:15]
Into the wild - Best Moments [21:42]
Into the Wild - Exclusive: Kristen Stewart Interview [4:13]
Into the Wild - Wikipedia

06.12.2013. 09:53

Tuesday June 11, 2013
News Articles

Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
TheGuardian | Glenn Greenwald | 06/09/13

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.

The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks. ... Read more

Boundless Informant NSA data-mining tool -- four key slides
TheGuardian | author | 06/08/13

The top-secret Boundless Informant tool details and maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks
Read more

Prior NSA Whistleblower Warns Edward Snowden: Government Will Seek "Revenge and Retaliation"
MotherJones | David Corn | 06/09/13

Thomas Drake, a National Security Agency whistleblower who several years ago provided information to the press about fraud, waste, and privacy abuses at the super-secret spy agency and who was prosecuted for doing so, has a warning for Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old whistleblower who on Sunday outed himself as the source of the blockbuster leaks revealing two sweeping NSA surveillance programs.

Drake says Snowden can expect to be targeted by the full force of the United States government. And Drake should know. The Justice Department pursued Drake fiercely, charging him with violating the Espionage Act--as if he had been a spy for a foreign power. Drake maintained that he had only conveyed unclassified information to a reporter. The government's case eventually fell apart, and it dropped the most serious charges. ... Read more

"Digital Blackwater": Meet the Contractors Who Analyze Your Personal Data
AlterNet | Tim Shorrock | 06/10/13

Amid the torrent of stories about the shocking new revelations about the National Security Agency, few have bothered to ask a central question. Who's actually doing the work of analyzing all the data, meta-data and personal information pouring into the agency from Verizon and nine key Internet Service Providers for its ever-expanding surveillance of American citizens?
Click to zoom

Well, on Sunday we got part of the answer: Booz Allen Hamilton. In a stunning development in the NSA saga, Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald revealed that the source for his blockbuster stories on the NSA is Edward Snowden, "a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton." Snowden, it turns out, has been working at NSA for the last four years as a contract employee, including stints for Booz and the computer-services firm Dell. ... Read more

500,000 contractors can access NSA data hoards
Salon | Natasha Lennard | 06/11/13

As Tim Shorrock pointed out as long ago as 2007 (and reminded us in light of the NSA leaks) "about 70 percent of our national intelligence budgets being spent on the private sector." The AP reported Tuesday that nearly 500,000 contractors -- employees like whistleblower Edward Snowden -- have access to the government's top secret programs.

Of the 4.9 million people with clearance to access "confidential and secret" government information, 1.1 million, or 21 percent, work for outside contractors, according to a report from Clapper's office. Of the 1.4 million who have the higher "top secret" access, 483,000, or 34 percent, work for contractors. ... Read more

The Program
NYTimes | Laura Poitras | 08/22/12

It took me a few days to work up the nerve to phone William Binney. As someone already a "target" of the United States government, I found it difficult not to worry about the chain of unintended consequences I might unleash by calling Mr. Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency turned whistle-blower. He picked up. I nervously explained I was a documentary filmmaker and wanted to speak to him. To my surprise he replied: "I'm tired of my government harassing me and violating the Constitution. Yes, I'll talk to you." ... Read more

Amid Data Controversy, NSA Builds Its Biggest Data Farm
NPR | Howard Berkes | 06/10/13

As privacy advocates and security experts debate the validity of the National Security Agency's massive data gathering operations, the agency is putting the finishing touches on its biggest data farm yet.   The gargantuan $1.2 billion complex at a National Guard base 26 miles south of Salt Lake City features 1.5 million square feet of top secret space. High-performance NSA computers alone will fill up 100,000 square feet.

... Last summer, during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a reporter asked NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, whether the Utah center "will hold the data of American citizens."   "No," Alexander responded. "While I can't go into all the details of the Utah Data Center, we don't hold data on U.S. citizens." ...

... The estimated power of those computing resources in Utah is so massive it requires use of a little-known unit of storage space: the zettabyte. Cisco quantifies a zettabyte as the amount of data that would fill 250 billion DVDs ... Read more

More Videos
TRNN News
TRNN | Glenn Greenwald: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things' (06/10/13) [12:35]
TRNN | Michael Ratner: NSA Whistleblower Ed Snowden Risks Freedom to Expose Extensive Government Spying (06/10/13) [15:48]
TRNN | Bill Black: Bank Profits Soar, Wages Suffer Sharpest Decline in 60 Years. (06/10/13) [10:28]
DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, June 11 [14:23]
*DN | Digital Blackwater: How the NSA Gives Private Contractors Control of the Surveillance State (06/11/13) [23:21]
As the Justice Department prepares to file charges against Booz Allen Hamilton employee Edward Snowden for leaking classified documents about the National Security Agency, the role of private intelligence firms has entered the national spotlight. Despite being on the job as a contract worker inside the NSA's Hawaii office for less than three months, Snowden claimed he had power to spy on almost anyone in the country. "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge, to even the president, if I had a personal email," Snowden told the Guardian newspaper. Over the past decade, the U.S. intelligence community has relied increasingly on the technical expertise of private firms such as Booz Allen, SAIC, the Boeing subsidiary Narus and Northrop Grumman. About 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on the private sector. Former NSA director Michael V. Hayden has described these firms as a quote "Digital Blackwater." We speak to Tim Shorrock, author of the book "Spies For Hire: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence."
*DN | "A Massive Surveillance State": Glenn Greenwald Exposes Covert NSA Program Collecting Calls, Emails (06/07/13) [14:16]
*DN | James Bamford: Inside the NSA's Largest Secret Domestic Spy Center [31:15]
National Intelligence
Comment: I usually don't agree with Fox News, but I do think they are agreeing that MASSIVE data collection is wrong.
Napolitano: NSA Leaker Is an "American Hero" (06/10/13) [6:22]
O'Reilly Slams 'Unconstitutional' NSA Surveillance: 'Should Be Shut Down Immediately' (06/11/13) [7:35]
NYTimes | The Program: NSA Whistle-Blower Tells All (08/29/12) [8:28]
"I Stand With Edward Snowden (06/10/13) [9:07]"
NPR | Amid Data Controversy, NSA Builds Its Biggest Data Farm (06/10/13) [3:37]
Comment
1. NSA is the largest employer in Maryland.
2. 1 in 4 of government workers is a contractors.
MSNBC | Glenn Greenwald Takes MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, to Task for Using NSA WH Talking Points (06/10/13) [17:03]
RT | Jeremy Scahill: Dirty Wars - US War Masters! (04/30/12) [37:27]
Inside The NSA: Americas Cyber Secrets [45:00]
Nova: The Spy Factory [52:58]
NSA Intelligence Agency
Facility
The Utah Data Center is currently under construction and is expected to open in October 2013. Our 1.5 billion-dollar one million square-foot Bluffdale / Camp Williams facility will house a 100,000 sq-ft mission critical data center. The remaining 900,000 SF will be used for technical support and administrative space. Other supporting facilities include water treatment facilities, chiller plant, power substations, vehicle inspection facility, visitor control center, and sixty diesel-fueled emergency standby generators and fuel facility for a 3-day 100% power backup capability.

Code-Breaking Supercomputer Platform
In October 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory launched the Titan Supercomputer, which is capable of churning through more than 20,000 trillion calculations each second or 20 petaflops. (1 petaflop = 1 quadrillion instructions per second).

Data Storage Capacity
The storage capacity of the Utah Data Center will be measured in "zettabytes". What exactly is a zettabyte? There are a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte; a thousand terabytes in a petabyte; a thousand petabytes in an exabyte; and a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte.

PRISM Data Collection Program:
Established in 2007, the PRISM program, our analysts can extract information directly from the servers of nine major American internet companies: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. This important partnership gives us direct access to audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs for each of these systems.
Where - Click to zoom
What - Click to zoom
When - Click to zoom
How Much
ACLU | What can the NSA do? (pdf)
Office of the Director of National Intelligence - Click to zoom
Office of the Director of National Intelligence (webpage)
National Security Agency - Wikipedia
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Economic Impact Of Climate Change Policy (06/11/13) [1hr]
Floyd Abrams: "Friend Of The Court: On The Front Lines With The First Amendment" (06/11/13) [1hr]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
*Chris Hayes | Edward Snowden the largest whistle blower of the century (06/10/13) [14:58]
Chris Hayes | Did NSA leaker Edward Snowden do the right thing? (06/10/13) [6:26]
Chris Hayes | The unique danger of government surveillance (06/10/13) [14:58]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow
*Rachel Maddow | Lack of checks distinguished NSA surveillance (06/10/13) [12:56]
Rachel Maddow | NSA whistleblower confirms what public already knew (06/10/13) [9:10]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section. As I construct the News Page I run across a lot of videos I never have seen before. Since I find YouTube frustrating because once you are past the video, it is usually hard to find it again, I save the link in this section so I can find the video at a later date.

06.11.2013. 11:32

Monday June 10, 2013
News Articles

US in damage control mode after Edward Snowden's explosive NSA leaks
TheGuardian | Dan Roberts | 06/10/13

Washington was struggling to contain one of the most explosive national security leaks in US history on Monday as public criticism grew of the sweeping surveillance state revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Political opinion was split with some members of Congress calling for the immediate extradition of a man they consider a "defector", but other senior politicians on both parties questioning whether US surveillance practices had gone too far.

Daniel Ellsburg, the former military analyst who revealed secrets of the Vietnam war through the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971, described Snowden's leak as even more important and perhaps the most significant leak in American history. ... Read more

Key to government's monitoring power lies in war, technology
Washington Post | Craig Timberg | 06/07/13

Expanded government surveillance was cast as a price of war in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Yet nearly a dozen years later, the war on terrorism is showing signs of ebbing while the surveillance systems created to fight it continue unabated.   If anything, they are becoming more powerful.

That's because the nation went to a war footing at a time of profound technological change that fueled an explosion of personal data. Governments and businesses have developed the ability to mine, sort and analyze this information as never before -- and show little inclination to relinquish that power. ... Read more

Comment: "The fact that there would be so much data collected on U.S. persons has got to be mind-blowing," said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "The sense we have now is that the system of checks and balances has simply collapsed."

How Congress unknowingly legalized PRISM in 2007
Washington Post | Timothy B. Lee | 06/06/13

On Sept. 11, 2007, the National Security Agency signed up Microsoft as its first partner for PRISM, a massive domestic surveillance program whose existence was reported by the Washington Post today. That's barely a month after Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Protect America Act.

The Bush Administration portrayed the PAA as a technical fix designed to close a gap in America's surveillance capabilities that had been opened by a then-recent ruling of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). It proved to be much more than that. ... Read more

Better Late Than Never on Deeming Nonbanks Too Big to Fail
NYTimes | Agnes T. Crane | 06/04/13

New systemic-risk tags are better late than never. The American International Group, GE Capital and Prudential Financial are among the first nonbank firms to be deemed systemically important financial institutions by the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

All three financial giants on Monday said they had been flagged for the stiffer oversight bestowed on systemically important institutions, but A.I.G. and GE Capital seem especially deserving. Uncle Sam had to swoop in to help both during the financial crisis, with A.I.G. receiving a $182 billion lifeline and GE Capital a federal guarantee for its new debt. ... Read more

Pressure in Britain Over What to Do With Bailed-Out Banks
NYTimes | Mark Scott | 06/06/13

The three stalwarts of the British establishment -- Justin Welby, Nigel Lawson and Mervyn King -- are all calling for the breakup of the part-nationalized Royal Bank of Scotland.

... Now, nearly five years after British taxpayers first took stakes in the lenders, the government is preparing to reduce its holdings before the next general election, which is expected in early 2015. The government owns 81 percent of R.B.S. and 39 percent of Lloyds. ... Read more

Quote of the Day: "Lucifer spells his name J. P. Morgan," he added.

Debt Deal in Alabama Will Cost JPMorgan
NYTimes | Mary Williams Walsh | 06/05/13

Under the deal to settle the bankruptcy of Jefferson County, Ala., firms that invested in its distressed debt will have the most to gain, JPMorgan Chase will face a big loss, and residents will be wondering whether there will be any relief for them

When the dust finally settles, JPMorgan Chase, which many in the county hold responsible for the financial collapse in the first place, will have given up nearly $1.6 billion as a result of its dealings with the county and its ill-fated effort to finance sewer repairs. The new deal calls for the bank to forfeit $842 million on the $1.22 billion of sewer debt that it holds, which comes on top of $647 million it forgave in termination fees on derivatives contracts with the county and a $75 million penalty it paid to settle a complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission. ... Read more

A Message From Your Friendly ECHELON/Total Awareness/Boundless Informant Surveillance System
ZeroHedge | author | 06/10/13

... In my routine search of your public records, and all 11,379 emails, texts, message board posts and phone calls you've made in recent years, I found a disturbing trend I am obligated to report to you: your affection for pepperoni pizza with hot chilis and olives (most often from Frank's Pizza Parlor, 1.34 miles from your home) appears to be negatively impacting your health, as your medical records indicate high blood pressure and high cholesterol. ...

Read more

Dirty War... type documentaries
BBC | Untold Story of the Iraq War, Dirty Wars and Col. James Steele (03/22/13) [51:08]
A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic reveals how retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played a key role in training and overseeing US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centers in Iraq. Another special forces veteran, Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had been sent into Iraq to organize the Iraqi security services.


DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, June 10 [14:38]
*DN | "You're Being Watched": Edward Snowden Emerges as Source Behind Explosive Revelations of NSA Spying (06/10/13) [15:27]
*DN | Glenn Greenwald on How NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Helped Expose a "Massive Surveillance Apparatus" (06/10/13) [15:15]
Speaking from Hong Kong where he broke the story of Edward Snowden outing himself as the NSA whistleblower, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald joins us to discuss Snowden's actions and the multiple disclosures he's revealed about government surveillance. "There is this massive surveillance apparatus being gradually constructed in the United States that already has extremely invasive capabilities to monitor and store the communications and other forms of behavior not just of tens of millions of Americans, but of hundreds of millions, probably billions of people, around the globe," Greenwald says. "It's one thing to say that we want the U.S. government to have these capabilities. It's another thing to allow this to be assembled without any public knowledge, without any public debate, and with no real accountability. What ultimately drove [Snowden] forward -- and what ultimately is driving our reporting -- is the need for a light to be shined on what this incredibly consequential [surveillance] world is all about and the impact it's having both on our country and our planet."
*DN | "On a Slippery Slope to a Totalitarian State": NSA Whistleblower Rejects Gov't Defense of Spying (06/10/13) [11:27]
Fat, Bald, White Guys Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warns the recent leaks could "render great damage to our intelligence capabilities"
*1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surveillance platform by DARPA [4:41]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm *What's Private In The Modern Age 06/10/13 [1hr]
An ex-CIA computer technician and a relatively low level consultant for Booze Allen Hamilton has admitted that he was the source of the series of leaks on the us surveillance programs. The revelations shed light on NSA programs that collect data from smartphones, tables, social media, email, and many other forms of electronic communication. Advances in technology allow analysts to sift through this vast trove of data in what some say amounts to something of a universal dragnet. The disclosures prompted a lengthy defense from President Obama last week.
NSA - Utah Data Center
In Washington Congress can't agree on anything, but ...

"These goals have considerable support in Congress. Last November a bipartisan group of 24 senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to approve continued funding through 2013 for the Department of Energy's exascale computing initiative" (the NSA's budget requests are classified).

2 Billion Dollars Data Center
And I'm sure the 2 billion dollars is just a drop in the bucket to what it will really cost!

Computer Capacity
  1. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world's fastest computer in 2009.
  2. But alas, by late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan's "K Computer," with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops.
  3. Its next goal is to reach exaflop speed, one quintillion (1018) operations a second, and eventually zettaflop (1021) and yottaflop.

Storage Capacity
  1. Total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes.
  2. Global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year.
  3. A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.
  4. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

Needs and Costs
  1. Initially Electricity will come from the center's own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag -- about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.
    When the computer gets to yottaflop size...
  2. It will have an extraordinary appetite for electricity, eventually using about 200 megawatts, enough to power 200,000 homes. The computer will also produce a gargantuan amount of heat, requiring 60,000 tons of cooling equipment, the same amount that was needed to serve both of the World Trade Center towers.
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section. As I construct the News Page I run across a lot of videos I never have seen before. Since I find YouTube frustrating because once you are past the video, it is usually hard to find it again, I save the link in this section so I can find the video at a later date.

06.10.2013. 11:51

Friday June 07, 2013
News Articles

The Student Loan Debt Crisis in 9 Charts
MotherJones | Maggie Severns | 06/05/13

The amount of total student loan debt has soared in the past decade, shooting up from $240 billion at the start of 2003 to nearly $1 trillion today.

Below are nine charts (see article) that help illustrate that the student loan crisis isn't just about interest rates but about how the cost of college has spiraled beyond the reach of many families and is leaving millions of students and grads with debts that are keeping them from realizing their financial goals. ... Read more
Click to zoom

NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others
Click to zoom
TheGuardian | Glenn Greenwald | 06/06/13

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.   The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation -- classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies -- which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers. ... Read more
'Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?' (06/07/13) [0:35]

Justice Department Fights Release Of Secret Court Opinion On Law That Underpins PRISM Program
HP | Matt Sledge | 06/07/13

Mere hours after President Barack Obama said Friday morning that he welcomes a debate on the federal government's highly classified surveillance programs, his Department of Justice tried to squash the release of a secret court opinion concerning surveillance law.

A 2011 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling found the U.S. government had unconstitutionally overreached in its use of a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The National Security Agency uses the same section to justify its PRISM online data collection program. But that court opinion must remain secret, the Justice Department says, to avoid being "misleading to the public." ... Read more

Internet Shrugs Off NSA Data Mining: People 'Numb To The Fact That They're Being Watched'
HP | Bianca Bosker | 06/07/13

Judging from talk on social networking sites, few people are terribly surprised -- or too upset -- to discover that the government may have been reading their email.

Reports in The Guardian and The Washington Post that the National Security Agency and FBI tapped into Internet and telephone data may seem like an appalling affront to privacy. At the same time, people have understood for years that Google scans their email to deliver hotel promotions ahead of a vacation they're set to take, or that Facebook monitors their activity so it can advertise rings to a 20-something planning to propose. News that yet another large organization has been tracking their online activity -- though it's a government agency, not a private company --- has been greeted with a shrug by many of the very users whose personal data the U.S. has been secretly gathering. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, June 07 [9:02]
*DN | "A Massive Surveillance State": Glenn Greenwald Exposes Covert NSA Program Collecting Calls, Emails (06/07/13) [14:16]
DN | EXCLUSIVE Nasser al-Awlaki to Obama: Why Did You Kill My U.S.-Born Son, Grandson in Drone Strikes? (06/07/13) [19:02]
*DN | Inside the U.S. Dirty War in Yemen with Jeremy Scahill, Nasser Al-Awlaki, Sheikh Fareed (06/07/13) [14:48]
TYT News
Why Americans Hate Politicians (06/05/13) [7:24]
Bill O'Reilly Wants You Damn Kid Voters Off The Lawn! (06/06/13) [6:48]
How our Elections are being Hijacked
TYT | Professor Lawrence Lessig has taken on a difficult task: save the American political system from becoming even more immersed in corruption. (06/03/13) [6:23]
*TED | Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim (04/03/13)[18:20]
Job Creators
TYT | Banned TED Talk (05/17/12) [5:35]
As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs.

The position is controversial -- so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject. National Journal reports today that TED officials decided not to put Hanauer's March 1 speech up online after deeming his remarks "too politically controversial" for the site.
Click to zoom
Original Slides to Nick Hanauer TED Talk.
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday 06/07/13 [1hr]
International News - Friday 06/07/13 [1hr]
TRNN News
TRNN | Michael Ratner: Court Order Reveals Unprecedented Government Surveillance of Verizon Cell Phone Customers (06/07/13) [21:14]
TRNN | John Ackerman: US Drug War Props Corrupt Mexican Ruling Class (06/07/13) [10:24]
More Articles

Inside America's Dirty Wars
TheNation | Jeremy Scahill | 04/24/13

How three US citizens were killed by their own government in the space of one month in 2011.
Read more
Nation | Jeremy Scahill: Killing Anwar al-Awlaki (04/22/13) [3:45]

Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

06.07.2013. 19:17

Thursday June 06, 2013
News Articles

St. Louis Is Burning
RollingStone | Steven Hsieh | 05/10/13

An underground landfill fire near tons of nuclear waste raises serious health and safety concerns -- so why isn't the government doing more to help?

There's a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It's invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away -- an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as "rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer." Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. "It smells like dead bodies," observes another local.

... West Lake Landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site that's home to some of the oldest radioactive wastes in the world. A six-foot chain-link fence surrounds the perimeter, plastered with bright yellow hazard signs that warn of the dangers within. On one corner stands a rusty gas pump. About 1,200 feet south of the radioactive EPA site, the fire at Bridgeton Landfill spreads out like hot barbeque coals. No one knows for sure what happens when an underground inferno meets a pool of atomic waste, but residents aren't eager to find out. ... Read more

Why Didn't the SEC Catch Madoff? It Might Have Been Policy Not To
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/31/13

More and more embarrassing stories of keep leaking out of the SEC, which is beginning to look somehow worse than corrupt -- it's hard to find the right language exactly, but "aggressively clueless" comes pretty close to summing up the atmosphere that seems to be ruling the country's top financial gendarmes.

... According to Furey, her group at the SEC's New York office, from a period stretching for over half a decade through December, 2008, did not as a matter of policy pursue cases against investment managers like Bernie Madoff. Furey says she was told flatly by her boss, Assistant Regional Director George Stepaniuk, that "We do not do IM cases." ... Read more

Person of the Day
Pastor Jim Wallis has been arrested for protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, builds bridges between polarized politicians, and pushes Christians to worry less about gay marriage and more about justice. And even better -- there's a whole new generation following his lead.

The Entire US Housing Market In One Chart
Click to zoom
ZeroHedge | author | 06/05/13

  1. Residential housing is the single largest "tangible" US real estate asset, worth roughly $18 trillion (but well below the total financial assets in circulation in the US).
  2. Housing inventory as of May was 133.2 million units, of which owner occupied is 78.9 million, renter occupied was 41.7 million, but most troubling: 12.6 million was Vacant. Some shortage.
  3. Of the Owner-occupied units, 3.3 million units were 90+ delinquent or in foreclosure, 2.0 million units were 30-90 days delinquent, and 5.8 million were current but with negative equity.
  4. It is this mismatch between 11.1 million in negative equity "owner occupied" units and 12.6 million vacant units that all those who peddle the rent-to-own dream are focused on as America becomes increasingly a society of rents.
Read more

How Cheney Got It Wrong: China Reaps Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom
NYTimes | Tim Arango | 06/03/13

Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world's top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer.

China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq's largest oil fields.   "The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq," said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. "They need energy, and they want to get into the market." ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, June 06 [9:36]
*DN | Obama-Backed Trans-Pacific Partnership Expands Corporate Lawsuits Against Nations for Lost Profits (06/06/13) [16:14]
*DN | NSA Whistleblowers: "All U.S. Citizens" Targeted By Surveillance Program, Not Just Verizon Customers (06/06/13) [18:33]
More Videos
Severe floods are crippling large parts of central Europe. The Czech Republic, Austria and Germany (06/04/13) [2:36]
Zina Saunders: Were the Oklahoma tornadoes the result of global warming? (06/05/13) [1:39]
Robert Gibbs: Darrell Issa Made Himself 'the Biggest Joke in All of Washington' (06/03/13) [5:16]
TYT News
TYT | Racist War On Weed - New ACLU Report (06/04/13) [4:19]
Solar Storms
*NASA | Coronal Hole In Sun May Cause Solar Winds & Auroras, NASA Says (06/06/13) [0:19]
More Good Articles

With the Trans Pacific Partnership's (TPP) Fast Track Authority, Who Needs Congress?
HP | Renee Parsons | 05/29/13

Despite the Obama administration's well-known penchant for secrecy, enough information has leaked out of its closed-door negotiations on the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement (FTA) to reveal there is much to oppose about the Mother of all Trade Agreements.

... According to "The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority" by Public Citizen's Lori Wallach, only five TPP chapters out of 29 are strictly devoted to 'trade' with the remainder focused on a broad array of public policy issues. How would the American public respond if they knew that TPP's agreed-upon authority will take absolute precedence over all relevant U.S. federal and state law representing a grave threat to our democratic federal republic. ... Read more

The Right to Evade Regulation: How corporations hijacked the First Amendment
NewRepublic | TIM WU | 06/03/13

very time you fill a prescription at a drug store like Walgreens, the pharmacy keeps a record of the transaction, noting information such as your name, the drug, the dosage, and the issuing doctor. It's a routine bit of bookkeeping, and for a long time it raised few eyebrows. Then a firm called IMS Health starting buying up the data. Mining pharmacy records, the company assembled profiles of hundreds of thousands of American doctors and millions of individual patients, with names and other identifying details encrypted. IMS Health turned around and sold access to those files to pharmaceutical companies, making it easier for the firms to target (and reward) the physicians most likely to prescribe expensive, brand-name drugs.

... Had the issue remained subject to a normal democratic process, it would have continued to play out that way--through a gradual, state-by-state debate about whether so-called "prescription confidentiality" laws make for good policy. But IMS Health did not want that kind of fight. Instead, it filed separate suits against the three states that had first cracked down on its business, invoking the First Amendment. The selling of prescription records, the company asserted, is a form of free speech. ... Read more

10 TV Shows to Watch This Summer
Rolling Stone | Katie Van Syckle | 05/16/13

Summer shows may not have the same cachet or narrative intensity as those in the fall, but there's nothing like capping off a long summer night with a few premiering, returning or concluding programs. Here are the 10 that'll have a permanent place on our DVR come Memorial Day weekend. ...

Read more


06.06.2013. 12:13

Wednesday June 05, 2013
News Articles

Medicare Exhausted In 2026, Trustees Say
HP | Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar | 06/01/13

Medicare's long-term health is starting to look a little better, the government said Friday, but both Social Security and Medicare are still wobbling toward insolvency within two decades if Congress and the president don't find a way to shore up the trust funds established to take care of older Americans.

Medicare's giant fund for inpatient care will be exhausted in 2026, two years later than estimated last year, while Social Security's projected insolvency in 2033 remains unchanged, the government reported. ... Read more

JPMorgan's Alabama Debacle Set to Cost Bank $1.6 Billion
Bloomberg | William Selway | 06/05/13

The biggest U.S. bank by assets agreed to forgive $842 million of debt owed to it by Jefferson County, Alabama, where it took the lead in arranging risky securities deals that pushed the county into the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy, in November 2011.   That agreement follows a $722 million settlement in 2009 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission related to the Jefferson County financing. JPMorgan's total costs amount to a quarter of the $6.2 billion trading loss in 2012 from corporate-credit bets by a trader known as the London Whale. ... Read more

Hacking the Drone War's Secret History
Wired Magazine | David Axe | 06/01/13

In 2008 U.S. troops in Iraq discovered that Shi'ite insurgents had figured out how to tap and record video feeds from overhead American drones. Now you too can hack Washington's globe-spanning fleet of silent, deadly armed robots -- although legally, and only in an historical sense.

Josh Begley, a 28-year-old NYU grad student, has just created an application programming interface -- basically, a collection of building blocks for software development -- that allows anyone with basic coding skills to organize, analyze and visualize drone-strike data from Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia dating back to 2002. ... Read more

Anthrax drug brings $334 million to Pentagon advisor's biotech firm
Los Angeles Times | David Willman | 05/19/13

Over the last decade, former Navy Secretary Richard J. Danzig, a prominent lawyer, presidential advisor and biowarfare consultant to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, has urged the government to counter what he called a major threat to national security.   Terrorists, he warned, could easily engineer a devastating killer germ: a form of anthrax resistant to common antibiotics.

U.S. intelligence agencies have never established that any nation or terrorist group has made such a weapon, and biodefense scientists say doing so would be very difficult. Nevertheless, Danzig has energetically promoted the threat -- and prodded the government to stockpile a new type of drug to defend against it.

Danzig did this while serving as a director of a biotech startup that won $334 million in federal contracts to supply just such a drug, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. ... Read more

BP's Oil Spill Deal Sours as Claims Add Billions to Cost
Bloomberg | Margaret Cronin Fisk | 06/05/13

BP Plc's $8 billion settlement with victims of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill may have hurt Europe's second-largest oil company more than it helped.

BP has protested in court filings that administrator Patrick Juneau's interpretation of last year's settlement may add billions to the $42 billion bill for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. BP has appealed U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier's order agreeing with Juneau's interpretation of the settlement.

BP contends that interpretation is wrong. More to the point, the London-based company may have agreed to a flawed deal as it rushed to move on after the accident, said David Berg, a Houston trial lawyer who often sues polluters on behalf of municipalities. The level of compensation was never capped and the settlement didn't require proof that losses were caused by the spill, he said. ... Read more

Sheldon Adelson's Woes Mount With Grand Jury In Las Vegas Sands Money-Laundering Probe
HP | Peter H. Stone | 06/05/13

Remember who gave all that money to Mitt Romney's presidential bid

The legal headaches besetting billionaire Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Sands Corp. now include a grand jury in Los Angeles, part of a federal money-laundering probe of his Nevada-based casinos, The Huffington Post has learned. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, June 05 [13:34]
DN | As U.S. Deploys Patriot Missiles and F-16s to Jordan, Could Syrian Conflict Engulf the Middle East? (06/05/13) [21:01]
DN | Jim Crow After Roe? How States Are Regulating Abortion Out of Existence & Widening Health Inequality (06/05/13) [6:05]
DN | Debate: Supreme Court OKs Unfettered DNA Collection -- An Invasion of Privacy or a Blow to Crime? (06/05/13) [15:51]
How our Elections are being Hijacked
*TED | Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim (04/03/13) [18:20]
*Hacking the Drone War's Secret History
Drone Strikes 2004-2013 - Click to zoom
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm *America's Energy Future Beyond Oil And Gas (06/05/13) [1hr]
Richard Haass: "Foreign Policy Begins At Home: The Case For Putting America's House In Order" (06/05/13) [1hr]
TRNN News
TRNN | Baris Karaagac: Turkish Deputy PM Apologizes as Mass Protests Continue (06/05/13) [13:44]
TRNN | John Ackerman: Mexico's Drug War Claims 70, 000 Lives in 6 Years (06/05/13) [15:27]
MSNBC Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Military brass rejects outside accountability on sexual assaults (06/04/13) [16:23]
Chris Hayes | Racial injustice in the "War on Weed (Drugs)" (06/04/13) [4:52]
Chris Hayes | Fear of a black electorate, Governor Christie? (06/04/13) [4:52]
Chris Hayes | South Carolina is trying to nullify "Obamacare" (06/04/13) [7:40], Part 2 [5:42]
TYT News

06.05.2013. 12:11

Tuesday June 04, 2013
News Articles

*How Elite Economic Hucksters Drive America's Biggest Fraud Epidemics
AlterNet | William K. Black | 06/01/13

The work of Alan Greenspan and other unethical economists has cost us trillions of dollars, millions of jobs and endless suffering.

What do you get when you throw together economic fraudsters, plutocrats and opportunistic criminals? A financial crisis, that's what. If you look back over the massive frauds that have swept the country in recent decades, from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s to the 2007-'08 financial crash, this deadly combination always appears.

A dangerous cycle begins when prominent economists pander to plutocrats and bought politicians, who reward them with top posts, where they promote the perverse economic policies that cause fraud epidemics. Crises develop, and millions of people are ripped off. Those who fight for truth are ignored or ruined. The criminals get wealthier, bolder and more politically powerful, and go on to hatch even more devastating cons. ... Read more

House Republicans broken into fighting factions
Washington Post | Paul Kane | 06/03/13/span>

On New Year's Day, in a cramped room in the Capitol basement, House Republican leaders faced an angry caucus. Democrats had negotiated them into a corner -- virtually every American would be hit with a massive tax increase unless the House agreed to block the hikes for everyone but the wealthy.   A freshman lawmaker seized a microphone and demanded to know how the leaders planned to vote. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) was a yes, but his top two lieutenants were opposed.

That vote, to avert the "fiscal cliff," marked a breaking point for House Republicans, who had disintegrated into squabbling factions, no longer able to agree on -- much less execute -- some of the most basic government functions. ... Read more

Whale of a Trade Revealed at Biggest U.S. Bank With Best Control
Bloomberg | Dawn Kopecki | 06/04/13

"We are dead I tell you," Bruno Iksil, a London-based trader at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), messaged an associate on March 23, 2012. "It is hopeless now."   Iksil, a Frenchman who would soon become known as the London Whale because of the size of his trades, had lost $44 million on corporate-credit bets three days earlier and was down more than $500 million for the year, Bloomberg Markets will report in its July issue. He and junior trader Julien Grout, under pressure from their manager, had tried to hide the extent of losses that would swell to more than $6.2 billion, the bank's biggest trading blunder ever. ... Read more

The Koch Influence
TheNation | Leslie Savan | 05/31/13

On the eve of our first Neo-Pleistocene summer, right-wing carbon barons David and Charles Koch seem to be everywhere, buying influence and trying to de-pollute their image.

The multibillionaire brothers are the potential new owners of the Tribune Company's eight newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and Hoy, the nation's second-largest Spanish-language daily. They're helping to shape what gets on PBS; as Jane Mayer tells it, David Koch barely had to lift a goldfinger to get a public television company to censor itself and drop a documentary critical of him. They're getting down with BuzzFeed; the Charles Koch Institute--sponsored a BuzzFeed Brews "immigration summit" a few weeks ago, with free beer and Ben Smith. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, June 04 [14:06]
DN | Bradley Manning Trial: WikiLeaks Lawyer Sees Spurious "Enemy" Claims & Bid to Scare Whistleblowers (06/04/13) [22:30]
DN | American Fascism: Ralph Nader Decries How Big Business Has Taken Control of the U.S. Government (06/04/13) [12:25], Part 2 [7:45]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Bill Black: Deficit is Dropping but is there a Real Recovery? (06/04/13) [12:07]
Bill Black: WIth surge in stock market, the wealthier are paying more taxes but working class wages are not rising and unemployment remains high, so this does not mean a sustained recovery of the real economy is underway.
TRNN | Paul Buchheit: 50% of Americans Live in Poverty? (06/04/13) [5:00]
Paul Buchheit: Based on assets and income, number of people in poverty closer to 50% rather than official stat of 15%
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm *New Questions About IRS Activities (06/04/13) [1hr]
Environmental Outlook: Jellyfish And The Health Of The Ocean (06/04/13) [1hr]
MSNBC Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | You can't keep a secret and neither can the government (06/03/13) [15:33]
Chris Hayes | Study: Young people really dislike the Republican Party (06/03/13) [7:40]
Chris Hayes | Syrian conflict emerges as proxy war (06/03/13) [12:33], Part 2 [5:30]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart Finds IRS Scrutiny Delightfully Ironic, Asks 'Where's Your Receipts, A**hole?' (06/04/13) [4:11]
Additional News Articles

Get Rid of Your Cable TV Package Now!
AlterNet | David Sirota | 06/03/13

For those of you sick of paying ever-higher cable bills, two huge pieces of news in the last week should encourage you to take action.   First came news that two previously cable-only channels, TBS and TNT, "are about to become the first national entertainment networks in the industry to stream on-air content live across multiple platforms," likely positioning the stations to eventually (though not yet) sell their content direct to consumers on an à la carte online basis, rather than only through traditional cable TV packages. ... Read more


06.04.2013. 12:10

Monday June 03, 2013
News Articles

'Storm Chasers' Star Tim Samaras, Son Paul Samaras And Carl Young Die In Oklahoma
HP | author | 06/02/13

Former "Storm Chaser" star Tim Samaras, his son Paul Samaras, and colleague Carl Young died while chasing the Oklahoma storm on Friday, May 31.   "We are deeply saddened by the loss of Tim Samaras his son Paul and their colleague Carl Young. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families," Discovery Channel said in a statement.

Discovery will dedicate the Sunday, June 2 special "Mile Wide Tornado: Oklahoma Disaster" to the trio's memory. They don't appear in the series, but the memorial card will read: "In memory of Tim Samaras, Carl Young and Paul Samaras who died Friday, May 31st doing what they love, chasing storms." ... Read more

China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom
NYTimes | author | date

Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world's top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer.

China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq's largest oil fields. ... Read more

4 Major Ways the Rich Pile On and Exploit the Rest of Us For More Money and Profit
AlterNet | Paul Buchheit | 06/02/13

In football terms, "piling on" means jumping on a player when he's down. In the economic new normal described by Bernie Sanders, it means taking most of the wealth and all of the income, moving profits and jobs overseas, and making impoverished people pay the bills.

1. Taking ALL the Income
2. Wealth Grab
3. Corporate Betrayal
4. Let the Hungry Pay
Read more

We must not accept this economic 'new normal'
The Guardian | Bernie Sanders | 06/02/13

The front pages of American newspapers are filled with stories about how the US economy is recovering. There is some truth to that. Since President George W Bush left office in 2009, significant progress has been made in moving our economy out of the abyss of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But in the midst of this slow recovery, we must not accept a "new normal"

The good news is that instead of losing more than 700,000 jobs a month as we were five years ago, we've been gaining almost 200,000 jobs a month since January. The bad news is that, in addition to those job numbers being much too low, nearly 60% of the jobs gained since the "recovery" are low-wage jobs that pay less than $14 an hour, while most of the jobs lost during the recession were decent-paying middle-class jobs. ... Read more

The Full List Of 2013's Bilderberg Attendees
ZeroHedge | author | 06/03/13

The annual gathering of the royalty, statesmen, and business leaders, conspiratorially believed to run the world (snubbing their Illuminati peers and Freemason fellows), will take place this week at the Grove Hotel in London, England. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, June 03 [13:13]
DN | A Turkish Spring? Over 1,000 Injured as Anti-Government Protests Spread Outside of Istanbul, Part 1 (06/03/13) [11:38], Part 2 [15:43]
DN | Bradley Manning Trial: After 3 Years, Army Whistleblower Begins Court Martial Shrouded in Secrecy (06/03/13) [16:20]
The Newsroom Season 2: Tease [0:36]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Battle Over Student Loan Rates (06/03/13) [1hr]
Movie Trailers
Environmental Movies
MSNBC Documentary: Future Earth - Addicted to Power (04/22/10) [44:03]
Water Changes Everything. [3:24]
Charity Water.org website
charitywater.org - 2011 Year in Review [2:36]
More Articles

Deposits Rise To Record $2.1 Trillion Over Bank Loans
ZeroHedge | author | 06/03/13

It may come as a surprise to some that the total level of commercial bank loans outstanding as of the most recent week, May 22, was "only" $7.303 trillion. We say only because this number is $20 billion less than the total commercial loans outstanding as of the weeks following the Lehman failure, just before the most epic deleveraging episode in recent US history began. It is also just $600 billion higher than the cyclical lows of $6.7 trillion (net of the February 2010 readjustment of the commercial loan terminology). Why do we bring this up? Because as is well-known, loans are the primary commercial bank system asset, and in a normally functioning financial system, loan creation leads to deposit growth. ... Read more
Click to zoom

Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

06.03.2013. 12:00



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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.
Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.
Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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,.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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".

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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)

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
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.

Or click here for a tablet or a small screen device
Sponsors

I'm looking for sponsors to financially help with this site.  If you might be interested please send me a message using the Contact form.

Donation


I am one of those "once" middle class, over 60, over educated, under-employed, semi retired, soon to be poor workers, that everyone is talking about. 
But I have a modest standard of living so I plan to give all extra donation, beyond my immediate needs, to several of my favorite charities.

save-the-children

News Pages
News March 2024
News February 2024
News January 2024
News December 2023
News November 2023
News October 2023
News September 2023
News August 2023
News July 2023
News June 2023
News May 2023
News April 2023
News March 2023
News February 2023
News January 2023

News December 2022
News November 2022
News October 2022
News September 2022
News August 2022
News July 2022
News June 2022
News May 2022
News April 2022
News March 2022
News February 2022
News January 2022

News December 2021
News November 2021
News October 2021
News September 2021
News August 2021
News July 2021
News June 2021
News May 2021
News April 2021
News March 2021
News February 2021
News January 2021

News December 2020
News November 2020
News October 2020
News September 2020
News August 2020
News July 2020
News June 2020
News May 2020
News April 2020
News March 2020
News February 2020
News January 2020

News December 2019
News November 2019
News October 2019
News September 2019
News August 2019
News July 2019
News June 2019
News May 2019
News April 2019
News March 2019
News February 2019
News January 2019

News December 2018
News November 2018
News October 2018
News September 2018
News August 2018
News July 2018
News June 2018
News May 2018
News April 2018
News March 2018
News February 2018
News January 2018

News December 2017
News November 2017
News October 2017
News September 2017
News August 2017
News July 2017
News June 2017
News May 2017
News April 2017
News March 2017
News February 2017
News January 2017

News December 2016
News November 2016
News October 2016
News September 2016
News August 2016
News July 2016
News June 2016
News May 2016
News April 2016
News March 2016
News February 2016
News January 2016

News December 2015
News November 2015
News October 2015
News September 2015
News August 2015
News July 2015
News June 2015
News May 2015
News April 2015
News March 2015
News February 2015
News January 2015

News December 2014
News November 2014
News October 2014
News September 2014
News August 2014
News July 2014
News June 2014
News May 2014
News April 2014
News March 2014
News February 2014
News January 2014

News December 2013
News November 2013
News October 2013
News September 2013
News August 2013
News July 2013
News June 2013
News May 2013
News April 2013
News March 2013
News February 2013
News January 2013

News December 2012
News November 2012
News October 2012
News September 2012
News August 2012
News July 2012
News June 2012
News May 2012
News April 2012
News March 2012
News February 2012
News January 2012

News December 2011