Home · News · News Jun 2013 · June 18 2013
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



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

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GOOD Short Videos
Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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Lindsey Graham Mashups
Lindsey Graham

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

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Environment & Climate Change
Environment

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

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

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

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

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

Wall Street and Banksters

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

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Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

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

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Daniel Ellsberg | Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg

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

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Nukes
Nukes

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

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Rana Foroohar and Fall of American Business
Rana Foroohar

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

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

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

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

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Kuznick Interviews

Kuznick Interviews

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

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

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China Valley of Tunnels

China Valley of Tunnels

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

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911
911

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

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

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

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Trump's Mashups
Trump's Mashups

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

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Trump's Sexcapades
Trump's Sexcapades.

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

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

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

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