Jun 22 2015 - News Jun 2015 - News - Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Monday June 22, 2015

News Articles

This How We Should Actually Punish Bank Felons
TruthDig & Robert Reich | Robert Reich | 06/22/15

What exactly does it mean for a big Wall Street bank to plead guilty to a serious crime? Right now, practically nothing.

But it will if California's Santa Cruz County has any say.

First, some background.

Five giant banks -- including Wall Street behemoths JPMorgan Chase and Citicorp -- recently pleaded guilty to criminal felony charges that they rigged the world's foreign-currency market for their own profit.

This wasn't a small heist. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions every day.

The banks altered currency prices long enough for the banks to make winning bets before the prices snapped back to what they should have been.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch called it a "brazen display of collusion" that harmed "countless consumers, investors and institutions around the globe -- from pension funds to major corporations, and including the banks' own customers."

The penalty? The banks have agreed to pay $5.5 billion. That may sound like a big chunk of change, but for a giant bank it's the cost of doing business. In fact, the banks are likely to deduct the fines from their taxes as business costs.

The banks sound contrite. After all, they can't have the public believe they're outright crooks.

It's "an embarrassment to our firm, and stands in stark contrast to Citi's values," says Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat.

Values? Citigroup's main value is to make as much money as possible. Corbat himself raked in $13 million last year.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon calls it "a great disappointment to us," and says "we demand and expect better of our people."

Expect better? If recent history is any guide -- think of the bank's notorious "London Whale" a few years ago, and, before that, the wild bets leading to the 2008 bailout -- JPMorgan expects exactly this kind of behavior from its people.

Which helped Dimon rake in $20 million last year, as well as a $7.4 million cash bonus. ...

America's CEOs Now Make 303 Times More Than Their Workers
MotherJones | Jaeah Lee | 06/22/15

The US economy is rebounding for the nation's top income earners, but not for everyone else, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute. The study, published Sunday, finds that chief executives at the country's 350 biggest firms earned an average of $16.3 million in 2014, marking a 54.3 percent increase since 2009. Meanwhile, compensation for typical workers in the same industries as those CEOs fell 1.7 percent over the same time period.

"Those at the top of the income distribution, including many CEOs, are seeing a strong recovery, while the typical worker is still experiencing the detrimental effects of a stagnant labor market," the study authors, Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis, found. ... Read more

Newsflash: Groundwater Running Out,
uprisingradio.org/ | author | 06/17/15

Two studies published by the American Geophysical Union today, have identified the most stressed ground water systems in the world. Researchers concluded that one-third of the biggest groundwater reserves are in serious trouble. The Arabian Aquifer System was the worst off -- a source of water for 60 million people. Closely following is the Indus Basin aquifer underneath northwestern India and Pakistan, followed by the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa. The water system under drought-stricken California also made the list but is not as stressed. The research is based on data from two NASA satellites that "measure dips and bumps in Earth's gravity, which is affected by the weight of water." The scientists worry that climate change and population growth will only exacerbate the problems. They ask the important question: "What happens when a highly stressed aquifer is located in a region with socioeconomic or political tensions that can't supplement declining water supplies fast enough?" - See more at: http://uprisingradio.org/home/2015/06/17/newsflash-groundwater-running-out-new-plan-for-tpa-sanders-and-trumps-candidacies/#sthash.YNUewzMd.dpuf ... Read more

Crossing The Event Horizon On 50 Years Of A Financially-Engineered Black Hole
ZeroHedge | author | 06/22/15

Nobody knows what will happen next in the struggle to wring some kind of debt repayment promises out of poor Greece. Without "restructuring" -- a virtual national bankruptcy proceeding -- there can be no plausible promises of repayment. Both sides seem to have exhausted their abilities to juke their way out. The European Union and its wing-men at the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) can only pretend to kick that fabled can down the road because it has turned into a cement-filled 50-gallon drum. The Greek government can only pretend to further dismantle its civil service and pension systems lest angry citizens toss it out and replace it with a new government, perhaps an ugly and pugnacious one made up of Golden Dawn party Nazis. ... Read more

DemocracyNow - http://www.democracynow.org/

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, June 22 [11:01]

DN | Exclusive: Green Party's Jill Stein Announces She Is Running for President on Democracy Now! (06/22/15) [13:09]

DN | Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Views, Links to Hate Group Revealed After Charleston Church Massacre (06/22/15) [13:54]

John Oliver

*HBO | John Oliver: Online Harassment (06/21/15) [16:49]

Middle East | Iraq in Particular

I like Vice videos because they actually talk to the common people of the country (topic) they are covering. Look at the summary I posted and then if you are interested look at the full video.

*Vice | In Saddam's Shadow: Baghdad 10 Years After the Invasion (Summary) [4:00]

Vice | In Saddam's Shadow: Baghdad 10 Years After the Invasion (03/22/13) [27:38]

BBC | Daylight Robbery: What Happened to the $23billion? (older,2008) [58:32]

TRNN News - http://therealnews.com/

TRNN | Pope Francis Goes Green, Balancing Science and Religion, Part 2 (06/22/15) [14:14]

TRNN | Pope Francis Goes Green Balancing Science and Religion. Janet Redman and Blase Bonpane weighs in on this defining moment for the Catholic Church, Part 1 (06/19/15) [19:45]

TRNN | Ukraine gets debt reduction and additional loans from IMF, Greece gets further squeezed, this is a despicable demonstration of the geo-strategic games being played (06/22/15) [13:41]

TYT News - http://www.tytnetwork.com/

TYT | The Most Dangerous Cops On The Planet Live In... (06/21/15) [8:44]

*TYT | TPP Grants Banks Terrifying Secret Powers. (06/21/15) [8:30]

TYT | Rand Paul's Huge Gift To The Wealthy (06/21/15) [5:02]

RT - http://www.rt.com/

RT | CrossTalk: Whose propaganda should we be worried about? (06/22/15) [35:30]

RT | Keiser Report: Craft beer & crowdfunding (E772) (06/18/15) [24:16]

Ring of Fire - http://ringoffireradio.com/

Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/

ThomHartmann | NSA surveillance Shorts... (06/19/15) [6:52]

Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

Operation Desert Storm: "Winds of the Storm" 1993 US Air Force First Gulf War () [37:26]

The Persian Gulf War (2 August 1990 -- 28 February 1991), codenamed Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 -- 28 February 1991) commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a UN-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.

06.22.2015. 10:47

NPR

PBS

Special Interest Important stuff

GOOD Shorts Videos

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I'm still working on this

GOOD Short Videos

Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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I'm still working on this

Newer Documentaries

Documentaries You've Never Seen

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Documentaries (small | pop-up)
Documentaries (big | full screen)

Good YouTube Documentaries

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Great YouTube Docs. (small | pop-up)
Good YouTube Docs. (big | full screen)

Lindsey Graham Mashups

Lindsey Graham

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

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Environment & Climate Change

Environment

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

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AI - Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning | Deep Learning

AI - Artificial Intelligence

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

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

Quantum mechanics

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

Wall Street and Banksters

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

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Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

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

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Daniel Ellsberg | Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg

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

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Nukes

Nukes

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

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Rana Foroohar and Fall of American Business

Rana Foroohar

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

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

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

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

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Kuznick Interviews

Kuznick Interviews

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

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

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China Valley of Tunnels

China Valley of Tunnels

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

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911

911

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

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

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

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Trump's Mashups

Trump's Mashups

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

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Trump's Sexcapades

Trump's Sexcapades.

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

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Trump's Speeches | Rallys |Interviews

Trump's Speeches | Rallys

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

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