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Friday November 22, 2013
News Articles

Todd Gitlin: How to Reverse the Slow-Motion Climate Change Apocalypse
AlterNet | Todd Gitlin |11/21/13

Why the divestment movement against big energy is so important.

Slow-motion, however, is not no-motion. In fits and starts, speeding up and slowing down, turning risks into clumps of extreme fact, one catastrophe after another -- even if there can be no 100% certitude about the origin of each one -- the planetary future careens toward the unlivable. That future is, it seems, arriving ahead of schedule, though erratically enough that most people -- in the lucky, prosperous countries at any rate -- can still imagine the planet conducting something close to business as usual. ... Read more

12 Ways JP Morgan Admitted It Ripped Off Americans to the Tune of Billions
AlterNet | Steven Rosenfeld | 11/20/13

Wall Street's latest chapter in corporate accountability is hardly satisfying, even if it is a rare admission of wrongdoing from a major bank. On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced a $13 billion settlement with J.P. Morgan for its rapacious role in the housing market bubble and collapse.

Beyond analyses showing that the government's supposed largest fine ever might end up " closer to $2.74 billion," and that $7 billion of it is tax deductible -- tantamount to America's 138 million taxpayers each giving a $50 bill to Morgan ...

  1. J.P. Morgan knew it had bad loans from the start
  2. J.P. Morgan knew appraisers were inflating values
  3. J.P. Morgan lied about these values to investors
  4. When asked about bad loans, they said, 'Don't worry."
  5. They were buying loans like sharks biting at bait.
  6. Their sales pitches were filled false assurances
  7. They dumped bad loans, en masse, into loan pools
  8. They had twice the bad loans as their standards allowed
  9. They met with Countywide, but kept buying bad loans
  10. They kept telling investors everything was peachy
  11. Other Wall Street giants did the exact same thing.
Read more

TPP - A Corporate Coup in Disguise
AlterNet | Jim Hightower | 10/01/13 older

This is a super-sized NAFTA, the 1994 trade scam rammed through Congress by the entire corporate establishment. NAFTA promised the "glories of globalization": prosperity across our land. Unfortunately, corporations got the gold. We got the shaft -- thousands of factories closed, millions of middle-class jobs went south, and the economies of hundreds of towns and cities were shattered.

Twenty years later, the gang that gave us NAFTA is back with the TPP, a "trade deal" that mostly does not deal with trade. Of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters! The other chapters amount to a devilish "partnership" for corporate protectionism: ...

- Banksters. Wall Street and the financial giants in other TPP countries would make out like bandits. The deal explicitly prohibits transaction taxes (such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax here) that would shut down speculators who have repeatedly triggered financial crises and economic crashes around the world. It restricts "firewall" reforms that separate consumer banking from risky investment banking. It could roll back reforms that governments adopted to fix the extreme bank-deregulation regimen that caused Wall Street's 2007 crash. And it provides an escape from national rules that would limit the size of "too-big-to-fail" behemoths.
Read more

Three Charts Explain Why Democrats Went Nuclear on the Filibuster
MotherJones | Kevin Drum | 11/22/13

No one has completely clean hands when it comes to filibusters in the Senate. Democrats have used them and Republicans have used them. But hoo boy, Republicans sure have used them more. That's why Democrats went nuclear on Thursday. Three charts tell the story. ... Read more

The Real Conspiracy Behind the JFK Assassination
MotherJones | David Corn | 11/22/13

... Like many late-year boomers, I grew up fascinated by the speculation, poring over the latest "revelations" and initially believing the worst--at one point, when I was 13, my best friend and I called Parkland Hospital in Dallas and asked to be connected to the wing where the supposedly still-alive Kennedy was being housed--but I came to conclude that much of the conspiracy-mongering was bunk. In Slate, Fred Kaplan does an excellent job chronicling his own similar trajectory, so I won't detail my conversion. But as I spent more time investigating and reporting national security matters, I came to the realization that government officials, spies, and operatives tend not to be sufficiently competent to pull off the murder of a president (with a well-placed patsy as the fall guy!) and then mount a subsequent and wildly effective cover-up. Still, I've resisted getting drawn too far into the Kennedy conspiracy debates--a true black hole. But if you're asking, I do believe that Kennedy was likely killed as the result of underhanded alliances and government misdeeds. It's just that what transpired was more nuanced than a CIA-Mafia-Castro-Soviet-Lyndon-Johnson plot. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, November 22 [10:39]
TYT News
*TYT | Afghanistan War In 2024? (11/22/13) [7:19]
"Secretary of State John Kerry announced Wednesday that the United States and Afghanistan had finalized the wording of a bilateral security agreement that would allow for a lasting U.S. troop presence through 2024 and set the stage for billions of dollars of international assistance to keep flowing to the Kabul government. The deal, which now will be presented for approval by an Afghan grand council of elders starting today, came after days of brinkmanship by Afghan officials and two direct calls from Mr. Kerry to President Hamid Karzai, including one Wednesday before the announcement. Just the day before, a senior Karzai aide had said the Afghan leader would not approve an agreement unless President Barack Obama sent a letter acknowledging U.S. military mistakes during the 12-year war. But Mr. Kerry emphatically insisted Wednesday that a deal was reached with no U.S. apology forthcoming. "President Karzai didn't ask for an apology. There was no discussion of an apology," Mr. Kerry said. "I mean, it's just not even on the table." After a 12-year war that stands as the longest in U.S. history, the security accord defines a training and counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan lasting at least another 10 years and involving an estimated 8,000-12,000 troops, mostly American.
*TYT | Elizabeth Warren Nails It On Social Security (11/22/13) [9:12]
*TYT | Don't Mix Coke With A Vote To Drug Test Welfare Recipients (11/21/13) [4:06]
*TYT | Senate Democrats Going Nuclear (11/22/13) [4:18]
TYT | Reid Finally Realizes GOP Will Never Work With Democrats (11/22/13) [8:43]
TYT | He's Autistic; He Deserved It Say Parents Of Bullies (11/22/13) [4:12]
TYT | Fox News Freaks Out Over Oprah Race Comments (11/22/13) [11:32]
TYT | Is The Bible Fiction? (11/22/13) [8:20]
*Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday (11/22/13) [1hr]
International News - Friday (11/22/13) [1hr]
MSNBC Chris Hayes - Al l In
Chris Hayes | A historic day: Nuclear option in the Senate (11/21/13) [14:20], Part 2 [3:52], Part 3 [5:48]
Chris Hayes | The fog of the Kennedy assassination (11/21/13) [4:14], Part 2 [6:16]
More segments on the MSNBC website
MSNBC Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow | GOP obstruction sparks nuclear reaction (11/21/13) [18:49]
Rachel Maddow | Digital archives a window on JFK history (11/21/13) [9:25]
More segments on the MSNBC website
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
Jon Stewart | Harry Reid bypasses the Senate's filibustering Republican minority by launching the "nuclear option." (11/21/13) [3:58]
Jon Stewart | Black Friday: Businesses extend Thanksgiving shopping hours, and turkey number 37740 shares its grievances with the world (11/21/13) [4:46], Part 2 [4:17]
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Cobert | Senate Democrats employ the so-called "nuclear option" in response to an unprecedented series of Republican filibusters (11/21/13) [3:21]
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.

11.22.2013. 11:54



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

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I'm still working on this

GOOD Short Videos
Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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I'm still working on this

Newer Documentaries
Documentaries You've Never Seen

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

Note: To view a video, click on its name/title
Great YouTube Docs. (small | pop-up)
Good YouTube Docs. (big | full screen)

Lindsey Graham Mashups
Lindsey Graham

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

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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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