Home · News · News May 2015
Friday May 29, 2015
News Articles

News Organizations Grapple With 2016 Presidential Race In Which Everyone Is Running
HP | Michael Calderone | 05/28/15

It was Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Tuesday, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania on Wednesday, and ex-New York Gov. George Pataki on Thursday. After the announcement-free Friday, the political media circus that already has traveled this week to Burlington, Vermont; Cabot, Pennsylvania; and Exeter, New Hampshire, will arrive Saturday in Baltimore, where former Maryland Gov, Martin O'Malley becomes the second Democratic challenger to Hillary Clinton.

... The ballooning field has placed news organizations in uncharted territory and forced upon them difficult editorial decisions. How do you cover a Republican race that could swell to 16 candidates? How do you distinguish between the newsworthiness and the side-show? ... Read more

Euronext Breaks: All Derivative, Currency Future Trading Halted
ZeroHedge | author | 05/29/15

Usually the market breaks don't take place until after the selling begins. Today, someone in Europe got triggerhappy, and as a result moments ago the Euronext broke. Or perhaps this is just another drill for the "big one".

SERVICES IMPACTED: Market Data, Trading

MARKET: Euronext Derivatives Markets

PRODUCT: Commodity Futures, Commodity Options, Currency Futures, Currency Options, Individual Equity Options Brussels, BEL20 Futures, PSI Futures, BEL20 Options, Index Dividend Futures, Single Stock Dividend Futures, Belgian Single Stock Futures

CATEGORY: Data issue

Due to a market data issue, trading has been halted on the BO,BF,FF,FO,MF,YF,YO,RF,ZF,ZO,SF exchanges until further notice.

As a consequence, all orders other than GTC's were removed from these products.

We are working to resolve this issue and we will provide an update as soon as possible regarding the expected pre-opening time and resumption of trading.

Read more

America Has No Enemy More Lethal Than The Neocon
ZeroHedge | author | 05/29/15

Those men who wrote our Constitution made it perfectly intelligible to anyone who cared to read it. They also left some flexibility in its articles to ensure that as time passed and circumstances changed the document would remain viable as the indispensable protector of the republic they created and of the liberty of citizens. In recent decades, however, Americans have been treated to an endless stream of politicians, academics, lawyers, and pundits who describe the opaqueness of the Founder's Constitution and the need for "experts" to decipher or infer what the document means. But their words are lies, there are no such things as universal values. There is only one value common to all men in all times and that is the universal lust for gaining and exercising arbitrary power, and that power is exactly what the Jacobin/Neocon crowd is after. ... Read more

Who Stole the American Dream? by Hedrick Smith

Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith's new book is an extraordinary achievement, an eye-opening account of how, over the past four decades, the American Dream has been dismantled and we became two Americas.

In his bestselling The Russians, Smith took millions of readers inside the Soviet Union. In The Power Game, he took us inside Washington's corridors of power. Now Smith takes us across America to show how seismic changes, sparked by a sequence of landmark political and economic decisions, have transformed America. As only a veteran reporter can, Smith fits the puzzle together, starting with Lewis Powell's provocative memo that triggered a political rebellion that dramatically altered the landscape of power from then until today.

This is a book full of surprises and revelations--the accidental beginnings of the 401(k) plan, with disastrous economic consequences for many; the major policy changes that began under Jimmy Carter; how the New Economy disrupted America's engine of shared prosperity, the "virtuous circle" of growth, and how America lost the title of "Land of Opportunity." Smith documents the transfer of $6 trillion in middle-class wealth from homeowners to banks even before the housing boom went bust, and how the U.S. policy tilt favoring the rich is stunting America's economic growth.
More News
  1. Former House Speaker Hastert indicted on federal charges (Reuters)
  2. Blatter expected to win re-election despite soccer corruption scandal (Reuters)
  3. NYSE Looks to Ease Late-Day Pileup (WSJ)
  4. What Will Happen to a Generation of Wall Street Traders Who Have Never Seen a Rate Hike? (BBG)
  5. Japan spending slump casts doubt on central bank optimism (Reuters)
  6. Unclear rules, market volatility take toll on bank capital (Reuters)
  7. Greece Told Budget a Red Line for Creditors Venting at G-7 (BBG)
  8. The Economist Who Realized How Crazy We Are (Michael Lewis)
  9. Pimco Said to Have Considered Goldman's Cohn for Top Job (BBG)
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, May 29 [8:29]
*DN | As GOP Candidates Question Climate Change, Texas & Oklahoma Hit by Devastating Floods Killing 23 (05/29/15) [19:06]
DN | The Enron of Sports: FIFA's Upheaval, from Corruption Arrests to Rising Death Toll in Qatar (05/29/15) [19:28]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart Talks NSA with Rand Paul, Grills Him on GOP 'Idea of Religious Persecution' (05/26/15) [10:01]
*TRNN | Christian Appy: Vietnam Blood Bath to Prove America had "Balls", Part 3 (05/29/15) [21:30]
why-we-fight*Why We Fight by Eugene Jarecki (2005) [1:39:04]
TRNN | Professor Leo Panitch: Greece in Suspended Animation (05/29/15) [10:30]
TRNN | Climate science expert D. Raghunandan and climate activist Anjali Appadurai discuss: India's Heat Wave Fueled by Western & Indian Energy Policies (05/29/15) [16:09]
*TYT | Rand Paul: Republicans Are Responsible For ISIS (05/27/15) [8:55]
TYT | Does Finding A Fossil Change The Mind Of A Creationist? (05/28/15) [6:23]
TYT | Old Angry Grandpa Explains Why Liberals Are Everywhere (05/28/15) [6:31]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
*ThomHartmann | Who Stole the American Dream...and can we get it back? (05/28/15) [44:41]
ThomHartmann | Hedrick Smith on the State of the American Economy... (05/28/15) [3:59]
ThomHartmann | Caller: My Strategy for dealing with Fox News Addicts... (05/28/15) [2:01]
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.

05.29.2015. 10:25

Thursday May 28, 2015
News Articles

Why Baltimore Blew Up
RolingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/26/15

It wasn't just the killing of Freddie Gray. Inside the complex legal infrastructure that encourages -- and covers up -- police violence

When Baltimore exploded in protests a few weeks ago following the unexplained paddy-wagon death of a young African-American man named Freddie Gray, America responded the way it usually does in a race crisis: It changed the subject.

Instead of using the incident to talk about a campaign of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of illegal searches and arrests across decades of discriminatory policing policies, the debate revolved around whether or not the teenagers who set fire to two West Baltimore CVS stores after Gray's death were "thugs," or merely wrongheaded criminals. ... Read more
*DN | Matt Taibbi: on Baltimore, Freddie Gray and How Legal System Covers Up Police Violence (05/21/15) [10:22]

India's Brutal Heat Wave Persists, Claiming Over 1,400 Lives.

Financial Insanity Grips The World
ZeroHedge | author | 05/28/15

Rare is the person who is a realist. We collectively live in a world of pretend and extend. Every one of us wants our present civilization to continue, though for countless millions the world has already turned upside down as unemployment has soared and war and terrorism proliferate. The very structure of life in our world is threatened because madmen have undermined the financial system through the creation of debt instead of wealth. We have collectively borrowed against our children's future until their very future is in doubt. ... Read more

Military "Accidentally" Sends Live Anthrax To 9 States Via FedEx
ZeroHedge | author | 05/28/15

A week after the 9/11 terrorists attacks that destroyed the Twin Towers in New York, letters laced with anthrax began to pop up across the US. By the end of November, 2001, 17 people had been hospitalized for anthrax exposure and five people were dead from inhalation. A subsequent FBI investigation pinned the entire ordeal on one Bruce Ivins who killed himself in 2008.

Fast forward to yesterday and 26 people are now being treated for exposure after live anthrax was sent via FedEx. The culprit: the US military. ... Read more

U.S. hopes Chinese island-building will spur Asian response
Reuter | David Alexander | 05/28/15

The release last week of the surveillance plane footage - showing dredgers and other ships busily turning remote outcrops into islands with runways and harbors - helps ensure the issue will dominate an Asian security forum starting on Friday attended by U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter as well as senior Chinese military officials.

... The meeting, the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, will be overshadowed by the tensions in the South China Sea, where Beijing has added 1,500 acres to five outposts in the resource-rich Spratly islands since the start of this year. ... Read more

On Patriot Act Renewal and USA Freedom Act: Glenn Greenwald Talks with ACLU’S Jameel Jaffer
firstlook.org/theintercept/ | Glenn Greenwald | 05/27/15

Even in the security-über alles climate that followed 9/11, the Patriot Act was recognized as an extreme and radical expansion of government surveillance powers. That’s why "sunset provisions" were attached to several of its key provisions: meaning they would expire automatically unless Congress renewed them every five years. But in 2005 and then again in 2010, the Bush and Obama administrations demanded their renewal, and Congress overwhelmingly complied with only token opposition from civil libertarians.

hat has all changed in the post-Snowden era. The most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to "sunset" on June 1, and there is almost no chance for a straight-up, reform-free authorization. ... Read more

John Oliver
The U.S. Just Charged A Bunch Of World Soccer Officials With Corruption. John Oliver Knew All Along.
HBO | Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: FIFA and the World Cup (06/08/14) [13:13]
More News
  1. No change in Greek debt talks after another day of spin (Reuters)
  2. G-7 Weighs In on Greece as Government Told to Be Serious (BBG)
  3. FIFA Faces Mounting Pressure From Sponsors as Visa Threatens to End Deal (WSJ)
  4. U.S. hopes Chinese island-building will spur Asian response (Reuters)
  5. Japan Inc.'s $104 Billion Investor Payout Set to Surge (BBG)
  6. Russia masses heavy firepower on border with Ukraine (Reuters)
  7. China Says Its Most-Wanted Fugitive Is in U.S. Custody (BBG)
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, May 28 [11:03]
*DN | Julian Assange: WikiLeaks' Julian Assange on Europe's Secret Plan for Military Force on Refugee Boats from Libya (05/28/15) [7:47]
*DN | Julian Assange: WikiLeaks' British Nuclear Sub Whistleblower William McNeilly Revealed Major Security Lapses (05/28/15) [12:27]
China
*BBC | Is China building on disputed Spratly Islands reefs? (older 09/09/14) [3:57]
*CNN | Chinese miliary confronts U.S. spy plane (05/20/15) [6:20]
CNN | U.S. watching China's island build-up (05/21/15) [2:56]
Robert Reich
The Big Picture: End Corporate Welfare (05/25/15) [3:00]
TRNN | Reese Erlich, author of Inside Syria, says: ISIS Gains Strategic Ground in Iraq and Syria (05/28/15) [10:57]
TRNN | Michael Hudson says: The Reoccurring Financial Woes of Greece (05/28/15) [15:42]
TYT | Bernie Sanders Continues To Champion Progressive Ideas (05/27/15) [9:08]
*TYT | Rand Paul: Republicans Are Responsible For ISIS (05/27/15) [8:55]
TYT | Carly Fiorina Wants To Ask Hillary Clinton About The Iraq War (05/27/15) [4:52]
*RT | CrossTalk: China's South Sea? (Ft. Pepe Escobar) (05/20/15) [23:50]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/

05.28.2015. 09:42

Wednesday May 27, 2015
News Articles

China Plans Naval Expansion Amid South China Sea Tensions
Reuters & HP | Megha Rajagopalan | 05/26/15

China outlined a strategy to boost its naval reach on Tuesday and announced plans for the construction of two lighthouses in disputed waters, developments likely to escalate tensions in a region already jittery about Beijing's maritime ambitions.

In a policy document issued by the State Council, the Communist-ruled country's cabinet, China vowed to increase its "open seas protection," switching from air defense to both offense and defense, and criticized neighbors who take "provocative actions" on its reefs and islands. ... Read more

Half Of Mozambique's Elephants Were Slaughtered In The Past 5 Years.

With Greece "Nowhere Close" To Deal, Depositors Pull €300 Million From Banks In Single Day
ZeroHedge | author | 05/27/15

Greece is "nowhere close" to a deal with its creditors and will miss a May deadline to strike a compromise ahead of an IMF payment due on June 5. Meanwhile, the ECB tightens the screws on the country's banking sector by refusing to lift the ceiling on the emergency liquidity that until now has helped to offset deposit flight. ... Read more

Koch Brothers Plan to Fund 'Several' GOP 2016 Presidential Hopefuls
Bloomberg | David Knowles | date

The world's fifth and sixth richest people say they will donate money to multiple Republican presidential candidates in the coming campaign.

In a Saturday interview on the Larry Kudlow Show, a nationally syndicated radio broadcast, David Koch let it slip that the roughly $900 million that he and his brother, Charles, plan to lavish on the 2016 presidential race could find its way into the hands of more than one GOP contender. ... Read more

BraveNewFilms | Koch Brothers EXPOSED: 2014 (01/21/15) [55:54] - Koch Brothers EXPOSED website

How the TPP Is Really a Forced Deal to Benefit the Rich
AlterNet | Leo Gerard | 05/27/15

Senators who voted last week to Fast Track ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) call it a free trade deal, but really, it's forced trade imposed on protesting American workers who have endured its damaging effects for decades.

Under the free trade regime, rich and powerful corporate interests have hauled in ever-higher profits as they shipped manufacturing overseas to low-wage, no-environmental-regulation countries. Meanwhile, American workers lost jobs, health benefits, income and all sense of stability. ... Read more

ThomHartmann | Brunch with Bernie: May 22, 2015 [44:54]
CNBC | 10 questions with Bernie Sanders (05/26/15) [3:31]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, May 27 [9:11]
DN | Julian Assange: Despite Congressional Standoff, NSA Has Secret Authority to Continue Spying Unabated (05/27/15) [10:35]
*DN | Julian Assange on the TPP: Secretive Deal Isn't About Trade, But Corporate Control (05/27/15) [6:26]
TRNN | Christian Appy: "America Does Bad Things for Good Reasons", Part 2 (05/27/15) [21:46]
*TRNN | Michael Hudson says: fast track legislation takes decision-making power out of the hands of the legislators and puts it in the hands of corporate lobbyists (05/27/15) [6:28]
*TYT | Lindsey Graham's 'Pool Room' Past Is How He Knows 'Iranians Are Liars' (05/26/15) [7:58]
TYT | Josh Dugger's In-Law Urges The World To Forgive Him For Child Molestation (05/26/15) [9:34]
RT | Keiser Report: Bottom 99% Income (E762) (05/26/15) [25:45]
In the second half, Max interviews Nick Williamson, CEO of Pythia, about his new product called Credits, which is the first blockchain technology to be used by a government - in this case, the Isle of Man, to register cryptocurrency companies on the island.
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
*ThomHartmann | It's Illegal to Disclose the Details of "Obamatrade" (05/21/15) [11:58]
*No to 'Fast Track,' No to Trade Treachery (04/29/15) [9:00] - TradeTreacher.com website
Rachel Maddow | Elizabeth Warren says "Secret TPP Trade Deal" is RIGGED! (04/23/15) [7:59]

05.27.2015. 09:40

Tuesday May 26, 2015
News Articles

Texas Flooding Called The Worst Ever By Governor
NYTimes & Reuters & HP | Jim Forsyth | 05/25/15

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday likened the ferocity of flash flooding that killed at least three people to a tsunami, and authorities said a dam had given way in a state park.

Abbott declared states of disaster in 24 counties and flew over the area south of Austin to assess the damage caused by tornadoes, heavy rainfall, thunderstorms and flooding that forced evacuations and rooftop rescues and left thousands of residents without electricity. ... Read more

Four Words That Imperil Health Care Law Were All a Mistake, Writers Now Say
NYTimes | Robert Pear | 05/25/15

They are only four words in a 900-page law: "established by the state." But it is in the ambiguity of those four words in the Affordable Care Act that opponents found a path to challenge the law, all the way to the Supreme Court.

How those words became the most contentious part of President Obama's signature domestic accomplishment has been a mystery. Who wrote them, and why? Were they really intended, as the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim, to make the tax subsidies in the law available only in states that established their own health insurance marketplaces, and not in the three dozen states with federal exchanges? ... Read more

Durable Goods Orders Slide YoY 4th Month In A Row Despite Dramatic Upward Revisions
ZeroHedge | author | 05/26/15

After dramatically upwardly revised data from last month (but following an even more dramatic downward revision to all historical data earlier in the month) - the highly noisy series of Durable Goods Orders printed -0.5% (from +5.1% in March, revised up from +4.0%). Capital Goods Orders (non-defense Ex-Air) beat expectations MoM (printing +1.0% vs 0.3%) and was revised remarkably up from the biggest drop since 2012 to a 1.5% rise in March. Core Capital Goods Orders, however, remains negative YoY for the 4th months in a row. The last time this happened was either a recession, or the Fed unleashed QE3. ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

Chinese State Paper Warns "War Will Be Inevitable" Unless U.S. Stops Meddling In Territorial Dispute
ZeroHedge | author | 05/26/15

Just to confirm that if the US had hoped it could threaten Beijing into submission and force the Politburo into curbing its expanionist appetit, it was dead wrong, the nationalist Global Times, a paper owned by the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper, the People's Daily, said in a Monday editorial that war was "inevitable" between China and the United States unless Washington stopped demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway. ... Read more

How The Saudis Wag The Washington Dog
ZeroHedge | author | 05/26/15

In real democracies, governments would do what the citizens who put them in office want them to do. The United States and other Western democracies make a mockery of that ideal. But, even so, there are limits; governments cannot defy public opinion on matters of great moment indefinitely. Enabling the Saudi ruling class, and the rulers of the other Gulf states, to direct American foreign policy to the extent that they do, and to get away with whatever they please, is hardly the least of it; but neither is it the only cause for concern. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, May 26 [13:02]
DN | 137 Shots, No Convictions: Cleveland Cop Acquitted in Killing of Unarmed African-American Pair (05/26/15) [16:45]
More News
*CNN | Texans scramble to recover after "wall of water... (05/25/15) [1:39]
*James Corden on California's Water Shortage () [4:12]
The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer (trailer) [2:00]

The Look of Silence is Joshua Oppenheimer's - powerful companion piece to the Oscar®-nominated The Act Of Killing. Through Oppenheimer's footage of perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered, as well as the identities of the killers.
The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer website
TRNN | Mr. Appy, author of "American Reckoning: "America Does Bad Things for Good Reasons": the Vietnam War and American Exceptionalism, Part 1 (05/26/15) [20:43]
*TRNN | Heidi Garrett-Peltier, assistant research professor at PERI explains: Cost of War and Lost Job Opportunities (05/26/15) [6:47]
Over 350,000 people (more like 1.3 million) have been killed directly from war-related violence (Afghan & Iraq) according to a new study done by Brown University on the cost of war. And of course many more have been killed, directly and indirectly, but the same study states that we have spent almost $4.4 trillion as of 2014 on these wars. But these wars in the long term will likely cost us much more. The question is, to what end? The threats that were stated as the reasons for going to war still exist today.
TRNN | TRNN DEBATE: Should Bernie Sanders Run as an Independent? (05/26/15) [12:39]
TYT | Oil Tycoon Attacks Anti-Fracking Researchers (05/25/15) [8:30]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
*ThomHartmann | TPP Won't Balance the Power of China (05/20/15) [7:23]
*ThomHartmann | End the Bankster's Get Out of Jail Free Card (05/21/15) [5:10]

05.26.2015. 09:38

Monday May 25, 2015
News Articles

Five big banks agree to pay more than $5 billion to settle regulatory charges
WashingtonPost | Steven Mufson | 05/20/15

Five of the world's largest banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion in fines to settle charges made by regulatory agencies and the Justice Department that the banks had acted in concert to manipulate international interest and foreign currency exchange rates.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the banks had engaged in "brazenly illegal behavior .?.?. on a near-daily basis." She added that the deal showed that the government "intends to vigorously prosecute all those who tilt the economic system in their favor [and] who subvert our marketplaces." ... Read more

ISIS Planning US Nuclear Attack In Next 12 Months: Report
ZeroHedge | author | 05/25/15

Three weeks after the first supposed attack by Islamic State supporters in the US, in which two ISIS "soldiers" wounded a security guard before they were killed in Garland, Texas, the time has come to raise the fear stakes. In an article posted in the terrorist group's English-language online magazine Dabiq (which as can be see below seems to have gotten its design cues straight from Madison Avenue and is just missing glossy pages filled with 'scratch and sniff' perfume ads ) ISIS claimed that it has enough money to buy a nuclear weapon from Pakistan and "carry out an attack inside the United States next year." Read more

Islamic State's magazine Dabiq, whose latest issue, #9

The Islamic State's (ISIS, ISIL) Magazine. All of the issues of the Islamic State's glossy propaganda magazine 'Dabiq,' named after a key site in Muslim apocalypse mythology can be found here
.
Readers Comment
The Islamic world is more worried about this worsening situation. The main targets of Isis are not Israel or non Muslims but majority of the people who they kill are Muslims, Edword snowden already said that thier leader got Training from isreal. May be this is a new weapon of World Powers to carry on War on Terror and this time Middle East is to destructed.
Readers Comment 2
Maybe the trail will lead to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave?

Bernanke Says "No Large Mispricings In US Securities"; These 5 Charts Say Otherwise
ZeroHedge | author | 05/25/15

Retired central banker, blogger, bond guru and hedge fund consultant Ben Bernanke just uttered the following total rubbish... *BERNANKE: NO LARGE MISPRICINGS IN U.S. SECURITIES, ASSET PRICES ...In an effort to save whoever it is that will pay him $250,000 next for these wise words, we offer five charts. Read more

N.S.A. and Other Matters Leave McConnell's Senate in Disarray
NYTimes | Jennifer Steinhauer | 05/23/15

The sleepy United States senators thought they were done voting. But then, around 1 a.m. on the Saturday before Memorial Day, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and presidential candidate, marched spryly to the Senate floor to let it be known that, no, he would not agree to extend the federal government's bulk collection of phone records program. Not even for one day.

With that, Senator Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentucky Republican who only a few hours before was ebullient with the passage of a major trade package, was reduced to ordering his colleagues back to Washington next Sunday to try again to prevent the act from expiring. ... Read more

Lake Mead Water Level Mysteriously Plunges After Nevada Quake
ZeroHedge | author | 05/25/15

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake (originally reported 5.4) shook Las Vegas and surrounding areas Friday morning causing roads and bridges to be closed. The quake went little-reported outside of local news (since there was at first glance minimum damage caused) but, since the quake's occurrence, something considerably more worrisome has occurred.

In the 36 hours since the quake's occurrence, water levels at Lake Mead have plunged precipitously. While we know correlation is not causation, the 'coincidence' of an extreme loss in water levels occurring in the aftermath of one of the largest quakes in recent Vegas history does raise a suspicious eyebrow - especially when there has been no official word on the precipitous decline. ... Read more

RT | Indian nightmare: GMO killer-cotton (05/24/15) [26:35]
An estimated 290,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in 20 years. Small farms used to be the country's economic backbone, but now owners struggle to make even a meager profit and drown in debt. For some, the pressure is too much. Many blame GMO cotton for the failing farms, having cornered the market and replaced organic crops; they have failed to live up to expectations.
*TRNN | Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, says that Syria could turn into another Afghanistan with US and Saudi policies creating significant blowback in the region (05/25/15) [9:32]
TRNN | Dimitri Lascaris discusse: Default Looms in Greece (05/25/15) [10:56]
TYT | Huge Bank Fines Hide A Dirty Truth About American Justice (05/23/15) [7:50]
TYT | Tom Cotton Thinks The Iraq War Was Justified (05/23/15) [8:42]
RT | CrossTalk: ISIS Redrawing Maps (05/20/15) [23:50]
RT | Keiser Report: How much do they steal? (E761) (05/23/15) [24:55]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
*Thom Hartmann | Last Hours: The Frightening Reality of Global Climate Change (03/06/15) [12:42]
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.

05.25.2015. 12:09

Friday May 22, 2015
News Articles

Senate Debate Reveals Absurd Level Of Trade Deal Secrecy
HP | Ryan Grim | 05/21/15

A revealing conversation on the Senate floor Thursday showed precisely how secretive President Barack Obama's pending trade deals are, and the absurdity of arguments to the contrary.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sponsored a bill that would have required the administration to post a "scrubbed" copy of the trade deals well before Congress gives the president fast-track authority to jam them easily through Congress. ... Read more

George Soros Warns "No Exaggeration" That China-US On "Threshold Of World War 3"
ZeroHedge | author | 05/22/15

While admitting that reaching agreement between the two countries will be difficult to achieve, George Soros - speaking at The World Bank's Bretton Woods conference this week - warned that unless the U.S. makes 'major concessions' and allows China's currency to join the IMF's basket of currencies, "there is a real danger China will align itself with Russia politically and militarily, and then it is not an exaggeration to say that we are on the threshold of a third world war." ... Read more

The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It by Thom Hartmann

The United States is in the midst of an economic implosion that could make the Great Depression look like child's play. In THE CRASH OF 2016, Thom Hartmann argues that the facade of our once-great United States will soon disintegrate to reveal the rotting core where corporate and billionaire power and greed have replaced democratic infrastructure and governance. Our once-enlightened political and economic systems have been manipulated to ensure the success of only a fraction of the population at the expense of the rest of us.

The result is a "for the rich, by the rich" scheme leading to policies that only benefit the highest bidders. Hartmann outlines the destructive forces-planted by Lewis Powell in 1971 and come to fruition with the "Reagan Revolution"-that have looted our nation over the past decade, and how their actions fit into a cycle of American history that lets such forces rise to power every four generations.

However, a backlash is now palpable against the "economic royalists"-a term coined by FDR to describe those hoarding power and wealth-including the banksters, oligarchs, and politicians who have plunged our nation into economic chaos and social instability.

Although we are in the midst of what could become the most catastrophic economic crash in American History, a way forward is emerging, just as it did in the previous great crashes of the 1760s, 1856, and 1929. The choices we make now will redefine American culture. Before us stands a genuine opportunity to embrace the moral motive over the profit motive-and to rebuild the American economic model that once yielded great success.

Thoroughly researched and passionately argued, THE CRASH OF 2016 is not just a roadmap to redemption in post-Crash America, but a critical wake-up call, challenging us to act. Only if the right reforms are enacted and the moral choices are made, can we avert disaster and make our nation whole again.
Audio Book | The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America by Thom Hartmann () [9:33:50]

This Aging Oil Pipeline Is In Great Lakes' 'Worst Possible Place' For A Spill
HP | Samantha Lachman | 05/22/15

Environmental activists say Michigan's tourism slogan -- "Pure Michigan" -- may no longer be accurate unless the state takes stronger action to prevent a 62-year-old oil pipeline from rupturing in a sensitive waterway.

The pipeline, called Line 5, is owned by the Canadian energy company Enbridge, carrying nearly 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids every day. It passes between the state's upper and lower peninsulas, along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. East of the pipeline is the iconic Mackinac Bridge, depicted on many of the state's license plates, and Mackinac Island, an historic, no-cars resort area. ... Read more

The NSA Plan To Find Bin Laden By Hiding Tracking Devices In Medical Supplies
firstlook.org/theintercept/ | Cora Currier | 05/21/15

The National Security Agency concocted a plan to find Osama bin Laden by hiding tracking devices in medical supplies, in an attempt to cross what officials called the "non-electronic moat" surrounding the reportedly ailing terrorist leader.

The scheme is laid out in a top-secret NSA presentation dated June 2010 and titled "Medical Pattern of Life: Targeting High Value Individual #1," which was among the files provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. ... Read more
Zero Dark Thirty () [2:36:59]

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, May 22 [10:37]
DN | State of Emergency in California as Santa Barbara Cleans Up from Another Major Oil Spill (05/22/15) [13:43]
TRNN | Kirk Wiebe says: As Senate Debates Patriot Act, Is Privacy Possible with Current U.S. Foreign Policy? (05/22/15) [10:55]
TRNN | Dr. Thierry Vrain and Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam discuss the science behind genetically engineered crops and the significance of GMO restrictions in more than 60 countries (05/22/15) [15:24]
TYT | Governments Lie And The Reality Of Iraq (05/21/15) [2:14]
TYT | Rand Paul Stands Up Against The Patriot Act (05/21/15) [5:54]
TYT | Jeb Bush Backtracks On Climate Change (05/21/15) [9:51]
TYT | School To Prison Pipeline Robs Young People Of Their Future (05/21/15) [6:04]
RT | Keiser Report: (E760) (05/21/15) [29:19]
RofF | Can Bernie Sanders Beat Hillary Clinton? (05/21/15) [5:37]
RofF | Republicans Fiddle While The Planet Burns (05/21/15) [2:54]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
TalkingStickTV | Thom Hartmann: The Crash of 2016 (05/02/14) [1:12:19]
Click picture to zoom in
Click picture to zoom in
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.

05.22.2015. 10:59

Thursday May 21, 2015
News Articles

Public Confused Why World's Biggest Banks Admitting Criminal Fraud, Leads To Public Yawns
ZeroHedge | author | 05/21/15

  1. Libor - interest rates
  2. ISDAfix - swaps
  3. Platts - oil prices
  4. WM/Reuters - FX
  5. High-Frequency Trading - equities

It was about two years ago when we summarized all the known and confirmed rigged markets. Since then things have gone from bad to worse for believers in fair and efficient markets, with not only countless more banks now admitting they rigged Libor and FX. It all culminated with yesterday's settlement in which five of the world's biggest banks, including JPM, Citi and Barclays, agreed to plead guilty in a currency-rigging probe. And, to Bloomberg's dismay, the public yawned. ... Read more

Now, by granting waivers allowing lenders (banksters) to keep operating even after a felony plea, the government has managed to punish firms (banksters) while protecting them from fatal consequences.
20 Banks | 650 Fines (over 20yr period) | $246 Billion in Fines... So Who Cares?

How the White House plans to help the humble bee maintain its buzz
WashingtonPost | Juliet Eilperin | 05/19/15

The humble bee -- nuisance, threat, and linchpin of the American food supply -- has won over the leader of the free world. And now President Obama is intervening on the bee's behalf as its habitat dwindles.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration will announce the first National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, a bureaucratic title for a plan to save the bee, other small winged animals and their breeding grounds. The initiative may feel like the kind of niche interest a second-term president devotes his time to, but scientists say his attention to the busy workforce that sustains many American crops is critical. ... Read more

The Hidden 'Betrayal' In Obama's Trade Agenda
HP | Laura Barron-Lopez | 05/20/15

As Congress prepares to give President Barack Obama expedited powers to "fast-track" trade deals through Congress, many U.S. steel mills and skeptics of Obama's trade agenda are worried about steel dumping, the term commonly used to describe countries selling steel below market price.

A "vibrant steel industry," Brown said, is a "national security issue" that is being toyed with because of the failure to crack down on steel dumping and similar practices.

"China has more steelmaking capacity than the entire rest of the world combined. They can't keep their steel mills busy, because they don't have that much domestic consumption," he said. "So China is always trying to sell steel at below-market prices -- so-called 'dumping steel' is the term the trade lawyers use." ... Read more

shanghai, China
Click picture to zoom in
More News
  1. Once-Unthinkable Criminal Pleas by U.S. Banks Get Investor 'Meh' (BBG)
  2. The E-Mail That Helped Catch Barclays: 'ISDAfix Is Manipulated' (BBG)
  3. CFTC Said Preparing ISDAfix Probe Talks in Weeks: Credit Markets (BBG)
  4. Islamic State takes control of Syria's Palmyra in westward advance (Reuters)
  5. Tensions High as Greece Gets Smallest Aid Rise Yet (BBG)
  6. The Rise of the $50,000 Rental (BBG)
  7. U.S. says South China Sea reclamations stoke instability (Reuters)
  8. First Hanergy Now Goldin: Hong Kong Stocks Drop Like Stones (BBG)
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, May 21 [11:55]
*DN | Matt Taibbi: World's Largest Banks Admit to Massive Global Financial Crimes, But Escape Jail (Again) (05/21/15) [14:42]
*DN | Matt Taibbi: on Baltimore, Freddie Gray and How Legal System Covers Up Police Violence (05/21/15) [10:22]
DN | Sgt. James Brown, 26, Survived Two Tours in Iraq Only to Die Begging for His Life in Texas Jail (05/20/15) [17:36]
DN | Say Her Name: Families Seek Justice in Overlooked Police Killings of African-American Women (05/20/15) [4:32]
*TRNN | James S. Henry says: Five Big Banks Plead Guilty to Rigging Currency Markets and No One Goes to Jail (05/21/15) [12:44]
*TRNN | Sen. Elizabeth Warren Pushes Back Against TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Fast Track (05/21/15) [6:12]
TRNN | Norman Finkelstein: U.S. Might Support UN Resolution That Leaves Palestine with a "Garbage Dump", Part 3 (05/21/15) [13:21]
*TYT | Bernie Sanders: Free College For All (05/20/15) [8:25]
*TYT | White-On-White Crime -- Will White Culture Ever Grow Up? (05/20/15) [6:58]
TYT | NYC School's Novel Lesson On Race (05/20/15) [8:28]
*RT | CrossTalk: China's South Sea? (Ft. Pepe Escobar) (05/20/15) [23:50]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/

05.21.2015. 10:46

Wednesday May 20, 2015
News Articles

Fall of Ramadi reflects failure of Iraq's strategy against Islamic State, analysts say
WashingtonPost | Hugh Naylor | 05/19/15

As Islamic State militants repeatedly attacked ­Ramadi this year, police solicited cash from local families and businessmen to buy weapons, one officer recalled. The Iraqi government didn't pay the police for months, he said. "We begged and begged for more support from the government, but nothing," said Col. Eissa al-Alwani, a senior police officer in the city.

The fall of Ramadi amounts to more than the loss of a major city in Iraq's largest province, analysts say. It could undermine Sunni support for Iraq's broader effort to drive back the Islamic State, vastly complicating the war effort. ... Read more
WP | Fall of Ramadi reflects failure of Iraq's strategy against Islamic State, analysts say

5 Banks To Plead Guilty To Criminal Rigging Charges, Pay $5.6 Billion For Manipulating Markets
ZeroHedge | author | 05/20/15

As the live webcast from US AG Loretta Lynch indicates, moments ago the DOJ announced five global banks including Citi, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, RBS would plead guilty to criminal charges to conspiring to manipulate FX Prices, and would pay some $5.6 billion in combined penalties to resolve a long running U.S. investigation into whether traders at the banks colluded to move foreign currency rates in directions to benefit their own positions. ... Read more

UBS will pay $545 million, plead guilty to one count of wire fraud, and go on DoJ "Probation" For Rigging $5 Trillion-A-Day FX Market.

Do you know what a Trillion dollars looks like?? National Debt - TILLIONS.

The Market's One-Sided Game Of Chicken
ZeroHedge | author | 05/20/15

That the Fed and other central banks have unleashed the speculative furies is an unassailable and baleful reality. What is going on here plain and simple is a one-sided game of chicken. The robo-traders and hedge fund buccaneers on Wall Street press the market higher on virtually no volume or conviction whenever macro-economic weakness presents itself, virtually daring the Fed to maintain is ultra-accommodative stance still longer. The casino gamblers will keep chop, chop choppin' higher until they finally lose confidence that the Eccles building is heaven's door to further riches. Then the machines will sell, sell, sell. There will be no credible Fed speakers to stop them. ... Read more

What A Cashless Society Would Look Like
ZeroHedge | author | 05/20/15

"A depression is coming? Let's put interest rates at zero. The economy is still in trouble? Let's have the central bank print trillions in new securities. The banks are not lending? Let's change the accounting rules and offer government guarantees and funds. People are still not spending? Let's have negative interest rates. The economy is still in the tank? LET'S BAN CASH TRANSACTIONS!" ... Read more

A 2016 theme emerges: Money, money, money, money, money
WashingtonPost | Dan Balz | 05/19/15

Despite the blur of activity by innumerable candidates, the 2016 presidential campaign so far is a mostly shapeless enterprise, save for one dominant factor: the prominence of money in the narrative. More than anything, money has been the defining characteristic of the race, highlighted by the political and private activities of the brand names of Clinton and Bush.

In their own ways, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush have brought unintentional attention to the role of money in politics and public life, to the intersection of money and political and public influence, and to the general absence of restraints, self-imposed or enforced. ... Read more

Every One Should Get a Second Chance
TheDoDo.com | Dying Dog Thrown In Garbage Is Unrecognizable Now
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, May 20 [7:15]
Bust Up The Big Banks
Ten Ideas to Save the Economy #4: Bust Up Wall Street (05/18/15) [2:49]
*TRNN | Robert Scheer & Chris Hedges: They Know Everything About You, Part 7 (of 7) (05/20/15) [20:22]
For the rest of the episodes go here
*TRNN | Norman Finkelstein: Israel's Iron Dome and Palestinian Armed Resistance, Part 2 (05/20/15) [20:52]
TRNN | Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada says: Illinois House Passes Bill to Stop BDS Campaign Against Israel (05/20/15) [17:41]
*TYT | Religious Terrorist Plotted To Kill Entire American Town & He's Already Out Of Jail (05/19/15) [8:30]
TYT | Chris Christie Wants 9/11-Style Fear To Rule All Of Our Lives (05/19/15) [8:05]
RT | Keiser Report: Great Apes with Human Rights (E759) (05/19/15) [25:31]
RofF | Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV - 05/19/2015 [29:00]
  1. "Rail Lobby Made Amtrak A Death Trap." David Haynes will explain the activities of the railway lobby, specifically how they managed to get liability caps on disasters and their efforts to make the entire industry a lot less safe. #Amtrak
  2. "The Discussion on Race We Should Be Having." Chauncey DeVega will tell us why the corporate media is ignoring the real discussion on race that needs to be had in America. #Baltimore
  3. "The Backstory." Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins will discuss some of the top news stories from the past week that corporate media refused to cover.
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Ralph Nader: What I'd Do as President... (05/19/15) [3:59]
ThomHartmann | Ralph Nader: Return to Sender... (05/19/15) [7:15]
ThomHartmann | How Do We Fix Our Trade Problem? (05/19/15) [5:51]
ThomHartmann | Why President Obama Really Wants TPP... (05/19/15) [6:31]

05.20.2015. 11:17

Tuesday May 19, 2015
News Articles

Original Iraq War Skeptics Find The Rekindled Debate Maddening
HP | Sam Stein | 05/18/15

For those lawmakers who actually voted against the war, and those journalists who reported skeptically before the attack, this is misleading at best and self-serving at worst. Watching the revisionist story take hold 13 years after they opposed the invasion is reviving the frustration and marginalization they felt back then.

"I was amazed, absolutely amazed at how people were supporting going to war on the basis of things that just weren't so," said former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), one of a handful of members who opposed the invasion. "It was clear as it could be. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. None of the intel suggested they had anything to do with 9/11 and the whole rationale for WMD [weapons of mass destruction] was just very, very thin for anybody who read the intelligence reports." As for the 2016 candidates' comments, he said: "It is just a rewriting of history in an attempt for everybody to cover their extraordinary mistake; probably one of the most serious mistakes in the military and diplomatic history of the United States, and they were all complicit." ... Read more

Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden by Wayne Madsen

An international bestseller, banned in Switzerland by the bin Laden family, Forbidden Truth by Jean-Charles Brisard & Guillaume Dasquie shows how US national security in Afghanistan was disastrously compromised by corporate oil interests & Saudi Arabia. Brisard wrote the 1st intelligence report on the bin Laden financial networks which was used to close down fraudulent Islamic charities funding terrorism, a report that President Jacques Chirac handed to George Bush on his visit to the US in the wake of 9/11. Forbidden Truth reveals that French intelligence gave the FBI unambiguous information that the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Massaoui, was tied to Al Qaeda, a story Brisard broke to Salon magazine before Special Agent Coleen Rowley came out publicly to say the FBI stifled the investigation. John O'Neill the former head of the FBI's antiterrorism division--who perished in the World Trade Center--told Jean-Charles Brisard in 7/01, "All of the answers, all of the clues allowing us to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia." The result of three years of investigation by a leading French intelligence expert & investigative journalist, Forbidden Truth is the untold story of the Clinton & Bush attempts to stabilize Afghanistan so that US energy companies could build a pipeline. In particular, it details the secret hazardous diplomacy between the Bush administration & the Taliban from February to August 2001--a story still untold in the US media--talks that ultimately led the US to make threats via Pakistani intermediaries to the Taliban in 7/01 that they were going to bomb Afghanistan if the Taliban didn't comply.

Osama Bin Laden -- The Truth Be Told
HP | Michael Brenner | 05/18/15

Sy Hersh's revelations about the systematic misrepresentation by the Obama administration of how it brought Osama bin-Laden to bay are causing a stir. Justifiably so. For they puncture the carefully constructed myth of how America revenged itself and renewed itself through this act of righteous justice. Moreover, the account of unsavory chicanery in high places once again spotlights the deceit that now is the hallmark of how our government works.

A year or so after the event, I wrote a piece in The Huffington Post about the CIA-sponsored film Zero Dark Thirty which has entrenched a cartoon version of this mythic story in the popular American mind. That commentary lays out some of the logical contradictions and false notes in the official story on which the film is based. I have incorporated a condensed, slightly modified version, in the belief that it could help serve as a primer for following the argument that the Hersh reporting has triggered. ... Read more

Original article (good)-> London Review of Books | The Killing of Osama bin Laden by Seymour M. Hersh

What The Snowden Files Say About The Osama Bin Laden Raid
firstlook.org/theintercept | author | 05/18/15

The U.S. has long maintained that the raid was conducted without the knowledge of the Pakistani government, and that the critical intelligence that led to bin Laden's location came from a years-long effort by U.S. analysts and operatives to trace the path of an Al Qaeda courier.

The Intercept is publishing a number of documents from the Snowden archive related to the Abbottabad raid and the hunt for bin Laden, which neither explicitly prove nor disprove any aspect of Hersh's account. However, the documents reference a number of things that are relevant to the debate, including the tracking of Al Qaeda couriers in Pakistan and the existence of intelligence gathered from the Abbottabad compound, as well as the impact of the raid on U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism partnerships.... Read more

A New Design for Antarctic Research
The new Halley VI Antarctic Research Station, the first fully-relocatable research station, launched this year and was designed by Hugh Broughton Architects with AECOM for British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
According to information provided by the architects, the modules are supported on giant steel skis and hydraulically driven legs. The legs allow the station to rise up out of the snow to avoid being buried, and as the ice shelf moves out towards the ocean, the modules can be lowered onto the skis and towed to a new, safer location further inland. Interior photos
More News
  1. China's Record Capital Outflows Spark Financial Stability Fears (FT)
  2. U.K. Inflation Falls Below Zero for First Time Since 1960 (BBG)
  3. Islamic State Solidifies Foothold in Libya to Expand Reach (WSJ)
  4. Judge sentences 11 Afghan police over lynching of woman in Kabul (Reuters)
  5. The $18 Trillion Global Economic Boost If Everything Went Right (BBG)
  6. Eurozone Prices Confirmed Flat Year-on-Year in April, Core Inflation Inches Higher (Reuters)
  7. Greek Finances to Stagger On Longer Than You Think (BBG)
  8. Athens sees EU deal soon, Greeks' approval of government stance dwindles (Reuters)
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, May 19 [9:29]
*DN | How an 85-Year Old Nun, Activists Infiltrated Top U.S. Nuclear Site, Exposing Dangers & Urging Peace (05/19/15) [18:13]
Three peace activists who infiltrated a nuclear weapons site have been freed from prison after their convictions were overturned. In 2012, the self-described Transform Now Plowshares broke into the Y-12 nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Known as the "Fort Knox of Uranium," the complex holds enough uranium to make 10,000 nuclear bombs. The activists cut holes in the fence to paint peace slogans and threw blood on the wall, revealing major security flaws at the facility, which processes uranium for hydrogen bombs. The break-in sparked a series of congressional hearings, with The New York Times describing it as "the biggest security breach in the history of the nation's atomic complex." The three were convicted of damaging a national defense site. After two years behind bars, a federal appeals court recently vacated their convictions, saying the prosecution failed to prove the three intended to "injure the national defense." All three were released this weekend until their resentencing on a remaining charge of damaging government property. They have likely already served more time than they are set to receive under their new sentencing. We are joined by two of the activists -- Sister Megan Rice, an 85-year-old Catholic nun, and Michael Walli -- as well as their attorney, Bill Quigley.
DN | With House Passage of Extreme 20-Week Abortion Ban, GOP Continues Assault on Reproductive Rights (05/19/15) [13:03]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | The Poor You Know & Did You Even Try to Research This? (05/14/15) [9:37]
*TRNN | Robert Scheer & Chris Hedges: They Know Everything About You, Part 6 (05/19/15) [25:37]
To get a better sense of the history Robert Scheer and Chris Hedges is talking about watch earlier episode of "The Untold History Of The US" by Oliver Stone.
The Untold History Of The US by Oliver Stone
TRNN | Josh Hoxie & Mayra Guizar examine: 43 million people are carrying $1.3 trillion in student debt. Graduating Class of 2015 Most Debt Burdened in History (05/19/15) [25:37]
TRNN | Norman Finkelstein: Israel's Descent into Barbarism, Part 1 (05/19/15) [22:28]
*TYT | Lindsey Graham To Run As ISIS's Worst Nightmare & He's Not Wrong (05/18/15) [9:26]
TYT | Stunning Number Believes Texas Will Be Invaded By Its Own Country (05/18/15) [8:58]
TYT | Police Have Their Toys Taken Away (05/18/15) [9:01]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Caller: Why Won't Media ask Jeb Bush About PNAC? (05/15/15) [4:03]
ThomHartmann | A Day in the Life of a Black Man... (05/15/15) [3:01]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

05.19.2015. 10:55

Monday May 18, 2015
News Articles

Antarctic Ice Shelf Is A Few Years From Disintegration: NASA
HP & Reuters | Alex Dobuzinskis | 05/15/15

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The last intact section of one of Antarctica's mammoth ice shelves is weakening fast and will likely disintegrate completely in the next few years, contributing further to rising sea levels, according to a NASA study released on Thursday.

The research focused on a remnant of the so-called Larsen B Ice Shelf, which has existed for at least 10,000 years but partially collapsed in 2002. What is left covers about 625 square miles (1,600 square km), about half the size of Rhode Island. ... Read more

Washington's Shadowy Energy Partnership With Azerbaijan Exposed
ZeroHedge | author | 05/18/15

Ten Members of the U.S. Congress -- along with 32 of their staff members -- received secret payments from Azerbaijan's state-owned oil company to travel to Baku in 2013, to cover the cost of travel, including souvenirs of "silk scarves, crystal tea sets and Azerbaijani rugs." ... Read more

GregPalastOffice | BP Blow-out Cover-Up (04/20/12) [6:29]
Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores by Greg Palast

This is the story of the corporate vultures that feed on the weak and ruin our planet in the process-a story that spans the globe and decades.

For Vultures' Picnic, investigative journalist Greg Palast has spent his career uncovering the connection between the world of energy (read: oil) and finance. He's built a team that reads like a casting call for a Hollywood thriller-a Swiss multilingual investigator, a punk journalist, and a gonzo cameraman-to reveal how environmental disasters like the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, and lesser-known tragedies such as Tatitlek and Torrey Canyon are caused by corporate corruption, failed legislation, and, most interestingly, veiled connections between the billionaires of financial industry and energy titans. Palast shows how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and Central Banks act as puppets and bandits for Big Oil.

With Palast at the center of an investigation that takes us from the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon, Vultures' Picnic shows how the big powers in the money and oil game slip the bonds of regulation over and over again, and simply destroy the rules that they themselves can't write-and take advantage of nations and everyday people in the process.

12 Years of Bush Presidencies = 747,000 Net New Private Sector Jobs
HP | Paul Abrams | 05/17/15

As former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) flails about trying to use his family name to attract financial and elite support while also desperately trying to distance himself from his brother's disastrous record, there is another problem he cannot run away from: The 12 Bush years were the worst on record for net new private sector job creation. Not just the worst, but no one has even come close to being the second worst.

Not just the worst, but no one has even come close to being the second worst.

That's it. Less than 1 million new private sector jobs in 12 years of Bush presidencies. President Obama creates as many new private sector jobs in 3-4 months as the Bushes did in 12 years.

To understand this more fully, the Bushes averaged 5,190 new jobs per month for 12 years. No, not 51,000 that would be considered terrible, awful and devastating. But one-tenth of that, 5,190. There are no words to describe how abysmal that is. ... Read more

David Stockman: "We Are Entering The Terminal Phase Of The Global Financial System"
ZeroHedge | author | 05/18/15

"What happened in each of those episodes was a short-run break in the system, collapse of confidence and flight to gold. What I think we are facing now is a terminal phase of a monetary system that isn't viable, stable or sustainable. Therefore gold has but one characteristic - massive upside in the years ahead." ... Read more

This Is What A $240/Share AAPL Would Look Like In Context
ZeroHedge | author | 05/18/15

If Carl Icahn, whose $6.8 billion in AAPL holdings makes him nearly a 6x bigger holder of the stock than the Swiss National Bank, is correct and AAPL is truly worth $240/share today, or about $1.4 trillion, roughly equivalent to 9% of US GDP, then this is how AAPL would rank if it were a sovereign nation (and yes, we know comparing market cap to GDP is idiotic, but so is everything else these days).

For the purists, at $240/share, AAPL would be 2.2x larger than the entire market cap of the Italian or Swedish stock market, 1.9x larger than all Spanish public companies combined, it would be almost the same size as the market cap of all Swiss companies, and is just about 70% of the market cap of Germany or France.

More News
  1. Tsipras Endgame Nears as Greek Bank Collateral Evaporates (BBG)
  2. Shi'ite forces ordered to deploy after fall of Iraqi city (Reuters)
  3. Ratings agency Fitch to downgrade many European banks (Reuters)
  4. Bubble Blowing to Continue So Long as Yellen Isn't Raising Rates (BBG)
  5. Greece's Debt Battle Exposes Deeper Eurozone Flaws (WSJ)
  6. Obama to set new limits on police use of military equipment (Reuters)
  7. China April home prices fuel hopes of bottoming out, but long road to recovery (Reuters)
  8. Hedge Funds Close Doors, Facing Low Returns and Investor Scrutiny (NYT)
  9. ASIC's Greg Medcraft 'quite worried' about Sydney, Melbourne house prices (Fin Review)
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, May 18 [10:56]
*DN | Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders' Presidential Bid & His Unanswered Letters to the White House (05/18/15) [14:02]
DN | Death Penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Anti-Execution State Brings Complications, Not Closure (05/18/15) [10:03]
John Oliver
HBO | John Oliver: Chickens (05/17/15) [18:21]
Pam Geller's Islamification of America! (humor)
Pam Geller's Islamification of America! (05/15/15) [1:53]
*TRNN | Robert Scheer & Chris Hedges: They Know Everything About You, Part 5 (05/18/15) [20:50]
*TYT | Cuba's Lung Cancer Vaccine Stuns But The Real Surprise Is The Price (05/16/15) [4:07]
TYT | House of Representatives Approves Bill To End NSA Data Collection (05/16/15) [7:57]
TYT | Fox Guest So Vile & Sexist Even Hannity Cringes (05/15/15) [6:42]
TYT | Police Brutality Cartoons Break Eric Bolling's Stupid Hypocritical Brain (05/15/15) [8:23]
TYT | Sam Harris & Noam Chomsky Trade Nasty Emails Until A Winner Emerges... (05/15/15) [18:26]
RT | CrossTalk: Dissolve NATO? (05/18/15) [24:40]
RT | Keiser Report: 26 Most Terrifying Words (E758) (05/16/15) [25:39]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
*ThomHartmann | Brunch with Bernie: May 15, 2015 (05/15/15) [44:02]
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.

05.18.2015. 11:22

Friday May 15, 2015
News Articles

As Chicago Pays Victims of Past Torture, Police Face New Allegations of Abuse at Homan Square
DemocracyNow | author | 05/15/15

More victims have come forward to detail recent abuse inside Homan Square, a secret compound used by Chicago police for incommunicado interrogations and detentions which some have described as the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site overseas. Exclusive video obtained by The Guardian shows a Chicago man named Angel Perez being taken inside a "prisoner entrance." Perez says police handcuffed his right wrist to a metal bar and then sexually assaulted him with a metal object, believed to be a handgun barrel. Perez says the officers also threatened to "go after" his family members, including his father who is battling cancer. Perez is now the 13th person to describe his detainment at the secret police site to The Guardian. Like many detainees, he apparently was never formally arrested -- neither booked, nor permitted access to an attorney, nor charged. Now, Perez and four others have filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department. We are joined by the reporter who broke the Homan Square story, Spencer Ackerman, national security editor at The Guardian.

We Are Seneca Lake: Josh Fox & Fracking Opponents Fight Natural Gas Storage Site in Upstate NY
DemocracyNow | author | 05/15/15

On Wednesday, Josh Fox, director of "Gasland," the documentary which exposed the harms of the fracking industry, was arrested along with 20 other people after forming a human barricade at a natural gas storage facility in upstate New York. The action was part of a long-standing campaign against plans by Crestwood Midstream to expand gas storage in abandoned salt caverns at Seneca Lake, a drinking water source for 100,000 people. We speak to Fox and air his new documentary short, "We Are Seneca Lake.

We never really should have built massive, sprawling cities such as Las Vegas and Phoenix in the middle of the desert. But the 20th century was the wettest century for western North America in about 1,000 years, and we got lulled into a false sense of security.

The Greatest Water Crisis In The History Of The United States
ZeroHedge | author | 05/15/15

What are we going to do once all the water is gone? Thanks to the worst drought in more than 1,000 years, the western third of the country is facing the greatest water crisis that the United States has ever seen. Lake Mead is now the lowest that it has ever been since the Hoover Dam was finished in the 1930s, mandatory water restrictions have already been implemented in the state of California, and there are already widespread reports of people stealing water in some of the worst hit areas. But this is just the beginning.

Right now, in a desperate attempt to maintain somewhat "normal" levels of activity, water is being pumped out of the ground in the western half of the nation at an absolutely staggering pace. Once that irreplaceable groundwater is gone, that is when the real crisis will begin. If this multi-year drought stretches on and becomes the "megadrought" that a lot of scientists are now warning about, life as we know it in much of the country is going to be fundamentally transformed and millions of Americans may be forced to find somewhere else to live. ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

"We're only at 38 percent full. Lake Mead hasn't been this low since we were filling it in the 1930s," said a spokeswoman for the US Bureau of Reclamation in Las Vegas.
Running Dry: A Journey From Source to Sea Down the Colorado River by Jon Waterman

In 1869, John Wesley Powell led a small party down the Green and Colorado Rivers in a bold attempt to explore the Grand Canyon for the first time. After their monumental expedition, they told of raging rapids, constant danger, and breathtaking natural beauty of the American landscape at its most pristine.

Jon Waterman combines sheer adventure and environmental calamity in this trailblazing cautionary account of his 2008 trip down the overtaxed, drying Colorado. Dammed and tunneled, forced into countless canals, trapped in reservoirs and harnessed for electricity, what once was untamed and free is now humbled, parched, and so yoked to human purposes that in most years it trickles away 100 miles from its oceanic destination.
NatGeo | Running Dry (04/28/10) [1:40]
NatGeo | Chasing Rivers: The Colorado, Part 1 (11/10/14) [24:00], Part 2 [23:30]
Russia and WWII
RT | CrossTalk: Remembering Victory (05/08/15) [24:14]
RT | #Victory70: Largest May 9 parade in Russian and Soviet history since WW2 (05/09/15) [1:31:15]
Deaths by Country during WWII
CountryTotal deaths
Albania30000
Australia40400
Austria(German-controlled)120000
Belgium88000
Brazil2000
Bulgaria25000
Burma(British)272000
Canada45400
China15,000,000 to 20,000,000
Cuba100
Czechoslovakia(Nov 1938 borders)325000
Denmark3200
Dutch East Indies3,000,000 to 4,000,000
Estonia (1939 borders)50000
Ethiopia100000
Finland97000
France550000
French Indochina1,000,000 to 2,200,000
Germany7,000,000 to 9,000,000
Greece320,000 to 807,000
Guam1,000 to 2,000
Hungary580000
Iceland200
India (British)1,587,000 to 2,587,000
Iran200
Iraq500
Ireland200
Italy450000
Japan2,500,000 to 3,000,000
Korea (Japanese Colony)400,000 to 500,000
Latvia (1939 borders)230000
Lithuania (1939 borders)350000
Luxembourg2000
Malaya(British)100000
Malta (British)1500
Mexico100
Mongolia300
Nauru(Australian)500
Nepalincluded with India
Netherlands301000
Newfoundland(British)100
New Zealand11900
Norway9500
Papua and New Guinea(Australian)15000
Philippines(U.S. Territory)500,000 to 1,000,000
Poland (1939 borders)5,000,000 to 6,000,000
Portuguese Timor40,000 to 70,000
Romania (1939 borders)800000
Ruanda-Urundi(Belgian)0 to 300,000
Singapore(British)50000
South Africa11900
South Pacific Mandate(Jap)57000
Soviet Union25,000,000 to 30,000,000
Spainincluded with Germany
Swede600
SwitzerlandBB100
ThailandBC7600
TurkeyBD200
United KingdomBE450900
United States420000
Yugoslavia1,000,000 to 1,700,000
Approx. Totals60,000,000 to 85,000,000
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, May 15 [10:56]
*DN | We Are Seneca Lake: Josh Fox & Fracking Opponents Fight Natural Gas Storage Site in Upstate NY (05/15/15) [15:59]
*DN | As Chicago Pays Victims of Past Torture, Police Face New Allegations of Abuse at Homan Square (05/15/15) [14:51]
Bernie Sanders
How to Solve America's Biggest Problems with Bernie Sanders! (04/11/15) [46:39]
Environment - Fracking
Gasland () [1:42:41]
Gasland 2010 () [1:42:56]
*TRNN | Robert Scheer & Chris Hedges: They Know Everything About You, Part 3 (05/15/15) [19:54]
*TRNN | Seymour Hersh says by going public with a "fairytale" narrative of the murder of Bin Laden, President Obama broke an agreement with top Pakistani generals to hide the U.S. mission and Pakistani military complicity. (05/15/15) [35:47]
Original article (good)-> London Review of Books | The Killing of Osama bin Laden by Seymour M. Hersh
TYT | Fox News Snob To Obama: We've Never Demonized The Poor-- ROLL THE TAPE! (05/14/15) [3:29]
TYT | Iraq War's Latest Victim? Jeb Bush & Yes, It's A Clusterf*ck (05/14/15) [11:31]
TYT | Decline In Religion Frightens Bill O'Reilly (05/14/15) [9:37]
TYT | Christian Persecution? It's Everywhere. Can I Name One Example? No. (05/14/15) [3:30]
RT | CrossTalk: Syrian Nightmare (05/15/15) [24:36]
RT | Keiser Report: Modern Slave Masters (E757) (05/14/15) [24:30]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | What is the Appropriate Role of Government? (05/14/15) [5:50]

05.15.2015. 15:23

Thursday May 14, 2015
News Articles

Thirty Million Gallons Under the Sea
Harpers Magazine | Antonia Juhasz | June 2015

One morning in March of last year, I set out from Gulfport, Mississippi, on a three-week mission aboard the U.S. Navy research vessel Atlantis. The 274-foot ship, painted a crisp white and blue, stood tall in the bright sunlight. On its decks were winches, cranes, seafloor-mapping sonar, a machine shop, and five laboratories. Stowed in an alcove astern was Alvin, the federal government's only manned research submarine. "Research vessel Atlantis outbound," A. D. Colburn, the ship's captain, reported into the ship radio.

The water was calm and the bridge crew quiet as they steered us into open water. For the next fourteen hours, we would sail toward the site of BP's Macondo well, where, in April 2010, a blowout caused the largest offshore-drilling oil spill in history. Once there, Atlantis's crew would launch Alvin and guide it to the bottom of the ocean, reaching depths as great as 7,200 feet below the surface. Over the next twenty-two days they would send the submersible down seventeen times, to gather animal, plant, water, and sediment samples. Their goal was to determine how BP's spill had affected the ocean's ecosystem from the seabed up. I would get the chance to join them in the submarine as they went closer to the Macondo wellhead than anyone had gone since the blowout. ...

Sorry I can't get to the whole article.
Read more

Jeb Bush Confronted By College Student: 'Your Brother Created ISIS'
HP | Marina Fang | 05/13/15

A college student told likely GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Wednesday that his brother, former President George W. Bush, was to blame for the rise of the Islamic State.

The heated confrontation took place at a town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada, according to The New York Times. Ivy Ziedrich, 19, a student at the University of Nevada, approached the former Florida governor to question him about comments he had made during the event. Bush had argued that the Obama administration's weak foreign policy was responsible for the rise of the terrorist group, also known as ISIS, in the Middle East. ... Read more

Senate Cuts Deal To Pass Obama's Secretive Trade Bills...

The $60 Billion Question: Can Afghanistan Take The Taliban And ISIS On Its Own?
HP | Akbar Shahid Ahmed | 05/13/15

American taxpayers have spent $62.5 billion on Afghanistan's military and police forces since the U.S. invaded that country in 2001. It could all go to waste -- or, worse, to extremists -- if the Afghan and U.S. governments don't increase their vigilance, according to the top watchdog for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

"The evidence strongly suggests that Afghanistan lacks the capacity -- financial, technical, managerial or otherwise -- to maintain, support and execute much of what has been built or established during more than 13 years of international assistance," said John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, in an address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday. ... Read more

*Why There Has Been No Recovery (In One Simple Chart): A Harvest Of Corruption
ZeroHedge | author | 05/14/15

The following graph is an older one and has been talked about for a while. But, it does a good job of illustrating that Corporations have been making bigger and bigger profits, while off-shoring jobs and paying lower wages here in the US. And they still complain of high taxes!
"The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy."
Will Rogers, Nov 26, 1932

"Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."
John Kenneth Galbraith

"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud."
Charles H. Ferguson

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Upton Sinclair
Read more
Click picture to zoom in
More News
  1. Amtrak train in Philadelphia wreck was traveling at twice speed limit (Reuters)
  2. The engineer has no recollection of the crash and "no explanation" for what happened (WSJ)
  3. Taliban claim attack on Afghan guesthouse that killed 14 (Reuters)
  4. Chicago's Junk Rating From Moody's Puzzles Investors (BBG)
  5. House votes to end spy agencies' bulk collection of phone data (Reuters)
  6. Wesley Clark: The Penny-Stock General (BBG)
  7. AOL's Armstrong to Leave $213 Million Richer After Verizon Deal (BBG)

Who Is The Biggest Energy Company in the World?
ZeroHedge | author | 05/14/15

PetroChina just surpassed Exxon Mobil to become the largest energy company in the world, on a market cap basis. Now the question becomes: can PetroChina retain its status as the world's largest energy company? ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, May 14 [8:56]
*DN | As Train Crash Death Toll Reaches 7, GOP Votes to Cut Amtrak Budget by $250M & Delay Safety Upgrades (05/14/15) [21:17]
<<- See article in the left column.
*DN | 30 Million Gallons Under the Sea: Five Years After BP Disaster, New Drilling OK'd by Spill Site (05/14/15) [11:17]
AJPlus - COMPLETE Surveillance
*AJPlus | Do Not Track: How Apps Access Your Private Information, Part 1 (05/12/15) [3:26], Part 2 [3:25], Part 3 [2:19], Part 4 [5:03]
*TRNN | Former NSA Senior Intelligence Analyst, J. Kirk Wiebe says the original USA Freedom Act after the Snowden disclosures are much better than what is being considered today (05/14/15) [15:44]
TYT | All The Ways Your Smartphone Is Spying On You 24/7 (05/13/15) [3:16]
AJ+ | Journalist Says Osama bin Laden Raid Is A Lie (05/11/15) [1:11]
TYT | Senate Denies Fast-track For Obama's Trade Deal (Trans-Pacific Partnership = TPP) (05/13/15) [11:19]
TYT | Were Obama's Comments About Elizabeth Warren Sexist? (05/13/15) [9:49]
TYT | President Obama Speaks Truth About Fox News (05/13/15) [8:47]
RT | Keiser Report: Don't Stop 'Banker Bashing'! (E756) (05/12/15) [23:30]
RT | Seymour Hersh: Bin Laden 'raid' - 'Old, sick man, who was going to be murdered' (05/12/15) [13:46]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Shell Exposes Arctic to 75% Chance of a LARGE Spill... (05/13/15) [5:48]
ThomHartmann | Republicans Care More About Billionaires than America... (05/13/15) [6:44]
ThomHartmann | America's infrastructure continues to fall apart (05/13/15) [7:50]
Jon Stewart - Daily News
Jon Stewart | Jon Stewart Feeds Fox News From Its Own 'Rich Buffet Of Bulls**t' (05/14/15) [9:37]

05.14.2015. 10:59

Wednesday May 13, 2015
News Articles

Amtrak Train Derails In Philadelphia, Killing At Least 6
HP | Andrew Hart | 05/13/15

At least six people were killed -- and eight individuals remain in critical condition -- after an Amtrak train traveling from Washington to New York City derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter described the wreckage and dangerous debris from the six overturned cars as an "absolute disastrous mess." "I have never seen anything like it in my life," Nutter said. ... Read more

Senate Democrats Knock Down Obama's Trade Bill (Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP)
HP | Laura Barron-Lopez | 05/13/15

Senate Democrats dealt a stinging blow to President Barack Obama Tuesday by blocking legislation that would grant him authority to fast-track international trade deals.

Democrats, including several who favor Obama's trade agenda, banded together to prevent the Senate from considering legislation that grants the president so-called Trade Promotion Authority, which would bar Congress from amending or filibustering trade agreements negotiated by the administration. Fifty-two senators voted to start debate on the bill, short of the 60 needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Forty-five senators voted against the plan. ... Read more

The Detail in Seymour Hersh's Bin Laden Story That Rings True
NYTimes | Carlotta Gall | 05/12/15

... But others, including top Pakistani generals, insisted that this was not the case. American officials at first said Bin Laden resisted the SEALs; the Pakistanis promptly leaked that he wasn't armed. Then came differing stories from the SEALs who carried out the raid, followed by a widening stream of new details from government reports -- including the 336-page Abbottabad Commission report requested by the Pakistani Parliament -- and from books and interviews. All of the accounts were incomplete in some way. ... Read more

Brig Usman Khalid informed CIA of Osama's presence in Abbottabad
thenews.com.pk | Amir Mir | 05/12/15

ISLAMABAD: Pulitzer prize winning American journalist Seymour Hersh's most recent claim that a former Pakistani intelligence official had actually informed the Americans about the Abbottabad hideout of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden (OBL), has given credence to the notion that a former ISI official provided the information about Osama's location in exchange of US$ 25 million bounty as well as the US citizenship with a new identity. ... Read more

The Killing of Osama bin Laden by Seymour M. Hersh
London Review of Books | Seymour M. Hersh | 05/12/15

It's been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama's first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan's army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration's account. The White House's story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida's operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said. ... Read more

They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy by Robert Scheer

They Know Everything About You is a groundbreaking exposé of how government agencies and tech corporations monitor virtually every aspect of our lives, and a fierce defense of privacy and democracy.

The revelation that the government has access to a vast trove of personal online data demonstrates that we already live in a surveillance society. But the erosion of privacy rights extends far beyond big government. Intelligence agencies such as the NSA and CIA are using Silicon Valley corporate partners as their data spies. Seemingly progressive tech companies are joining forces with snooping government agencies to create a brave new world of wired tyranny.

Life in the digital age poses an unprecedented challenge to our constitutional liberties, which guarantee a wall of privacy between the individual and the government. The basic assumption of democracy requires the ability of the individual to experiment with ideas and associations within a protected zone, as secured by the Constitution. The unobserved moment embodies the most basic of human rights, yet it is being squandered in the name of national security and consumer convenience.

Robert Scheer argues that the information revolution, while a source of public enlightenment, contains the seeds of freedom's destruction in the form of a surveillance state that exceeds the wildest dream of the most ingenious dictator. The technology of surveillance, unless vigorously resisted, represents an existential threat to the liberation of the human spirit.

The US Is In Recession According To These 7 Charts
ZeroHedge | author | 05/13/15

The evidence continues to mount... "Most since Lehman" has become the new meme for macro-economic data in the US as day after day brings another lacklustre superlative to be dismissed with some excuse by the cognoscenti of sell-side economists... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, May 13 [7:06]
*DN | Revolt over TPP: Senate Dems Rebuke Obama by Blocking Debate on Secretive Trade Deal (05/13/15) [11:13]
DN | As Internal Docs Show Major Overreach, Why Is FBI Spying on Opponents of Keystone XL Pipeline? (05/13/15) [10:06]
Jon Stewart - Daily News
Jon Stewart | Jeb Bush's Support For George W. Is Like Wearing An 'I F--k Dogs' T-Shirt (05/13/15) [7:01]
*TRNN | Robert Scheer & Chris Hedges: They Know Everything About You, Part 1 (05/13/15) [21:12], Part 2 [18:32]
<<- see book information in the left column
TRNN | Verizon Buys AOL, Now Owns HuffPost (05/13/15) [8:27]
TRNN | Union Activist Frank Hammer says: Senate Democrats Block Obama's Fast-track Authority for Trade Pacts (TPP) (05/13/15) [13:16]
*TYT | Osama Bin Laden Raid Details Exposed By Seymour M. Hersh (05/12/15) [16:40]
TYT | Critics Attack Seymour Hersh After Bin Laden Raid Story Goes Public (05/12/15) [9:59]
TYT | Mark Halperin Bloomberg Interview Of Ted Cruz Racist? (05/12/15) [10:14]
*RT | CrossTalk: The Yemen Proxy? (05/13/15) [24:23]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Who's Writing the TPP? (05/12/15) [6:06]
ThomHartmann | Why are Republicans Sticking it to our Troops? (05/12/15) [3:44]

05.13.2015. 13:32

Tuesday May 12, 2015
News Articles

Greece Effectively Defaults To IMF Using SDR Reserves To "Repay" Fund; 1 Month Countdown Begins
ZeroHedge | author | 05/12/15

Greece tapped emergency reserves in its holding account at the IMF in order to make a 750 million euro payment to the Fund on Monday meaning that, as predicted, the IMF is now paying itself. Athens has one month to replenish the account. Meanwhile, the Fund has indicated it wants no part of another Greek bailout. And just to confirm how terminal the situation for Greece is, MarketNews just reported that Greece now has a paltry €90 million in cash reserves left. The end of the world's most drawn out tragicomedy is finally nigh. ... Read more

Central Planning + HFT = Global Bond Crash.

Seymour Hersh's Bin Laden Raid Bombshell Draws White House, Media Pushback
HP | Michael Calderone | 05/11/15

Hersh's 10,000-word article, published in the London Review of Books, prompted pushback from the White House and from journalists, who rebutted his claims online, on cable news, and on Twitter.

Hersh on Monday brushed off the criticism in an interview with The Huffington Post. "If I worried about the reaction to what I write, I'd be frozen," he said. Hersh said that journalists "should be very skeptical of someone who says what goes against what every newspaper and magazine believed." ... Read more

Newsy | White House, Journalists Pan Hersh's New Bin Laden Theory (05/11/15) [2:27]

Seymour Hersh Article Alleges Cover-Up in Bin Laden Hunt
NYTimes | Matthew Rosenberg | 05/11/15

Four years after a Navy SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, lingering questions remain about the raid and what led up to it. Now, in a 10,000-word article in The London Review of Books, the journalist Seymour M. Hersh challenges nearly every facet of the semiofficial narrative that has emerged over the years, alleging a vast cover-up that involves hundreds, possibly thousands, of people and goes all the way to President Obama himself. ... Read more

Pope Warns "Powerful People Don't Want Peace Because They Live Off War
ZeroHedge | author | 05/12/15

... The Pope has a rather depressing message for the world's children: the world's most powerful people don't want peace:

Many powerful people don't want peace because they live off war," the Pontiff said as he met with pupils from Rome's primary schools in the Nervi Audience Hall.

Talking to children during the audience organized by the Peace Factory Foundation, he explained that every war has the arms industry behind it.

"This is serious. Some powerful people make their living with the production of arms and sell them to one country for them to use against another country," the Pope was cited by AGI news agency as saying.

The head of the Catholic Church labeled the arms trade "the industry of death, the greed that harms us all, the desire to have more money."

"The economic system orbits around money and not men, women," he told 7,000 kids present at the audience.

Despite the fact that wars "lose lives, health, education," they are being waged to defend money and make even more profit, the Pope said.
Read more
Click picture to zoom in
War Games
Newsy | Texas 'Jade Helm 15' Conspiracy Theory Splits Politicians (05/09/15) [2:39]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, May 12 [12:51]
*DN | Seymour Hersh Details Explosive Story on Bin Laden Killing & Responds to White House, Media Backlash (05/12/15) [21:05]
*DN | Exclusive: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Speaks Out Upon Sentencing to 3.5 Years in Prison (05/12/15) [15:19]
DN | "Kill Anything": Israeli Soldiers Say Gaza Atrocities Came from Orders for Indiscriminate Fire (05/06/15) []
CBS | Face the Nation
*CBS News | Face the Nation: Bernie Sanders on CBS Face the Nation (05/10/15) [5:56]
*TRNN | Larry Wilkerson: Jeb Bush's Entourage Filled with Neocons (05/12/15) [6:43]
*TRNN | Investigative reporter Marcy Wheeler: CIA Whistleblower Gets 42 Months In Prison For Talking to Press (05/12/15) [8:33]
TYT | Jeb Bush Promises He'll Be As Stupid About Iraq As His Brother (05/11/15) [6:38]
TYT | Is Obama The Reason Black People Aren't Grateful To The Cops? (05/11/15) [11:51]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | What Happened to the American Middle Class? (05/11/15) [9:17]
Why Aren't the "Job Creators" Creating Jobs? (05/11/15) [1:46]
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.

05.12.2015. 11:25

Monday May 11, 2015
News Articles

Seymour Hersh: Obama's Entire Account Of bin Laden's Death Is One Big Lie; This Is What Really Happened
ZeroHedge | author | 05/11/15

The last time famed US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made news in the global media was with his massive, 5000-word expose from December of 2013 "Whose sarin?" revealing the true motives behind the Syrian near-war of 2013 including what we had said from the very beginning: the very professionally created YouTube clips showing the consequences of what was said to have been an Assad poison gas attack, were nothing but a fake (subsequent reports identified the propaganda source as Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose entire operation has been funded by an unidentified European country.)

Fast forward to today when in a report whose word count doubles his previous record for the London Review of Books, Hersh targets a topic near and dear to the hearts of many Americans: the story of the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. Or rather the completely false and, according to Hersh, fabricated story, one made up entirely by the US president and spoon fed for popular consumption with the aid of a Hollywood blockbuster whose entire plot line is, if Hersh is correct, one big lie as well. ... Read more

*Seymour Hersh Claims Obama Lied About Bin Laden Raid
www.lrb.co.uk | Seymour M. Hersh | 05/__/15

It's been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama's first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan's army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration's account. The White House's story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida's operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said. ... Read more

HP | Jeb Bush: I'd Have Invaded Iraq, Too! (05/10/15) (article)
Note: to Jeb Bush. Most of the World leaders think that George W. Bush, and many top figures in his administration, should be brought up for War Crimes. Heck, George W. Bush's administration 1) dropped the ball on terrorism (9/11), 2) went after the wrong people, and created the mess we are in now, and then 3) dropped the ball on our Economy (2008 crash). What else could they have fucked up, and got away with????

Note: the value in our economy is being Extracted

Congress Tells Court That Congress Can't Be Investigated For Insider Trading
firstlook.org/theintercept | Lee Fang | 05/09/15

In a little-noticed brief filed last summer, lawyers for the House of Representatives claimed that an SEC investigation of congressional insider trading should be blocked on principle, because lawmakers and their staff are constitutionally protected from such inquiries given the nature of their work.

The legal team led by Kerry W. Kircher, who was appointed House General Counsel by Speaker John Boehner in 2011, claimed that the insider trading probe violated the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch.

In 2012, members of Congress patted themselves on the back for passing the STOCK Act, a bill meant to curb insider trading for lawmakers and their staff. "We all know that Washington is broken and today members of both parties took a big step forward to fix it," said Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, upon passage of the law. ... Read more

F.E.C. Can't Curb 2016 Election Abuse, Commission Chief Says
NYTimes | Eric Lichtblau | 05/02/15

The leader of the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.

"The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim," Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. "I never want to give up, but I'm not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It's worse than dysfunctional." ... Read more

All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power by Nomi Prins

... All the Presidents' Bankers sheds new light on pivotal historic events--such as why, after the Panic of 1907, America's dominant bankers convened to fashion the Federal Reserve System; how J. P. Morgan's ambitions motivated President Wilson during World War I; how Chase and National City Bank chairmen worked secretly with President Roosevelt to rescue capitalism during the Great Depression while J.P. Morgan Jr. invited Roosevelt's son yachting; and how American financiers collaborated with President Truman to construct the World Bank and IMF after World War II.

Prins divulges how, through the Cold War and Vietnam era, presidents and bankers pushed America's superpower status and expansion abroad, while promoting broadly democratic values and social welfare at home. But from the 1970s, Wall Street's rush to secure Middle East oil profits altered the nature of political-financial alliances. Bankers' profit motive trumped heritage and allegiance to public service, while presidents lost control over the economy--as was dramatically evident in the financial crisis of 2008. ...

The Latest Outrageous Example of the Pentagon, DEA and Private Companies Conspiring to Track Everything You Do
AlterNet | Bill Blunden | 05/08/15

Guess what the malware software is really for?

... A report published by Privacy International as well as an article posted by Vice Motherboard clearly show that both the DEA and the United States Army have long-standing relationships with Hacking Team, an Italian company that's notorious for selling malware to any number of unsavory characters.

Federal records indicate that the DEA and Army purchased Hacking Team's Remote Control System (RCS) package. RCS is a rootkit, a software backdoor with lots of bells and whistles. It's a product that facilitates a covert foothold on infected machines so intruders can quietly make off with sensitive data. The aforementioned sensitive data includes encryption keys. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, May 11 [11:21]
DN | As Feds Probe Baltimore Police, Cops in Freddie Gray Case Seek Removal of Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby (05/11/15) [27:58]
John Oliver
HBO | John Oliver: Paid Family Leave (05/10/15) [12:20]
*TRNN | Jamie Henn Co-Founder of 350.org says: NOAA Warns Record High Levels of Co2 in the Atmosphere (05/11/15) [6:32]
TRNN | Vijay Prashad: Is Assad on the Brink of Defeat? (05/10/15) [7:21]
*TYT | More Proof Obama's TPP Deal Favors The Rich (05/10/15) [4:02]
TYT | Congress Quietly Made Insider Trading Legal... For Themselves (05/10/15) [6:48]
TYT | Top Election Regulator: I Have ZERO Power To Regulate Elections (05/10/15) [6:41]
TYT | Richest Congressman: The World Is Jealous Of Our Poor (05/10/15) [8:23]
RT | CrossTalk: Teetering Ukraine (05/11/15) [23:47]
RT | Keiser Report: UK Election Aftermath (E755) (05/11/15) [23:39]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Bernie Sanders: TPP Will Be a Disaster! (05/08/15) [1:42]
ThomHartmann | TPP Would Mean Layoffs for Maine Shoe Company... (05/08/15) [2:33]

The Meatless Monday Winner Even Carnivores Will Love
HP | author | 05/04/15

Bucatini with Sautéed Chard and Vegetarian Sausage, 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients
2 pre-cooked Italian vegetarian sausages (we like Field Roast), cut into 1/3 to 1/2-inch round slices (you can also use seitan slices if vegetarian sausage is not available)
Kosher salt
1 pound bucatini (or spaghetti)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 large bunches chard (Swiss, red, rainbow or a combination) leaves cut into 1 inch wide strips, ribs and tender stems roughly chopped (discard the thicker part of the stems)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
3 tablespoons chopped Italian (flat-leaf) parsley
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sausage in one layer; cook undisturbed until browned, 2 to 4 minutes. Using tongs, flip and cook on the other side for an additional 2 to 4 minutes. Set the sausage aside in a dish or bowl.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat and add 1 tablespoon of salt. Add the pasta to the pot of boiling water and cook until al dente, about 1 minute less than the directions on the package. Reserve 1/4 cup of the pasta water and drain the pasta in a colander.

Meanwhile, wipe down the skillet with paper towels, set it over medium heat, and add the oil. When the oil is shimmering add the chard stems and sauté for 2 minutes. Stir in the garlic, red pepper flakes, and 2 tablespoons of the parsley, and cook for 1 minute. Add the chard and sauté, stirring until wilted, 7 to 9 minutes (you can cover the skillet with a large lid but continue to stir.) Season with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/8 teaspoon of black pepper.

Add the drained pasta to the skillet with 3 tablespoons of the reserved pasta water and cook, stirring, until the pasta is coated, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer the pasta to a serving bowl, and sprinkle with the remaining parsley, and Parmesan cheese (if desired). Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve hot.
Read more


05.11.2015. 11:46

Friday May 08, 2015
News Articles

Watch Bernie Sanders Explain In 30 Seconds Why Elites Love Voter Apathy
AlterNet | Zaid Jilani | 05/08/15

American voter turnout has long lagged behind that of most countries. A new Pew survey released this month found that among developed countries the United States had higher voter turnout in the last national election than only Japan, Chile, and Switzerland: This lower voter turnout has consequences -- it is a well-established fact that the groups of people that do not vote tend to have more progressive views. Thus lower voter turnout tends to benefit conservative political parties. ... Read more
*Bernie Sanders Explains Why Elites Don't Want You To Vote (05/07/15) [0:23]

Old Workers Hit New All Time High As All April Jobs Go To The "55 And Older".

Americans Not In The Labor Force Rise To Record 93,194,000
ZeroHedge | author | 05/08/15

In what was an "unambiguously" unpleasant April jobs payrolls report, with a March revision dragging that month's job gain to the lowest level since June of 2012, the fact that the number of Americans not in the labor force rose once again, this time to 93,194K from 93,175K, with the result being a participation rate of 69.45 or just above the lowest percentage since 1977, will merely catalyze even more upside to the so called "market" which continues to reflect nothing but central bank liquidity, and thus - the accelerating deterioration of the broader economy. ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

Part-Time Jobs Soar By 437,000; Full-Time Jobs Tumble, Stay Firmly Under Pre-Recession Highs.

There Will Be More Silence in the Face of Tyranny if We Continue to Look the Other Way
HP | Charles M. Sennott | 05/08/15

We will see more murders like the public beheading of the American freelance journalist James Foley, more messengers detained like the Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian who is being held on trumped up accusations in a Tehran prison simply for reporting the story of a changing Iran, and there will be more horrific attacks like the one at Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

This dark vision for the future will be our own fault if we allow the attack on journalism around the world to go unchecked for another decade, if we continue to look the other way and ignore how killing the messenger erodes democracy and threatens a free, open society. ... Read more

Man Loses Leg To Flesh-Eating Bacteria After Stepping In Gulf Of Mexico
HP & ABC | James Gerken | 05/07/15

When Zach Mody stepped into the Gulf of Mexico last month to take a photo of the sunset, the water splashed over his foot, which had a small cut on it. "I didn't think anything about it," he told local ABC-7 affiliate WZVN.

A physician assistant who spoke with WZVN offered a description of Mody's symptoms that closely matches an infection known as necrotizing fasciitis. It's not clear what specific type of bacteria Mody was exposed to, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several types of bacteria can cause necrotizing fasciitis. Most commonly, the infection is caused by group A Streptococcus. Most cases of necrotizing fasciitis "occur randomly and are not linked to similar infections in others," the CDC explains. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, May 08 [10:39]
*DN | Court Rules NSA Bulk Spying Illegal: New Vindication for Snowden, and Uncertainty for PATRIOT Act (05/08/15) [14:22]
*DN | As Obama Admin Seeks More Funding for Charter Schools, Questions Raised over Billions Already Spent (05/08/15) [16:21]
Bloomberg News
I don't like Larry Summers, because I think he was one of the causes for the 2008 crash. But, I did find this interview interesting, because he kept talking about the underlining problems not being addressed.
*Bloomberg | Larry Summers: I'm Concerned U.S. Growth Won't Pick Up (05/07/15) [7:51]
*TRNN | John Kiriakou says: They Won't Shut Me Up, Part 10 (05/08/15) [15:48]
For interviews 1-9 go here
TRNN | Emptywheel.net's Marcy Wheeler discusses a US court of appeals court ruling that paves the way for challenging bulk metadata collection (05/08/15) [3:46]
TRNN | Sonali Kolhatkar, the co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence, discusses the latest round of talks between Taliban and the Afghan government in Doha, Qatar (05/08/15) [9:59]
TRNN | Bilal Ahmed: The Dismal Failure of "Operation Decisive Storm" in Yemen (05/08/15) [10:24]
TYT | HUGE WIN FOR PRIVACY! Court Rules NSA Spying Is Illegal (05/07/15) [12:21]
*TYT | Oil Companies Secretly Meet With Iran (05/07/15) [5:09]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

05.08.2015. 10:46

Thursday May 07, 2015
News Articles

Deutsche Bank's Head Of Global Credit Strategy Explains Why "This Is Not Capitalism"
ZeroHedge | author | 05/07/15

"... part of the problem today is that over the last 15-20 years, capitalism has been propped up every time it's about to go through one of the cyclical creative destruction phases. Compounded up that's left us with a big mess to clear up across the globe and a lot of sub optimal resource allocation. So across a lot of the Western World we're left with too much debt, too much inequality, low real wage growth, limited conventional tools to help the economy to de-lever, QE and ZIRP and a political backlash against the mainstream." ... Read more

NSA Phone Surveillance Not Authorized, U.S. Appeals Court Says
HP & Reuters | author | 05/07/15

A federal appeals court on Thursday said a National Security Agency program that collected the records of millions of Americans' phone calls was not authorized by Congress.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge erred in dismissing a lawsuit challenging the program's constitutionality, and returned the case to the judge for further proceedings. It also upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction to block the collection of phone records under the program. ... Read more

The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror

From the perspective of a Boeing 767 captain and former "special activities" contract pilot, Philip Marshall straps the reader into the cockpits of hijacked commercial airliners to tell the story of the most sophisticated terrorist attack in history. Based on a comprehensive ten-year study into the murders of his fellow pilots on 9/11, he explains how hijackers, novice pilots at the controls of massive guided missiles, were able to beat United States Air Force fighters to iconic targets with advanced maneuvering, daring speeds and a kamikaze finish. But, as Marshall explains, the tactical plan was so precise that it rules out car-bombers and shoe-bombers known as al Qaeda, KSM and Osama bin Laden. So then, who was it? That's what you are about learn. Backed by official NTSB, FAA and black box recordings, Marshall finds the most capable and most documented group of conspirators buried deep within a Congressional Inquiry's report and retraces their work in gripping detail. Fasten your seatbelt--- the sad truth is that all of the solid evidence points to a dark collaboration between members of the Bush Administration and a covert group of Saudi government officials. This is a game changer that will finally set the record straight on the most horrific crime in US history. ...
False Flag 911( How Bush Cheney and the Saudis Created the Post-911 World)

From the flight deck of a Boeing 767, airline captain Philip Marshall pulls back the veil of deception surrounding the 911 attacks. In gripping, authoritative detail he recreates the hijacked flights, including all their technical challenges, exploding the myths behind official accounts of pilot training and tactical planning. His finding: the mission could not have been carried out by any known terrorist group. Explaining for the first time the hijackers' mysterious trips to Las Vegas, where and how they could have been trained, and the document that actually states a political motive for the attacks, he finds abundant evidence implicating a nexus of Saudi officials, American contractors and, most unthinkably, members of the Bush administration. Analyzing 911 in terms of its original tactical plan, Marshall concludes that the attack partially failed, and that its failures could ultimately serve to bring the creators of the Post 911 World to light, if not to justice.

You Can't Point A Finger At Saudi Arabia, And Not Have 5 Fingers Pointing Back To The U.S.
opednews.com | Jon Gold | older, 01/23/15

For this article, I'm going to skip the partnerships between the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and the Pakistani ISI during the Afghanistan/Russia War to support the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Instead, I'm going to move past that time, and into the 90's where a lot of interesting things took place.

First, we'll take a look at what was called "Vulgar Betrayal" In 1996, "the most significant US government investigation into terrorist financing before 9/11, is launched. This investigation grows out of investigations Chicago FBI agent Robert Wright had begun in 1993, and Wright appears to be the driving force behind Vulgar Betrayal. ... Read more

Does Russia Really Own 20% Of The US' Uranium Reserves?

Guess Who Owns $1.1 Billion In Apple Stock
ZeroHedge | author | 05/07/15

The Swiss National Bank had a rough quarter in Q1 as the decision to abandon the increasingly unsustainable EURCHF floor (an event which marked an implicit admission that central banks are not all-powerful after all) blew a $32 billion hole in the central bank's euro reserves.

More interesting than the massive loss was the line item in the SNB's balance sheet which shows that 18% of the bank's assets are held in foreign stocks. ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

The Texas Job Recession Is Now Literally "Off The Chart"
ZeroHedge | author |05/07/15

On one hand, the government's Department of Labor reported earlier today that in the past week just 265K people were laid off: the lowest number since early 2000. On the other, private data aggregator Challenger reported that in April, there were a whopping 61,582 job cuts, a 68% surge from March, and up 53% from a year ago. This was the highest monthly total since May 2012 and the highest April total since 2009! ... Read more
Click picture to zoom in

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, May 07 [10:54]
*DN | Robert Jay Lifton on How Climate Change Joins Nuclear War in Threatening Human Survival (05/07/15) [15:00]
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
Jon Stewart | The Daily Show Looks At The Legend Of 'El Jebe' Jeb Bush (05/07/15) [5:06]
Open Secrets in Hollywood
An Open Secret (Trailer) [2:01]
AnOpenSecretFilm.com website
Philip Marshall - was he killed for his books?
Philip Marshall: THE BIG BAMBOOZLE: 9/11 and the War on Terror () [1:00:14]
CIA at War.pdf
TRNN | Bill Black: Why UK Election is a Win-Win for Banksters (05/07/15) [7:17]
TRNN | Economists John Weeks and Susan Himmelweit say: Brits Head to Polls, But Will Either Party Take on Income Inequality? (05/07/15) [12:00]
TRNN | New Democratic Party Defeats 43 Year Conservative Domination in Alberta (05/07/15) [10:01]
*TYT | Israeli Soldiers Interviewed: Told To Shoot To Kill... Everyone (05/06/15) [10:42]
Tips To Help Avoid Online Surveillance (full) (04/29/15) [2:59]
TYT | How To Avoid Online Surveillance (05/06/15) [2:41]
- Surveillance Self-Defense website
- Electronic Frontier Foundation website
TYT | Rush Limbaugh On Baltimore Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby (05/06/15) [5:49]
RT | Keiser Report: (E754) (05/07/15) [24:42]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Hedge Fund Managers Getting Political to Protect Themselves... (05/06/15) [4:34]
ThomHartmann | Why isn't the Media Talking About the Trade Deficit? (05/06/15) [1:22]
Other Videos and Articles
September 5, 2007 - U.S. Navy 'Top Gun' pilot, Commander Ralph Kolstad, started questioning the official account of 9/11 within days of the event. "It just didn't make any sense to me," he said. And now 6 years after 9/11 he says, "When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story."

Commander Kolstad adds, "I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!"

He points to the physical evidence at the Pentagon impact site and asks in exasperation, "Where is the damage to the wall of the Pentagon from the wings? Where are the big pieces that always break away in an accident? Where is all the luggage? Where are the miles and miles of wire, cable, and lines that are part and parcel of any large aircraft? Where are the steel engine parts? Where is the steel landing gear? Where is the tail section that would have broken into large pieces?"

05.07.2015. 11:06

Wednesday May 06, 2015
News Articles
We no longer have capitalism, Fair Trade, or a Democracy anymore. We have One-Dollar-One-Vote, Free Tade (for some), and an Oligarchy (rule by the few) for a government.

IL Governor Rauner's Pal Made $625,000 Per Hour Last Year and Then Gave $10 Million to Rauner Campaign to Attack Unions and Cut Worker Pay
HP | Robert Creamer | 05/06/15

The New York Times reported yesterday that Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner's chief political backer, Ken Griffin, made $1.3 billion last year as manager of the hedge fund Citadel Capital. Griffin made as much personally as 26,000 average Americans making the median wage. He made as much as 16,000 civil engineers.

Griffin made $625,000 per hour. By the way, he also benefited from the federal tax law that allows hedge fund managers to pay a maximum of 20 percent tax rate on their income. That means that Griffin probably paid a lower income tax rate than his secretary.

Not only did Griffin donate $2.5 million to Rauner's campaign for governor. He also contributed millions to right-wing Super-PACs -- including one controlled by the notorious Charles and David Koch.

And he contributed $10 million -- half of a $20 million campaign war chest -- that Rauner plans to use to run opponents against members of the legislature who dare to oppose his policies that are aimed at destroying unions and cutting worker wages and pensions. Read more

Bernie Sanders To Introduce Bill To Break Up The Big Banks
HP & Reuters | author | 05/05/15

Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist U.S. senator who has launched a bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, said on Tuesday he will introduce a bill to break up the biggest banks, a position far to the left of the party's front runner, Hillary Clinton.

Calls for Wall Street's largest firms to be cut down were numerous after taxpayers spent billions of dollars to prevent the financial system from collapse during the 2007-09 financial crisis, but they have since gradually died down. Under the Sanders proposal, regulators on the existing Financial Stability Oversight Council would compile a list of institutions that are 'too big to fail' and implicitly rely on government support during a crisis. ... Read more

California Adopts "Unprecedented" Restrictions On Water Use As Drought Worsens.

On Flash Crash Anniversary Scapegoat Sarao Says "I Did Nothing Wrong Apart From Being Good At My Job"
ZeroHedge | author | 05/06/15

While the rest of the world, or at least 1% of it, is enjoying the ongoing "wealth effect" propping up the increasingly more rickety "markets" built on the backs of $22 trillion in central bank assets, or more than the GDP of the US and Japan combined, earlier today Nav was fighting if not for his life then certainly his freedom when he told a London court he had done nothing wrong, the Flash Crash was not his fault, and was just good at his job. "I've not done anything wrong apart from being good at my job. How is this allowed to go on, man?" Sarao said at Westminster Magistrates' Court. ... Read more

Samples of Israeli Horrific Brutality and War Criminality in Gaza
firstlook.org/theintercept/ | Glenn Greenwald | 05/05/15

The Israeli group Breaking the Silence issued a report this morning containing testimony from Israeli soldiers about the savagery and criminality committed by the Israeli military during the attack on Gaza last summer. The Independent has a good article describing the report's findings: "The Israeli military deliberately pounded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip with incessant fire of inaccurate ordinance" and "was at best indifferent about casualties among the Palestinian population." At best.

This should surprise nobody who paid any attention to the brutal Israeli destruction of Gaza or, for that matter, countless Israeli attacks before that. The U.N. has said that 7 out of 10 people killed by the Israelis were civilians, "including 1,462 civilians, among them 495 children and 253 women"; video of Israelis killing four Gazan boys as they played on a beach sickened anyone decent. ... Read more

Surveillance
Electronic Frontier Foundation | Stop Watching Us () [3:25]
ReasonTV | Edward Snowden, v 1.0: NSA Whistleblower William Binney Tells All (01/10/14) [50:11]
HarvardLawSchool | Lawrence Lessig Interviews Edward Snowden (10/23/14) [1:03:01]
Climate Change | The Sixth Extinction
DN | The Sixth Extinction: Elizabeth Kolbert on How Humans Are Causing Largest Die Off Since Dinosaur Age (02/11/14) [12:45]
The Sixth Extinction () [50:27]
History of Earth and Extinction () [2:08:40]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, May 06 [9:19]
*DN | "Kill Anything": Israeli Soldiers Say Gaza Atrocities Came from Orders for Indiscriminate Fire (05/06/15) [25:30]
DN | After Palestine Overcomes U.S.-Israeli Pressure and Joins ICC, Will Gaza's Victims See Justice? (05/06/15) [13:55]
*'Breaking Silence': IDF soliders speak out on Gaza operation (05/05/15) [11:35]
Alan Grayson on TPP & TTIP
*No to 'Fast Track,' No to Trade Treachery (04/29/15) [9:00], http://www.TradeTreachery.com website
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Jon Stewart Plays 'Let's Get Rid Of Ted Cruz' (05/06/15) [5:31]
*TRNN | John Kiriakou: Why I Was Targeted by the CIA, Part 9 (05/06/15) [26:16]
For interviews 1-8 go here
TRNN | Attorney A. Dwight Pettit and law professor Byron Warnken discuss: Did States Attorney Mosby Overcharge the Six Baltimore Police? (05/06/15) [7:35]
*TYT | America's Number One Issue In 2016 Election Is... (05/05/15) [4:00]
TYT | Megyn Kelly & Bill O'Reilly Duke It Out Over Muhammad Contest (05/05/15) [3:56]
TYT | Huckabee Running For President Despite Powerful Haters (05/05/15) [7:57]
Ring of Fire | Papantonio: Sanders and Warren Are Right - Kill The TPP (05/05/15) [10:06]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Reaganism is Literally Killing Us! (05/05/15) [8:27]
ThomHartmann | DNC Announces 6 Presidential Debates... (05/05/15) [1:25]
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.

05.06.2015. 10:55

Tuesday May 05, 2015
News Articles

*Why the Trans Pacific 'Trade Deal' Is a Terrible Deal for American Workers
AlterNet | Robert Reich | 05/03/15

Have we learned nothing from thirty years of failed trickle-down economics? By now we should know that when big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy get special goodies, the rest of us get shafted.

The Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts of 1981, 2001, and 2003, respectively, were sold to America as ways to boost the economy and create jobs. They ended up boosting the take-home pay of those at the top. Most Americans saw no gains.

In fact, the long stagnation of American wages began with Reaganomics. Wages rose a bit under Bill Clinton, and then started plummeting again under George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics proved a cruel hoax. The new jobs created under Reagan and George W. Bush paid lousy wages, the old jobs paid even less, and we ended up with whopping federal budget deficits. ... Read more

*US Trade Deficit Soars To Worst Since Financial Crisis; Will Push Q1 GDP Negative
ZeroHedge | author | 05/05/15

After shrinking notably in Feb, March's US Trade deficit exploded. Against expectations of a $41.7bn deficit, the US generated a $51.4bn deficit - the worst since Oct 2008 and the biggest miss on record. Exports rose just $1.6bn while imports soared $17.1bn with the goods deficit with China soaring from $27.3bn to $37.8bn in March. Ironically, just as the "harsh winter" was found to lead to a GDP boost due to a surge in utility spending, so the West Coast port strike which was blamed for the GDP drop, was actually benefiting the US economy as it lead to a plunge in imports. In March, however, the pipeline was cleared, and US imports from China soared by over $10 billion to $38 billion. End result: prepare for upcoming Q1 GDP downgrades into negative territory. .... Read more

Greek Deal In Limbo After "Serious Disagreement" Between EU, IMF
ZeroHedge | author | 05/05/15

On the heels of Monday's news that the IMF may demand a write-off of Greek debt by European creditors before the organization will disburse its portion of a €7.2 billion aid tranche to Athens, it now appears the situation has deteriorated further with unnamed Greek officials reporting "serious disagreements" between the IMF and the EU which may make a compromise "impossible" by the critical May 12 deadline. ... Read more

The Obscene Amounts of Money the 10 Highest-Paid Hedge Fund Managers Just Made
AlterNet | Michael Arria | 05/05/15

Alpha Magazine has released its "Rich List," the annual rundown of the Unites States' highest-earning hedge fund managers and there's an interesting development. The top earners underwent a 45% drop in earnings during 2014, which prompted the magazine to invoke, "harsh memories of the global financial crisis [that] pervaded Wall Street."

Yes, the top hedge fund managers only pulled down a "paltry" $11.62 billion combined in 2014, around the same amount they were able to bag in 2008 and only a little more than half of what they generated in 2013. Head of Appaloosa Management David Tepper fell from Number 1 to 11th, taking in a "mere" $400 million. "In total, it was a rough year for hedge fund industry honchos," Jeff Cox wrote at CNBC.

Ken GriffinCitadel$1.3 billion
James SimonsRenaissance$1.2 billion
Ray DalioBridgewater$1.1 billion
Bill AckmanPershing Square$950 million
Izzy EnglanderMillenium$900 million
Michael PlattBluecrest$800 million
Larry RobbinsGlenview$570 million
David ShawDE Shaw$530 million
O. Andreas HalvorsenViking Global$450 million
Charles ColemanTiger Global$425 million
Read more

How The NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text
firstlook.org/theintercept/ | Dan Froomkin | 05/05/15

Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored.

The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called "Google for Voice" nearly a decade ago. Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community's "holy grail," the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and "extract" the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest. ... Read more



Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, May 05 [12:07]
*DN | Human Rights Watch: Saudi-Led Coalition Bombing Yemen with Banned U.S.-Made Cluster Munitions (05/05/15) [8:34]
*DN | Emails Show American Psychological Association Secretly Worked with Bush Admin to Enable Torture (05/05/15) [8:39]
Alan Grayson on TPP & TTIP
*No to 'Fast Track,' No to Trade Treachery (04/29/15) [9:00], http://www.TradeTreachery.com website
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Jon Stewart Explains When It's OK To Shoot People Who've Offended You (05/05/15) [9:55]
TRNN | Baltimore Youth on Being Called Thugs (05/05/15) [10:23]
TRNN | Baltimore Police Admit camera presence during interaction with young man prevented arrest. (05/05/15) [5:02]
TYT | Is This Job-Slashing Ex-CEO The Anti-Hillary The GOP's Been Praying For? (05/04/15) [7:58]
TYT | Neurosurgeon Turned FOX News Loon Joins Presidential Race (05/04/15) [7:09]
*TYT | 'Draw Muhammad' Contest Organizer Ups The Hate Following Shooting (05/04/15) [16:09]
RT | Keiser Report: Royal 'Cramdowns' (E753) (05/05/15) [23:47]
*Papantonio: Sanders' Candidacy Will Force Conversation on REAL Issues (05/01/15) [7:50]
Ring of Fire | Tell Americans The Truth About TPP: Quit Hiding (05/01/15) [10:42]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Sociopathy on Parade... (05/05/15) [3:17]
ThomHartmann | Bernie Sanders: The U.S. Should be like Scandinavia... (05/05/15) [2:51]
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.

05.05.2015. 11:41

Monday May 04, 2015
News Articles

Bill Gross: "This Is All Ending"
ZeroHedge | author | 05/04/15

"When does our credit based financial system sputter / break down? When investable assets pose too much risk for too little return. Not immediately, but at the margin, credit and stocks begin to be exchanged for figurative and sometimes literal money in a mattress." We are approaching that point now as bond yields, credit spreads and stock prices have brought financial wealth forward to the point of exhaustion. A rational investor must indeed have a sense of an ending, not another Lehman crash, but a crush of perpetual bull market enthusiasm. ... Read more

US Factory Orders Drop YoY For 5th Consecutive Month.
Path to Paradise - The Untold Story of the World Trade Center Bombing [VHS]

An HBO production, amazing actors, superb dialog. A bomb-making expert from Iraq attempts entry to the U.S. without a visa. He states he's leaving Iraq for political asylum in the U.S. The INS agent questions him a bit, looks over his fishy looking passport. She approaches her superior with the asylum application and urges that "he should be detained". "Jails are full. You want to take him home?" her boss retorts. The film shows just how these terrorists jumped through about any and every loophole in the system under the guise of religious freedom. Bomb-making right in the apartment. Operating right under the nose of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Anti-American propaganda tapes found in an apartment which, truth be told, is not against the law. And of course there was the chilling prophetic line at the end: "Next time we'll bring them both down." ... Read more

How to Solve America's Biggest Problems with Bernie Sanders!
How to Solve America's Biggest Problems with Bernie Sanders!
Austin Indymedia | author | 04/11/15

Watch Bernie and be inspired! Vermont's Independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders speaks on topics from climate change to income inequality in a Town Hall Meeting in Austin, Texas, on March 31st, 2015.

The Town Hall Meeting discussion items includes:
How to . . .
  1. Overturn Citizens United and Get Big Money Out of Politics;
  2. Deal with Obscene Wealth and Income Inequality.
  3. Combat Climate Change.
  4. Create Democracy NOT Oligarchy.

Ben Carson Is Running for President. Read These 6 Stories About Him Now.
MotherJones | Sam Brodey | 05/04/15

The doctor is in: Conservative darling Dr. Ben Carson officially announced that he's running for president on Sunday in interviews with TV stations in Ohio and Florida. On Monday, he's expected to address supporters in his hometown of Detroit. He will be the fourth Republican to officially enter the race, joining Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Carson's candidacy is the culmination of months of fundraising and advocacy by grassroots activists anxious for him to run for president. Carson, a former head of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University whose unlikely rise was the subject of a cable TV movie, has never before held elected office. He is popular among DC-loathing tea partiers and Christian conservatives, but his political inexperience and past gaffes will likely make it difficult for him to win over the GOP establishment. ... Read more

Future President Ben Carson Wrote 6 Books. We Read Them So You Don't Have To.
MotherJones | Tim Murphy | 01/27/15

Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson rallied Republicans at the Iowa Freedom Summit on Saturday, stirring up speculation once more that the conservative activist will seek his party's presidential nomination next year. Carson has never run for office and only recently registered as a Republican, but as the author of six books over more than two decades, he does have a considerable paper trail--and it's starting to get him into trouble. ... Read more

Climate Change
Climate Desk | Mapping Deforestation with Google Earth (older, but good) [1:08]
Climate Desk | Using the Bible to Resist Climate Action (older, but sad) [1:31]
NatGeo | Six degrees could change the world (older, but informative) [1:36:06]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, May 04 [7:58]
DN | "Our Time is Now": Baltimore State's Attorney Mosby Charges Six Baltimore Cops in Freddie Gray Death (05/04/15) [8:13]
DN | "The Army Knew": New Investigation Unravels Mexican Govt. Account of How 43 Students Disappeared (05/04/15) [10:57]
John Oliver
HBO | John Oliver: Standardized Testing (05/03/15) [18:01]
False Flag Videos
*HBO | Path to Paradise: The Untold Story of the (1993) World Trade Center Bombing () [1:34:17]
TRNN | John Kiriakou described: his time as head of counter terrorism in Pakistan and the lie about the torture of Abu Zubaydah, Part 8 (05/04/15) [24:37]
TRNN | What Conditions Gave Rise to the Baltimore Uprising? (05/04/15) [25:33]
TRNN | Was Baltimore's Curfew a Dress Rehearsal for Martial Law? (05/04/15) [39:36]
TRNN | Over 5,000 Students Call For Change From the Top in Baltimore (05/04/15) [5:01]
*TYT | Did The Supreme Court Just Overturn Citizens United On Accident? (05/03/15) [7:06]
TYT | Marilyn Mosby Attacked Immediately After Announcing Charges Against Cops (05/03/15) [9:37]
TYT | Can Bernie Sanders Appeal To Middle America? (05/03/15) [5:09]
RT | Keiser Report: Never-ending Baltimores (E752) (05/02/15) [23:36]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
ThomHartmann | Caller: End of Times Republicans Don't Want Mideast Peace... (05/01/15) [3:17]
ThomHartmann | Brunch with Bernie: May 1, 2015 (05/01/15) [44:08]
False Flags
Boston Bombing
  1. Boston Marathon bombing kills 3, injures over 140 | Jimmy Golen | AP (04/16/13)
  2. When Drills Go Live? Marathons -- A Tale of 2 Cities and the Running of a Planned Mass Casualty Event
  3. Marathons -- A Tale of 2 Cities and the Running of a Planned Mass Casualty Event.pdf
  4. Fox19 | Did the FBI know about Boston bombing beforehand? (04/16/13) [3:44]
  5. Storyleak | Anthony Gucciardi: Boston Marathon Witness, Alastair Stevenson, Interview: Police Told Us Bomb Drill Was 'Training Exercise' (04/16/13) [4:09]
London Undeground - 7/7 - 07/07/05
  1. Britain's Largest Terror Attack Likely "Mossad/MI-5? Operation | veteranstoday.com | Anthony John Hill (05/18/11) (article)
  2. 7/7 Ripple Effect 2 () [2:22:22]
  3. BBC Documentary on London 7/7 bombings () [58:58]
9/11
  1. Mike Ruppert | 9/11 - The Truth And Lies Of 911 (2004) [2:23:58]
  2. Webster G. Tarpley on the 46 Drills of 9/11 (03/30/12) [58:56]
WTC 1993
  1. FBI 100 | First Strike: Global Terror in America (02/26/93) (article)
  2. Path to Paradise: The Untold Story of the World Trade Center Bombing () [1:34:17]
  3. 1993 World Trade Center Bombing Documentary [44:30]
OKC Bombing 1995
  1. OKC Bombing Star Witness Reveals Staged Government Terror Attack (04/19/12) [1:01:33]
  2. A Noble Lie (04/19/95) [2:00:52]
F-35
Brave New Films | F35, The jet that ate the Pentagon (02/03/14) [8:18]


05.04.2015. 12:13

Friday May 01, 2015
News Articles

16 Signs That The Economy Has Stalled Out And The Next Economic Downturn Is Here
ZeroHedge | author | 05/01/15

If U.S. economic growth falls any lower, we are officially going to be in recession territory. On Wednesday, we learned that U.S. GDP grew at a 0.2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2015. That was much lower than all of the "experts" were projecting. And of course there are all sorts of questions whether the GDP numbers the government feeds us are legitimate anyway. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were used they would show that U.S. GDP growth has been continuously negative since 2005. ...

  1. We just learned that U.S. GDP grew at an anemic 0.2 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2015...
  2. If you strip a very unusual inventory buildup out of the GDP number, U.S. GDP would have actually fallen at a -2.5 percent annual rate during the first quarter...
  3. Our trade deficit with the rest of the planet is absolutely killing our economic growth. According to the Reality Chek Blog, U.S. economic growth would have been a total of 8 percent higher since the end of the last recession if we actually had balanced trade with other nations...
  4. According to numbers that were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in one out of every five American families nobody has a job. So how in the world can the "unemployment rate" be sitting at "5.5 percent" when everyone is unemployed in 20 percent of all families in the United States? It doesn't make any sense.
  5. The rate of homeownership in the United States has just hit a brand new 25 year low. How can anyone claim that the middle class is "healthy" when the percentage of Americans that own a home is the lowest that it has been in more than two decades?
  6. Back in 2013, 31 percent of all Americans said that they did not anticipate buying a home "for the foreseeable future". Just two years later, that number has risen to 41 percent.
  7. The student loan bubble is clearly bursting. According to Bloomberg, only 37 percent of all student loan borrowers are actually up to date on their payments and reducing their balances...
  8. Procter & Gamble has announced that it will be cutting up to 6,000 more jobs from their payroll. Why would they be doing this if the economy is "getting better"?
  9. McDonald's plans to permanently shut down 700 "poorly performing" restaurants over the course of 2015. Why would they be doing this if the economy is "getting better"?
  10. It is being projected that half of all fracking companies in the United States will be either "dead or sold" by the end of 2015.
  11. Retail sales in the U.S. have not dropped this rapidly since the last recession.
  12. Wholesale sales in the U.S. have not dropped this rapidly since the last recession.
  13. Factory orders in the U.S. have not dropped this rapidly since the last recession.
  14. Credit requests are being declined at a rate that we haven't seen since the last recession.
  15. U.S. export growth has gone negative for the first time since the last recession.
  16. As the U.S. economy begins to head into another downturn, most Americans are completely unprepared for it. In fact, one recent survey discovered that 62 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
Read more

Brace for a flood of foreclosures when boom-era HELOCs turn 10
msn.com | Jerry Kronenberg | 04/27/15

Millions of Americans will soon see monthly bills shoot up on home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) taken out during the housing boom, because HELOCs are going to start making homeowners pay both interest and principal, not just interest. That's bad news because many consumers are already underwater, meaning they owe more than their places are worth, a RealtyTrac study shows.

"A lot of people were using their homes as ATMs during the bubble, and that -- coupled with the fact that home values have since gone down -- has backed a lot of them into a corner," says Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac, which recently analyzed home equity lines of credit on millions of properties. ... Read more

US Manufacturing Weakest In 2 Years As Construction Spending Plunges.

How Shale Is Becoming The Dot-Com Bubble Of The 21st Century
ZeroHedge | author | 05/01/15

As I review the financials of one of the largest shale producers in the United States, Whiting Petroleum (WLL), I can't help but notice the parallels to the .COM era of 1999 which, to some extent, has already returned to the technology and biotech sectors of today. Back then, the faster you burned cash to capture customers regardless of earnings to drive your topline, the higher your valuation. The theory was that after capturing the customers (in energy today, it is the wells) spending would slow and so would customer additions allowing companies to generate cash. By the way, a classic recent case is none other than Netflix (NFLX) which, in the past was exposed for accounting gimmicks that continue even today.

What is worse is WLL continues to grow production even though prices have collapsed and cash generation is in decline. In fact, year over year cash generated from operations fell 30% despite production growing some 70% plus percent. Does this sound like a company you want to invest in or like one that is run efficiently? So, let's review: .com companies did the same and the majority went bankrupt so if WLL and other E&P companies continue to spend cash well above their operation capacity, not because they want to but because they have to, it will lead to the same result as it did in 2000... POP! ... Read more

The Uncounted; World Bank-Backed Energy Giant Threatens A Way Of Life
HP | Barry Yeoman | 05/01/15

The Tata group, one of India's largest conglomerates, promised to be a good neighbor when it took on the job of building the nation's first "ultra mega" coal-fired power plant. ICIJ and The Huffington Post estimate that 3.4 million people have been physically or economically displaced by World Bank-backed projects since 2004. For email updates on our investigation, sign up below. The plan was to build the plant along the Gulf of Kutch, an inlet of the Arabian Sea that provides a living for fishing clans that harvest the coast's rich marine life. Tata assured the World Bank Group, which was putting up $450 million to help finance the project, that there was little reason to worry about the giant plant's impact on people living and working nearby.

Tata reported that "the fishing potential of the Gulf of Kutch is significant," but there were "no local fishing activities in the coastal waters fronting the project." The "nearest small fishing community," it said, was located "outside the project area." ... Read more

Chernobyl At Risk
Chernobyl: Massive forest fire inches closer to abandoned nuclear plant, Ukraine (04/29/15) 0:58]
Chernobyl 25 Years Later: Soviet dream turned nuclear nightmare (04/26/11) [3:00]
Chernobyl Fallout 25: Pripyat, Nuclear Ghost Town (04/26/11) [26:14]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, May 01 [9:09]
*DN | Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders, the TPP "Corporate Coup d'Etat" & Writing to the White House (05/01/15) [10:58]
Alan Grayson on TPP & TTIP
*No to 'Fast Track,' No to Trade Treachery (04/29/15) [9:00]
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral rules-based trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. More at wikipedia

TPP
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed regional regulatory and investment treaty. As of 2014, twelve countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region have participated in negotiations on the TPP: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. The nine Trans-Pacific Partnership countries announced that the TPP intended to "enhance trade and investment among the TPP partner countries, to promote innovation, economic growth and development, and to support the creation and retention of jobs." Some global health professionals, internet freedom activists, environmentalists, organised labour, advocacy groups, and elected officials have criticised and protested the negotiations, in large part because of the proceedings' secrecy, the agreement's expansive scope, and controversial clauses in drafts leaked to the public. More at wikipedia

TTIP
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States. Proponents say the agreement would result in multilateral economic growth, while critics say it would increase corporate power and make it more difficult for governments to regulate markets for public benefit. The American government considers the TTIP a companion agreement to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. After a proposed draft was leaked in March 2014. More at wikipedia

TAFTA
A Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) is a proposal to create a trans-atlantic free-trade area covering Europe and North America. Such proposals have been made since the 1990s and since 2013 an agreement between the United States and European Union has been under negotiation: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Once complete, if combined with free trade agreements with Canada, Mexico and the European Free Trade Association it could form a free trade area covering a large portion of the two continents. More at wikipedia

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
http://www.senate.gov/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm http://www.TradeTreachery.com
TRNN | TRNN Investigative journalist Stephen Janis discusses: What We Know About the Multiple Investigations into Freddie Gray's Death (05/01/15) [10:51]
TYT | The Cause Of The Baltimore Riots According To One Idiotic Republican (04/30/15) [4:31]
TYT | The Story Of The Tulsa Race Riots Will Disgust You (04/30/15) [5:18]
TYT | Sen. Bernie Sanders Announces 2016 Run For Presidency (04/30/15) [6:07]
Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/
Thom Hartmann | Alan Grayson: TPP is Trade Treachery (04/30/15) [5:27]

05.01.2015. 10:40



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

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GOOD Short Videos
Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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Newer Documentaries
Documentaries You've Never Seen

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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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