Home · News · News Oct 2014
Friday October 31, 2014
News Articles

In Big-Money Move, Corporations Seek to Make Congress a Wholly-Owned Subsidiary
HP | Richard (RJ) Eskow | 10/30/14

s Election Day approaches, two reports show us exactly how corrupted our political system has become. Unless voters come out in force, it looks like corporate money is about to buy itself another house of Congress. The Wall Street Journal analyzed filings from the Federal Election Commission and concluded that

In a significant shift, business groups gave more money to Republican candidates than to Democrats in seven of the most competitive Senate races in recent months, in some cases taking the unusual step of betting against sitting senators. ... Read more

Banzainomics: What The BOJ's Shocking Announcement Really Means
ZeroHedge | author | 10/31/14

Bank of Japan Reaction Context: Nikkei 225 Is Up 1000 Points In 7 Hours

You know the world's financial markets have become farce when the broad Nikkei 225 stock market of Japan rises 1000 points in 7 hours... The meme that stock 'markets' move on fundamentals not central bank (FED) liquidity is officially dead.

Still confused what the BOJ's shocking move was about, aside from pushing the US stock market to a new record high of course? This should explains it all: as the chart below show, as a result of the BOJ's stated intention to buy 8 trillion to 12 trillion yen ($108 billion) of Japanese government bonds per month it means the BOJ will now soak up all of the 10 trillion yen in new bonds that the Ministry of Finance sells in the market each month. In other words. The Bank of Japan's expansion of record stimulus today may see it buy every new bond the government issues. In other words: full monetization.
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Why the GOP Is Going to Be in Deep Trouble If Their Crazy Tea Party Candidates Get into the Senate
AlterNet | Elias Esquith | 10/30/14

As pundits and wonks have been telling us since basically the day after President Obama was reelected -- and as Nate Silver and others' forecast oracles still insist -- we're probably going to wake up on Jan. 3 of next year with a brand-new, Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

But while a lot of ink has been spilled in anticipation of how a GOP Congress will clash with Senate Democrats and President Obama, less attention is being paid to what might happen within the Republican Party once the post-victory honeymoon is over. Will a newly unified Congress be the first step toward a final end to the GOP's civil war? Or will GOP leadership soon find that winning in 2014 was the easy part? ... Read more

How the Christian Right Is Using Hobby Lobby and "Duck Dynasty" to Take Back America
MotherJones | Mariah Blake | 10/31/14

Pundits may be declaring the culture wars over, but conservative Christians are donning their battle gear and rushing back to the front lines. In recent months, a coalition of conservative evangelical organizations has been pursuing an aggressive voter mobilization campaign that involves a combination of high-tech tools, briefings for pastors, and rallies simulcast to mega-churches around the country.

The goal of these gatherings is to drum up outrage over recent political skirmishes, including the Hobby Lobby lawsuit, and to persuade believers that their religious freedoms are under attack by ungodly forces. During one recent event, which was shown in churches across the nation, speakers likened the situation of US churchgoers to Christians beheaded by ISIS in Syria. "We see the struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, truth and lies," said David Benham, whose planned HGTV reality show was canceled after his fiercely anti-gay remarks came to light. "What's happening with swords over in the Middle East is happening with silence over here in America." ... Read more

Ignore the John Birch Society logo, I don't agree with most of their ideas. But, the information Gary Allen, an investigative journalist, organized in his book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy" and presented in this lecture is really an eye-opener.
*None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen (1972) [1:03:51]
In this book, Congressmen Schmitz says in the Introduction, "The story you are about to read is true." Allen goes on to assert that the present political and economic systems in most developed nations are the result of a sweeping conspiracy by the Establishment's power elite, which started in the early 1900s. According to this theory, this has been a four (or six)-step process:

  1. Establish a central bank, deceptively named so that people will think it is part of the government;
  2. Establish an income tax system as a means of extorting money from the common man;
  3. Have the central bank (FED) be the holder of the national debt;
  4. Create tax free foundations;
  5. Eliminate (or reduce) the inheritance tax;
  6. Run the national debt, and the interest thereon, sky high through wars (or any sort of deficit spending), starting with World War I.
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, October 31 [12:41]
*DN | The Nazis Next Door: Eric Lichtblau on how the CIA & FBI Secretly Sheltered Nazi War Criminals (10/31/14) [11:12]
DN | Gubernatorial Candidate Howie Hawkins Calls for a "Green New Deal for New York" (10/31/14) [12:25]
DN | How to Buy a City: Chevron Spends $3 Million on Local California Election to Oust Refinery Critics (10/31/14) [8:36]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Democalypse 2014 - South by South Mess: Texas. (10/30/14) [9:15] TRNN | Professor Ivan Katchanovski: Oligarchs Consolidate Power in Ukraine after Parliamentary Elections, Part 2 (10/31/14) [9:30]
*TRNN | Costas Lapavitsas speaks: The Financialization of Life, Part 5 (10/28/14) [16:59]
TRNN | Costas Lapavitsas speaks: The Financialization of Life, Part 6 (10/31/14) [10:19]
TYT | Don't Read This Tech News Site If You Want Net Neutrality News (10/30/14) [6:06]
TYT | Netanyahu Called 'Chickenshit' & Now Everyone's Crying Foul (10/30/14) [7:32]
*TYT | Just Before Election Conservatives Become HUGE Liberals - Why? (10/30/14) [8:46]
*TYT | GOP Loves Putin, So Why Did Boehner Say Bush Would Punch Him? (10/30/14) [8:15]
TYT | Fox News Evil Doctor Calls For 'American Jihad' To Defeat Unbelievers (10/30/14) [15:00]
TYT | Millennials Poised To Vote Against Their Own Self-Interest | The System Works! (10/30/14) [7:30]
TYT | Apple CEO Tim Cook Comes Out As Gay - Big Deal? (10/30/14) [3:46]
TYT | Nurse Defies Ebola Quarantine Goes For Bike Ride In Maine (10/30/14) [5:15]

10.31.2014. 11:23

Thursday October 30, 2014
News Articles
Voting | Politics
Like most of my projects I seem to run out of time before I can get them completely done. I was hoping to have a list of websites for you to go to so you could evaluate your politicians before you go to the polls next week. I only got to my politicians and then ran out of steam (see my research below). I will try to work on this over the weekend and post my results on Monday.

Current Michigan Elected Representatives
Current Michigan Elected Representatives
My Elected Officials, based on my districts
My Elected Officials, based on my districts
Sample Ballot for my district Charelvoix, Michigan
Sample Ballot for my district Charelvoix, Michigan
-OR-
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This Map Depicts The Staggering Highs And Lows Of The U.S. Economy Since 1999
open your Browser window to a large size. Click on the map below. Use the slider to show the annual job growth and job loss in every metro area in the country between 1999 and 2014.
Highs And Lows Of The U.S. Economy Since 1999
I used to have a climbing harness that looked just like this:
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, October 30 [10:43]
DN | Showdown over Ebola: Will Quarantines of Healthcare Workers Harm the Fight Against Epidemic? (10/30/14) [20:59]
*DN | "The Red Cross' Secret Disaster": Charity Prioritized PR over People After Superstorm Sandy (10/30/14) [18:30]
*DN | Is Your Judge for Sale? Dark Money Groups Pour Millions into Judicial Races to Reshape Courts (10/30/14) [4:33]
Text for Ebola Showdown
A debate is intensifying in the United States over quarantining healthcare workers who return from West Africa but do not show signs of Ebola. On Wednesday, Maine's governor said that he would seek legal authority to enforce a 21-day home quarantine on Kaci Hickox, a nurse who has tested negative for Ebola after treating patients in Sierra Leone. Hickox made national headlines when she publicly criticized New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for quarantining her in a tent outside the hospital. Hickox said she would challenge Maine's restrictions just as she did in New Jersey. "I completely understand that the state's purpose is to protect the state of Maine," Hickox said last night. "I have worked in public health for many years, and that has always been my purpose, as well, but we have to make decisions on science, and I am completely healthy." To discuss the debate, we speak to Lawrence Gostin, professor and faculty director at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. He is also the director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law.
TRNN | Hedges & Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?, Part 5 (10/30/14) [23:33]
TRNN | Oligarchs Consolidate Power in Ukraine After Parliamentary Elections , Part 1 (10/30/14) [13:04]
John Oliver
HBO | John Oliver: Ayn Rand - How Is This Still A Thing? () [3:41]
Don't let the John Birch Society logo put you off, I actually don't agree with most of their platform, but the information , the conservative journalist, Gary Allen organized in his book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy", and presented in this lecture, is amazingly.
*None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen (1972) [1:03:51]
In this book, Congressmen Schmitz says in the Introduction, "The story you are about to read is true." Allen goes on to assert that the present political and economic systems in most developed nations are the result of a sweeping conspiracy by the Establishment's power elite, which started in the early 1900s. According to this theory, this has been a four-step process:

  1. Establish a central bank, deceptively named so that people will think it is part of the government;
  2. Establish an income tax system as a means of extorting money from the common man;
  3. Have the central bank (FED) be the holder of the national debt;
  4. Run the national debt, and the interest thereon, sky high through wars (or any sort of deficit spending), starting with World War I.
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

10.30.2014. 15:03

Wednesday October 29, 2014
News Articles
The article below is real, but I find it very disappointing. Yet again mega corporations obliterate the facts.

Co-Founder of The Weather Channel: Global Warming Is a Complete Hoax
mediaite.com | Josh Feldman | 10/27/14

John Coleman, meteorologist and co-founder of The Weather Channel, told Megyn Kelly tonight that he doesn't believe global warming is real and laughed out loud at anyone who buys into what Al Gore is selling.

Coleman recently wrote an open letter arguing, "There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future." He told Kelly it's tough to get a media platform these days when you're a climate skeptic "ever since Al Gore made it a plank of the Democratic Party." ... Read more
TYT | Weather Channel Founder On Climate Change (10/28/14) [9:42]

The Weather Channel Companies, owners of television's Weather Channel and weather.com, would buy one of its rivals, Weather Underground. (07/03/12) (NYTimes)
Evelyn de Rothschild and Lynn Forester de Rothschild said they are buying a majority (70%) stake in weather-data service Weather Central L.P., marking a significant expansion of the Rothschilds' investments into media and information. (01/31/11) (WSJ)
The Weather Channel was purchased more than two years ago in a $3.5 billion deal led by NBC Universal and private-equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital.

What Happens If You Have No Welfare and No Job?
Atlantic | Olga Khazan | older, 06/13/14

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the welfare reform of the 1990s led to many poor mothers being kicked off welfare rolls. While some poor adults could still receive help from food stamps and disability insurance, the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" dramatically cut how much cash aid they could collect. The hope was that they would find work, but many didn't.

Meanwhile, spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the only cash assistance program that non-disabled, non-elderly, poor single mothers are eligible for, has dropped precipitously: It was lower in 2007 than it had been in 1970.

... The Urban Institute recently released a fascinating new qualitative study that aims to answer that very question. Relying on 90-minute interviews with 29 unmarried women in Los Angeles and 22 in southeast Michigan, the nonprofit examined the lives of these so-called "disconnected" women--meaning they get neither income from work nor TANF money. (About one in eight low-income single mothers was disconnected in 1996, when welfare reform was first implemented, but about one in five was disconnected in 2008.) ... Read more

China "Ghost Town Index" - Here Are China's 10 "Ghastliest" Cities
ZeroHedge | author | 10/28/14

Who can forget China's ghost city of Ordos: back in late 2009, when the hollow shell behind China's torrid growth was first revealed to the world, the city near China's Mongolia border was cooler talk for weeks. Fast forward five years later, and Ordos is all but forgotten, having been eclipsed by a veritable army of much bigger "ghosts" that make up the "ghost town network" - a list of cities created by the China Investment Network, a business newspaper in Beijing, to determine which cities were the most ghostly. ... Read more
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Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, October 29 [12:57]
DN | Will Mike Brown's Killer Avoid Charges in Ferguson? Cops Stockpile Riot Gear Amid "Troubling" Leaks (10/29/14) [13:49]
*DN | Is Filming a Police Officer a "Domestic Threat"? Austin Activist on Trial for Videotaping an Arrest (10/29/14) [9:45]
*TRNN | Welfare's Stigma in White Working-Class America (10/29/14) [10:38]
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*TRNN | Public health expert Allyson Pollock explains how poverty, sanitation and infrastructure contribute to ebola's death toll in West Africa (10/29/14) [10:55]
*TRNN | Journalist Max Blumenthal discusses the situation in Jerusalem and the reconstruction plans for Gaza (10/29/14) [12:33]
TYT | Weather Channel Founder On Climate Change (10/28/14) [9:42]
TYT | Global Warming Is Our Eugenics Says Hot Air Expert (10/28/14) [8:41]
TYT | Scott Walker Hides His Equal Pay Record Behind This Lying Smile (10/28/14) [8:26]
China's Ghost Cities
China's Unbelievable Ghost City on the Coast! (06/19/14) [6:48]
Nanhui, formally known as Lingang New City and Luchao Harbor City, is a massive new city that's being built 60 km from central Shanghai. Right now, the place is in the "ghost city" phase of development, but is rapidly moving towards being inhabited. It is slated to be fully functioning by 2020.
Fun Facts
The ordered lines of Jerome, Idaho (population: 10,000) start to disintegrate as you approach those parts of town that teeter on the edge of the Snake river canyon. Here the homes are "unregulated and unzoned", says photographer Michael Light.
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10.29.2014. 13:19

Tuesday October 01, 2014
News Articles

New Study: Global Warming Has Doubled The Risk Of Extreme Winters In Europe
ThinkProgress | Jeff Spross | 10/27/14

Global warming has doubled the chances that any given winter in Europe or northern Asia will be unusually severe, according to new research.

Specifically, temperatures have risen at the poles much faster than around the rest of the planet, leading to the collapse of Arctic sea ice coverage and altering weather patterns in the northern hemisphere. The research was recently published in Nature Geoscience, and relied on a the combined output of 100 different simulations -- "the most comprehensive computer modeling study to date," as The Guardian put it. ... Read more

Inside the New York Fed: Secret Recordings and a Culture Clash
ProPublica | Jake Bernstein | 09/26/14

After interviews with dozens of New York Fed employees, Beim learned something that surprised even him. The most daunting obstacle the New York Fed faced in overseeing the nation's biggest financial institutions was its own culture. The New York Fed had become too risk-averse and deferential to the banks it supervised. Its examiners feared contradicting bosses, who too often forced their findings into an institutional consensus that watered down much of what they did. ... Read more

NPR | The Secret Recordings of the FED and Goldman Sach by Carmen Segarra (09/26/14) [62:24]
NPR This American Life
Ira introduces Carmen Segarra, a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve in New York who, in 2012, started secretly recording as she and her colleagues went about regulating one of the most powerful financial institutions in the country. This was during a time when the New York Fed was trying to become a stronger regulator, so that it wouldn't fail to miss another financial crisis like it did with the meltdown in 2008. As part of that effort to reform, the Fed had commissioned a highly confidential report, written by Columbia professor David Beim, that identified why the regulator failed in the years leading up to the crisis. Beim laid out specific recommendations for how the Fed could fix its problems. Carmen's recordings allow us to see if the Fed successfully heeded those recommendations more than two years later. What we hear is not reassuring.

Secret Recordings Inside The Federal Reserve Prompt Elizabeth Warren To Call For Investigation
ThinkProgress.org | Alan Pyke | 09/28/14

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) want to investigate the Federal Reserve's relationships with the banks it oversees after the release of taped conversations between managers and a former bank examiner at the Fed.

... Segarra says she began making the tapes after her own colleagues tried on multiple occasions to cajole her into changing her notes from meetings with Goldman Sachs executives because they didn't want an official record of some of the executives' comments about the bank's willingness to bend the rules. ...

... The tapes document the former examiner's experience pushing for a tougher approach to Goldman Sachs and being rebuffed by members of the team who had been there much longer. The audio recordings, published last week by This American Life and Pro Publica, appear to indicate that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York continues to have too cozy a relationship with the private bankers it is supposed to supervise despite an internal 2009 report that documented serious problems with how the Fed ran its oversight division in the run-up to the financial crisis. ... Read more

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Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, October 28 [7:45]
DN | Attack on Canadian Parliament Fuels "Anti-Terror" Laws, Ignoring Ties to Mental Illness, Drug Abuse (10/28/14) [20:56]
*DN | As Indonesia's New President Takes Office, Cabinet Includes Officials Tied to Atrocities of Old (10/28/14) [15:11]
*DN | Monsanto, BigAg Spend Millions Fighting Colorado, Oregon Ballot Measures to Label GMO Foods (10/28/14) [10:28]
TRNN | Hedges & Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?, Part 4 (10/28/14) [26:47]
*TRNN | Larry Wilkerson: Nuclear Agreement with Iran May Become Midterm Election Fodder in Congress (10/28/14) [10:42]
TRNN | Michael Fox of teleSUR: A Narrow Victory for President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil (10/28/14) [8:16]
Jon StewarT
Jon Stewart | "Forgetting to Be Afraid" author and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis expresses hope that Texas is gradually becoming more liberal. (10/27/14) [4:47], Part 2 [5:46]
Jon Stewart | Democalypse 2014 - South by South Mess: Malady on 34th Street (10/16/14) [8:28]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire | Ring of Fire full episode(10/27/14) [57:00]
  1. 00:49 - "The Unending Greed of Hank Greenberg." Howard Nations will discuss former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg's suit against the government for helping his company avoid bankruptcy. #NeverendingGreed
  2. 12:34 - "The Hidden Dangers of Fracking." Attorney Tom Crosley will explain the link between fracking in the Eagle Ford Shale and the massive uptick in traffic accidents in the area. #FrackingDangers
  3. 22:14 - "Contractor Fraud A Growing Epidemic." Michael Burg will tell us how construction defects and contractor fraud are becoming the "new normal" in the construction industry. #ConstructionFraud
  4. 31:43 - "What We Learned From The Fed Tapes." Attorney Peter Mougey will explain the significance of the recently released "Fed Tapes." #FedTapes
  5. 41:28 - "Rand Paul's GOP Makeover." Adele Stan, senior digital editor of The American Prospect in Washington, D.C., will explain how Rand Paul is hoping to makeover the GOP in his own image -- and why we should all be very afraid. #RandPaul
  6. 51:20 - "Republicans Are Outsourcing America." David Haynes will discuss the dangers of privatization and outsourcing, and how they've brought in new avenues of fraud for corporations. #OutsourcingAmerica

10.28.2014. 13:35

Monday October 27, 2014
News Articles

Billionaires Answer Call To Donate To Republican Super PACs For 2014 Homestretch
HP | Paul Blumenthal | 10/22/14

Billionaires are rushing to the aid of Republicans in the homestretch of the 2014 elections with a massive super PAC infusion after a plea from big money mastermind Karl Rove.

On Sept. 17, Rove, the co-founder of the super PAC and dark money duo American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, took to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to send out his billionaire bat-signal.

... Since Rove's plea, 21 billionaires and their family members have poured $19.9 million into super PACs backing Republican Party candidates, fueling an October outside spending surge. Only $5.1 million was given to the Republican super PACs in the first half of September, before Rove's request. ... Read more

Arctic Ice Melt Seen Doubling Risk of Harsh Winter in EU
Bloomberg | Stefan Nicola | 10/16/14

The decline in Arctic sea ice has doubled the chance of severe winters in Europe and Asia in the past decade, according to researchers in Japan.

Sea-ice melt in the Arctic, Barents and Kara seas since 2004 has made more than twice as likely atmospheric circulations that suck cold Arctic air to Europe and Asia, a group of Japanese researchers led by the University of Tokyo's Masato Mori said in a study published yesterday in Nature Geoscience. ... Read more

Another Deutsche Banker And Former SEC Enforcement Attorney Commits Suicide
ZeroHedge | author | 10/26/14

Back on January 26, a 58-year-old former senior executive at German investment bank behemoth Deutsche Bank, William Broeksmit, was found dead after hanging himself at his London home, and with that, set off an unprecedented series of banker suicides throughout the year which included former Fed officials and numerous JPMorgan traders. Following a brief late summer spell in which there was little if any news of bankers taking their lives, as reported previously, the banker suicides returned with a bang when none other than the hedge fund partner of infamous former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Khan, Thierry Leyne, a French-Israeli entrepreneur, was found dead after jumping off the 23rd floor of one of the Yoo towers, a prestigious residential complex in Tel Aviv. Just a few brief hours later the WSJ reported that yet another Deutsche Bank veteran has committed suicide, and not just anyone but the bank's associate general counsel, 41 year old Calogero "Charlie" Gambino, who was found on the morning of Oct. 20, having also hung himself by the neck from a stairway banister Read more

$20 Billion Later Halliburton Moves Headquarters to Dubai
HP | Raymond J. Learsy | older, 05/25/11)

Business must be slowing down in Iraq. After booking over $20 billion in revenues from its work in Iraq, some on no bid contracts and now under Congressional scrutiny for both the quality of its work and billing practices, Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old company, is moving its headquarters from Houston to Dubai. The company together with its KBR unit has been the Pentagon's largest contractor in Iraq.

The move is being met with outrage on Capitol Hill. Senator Patrick Leahy (D. Vermont) and chairman of the judiciary committee voiced his anger, "This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years". ... Read more

Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire | Ring of Fire full episode(10/19/14) [56:30]
  1. 00:39 - "Republican Budget Cuts Are Breeding Corruption." Michael Burg explains how austerity measures are leading to an increase in the amount of government waste and corporate fraud. #AusterityFraud
  2. 10:36 - "Shifting Costs To The Sick." Howard Nations talks about the new way that insurance companies are trying to fleece consumers with higher fees. #Insurance
  3. 19:57 - "The Ticking Time Bombs on Our Highways." David Haynes will tell us why most vehicle recalls go unheeded by consumers, dealerships, and even the government. #RecallDangers
  4. 29:20 - "The Forgotten Victims Of The Recession." Joshua Holland, senior digital producer for BillMoyers.com in New York City, will tell us about the mental anguish that was caused by the Great Recession. #RecessionVictims
  5. 37:58 - "Are American Doctors Too Greedy?" Dr. Tom Schneider, author of A Physician's Apology, talks about the rampant greed that has become a staple of the medical profession. #PrescriptionForGreed
  6. 46:35 - "How Florida Elected A Criminal Governor." Farron Cousins, executive editor of The Trial Lawyer Magazine, explains how the state of Florida managed to elect a fraud-riddled candidate as governor. #RickScottFraud
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, October 27 [9:21]
*DN | Back from West Africa, a U.S. Nurse Says Quarantining Medical Workers Threatens Ebola Response (10/27/14) [11:56]
*DN | From Fear-Mongering to Crippling Debt, Lapses in Politics and Health Hurt Global Effort on Ebola (10/27/14) [19:33]
Good Old Dick Cheney
TYT | Finally, A Reporter Challenges Dick Cheney & It's... Megyn Kelly? (06/19/14) [6:41]
TheLipTV | 9/11 and the Cheney Conspiracy with Michael Ruppert, Part 2 (03/05/13) [49:23]
Bill Moyers | Two experts on American elections talk to Bill about the plot to keep citizens away from the ballot box. (10/24/14) [25:23]
John Oliver
John Oliver Calls Out Sugar Industry (10/26/14) [11:34]
TRNN | Costas Lapavitsas speaks: The Financialization of Life, Part 3 (10/26/14) [16:14]
TRNN | Costas Lapavitsas speaks: The Financialization of Life, Part 4 (10/26/14) [14:33]
TYT | In The Battle Of Billionaires, Karl Rove Wins And America Loses (10/26/14) [6:47]
TYT | Most Hated Government By Its Own People? The Winner Is... (10/25/14) [8:48]
TYT | Conservatives Trust News Like This, Liberals Trust News Like That (10/25/14) [9:20]
TYT | Federal Reserve Head Breaks Down Inequality (10/25/14) [6:09]
TYT | War On Drugs + War On Terror = Boom Times For Opium Trade (10/25/14) [4:24]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

10.27.2014. 11:08

Friday October 24, 2014
News Articles

Why Spain's Poor Fear Goldman Sachs
HP | Sonya Dowsett | 10/24/14

Last year Madrid's city and regional governments sold almost 5,000 rent-controlled flats to private equity investors including Goldman Sachs and Blackstone. At the time, the tenants were told their rental conditions would remain the same.

Jamila Bouzelmat is one of them. The mother of six lives in a four-bedroom flat on the outskirts of the Spanish capital that was bought jointly by Goldman and a Spanish firm. The 44-year-old said that until March her family paid 58 euros ($73) a month in rent out of her husband's 500-euro unemployment benefit. In April, her bank statement shows, her new landlords suddenly took 436 euros from her bank account. ... Read more

*Banker Suicides Return: DSK's Hedge Fund Partner Jumps From 23rd Floor Apartment
ZeroHedge | author | 10/24/14

The summer, thankfully, has been largely bereft of the dismal trend of bankers committing suicide, but as Bloomberg reports, Thierry Leyne, a French-Israeli banker and partner of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former chief of the IMF, was found dead Thursday after apparently taking his own life by jumping off the 23rd floor of one of the Yoo towers, a prestigious residential complex in Tel Aviv. This is the 16th financial services executive death this year. ...

    This is the 16th financial services executive death this year...
  1. William Broeksmit, 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, was found dead in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London, on January 26th.
  2. Karl Slym, 51 year old Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok on January 27th.
  3. Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of the JP Morgan European headquarters in London on January 27th.
  4. Mike Dueker, 50-year-old chief economist of a US investment bank was found dead close to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State.
  5. Richard Talley, the 57 year old founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was found dead earlier this month after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.
  6. Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month, however the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.
  7. Ryan Henry Crane, a 37 year old executive at JP Morgan died in an alleged suicide just a few weeks ago. No details have been released about his death aside from this small obituary announcement at the Stamford Daily Voice.
  8. Li Junjie, 33-year-old banker in Hong Kong jumped from the JP Morgan HQ in Hong Kong this week.
  9. James Stuart Jr, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO, found dead in Scottsdale, Ariz., the morning of Feb. 19. A family spokesman did not say whatcaused the death
  10. Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown's Vertical Group, commited suicide by jumping in front of LIRR train
  11. Kenneth Bellando, 28, a trader at Levy Capital, formerly investment banking analyst at JPMorgan, jumped to his death from his 6th floor East Side apartment.
  12. Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, the former CEO of Dutch bank ABN Amro found dead at home near Amsterdam with wife and daughter.
  13. Li Jianhua, 49, the director of China's Banking Regulatory Commission died of a sudden heart attack
  14. Lydia _____, 52 - jumped to her suicide from the 14th floor of Bred-Banque Populaire in Paris
  15. Julian Knott, 45 - killed wife and self with a shotgun in Jefferson Township, New Jersey
  16. Thierry Leyne, 48 - jumped from 23rd floor apartment in Tel Aviv.
Read more

*Gary Webb Was Right
HP | Marc Levin | 10/24/14

Once again the paper has decided to focus on discrediting a fellow journalist instead of deepening the analysis of the story he highlighted. Gary Webb put a spotlight on the CIA and the Reagan administrations unholy alliance with anti communist guerrilla groups and their supporters who were involved in drug trafficking.

Webb's reporting uncovered the story of how tons of cocaine were shipped into San Francisco by supporters of the CIA backed Contras and then distributed down to LA to a Nicaraguan named Danilo Blandon who sold it to a street dealer from South Central, Freeway Rick Ross. ... Read more

Climate Change Is Kicking the Insurance Industry's Butt
MotherJones | Tim McDonnell | 10/24/14

In the months after Hurricane Sandy, insurance companies spooked by rising seas dropped coastal policies in droves.

... Certainly the threat is real. Globally, average annual weather-related losses have increased more than tenfold in the last several decades, from $10 billion per year in the period 1974-1983 to $131 billion in 2004-2013, according to the report. The insurance industry is not keeping pace: The proportion of those damages that are insured is steadily declining. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, October 24 [12:49]
*DN | Former Weapons Inspector in Iraq Raises Skepticism over Claims Iran Is Hiding Nuclear Weapons Tests (10/24/14) [14:44]
*DN | European Privacy in the Age of Snowden: We Need a Debate About What Intelligence Agencies Are Doing (10/24/14) [10:16]
*DN | Obama Promised a "World Without Nuclear Weapons," But May Now Spend $3 Trillion on Weapons Upgrades (10/24/14) [15:46]
*TRNN | Patrick Cockburn the author: Kurdish Fighters Regain Kobani... The coalition is not what it appears to be. (10/24/14) [12:55]
*TRNN | Hedges & Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?, Part 3 (10/24/14) [22:22]
TRNN | Costas Lapavitsas speaks: The Financialization of Life, Part 2 (10/24/14) [12:44]
Stephan Cobert
Stephen Colbert | The New York Times reports that thousands of chemical weapons were found in Iraq, causing Stephen to party like it's 2003. (10/16/14) [5:05]
TYT | Good Ebola News: Dallas Nurse Cleared (10/23/14) [2:11]
TYT | Fox News To Chrissy Teigen: Stick To Having A Nice Ass (10/23/14) [4:17]
TYT | Young Hot Women Should Date, Not Vote, Says Fox News (10/23/14) [5:14]
Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | NYC Ebola patient had contact with 3 friends (10/23/14) [8:22]
Chris Hayes | Is Bellevue Hospital ready to handle an Ebola patient (10/23/14) [7:40]
Chris Hayes | Fmr. Surgeon General: everyone has to be on alert (10/23/14) [4:49]

10.24.2014. 12:01

Thursday October 23, 2014
News Articles

The High Price of Free Money: Now US Bankers Fear Financial, Social, or Political 'Instability'
ZeroHedge | author | 10/23/14

Something is changing about the perception of the Fed's free-money policies. While we've lambasted them for their nefarious effects on the real economy and the inequality they produce, Wall Street, the prime beneficiary, has been bombastically gung-ho about them. And the mainstream media have praised the Fed's "bold action," as it's called, at every twist and turn.

But now even Wall Street is getting cold feet. The official warning shot came from Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who admitted suddenly that "the extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me." Then bankers chimed in. FICO, which produces the infamous credit score, found in its latest survey of North American bank risk managers that 62% of them thought "the wealth gap poses a growing risk to the financial system."

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Without thriving consumers, the American economy that is so dependent on them will continue to languish. Just adding more consumers to the mix may increase overall consumer spending, and stirring up inflation may cover up the issue. But as the majority of individual consumers falls further behind, the risks of financial, social, or political "instability" might be looking ever more plausible to those bankers. ... Read more

Canada's parliament attacked, soldier fatally shot nearby
Reuters | Randall Palmer | 10/22/14

A gunman attacked Canada's parliament on Wednesday, with gunfire erupting near where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was speaking, and a soldier was fatally shot at a nearby war memorial, stunning the Canadian capital.

The gunman in the parliament building was shot dead, and Harper was safely removed in incidents that may have been linked to Islamic militants. ... Read more

The Science of Fox News: Why Its Viewers Are the Most Misinformed
AlterNet | Chris Mooney | 10/20/14

In June of 2011, Jon Stewart went on air with Fox News' Chris Wallace and started a major media controversy over the channel's misinforming of its viewers. "Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers?" Stewart asked Wallace. "The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll."

The author's goal here is to explore the underlying causes for this "Fox News effect"--explaining how this station has brought about a hurricane-like intensification of factual error, misinformation and unsupportable but ideologically charged beliefs on the conservative side of the aisle. ... Read more

Why Conservatives Opt for Propaganda Over Reality
AlterNet | Amanda Marcotte | 10/22/14

Conservatives are consuming a right-wing media full of lies and misinformation, whereas liberals are more interested in media that puts facts before ideology.

Pew Research set out to find what's behind what it considers the increasing political polarization of the United States; why the country is moving away from political moderation and becoming more and more divided between liberals and conservatives. Its first report on the phenomenon, which examines where people are hearing news and opinion in both regular and social media, shows that this is happening for very different reasons among people moving to the right than for people moving to the left.

Or that's the charitable way to put it. The less charitable way is to say Pew discovered that conservatives are consuming a right-wing media full of lies and misinformation, whereas liberals are more interested in media that puts facts before ideology. It's very much not a "both sides do it" situation. Conservatives are becoming more conservative because of propaganda, whereas liberals are becoming more liberal while staying very much checked into reality. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, October 23 [5:52]
*DN | Citizenfour: Inside Story of NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Captured in New Film by Laura Poitras (10/23/14) [9:51]
"At this stage I can offer nothing more than my word. I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community. I hope you understand that contacting you is extremely high risk ... This will not be a waste of your time." This was one of the first messages Edward Snowden wrote to filmmaker Laura Poitras beginning an exchange that helped expose the massive surveillance apparatus set up by the National Security Agency. Months later, Poitras would meet Snowden for the first time in a Hong Kong hotel room. Poitras filmed more than 20 hours of footage as Snowden debriefed reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill. That footage -- most unseen until now -- forms the backbone of Poitras' new film, "Citizenfour." She joins us to talk about the film and her own experience with government surveillance. The film is the third installment of her 9/11 trilogy that also includes "My Country, My Country" about the Iraq War and "The Oath" about the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Poitras' NSA reporting contributed to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service awarded to The Guardian and The Washington Post.
*DN | Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater Execs Remain Free as Guards Convicted for Killing 14 Iraqis in Massacre (10/23/14) [7:47]
*TRNN | Hedges & Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?, Part 2 (10/23/14) [25:14]
Journalist Chris Hedges interviews political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, who says democracy requires continuous opposition and vigilance by the citizenry.
*TRNN | Reese Erlich, Freelance Correspondent and Author of Inside Syria, says the irony in the support to the Kurds in Kobani is that PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the US (10/23/14) [25:14]
TYT | Colorado Teens Try To Run Away To Join ISIS (10/22/14) [7:27]
TYT | Canada Attacked - The Gun Law Role & The 'Terrorism' Question (10/22/14) [10:36]
TYT | Why This Man Scares Republicans Out Of Their Piss-Soaked Pants (10/22/14) [4:25]
TYT | Politico & BP Blatantly Conspire To Hide BP's Devastating Oil Spill (10/22/14) [5:17]

10.23.2014. 10:59

Wednesday October 22, 2014
News Articles

Canadian Capital On Lock Down As A Result Of Ongoing "Terrorist" Shooting Incident
ZeroHedge | author | 10/22/14

At least two people are injured, including a soldier, after shots were fired in the Parliamentary precinct in Ottawa on Wednesday morning; one shooter is dead and police suspect as many as two others are on the loose.

A dark-clothed gunman fired the shots just before 10 a.m. at the Canadian War Memorial, where a uniformed soldier was shot. The gunman then fled for Parliament Hill, where he unleashed more gunfire inside Centre Block. ... Read more
CBC | Ottawa Police Confirm at least 3 Separate Shooting Sites and Multiple Suspects (10/22/14) [0:57]

New poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. In its fifth trust poll, 35 percent said they trusted Fox news more than any other outlet, followed by PBS at 14 percent, ABC at 11 percent, CNN at 10 percent, CBS at 9 percent, 6 percent for MSNBC and Comedy Central, and just 3 percent for NBC.

Permanent Damage to US Economy-Michael Snyder
USAWathchdog.com | Greg Hunter | 10/22/14

Michael Snyder is a self-proclaimed "truth-seeker" and financial writer who says there is no recovery on Main Street, and we are not going to get one--ever. Snyder contends, "We've had permanent damage to the U.S. economy. ...

... By the time President Obama's eight years are over, we are on pace to approximately double the size of the national debt from $10.6 trillion to more than $20 trillion. What we are doing is absolute insanity. . . . We are going to suffer the consequences for so much of this. As far as the time window, I believe the next 12 to 15 months are going to be the most interesting time economically and as a nation as I have ever seen." ... Read more
USAWathchdog | Permanent Damage to US Economy-Michael Snyder (10/21/14) [25:36]
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Apple Beats Top And Bottom Line, Repurchases Record $45 Billion In Stock In Fiscal 2014.

Harley Bassman: "The Fed Is Trying To Land A Jumbo Jet On A Football Field"
ZeroHedge | author | 10/22/14

In Harley Bassman latest news letter, in which he picks up on his favorite topic: implied volatility in rates, and the arbitrage opportunities it provides courtesy of epic risk mispricing in the current quote-unquote market, courtesy of the Fed's 6 year+ centrally-planned manipulation of, well, everything. ... Read more

Wall Street Is One Sick Puppy - Thanks To Even Sicker Central Banks
ZeroHedge | author | 10/22/14

Last Wednesday the markets plunged on a vague recognition that the central bank promoted recovery story might not be on the level. But that tremor didn't last long.

Right on cue the next day, one of the very dimmest Fed heads--James Dullard of St Louis---mumbled incoherently about a possible QE extension, causing the robo-traders to erupt with buy orders. By the end of the day Friday, with the market off just 5% from its all-time highs, the buy-the-dips crowd was back, proclaiming that the "bottom is in". This week the market has been energetically retracing what remains of the October correction. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, October 22 [7:01]
*DN | In U.N. Speech, Noam Chomsky Blasts United States for Supporting Israel, Blocking Palestinian State (10/22/14) [18:23], Part 2 [15:47]
How is Money Made | How Much Debt Do We Have
*Demonocracyinfo | US Debt in Physical $100 bills [2:10]
*Mike Maloney | How is Money Made (and Who Benefits) [29:34] (start at 1:11)
*TRNN | Hedges & Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? (10/22/14) [20:25]
Journalist Chris Hedge interviews political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, who says democracy requires continuous opposition and vigilance by the citizenry.
*TRNN | Costas Lapavitsas speaks: The Financialization of Life (10/22/14) [16:34]
TYT | Bill O'Reilly Explains Dem Voting - It's Not Him, It's You (10/21/14) [5:51]
TYT | Sarah Palin's PAC Is A Massive Million Dollar Scam (10/21/14) [4:14]
TYT | Corrupt Congressman Threatens Critics With More Corruption (10/21/14) [6:32]
TYT | Republicans Love Latinos, Except When Hating Them Gets More Votes (10/21/14) [5:53]
TYT | Obamacare Worst Nightmare Hilariously Coming True For Republicans (10/21/14) [3:11]
Visualize Your Future
National Debt
*Demonocracyinfo | US Debt in Physical $100 bills [2:10]
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FED - Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve Explained In 7 Minutes [7:06]
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Crash Course - Debt, Chp 13 [14:19]
Banksters | FED | Money | Debt
*Mike Maloney | The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind - Hidden Secrets of Money 4 [29:34]
Derivatives
*Brookley Born: Derivatives still a ticking time bomb! Sept 2011 () [11:42]
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*Derivatives Held by the Different Banks
*DN | All the President's Bankers: Nomi Prins on Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion (04/08/14) [17:47], Part 2 [4:17]
Quarterly Report on Bank Derivatives Activities.pdf
OCC's Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities.pdf

10.22.2014. 12:29

Tuesday October 21, 2014
News Articles

Another Month, Another Global Heat Record Broken
AP & HP | Seth Borenstein | 10/20/14

Earth is on pace to tie or even break the mark for the hottest year on record, federal meteorologists say. That's because global heat records have kept falling in 2014, with September the latest example.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday that last month the globe averaged 60.3 degrees Fahrenheit (15.72 degrees Celsius). That was the hottest September in 135 years of record keeping.

It was the fourth monthly record set this year, along with May, June and August. ... Read more

Tornadoes Increasingly Coming In Swarms In United States, Study Says
Reuters & HP | Will Dunham | 10/16/14

Tornadoes in the United States are increasingly coming in swarms rather than as isolated twisters, according to a study by U.S. government meteorologists published on Thursday that illustrates another trend toward extreme weather emerging in recent years.

Looking at tornado activity over the past six decades, the study in the journal Science found the total number of tornadoes annually remaining rather steady, averaging 495. Since the 1970s, there have been fewer days with tornadoes but plenty more days with many of them, sometimes dozens or more.

On the list of the 10 single days with the most tornadoes since 1954, eight have occurred since 1999, including five since 2011. That year alone had days with 115, 73, 53 and 52 twisters. ... Read more

California Drought Worsened By Climate Change, Scientists Say
Reuters | Joaquin Palomino | 09/29/14

California's catastrophic drought has most likely been made worse by man-made climate change, according to a report released Monday by Stanford University, but scientists are still hesitant to fully blame the lack of rain on climate change.

The research, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society as part of a collection of reports on extreme weather events in 2013, is one of the most comprehensive studies linking climate change and California's ongoing drought, which has caused billions of dollars in economic damage. ... Read more

"Anti-Petrodollar" CEO Of French Energy Giant Total Dies In Freak Plane Crash In Moscow
ZeroHedge | author | 10/21/14

Three months ago, the CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, dared utter the phrase heard around the petrodollar world, "There is no reason to pay for oil in dollars," as we noted here. Today, RT reports the dreadful news that he was killed in a business jet crash at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow after the aircraft hit a snow-plough on take-off. The airport issued a statement confirming "a criminal investigation has been opened into the violation of safety regulations," adding that along with 3 crewmembers on the plane, the snow-plough driver was also killed. ... Read more

Europe Demands Banks Hand Over Their Lunch Money Following Swiss Franc Libor Rigging
ZeroHedge | author | 10/21/14

Having confirmed that RBS, UBS, JPMorgan,,and Credit Suisse operated a cartell to manipulate bid-ask spreads of Swiss Franc libor, the European Commission has unleashed unmerciless vengeance on these law-breaking institutions:

JPMorgan fined EUR 72.2 Million, UBS fined EUR 12.7 Million, Credit Suisse fined EUR 9.17 Million, & RBS Nothing (for whistle-blowing).

The commission found that these four entities 'influenced' interest rate derivatives prices between March 2008 and July 2009 - probably the most volatile and price-sensitive period of American financial history.. and they get fined "an hour's pay?" Nothing ever changes... Read more

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Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, October 21 [13:26]
*DN | After Ignoring ISIS Assault on Kobani, U.S. Launches Major Strikes & Arms Turkey's Kurdish Foes (10/21/14) [15:06]
*DN | Former U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Falk on the Legitimacy of Hope in the Palestinian Struggle (10/21/14) [16:19]
John Oliver
HBO | Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Translators (10/19/14) [16:06]
HBO | Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Supreme Court (10/19/14) [5:39]
TRNN | Journalist Sharif Kouddous: What direction is Egypt headed, several years after the Revolution? (10/20/14) [24:59]
TRNN | Kurt Lambeck, Professor of Geophysics: Study Finds Sea Levels Rising at an Unprecedented Rate (10/20/14) [10:44]
TYT | Panic Over Ebola Outbreak Goes Viral In America (10/20/14) [7:37]
TYT | Could You Forgive Him Like Michelle Knight Did? (10/20/14) [6:17]
TYT | Citizen Pulls Over Cop, Demands ID & It's Amazing (10/20/14) [10:44]
*TYT | White Privilege Even Applies To Riots - The Proof Is In The Pumpkins (10/20/14) [9:45]
TYT | CNN Axes 150 Jobs & Several Shows In 'Painful Week' (10/20/14) [5:11]
TYT | Chuck Todd Asks A Question Even A Journalist Would Ask (10/20/14) [3:12]
TYT | Russell Brand Must Choose: Trump, Hannity Or Piers Morgan? His Answer Is Perfect (10/20/14) [2:54], Part 2 [1:59]
TYT | Study Proves 70% Of Art Sold Are Fakes (10/19/14) [6:50]

10.21.2014. 11:11

Monday October 20, 2014
News Articles

Living The Grecovery Dream: Two Jobless Parents, Two Kids, One Cat All Living In A Car
ZeroHedge | author | 10/20/14

This is an article of a Greek Family that is living in their car. But, it reminds us that it could be anyone of us if we suddenly have an life changing crisis. We all need help sometime in our life!

Squeezed between steering wheel, handbrake, door and dashboard, Katerina reads in her history book, takes notes for school. Next to her, on the driver's seat, cat Eddy stares right in the camera lens. It may look like a cute snapshot on a sunny day, if it wasn't for a sad detail: a withering spring stuck in a roll of toilet paper. A distinctive memory of a former normal life that turned into a grim reality for a family of four. ... Read more

The Conference Board forecasts that China's annual growth will slow to an average of 5.5% between 2015 and 2019, compared with last year's 7.7%. It will downshift further to an average of 3.9% between 2020 and 2025, according to the report.

Why Chinese Growth Forecasts Just Crashed To A Paltry 3.9% - And Are Going Even Lower - In One Chart
ZeroHedge | author | 10/20/14

Up until a few years ago, conventional wisdom was that China would grow at nearly double digits as long as the eye could see. Then, however, something happened, and China's 9% growth became 8%, then 7% and even lower, as suddenly the Politburo made it quite clear China would not chase growth at any cost, especially when the cost is trillions in bad debt and other NPLs, as we have explained time and again. The collapse in Chinese growth expectations is shown best on the following formerly hockeysticking chart of IMF's revised Chinese growth projections which has completely collapsed in the past few years. ... Read more
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60Minutes | China's Ghost Cities - 60 Minutes Australia (07/02/13) [10:49]
Dateline | China's Empty Cities (09/10/13) [15:00]

E-Waste
BAN | Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia (2013) [23:03]
Dateline | E-Waste Hell (09/25/11) [17:44]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, October 20 [13:04]
DN | "Women Are Being Driven Offline": Feminist Anita Sarkeesian Terrorized for Critique of Video Games (10/20/14) [20:01]
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers | Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson talks to Bill about what the title character of her new book Lila, says about the state of democracy in America. (10/17/14) [25:16]
Senator Elizabeth Warren
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Banking Hearing on Income Inequality (09/17/14) [10:09]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Sen. Warren asks Fed Chair Yellen about efforts to end TBTF (To Big To Fail) (07/15/14) [7:30]
California Drought
Stunning Scenes From California's Central Valley Drought, New Yorker
*TRNN | Deepa Kumar: Culture of the National Security State, Part 5 (10/19/14) [16:54]
*TYT | Raising The Minimum Wage Would Save Billions (10/19/14) [6:43]
*TYT | Military Selling Planes For Scrap Metal (10/19/14) [5:19]
TYT | Honest Politician Reveals The Worst Part Of The Job - 'We Hate It' (10/19/14) [4:06]
TYT | On Obama: Elizabeth Warren vs Howard Fineman (10/19/14) [10:23]
Chris Hayes
U.S. Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: FOX News and GOP Exploiting American's Fears (10/18/14) [7:27]

10.20.2014. 13:19

Friday October 17, 2014
News Articles

Now Comes The "Specter Of Deflation": The Money Printers' Latest Scam
ZeroHedge | author | 10/16/14

The Fed's public relations firm of Hilsenrath & Blackstone was out this morning with the official line on the market's tremors of recent days. It seems that $10 trillion in freshly minted digital money at the world's major central banks over the last eight years---that is, a tripling of their balance sheets to $16 trillion--- is not enough. Not only is 2% inflation still MIA, but it now threatening to enter the dark side: Behind the spate of market turmoil lurks a worry that top policy makers thought they had beaten back a few years ago: the specter of deflation. Never mind that there is nothing close to a sustained run of negative consumer price indices anywhere in the world. ... Read more

Sorry, California. Winter Isn't Going to Fix Your Drought.
MotherJones | Tim McDonnell | 10/16/14

California's crippling drought is not expected to improve over the winter, according to new forecast data released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Nearly 60 percent of the state is experiencing exceptional drought--the worst category--NOAA reported. The map above shows that the northern California coast could see some improvement. But in the Central Valley, a critical source of fruits, nuts, and vegetables for the whole country, conditions won't be getting better any time soon. A little rain is expected, NOAA forecaster Mike Halpert said in a statement, but not enough to reverse the trend. ... Read more
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News at a Glance
  1. Obama open to appointing Ebola 'czar', opposes travel ban (Reuters)
  2. Schools Close as Nurse's Ebola Infection Ignites Concern (BBG)
  3. How the World's Top Health Body Allowed Ebola to Spiral Out of Control (BBG)
  4. European Stocks Rise Amid Growing Pressure for Stimulus (BBG)
  5. Putin Threatens EU Gas Squeeze Raising Stakes for Ukraine (BBG)
  6. ECB to Start Asset Purchases Within Days, Says Central Banker Coeuré (WSJ)
  7. Investors search for signs of end to stock market correction (Reuters)

Insiders Blame Rove for Covering Up Iraq's Real WMD
TheDailyBeast | author | 10:16:14

Starting in 2004, some members of the George W. Bush administration and Republican lawmakers began to find evidence of discarded chemical weapons in Iraq. But when the information was brought up with the White House, senior adviser Karl Rove told them to "let these sleeping dogs lie." ...

... According to Wurmser, "in 2005-6, Karl Rove and his team blocked public disclosure of these (findings) and said 'Let these sleeping dogs lie; we have lost that fight so better not to remind anyone of it.'" ... Read more

Rate of Mass Shootings Has Tripled Since 2011, Harvard Research Shows
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Severe Solar Storm Damage Could Top $2 Trillion
Bloomberg | author | 10/16/14

According to a study by Lloyd's of London, an extreme geomagnetic storm in the near future is almost inevitable. Such a storm that could cause widespread power outages in the U.S. for one to two years might have an economic cost of more than $2 trillion. Read more
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Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, October 17 [9:10]
DN | In Tight Midterms Facing Low Turnout, Colorado's Senate Race Could Decide Who Controls Congress (10/17/14) [13:17]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Florida's gubernatorial race heats up as Governor Rick Scott shows up late to a debate where Democratic candidate Charlie Crist is using a fan to strategically cool his balls. (10/16/14) [8:58]
*TRNN | Why are Stock Markets so Volatile? (10/17/14) [11:56]
Real serious depression pending as a result of austerity says Professor Michael Hudson, author of The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and its Discontents.
TRNN | Behind America's Store Fronts -- Drugs, Homelessness and Abandonment (10/17/14) [7:10]
In an original TRNN series, conservative residents of the working-class town of Westminster, Maryland, paint a political landscape different from that depicted in the mainstream media.
TYT | Pressure Mounts To Ban Travel To Africa (10/16/14) [9:53]
TYT | Ebola Sanity Briefly Infects Fox News, Will It Spread? (10/16/14) [5:53]
TYT | Frontier Flight Crew Exposed To Ebola (10/16/14) [4:37]
TYT | Privileged White Guy Refuses Jon Stewart's Case For White Privilege (10/16/14) [7:30]
TYT | Small Fan Ruins Debate In 'Extremely Peculiar' Moment (10/16/14) [7:02]
Climate "Winter" Outlook
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More News
Bill Nye the Science Guy's Take on GMO Foods (10/16/14) [7:57]
PBS | Separating legitimate Ebola concerns from unnecessary fear (10/17/14) [7:32]
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10.17.2014. 11:28

Thursday October 16, 2014
News Articles

Chomsky: Business Elites Are Waging a Brutal Class War in America
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 10/14/14

Journalist Matt Taibbi has suggested that the government is afraid to prosecute powerful bankers, referring to "an arrestable class and an unarrestable class." What is your view on the current state of class war in the U.S.?

Well, there's always a class war going on. The United States, to an unusual extent, is a business-run society, more so than others. The business classes are very class-conscious--they're constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized. We don't use the term "working class" here because it's a taboo term. You're supposed to say "middle class," because it helps diminish the understanding that there's a class war going on. ... Read more

Prepare For Epic Volatility: E-mini Liquidity Is Nonexistant
ZeroHedge | author | 10/16/14

If you thought the last several days were volatile in the market, you ain't seen nothing yet: judging by the early liquidity, or rather complete lack thereof, in the market moving E-Mini contract, the asset class through which as we disclosed a month ago central banks directly manipulate markets with the CME's blessing, then we urge all those who have stop losses close to the NBBO to quietly pull those as they will get hit adversely. The reason? As this Nanex chart of ES orderbook levels show, there is zero, zilch, nada liquidity in the ES (purple line, compare to orange yesterday). ... Read more
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Major News for Today

  1. Dallas County May Declare State of Disaster From Ebola Virus (BBG)
  2. Markets on edge after worst turmoil in four years (Reuters)
  3. Central bankers may have no quick fix as markets swoon, economy weakens (Reuters)
  4. Risk of Deflation Feeds Global Fears (Hilsenrath)
  5. U.S. health official allowed new Ebola patient on plane with slight fever (Reuters)
  6. Texas Hospital Fights Allegations About Ebola Protocols (BBG)
  7. Treasuries Gain as Oil Drops Below $80 While Stocks Slide (BBG)
  8. Greek Bonds Slump on Bailout Concern as Spain Misses Sale Target (BBG)
  9. White House shifts into crisis mode on Ebola response (Reuters)
  10. Obama Confronts Slippery Slope as Islamic State Advances (BBG)

How Laissez-Faire Economics Led to Inequality and Recession
HP | Jeff Madrick | 10/14/14

Remember in 2009 when everyone was dodging blame for the financial crisis? Depending on who you asked, it was the bankers, the federal regulators, Fannie Mae, fraudster mortgage companies, the ratings agencies and the sub-prime borrowers themselves. The favorite claim of excuse makers was that no single group was to blame -- it was a cluster-f*** as one journalist friend put it.

If everyone did it, no one could be held accountable. But it wasn't true. Bankers and regulators were the major creators of the crisis, for their neglect and single-minded self-aggrandizement that often involved bending the rules. ... Read more

Thirteen Factories
Wikipedia | author | history

The Thirteen Factories was an area of Guangzhou (Canton), China, where the first foreign trade was allowed in the 18th century since the hai jin (??) ban on maritime activities. It is also referred to as the "Thirteen Hongs" or the "Canton Factories". The site where the factories stood is now Wenhua Park, and Thirteen Hong Street, onto which the factories backed is now named Shisanhang Road.

Factories were "foreigners quarters", or trading posts, outside the city walls in Guangzhou rather than a place in the contemporary sense where are manufactured goods. The name came from the foreign agent term of "factors", who maintained offices or factories. Chinese citizens often referred to the factories as "Barbarian Houses". ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, October 16 [9:54]
*DN | A U.S. Nurse Witnesses Ebola's Ravages in Sierra Leone, Where Horrific Conditions Claim Lives Daily (10/16/14) [16:22], Part 2 [11:42]
DN | A Little Shout of Joy: Supreme Court Lets Abortion Clinics Reopen, Easing Crisis of Access in Texas (10/16/14) [4:54]
Jon Stewart - Daily News
Jon Stewart | Jon Stewart Tries To Make Bill O'Reilly Admit White Privilege Exists. And Fails. (10/16/14) [8:01]
*Jon Stewart | Just Try Not to Say Something Stupid for 90 Minutes (10/16/14) [7:46]
*TRNN | Phyllis Bennis: U.S. Will Fail In Attempt to Create Proxy Army in Syria (10/16/14) [14:03]
*TRNN | Deepa Kumar: The Islamophobia of "Homeland", Part 4 (10/16/14) [21:22]
Dr. Kumar tells Paul Jay that Muslim characters on Homeland are either terrorists, sympathizers of terrorists, or "good Muslims" which means pro-US.
TRNN | researcher Tamara Lorincz: Emissions Reduction Impossible Without Demilitarizing Foreign Policy (10/16/14) [13:42]
The Pentagon's new climate change policy does not address the military's contribution to climate change, says researcher Tamara Lorincz.
*TYT | Allowed To Bring Guns To Speeches You Disagree With (10/15/14) [5:38]
TYT | Media Completely Failing America On Ebola In Shocking New Study (10/15/14) [4:36]
*TYT | C.I.A. A Disaster Factory For Decades Yet Here We Go Again (10/15/14) [5:59]
TYT | 2nd Ebola Case In United States Raises Grim Questions (10/15/14) [8:36]

10.16.2014. 11:09

Wednesday October 15, 2014
News Articles

James Risen Challenges the Greed, Power, and Endless War of the National Security State
AlterNet | Norman Solomon | 10/14/14

No single review or interview can do justice to "Pay Any Price" -- the new book by James Risen that is the antithesis of what routinely passes for journalism about the "war on terror." Instead of evasive tunnel vision, the book offers big-picture acuity: focusing on realities that are pervasive and vastly destructive.

Published this week, "Pay Any Price" throws down an urgent gauntlet. We should pick it up. After 13 years of militarized zealotry and fear-mongering in the name of fighting terrorism, the book -- subtitled "Greed, Power, and Endless War" -- zeros in on immense horrors being perpetrated in the name of national security.

Here are a few quotes from the book:
  1. "Obama performed a neat political trick: he took the national security state that had grown to such enormous size under Bush and made it his own. In the process, Obama normalized the post-9/11 measures that Bush had implemented on a haphazard, emergency basis. Obama's great achievement -- or great sin -- was to make the national security state permanent."
  2. "In fact, as trillions of dollars have poured into the nation's new homeland security-industrial complex, the corporate leaders at its vanguard can rightly be considered the true winners of the war on terror."
  3. "There is an entire class of wealthy company owners, corporate executives, and investors who have gotten rich by enabling the American government to turn to the dark side. But they have done so quietly. . . . The new quiet oligarchs just keep making money. . . . They are the beneficiaries of one of the largest transfers of wealth from public to private hands in American history."
  4. "The United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer."
  5. "Of all the abuses America has suffered at the hands of the government in its endless war on terror, possibly the worst has been the war on truth. On the one hand, the executive branch has vastly expanded what it wants to know: something of a vast gathering of previously private truths. On the other hand, it has ruined lives to stop the public from gaining any insight into its dark arts, waging a war on truth. It all began at the NSA."
Read more

Republican Right Embraces Its Long, Hypocritical Tradition of Pandering to Fear
HP | Robert Creamer | 10/14/14

They're back. Like the fourth sequel to a bad horror movie, the Republican Right has once again chosen to embrace its long ignoble, hypocritical tradition of pandering to -- and stoking -- fear.

As the election nears, their ads are filled with images of ISIL terrorists, Ebola viruses, Secret Service breaches, and "porous" borders through which knife-wielding Muslim extremists are surely infiltrating every corner of our society. It's not just disgusting. It's also hypocritical. The fact is that the Republicans have an abysmal record when it comes to defending the security of ordinary Americans.

But this is nothing new. Right-wing demagogues have perfected their techniques for appealing to our darkest fears for decades. It's embedded in their DNA. ... Read more

Another Ebola Case In Dallas

New York Times Reporter James Risen Finds 'Crazy Is The New Normal' In War On Terror
HP | Michael Calderone | 10/14/14

New York Times reporter James Risen was surprised Sunday when former National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden said he doesn't see a need for the government to prosecute Risen for refusing to reveal a source. "I'm glad to see he feels that way these days," Risen said in an interview Monday with The Huffington Post. "I'm not sure how long he's felt that way."

... Risen was one of a the few reporters to seriously scrutinize the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq, even as his own paper downplayed that skeptical coverage. The next year, Hayden and the Bush White House successfully pressured the Times not to publish Risen and colleague Eric Lichtblau's blockbuster report on the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. The Pulitzer Prize-winning story finally appeared on the front page in late 2005, just weeks before Risen planned to reveal it in a chapter of his book, State of War. ... Read more

Your Thoughts on Tiny Houses
BillMoyers | John Light | 10/14/14

Last week, BillMoyers.com published a report on micro-houses (or, more popularly, "tiny houses"). These ultra-compact homes of 1,000 square feet or less are appealing to those who want to make their lives more sustainable, and, increasingly, are being looked at by some as a model for affordable housing.

Many in our audience had lived in a micro-house. "I lived in a 920-square-foot passive solar house and was very happy. My heating bill for the entire winter: $98," said Gordon Billingsley. And even though our BillMoyers.com piece looked at micro-homes for individuals, some of our audience said that they work for families, too. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, October 15 [12:34]
DN | As Second Dallas Nurse Diagnosed with Ebola, Are U.S. Hospitals Failing Healthcare Workers? (10/15/14) [14:59]
*DN | Infected Workers, Slow Deployment, No Vaccines: Ebola Response Shows Pitfalls of Privatized Health (10/15/14) [16:12]
DN | Mexico's Missing Students: Were 43 Attacked by Cartel-Linked Police Targeted for Their Activism? (10/15/14) [10:33]
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- a collection of debris in the North Pacific ocean -- is one of five major garbage patches drifting in the oceans.
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*TRNN | Sen. Bob Graham: Revealing the 9/11 Conspiracy Would Undo the Entire US-Saudi Alliance, Part 2 (10/14/14) [16:24]
*TRNN | Deepa Kumar: Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (10/15/14) [20:21]
*TYT | Meet The Ultra-Rich Koch Donors Who Not-So-Secretly Run Things (10/14/14) [19:28]
TYT | Fox News Hides The Ugly, Honest Reason America Has No Surgeon General (10/14/14) [3:36]
TYT | Untouchable Rich Iranian Kids Flaunt Riches On Social Media (10/14/14) [5:53]
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Wikipedia | author | current

The group originated as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999. This group was the forerunner of Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn--commonly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). It took part in the Iraqi insurgency against US-led forces and their Iraqi allies following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and joined other Sunni insurgent groups to form the Mujahideen Shura Council, which consolidated further into the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) shortly afterwards. At its height, it enjoyed a significant presence in Al Anbar, Nineveh, Kirkuk, and other areas, but around 2008 its violent methods led to a backlash against it and temporary decline.

In April 2013, the group changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It grew significantly under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, gaining support in Iraq as a result of perceived economic and political discrimination against Iraqi Sunnis. ... Read more


10.15.2014. 12:06

Tuesday October 14, 2014
News Articles

WHO: New Ebola Cases Could Be Up To 10,000 Per Week In 2 Months
AP & HP | author | 10/14/14

The death rate in the Ebola outbreak has risen to 70 percent and there could be up to 10,000 new cases a week in two months, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday. WHO assistant director-general Dr. Bruce Aylward gave the grim figures during a news conference in Geneva. Previously, WHO had estimated the death rate at around 50 percent.

... For the last four weeks, there's been about 1,000 new cases per week -- including suspected, confirmed and probable cases, he said, adding that the U.N. health agency is aiming to get 70 percent of cases isolated within two months to reverse the outbreak. ... Read more

All That Is Broken With The US Financial System In One Chart
ZeroHedge | author | 10/14/14

As the blue bar shows, total loans issued by the biggest US bank were $743 billion in Q3 2014: about $20 billion less than in the quarter Lehman blew up. Four years later, and the US commercial bank lending apparatus is still in a state of depression. Or so it would appear on the books.

But why doesn't JPM lend out more: after all that is the main pathway to stimulate the economy as all pundits will tell us. Simple: it doesn't need to. As the red bars show, total consumer deposits held by the bank just rose once more, this time to a record $1,335 billion, up $15 billion in the quarter, pushing the deposit-over-loan difference to a new record $591 billion. This is happening exclusively due to the Fed, which when banks do not "create" money from loans (as they clearly don't), has to step in with QE and create money on its own. ... Read more
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Mortgage Application Pipeline At America's Largest Mortgage Lender Drops To Lowest Since Lehman
ZeroHedge | author | 10/14/14

US housing picture is once again the worst it has ever been (excluding those days around the Lehman bankruptcy when all of finance died for a few weeks).

In short: the only people buying houses in the US now are foreigners laundering their illegal, tax-exempt profits (ever fewer) and those as close to the Fed's ZIRP as possible, and, of course, paying all cash. Everyone else: not so much. Read more
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The Fed Is About To Pull The QE Plug... And This Happens
ZeroHedge | author | 10/14/14

Moments ago, the Fed concluded its latest $931MM POMO, with just 6 more POMOs left ever (at least until another QE program is unveiled), and judging by the last week's performance, the market has finally figured this out. And Goldman, which has been pounding the table on shorting the 10 Year for about a year now, and in the process crucifying even more muppets, has some bad news for TSY shorts: global growth is crashing. ... Read more
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Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, October 14 [13:41]
*DN | James Risen Prepared to "Pay Any Price" to Report on War on Terror Amid Crackdown on Whistleblowers (10/14/14) [11:08], Part 2 [4:39]
State of War by James Risen
John Oliver
Warren G Harding Love Letters (10/12/14) [3:11]
John Oliver: Pumpkins Spice (10/12/14) [3:11]
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
*Jon Stewart | Former AIG Chairman and CEO Hank Greenberg sues the U.S. government, claiming that the terms of the company's $184 billion bailout were insufficient and unfair. (10/09/14) [9:58]
Jon Stewart | Jeremy Renner discusses the career of journalist Gary Webb, which served as the basis for his film "Kill the Messenger." (10/09/14) [5:15]
*Jon Stewart | Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta discusses the need for Congress and President Barack Obama to work together to address the threat of ISIS. (10/08/14) [8:19], Part 2 [10:47]
*TRNN | Deepa Kumar: Fighting the Demonization of Muslims, Part 2 (10/14/14) [15:26]
TRNN | How Socialist China Became the Workshop of the World (10/13/14) [8:25]
TRNN | Privatization, Occupation, and the Israeli Economy (10/13/14) [13:29]
TYT | Republicans To Blame For No Ebola Vaccine? (10/14/14) [2:56]
*TYT | Professor Reza Aslan On Sam Harris (10/14/14) [4:00], Part 2 [4:10]
TYT | How Budget Cuts Cost Us An Ebola Vaccine (10/14/14) [5:11]
TYT | New Texas Ebola Case, Is It Time To Panic? (10/14/14) [5:00]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire | Ring of Fire (10/12/14) [57:00]
  1. 00:46 - "SCOTUS Destroys Fundamentals of Democracy." David Haynes talks about the upcoming Supreme Court term, and their disastrous first decision to limit early voting in Ohio. #SCOTUS
  2. 14:16 - "Eric Holder's Troubled Legacy." Michael Burg discusses Eric Holder's dismal record on Wall Street accountability. #TooBigToJail
  3. 25:48 - "Obamacare Ends Big Pharma's Bribe Machine." Howard Nations explains how a provision in Obamacare could put an end to big pharma's bribing of doctors. #BigPharmaBribery
  4. 37:53 - "The Backstory." Pap and Sam News.


10.14.2014. 13:35

Monday October 13, 2014
News Articles

Will The Fed Let The Stock Market Crash Before An Election?
ZeroHedge | author | 10/13/14

... Let's set aside sentiment measures and technical analysis and ask a larger question: will the Fed let the stock market crash before an election? Once again we find two camps among participants. 1) One camp believes markets still obey the basic rules of technical analysis. The Fed and other central banks may intervene at the margins, but their interventions only work on low-volume days. When selling increases, it overwhelms the relatively modest size of central bank intervention and the market then crash. 2) The other camp holds that all markets are now engineered, and intervention can reach essentially unlimited levels if the Powers That Be deem that necessary.

For context, let's recall that the Fed conjured up $16 trillion to backstop global banks in the Global Financial Meltdown; (the Levy Institute came up with $29 trillion after poring over all the data). To put $16 trillion in context, note that entire gross domestic product (GDP) of the U.S. is about $17.3 trillion, and all residential mortgages in the U.S. total about $10 trillion. ... Read more
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Where prior to 2008 the Fed and other central state players might have viewed $10 billion as a major intervention, what do you think whatever it takes is now? Do you really think $1 trillion would give those in charge pause? Since we're talking about propping up a $160+ trillion edifice ($80 trillion of assets in the U.S. alone), what's a trillion or two between pals?

Key Figures In CIA-Crack Cocaine Scandal Begin To Come Forward
HP | Ryan Grim | 10/10/14

... More than 18 years have passed since Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with his "Dark Alliance" newspaper series investigating the connections between the CIA, a crack cocaine explosion in the predominantly African-American neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, and the Nicaraguan Contra fighters -- scandalous implications that outraged LA's black community, severely damaged the intelligence agency's reputation and launched a number of federal investigations. ...

... Now, Webb's bombshell expose is being explored anew in a documentary, "Freeway: Crack in the System," directed by Marc Levin, which tells the story of "Freeway" Rick Ross, who created a crack empire in LA during the 1980s and is a key figure in Webb's "Dark Alliance" narrative. The documentary is being released after the major motion picture "Kill The Messenger," which features Jeremy Renner in the role of Webb and hits theaters on Friday. ... Read more

Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola
Ebola Themed Halloween Costumes.
 Still working on this.
*TRNN | After revelations show that the Obama administration uses reporters' FOIA requests as a tip service, did the mainstream media create a monster that they can't tame? (10/13/14) [9:59]
TYT | Obama's Weakness Explained (10/12/14) [4:13]
TYT | ISIS Pushes Right Up To Turkish Border (10/12/14) [4:54]
TYT | DON'T Joke About Ebola When On A Plane (10/11/14) [4:30]
TYT | Is Sam Harris As Dangerous As Sarah Palin? (10/11/14) [19:41]
"Whether you think him a truth-teller or a bigot, Bill Maher deserves credit for launching one of the most robust public cultural/intellectual debates in recent memory. Two weeks ago today, he said on HBO that "a vast number of Muslims across the world" believe people who do not share their religious beliefs "deserve to die." He also suggested that the Islamic State, or ISIL, was not an abberation of Islam, but a reflection of it.

Those remarks sparked a heated debate three days later on CNN, when hosts Don Lemon and Alisyn Camerota pressed the religious scholar Reza Aslan to defend Islam against the charge that it was inherently violent. Aslan argued that the CNN hosts were cherry-picking examples and making broad sweeping general claims about Islam that were false. "We are using two or three examples to justify a generalization," he said. "That's actually the definition of bigotry."

Four days later, Maher returned to his program with Sam Harris, the religious critic, and the two got into a shouting match with actor Ben Affleck and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof over whether violence, intolerance, subjugation of women, etc. were inherent to Islam. Midway through the debate, Harris said "Islam at the moment is the motherlode of bad ideas." Maher concurred: "That's just a fact." Affleck, visibly repulsed and stupefied, only sighed: "Jesus Christ"
TYT | Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Malala Yousafzai And Kailash Satyarthi (10/11/14) [6:32]
TYT | Meet Little Moe, The Ebola Killing Robot. (10/12/14) [2:02]
 Still working on this.

10.13.2014. 10:07

Friday October 10, 2014
News Articles

Key Figures In CIA-Crack Cocaine Scandal Begin To Come Forward
HP | Ryan Grim | 10/10/14

With the public in the U.S. and Latin America becoming increasingly skeptical of the war on drugs, key figures in a scandal that once rocked the Central Intelligence Agency are coming forward to tell their stories in a new documentary and in a series of interviews with The Huffington Post.

More than 18 years have passed since Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with his "Dark Alliance" newspaper series investigating the connections between the CIA, a crack cocaine explosion in the predominantly African-American neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, and the Nicaraguan Contra fighters -- scandalous implications that outraged LA's black community, severely damaged the intelligence agency's reputation and launched a number of federal investigations.

It did not end well for Webb, however. Major media, led by The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, worked to discredit his story. Under intense pressure, Webb's top editor abandoned him. Webb was drummed out of journalism. One LA Times reporter recently apologized for his leading role in the assault on Webb, but it came too late. Webb died in 2004 from an apparent suicide. Obituaries referred to his investigation as "discredited."

Now, Webb's bombshell expose is being explored anew in a documentary, "Freeway: Crack in the System," directed by Marc Levin, which tells the story of "Freeway" Rick Ross, who created a crack empire in LA during the 1980s and is a key figure in Webb's "Dark Alliance" narrative. The documentary is being released a week after the major motion picture "Kill The Messenger," which features Jeremy Renner in the role of Webb and hits theaters on Friday. ... Read more

"Financial Markets Are Artificially Priced: What Do You Do?" - Bill Gross' First Janus Capital Letter
ZeroHedge | author | 10/10/14

Financial markets are artificially priced.... We have had our Biblical seven years of fat. We must look forward, almost by mathematical necessity, to seven figurative years of leaner: Bonds -- 3% to 4% at best, stocks -- 5% to 6% on the outside. That may not be enough for your retirement or your kid's college education. It certainly isn't for many private and public pension funds that still have a fairy tale belief in an average 7% to 8% return for the next 10 to 20 years! ... Read more

Remember back when you held that median American nest-egg of $81,200? The average member of the Forbes 400 holds a fortune over 70,000 times that size.

America's Ridiculously Rich: the 2014 Edition
BillMoyers | author | 10/10/14

... And the richest of these 400 hold far more than that average. Take Larry Ellison, the third-ranking deep pocket on this year's Forbes list. Ellison just stepped down as the CEO of the Oracle business software colossus. His net worth: $50 billion.

What does Ellison do with all those billions? He collects homes and estates, for starters, with 15 or so scattered all around the world. Ellison likes yachts, too. He currently has two extremely big ones, each over half as long as a football field.

Ellison also likes to play basketball, even on his yachts. If a ball bounces over the railing, no problem. Ellison has a powerboat following his yacht, the Wall Street Journal noted this past spring, "to retrieve balls that go overboard."

Hiring that ball-retriever qualifies Ellison as a "job creator," right? Maybe not. Ellison has regularly destroyed jobs on his way to grand fortune. He has become, over the years, a master of the merge-and-purge two-step: First you snatch your rival's customers, then you fire its workers.

In 2005, for instance, Ellison shelled out $10.6 billion to buy out PeopleSoft, an 11,000-employee competitor. He then proceeded to put the ax to 5,000 jobs .

Five years later, Ellison bought out Sun Microsystems and indignantly denied that any "massive layoff" would be in the offing. Five months later, Ellison's Oracle quietly acknowledged a major downsizing in an official federal regulatory filing.

Job massacres like these have been hollowing out America's middle class ... Read more

Princess Juliana International Airport, St. Maarten
weather.com | author | current

Maho Beach is located in St Maarten, and famous for the Princess Juliana International Airport adjacent to the it. Arriving aircraft must touch down as close as possible to the beginning of Runway 10 resulting in aircraft flying over the beach at minimal altitude.

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, October 10 [9:16]
*DN | Pakistani Education Activist Malala Yousafzai Becomes Youngest Winner of Nobel Peace Prize (10/10/14) [11:19]
DN | Ferguson October: Activists Call for Nationwide Convergence to Demand Justice for Michael Brown (10/10/14) [21:04]
*DN | Jeremy Scahill on Obama's Orwellian War in Iraq: We Created the Very Threat We Claim to be Fighting (repeat 10/03/14) [17:49] *TRNN | Ms. Deepa Kumar: Islamophobia and a Challenge to Bill Maher (10/10/14) [20:57]
TRNN | Baltimore Sun journalist Mark Puente discusses his investigation into police brutality cases that have cost the city $5.7 million (10/10/14) [14:30]
TYT | Fox News vs Harvard On ISIS Turns Into Embarrassing Ignorance Fest (10/09/14) [5:02]
TYT | Would Hosting Meet The Press Ruin Jon Stewart? (10/09/14) [6:46]
TYT | All Muslims Are Violent Radicals Like The Nazis, Insists Politician (10/09/14) [9:26]
*TYT | Immense Lie About ISIS Spreads Fear, Confusion & The Republican Message (10/09/14) [7:03]
TYT | Anti-Muslim Bias Goes WAY Beyond Bill Maher & Sam Harris (10/09/14) [12:25]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire | The Death of Critical Thinking In America (10/09/14) [9:33]
Drugs | Betrailal | Gary Webb
Freeway: Crack In The System Official Trailer - Marc Levin CIA Contra Documentary (trailer) (2014) [212]
Connections between Freeway Ricky Ross, the Bush Administration, and the crack cocaine epidemic () [26:31]
The drug kingpin Freeway Ricky Ross became known as The Wal-Mart of Crack in Los Angeles during the 1980s by becoming the largest supplier of drugs in the area, without his initially knowing that his source of drugs was a CIA agent connected to the Iran-Contra scandal associated with George Bush and Ronald Reagan.

This compilation of video clips from the documentary film The American Drug War: The Last White Hope details the circumstances of the connections between Ricky Ross and the CIA, showing how the connection was publicly exposed in the media and then largely forgotten by the public while CIA drug trafficking continues.
Kill the Messenger Official Trailer #1 - Jeremy Renner Crime (trailer) (2014) [2:18]
*DN | "Kill the Messenger" Resurrects Gary Webb, Journalist Maligned for Exposing CIA Ties to Crack Trade (10/09/14) [5:24]
Terrorist | Collateral Damage | and Iraq
BookTV | Why Did the Iraq War Start? The Untold Story - Seymour Hersh (2005) [1:22:50]
Leading To War () [1:12:16]
LeadingToWar website
Untold History of United States by Oliver Stone - Bush & Obama: Age of Terror (2013) [58:39]

How Abola Effects the Body
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10.10.2014. 12:39

Thursday October 09, 2014
News Articles

Want To Score High On The SAT? Pick Rich Parents
ZeroHedge | author | 10/08/14

While money (reportedly) can't buy love, it appears, according to The WSJ, that it can buy brains.On average, based on calculations from FairTest, students in 2014 in every income bracket outscored students in a lower bracket on every section of the test. Rather stunningly, students from the wealthiest families outscored those from the poorest by just shy of 400 points. As WSJ's Josh Zumbrun so poetically notes, perhaps SAT should more appropriately stand for Student Affluence Test. ... Read more
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Are Tiny Houses a Viable Affordable Housing Solution?
BillMoyers | John Light | 10/06/14

Last month's well attended climate march in New York City showed that we are finally recognizing the harmful effects of our fossil-fuel driven economy on the planet. Some Americans looking to shrink their carbon footprint are doing so by shrinking their homes, opting to live in ultra-compact houses, often referred to as "tiny houses."

Increasingly, these small homes are also being considered as models for affordable housing that could serve as a place for the homeless to find some stability and, perhaps, live permanently. In such varied locations as Portland, Oregon, upstate New York, Austin, Texas and Madison, Wisconsin, local advocates for the homeless have constructed communities of tiny houses. ... Read more
Are Tiny Houses a Viable Affordable Housing Solution? (10/07/14) [9:32]

210 Square Foot Modern Tiny House- with no Loft! (03/17/14) [13:43]
Collage of Tiny and not so Tiny houses. Fun to watch to see what different people are accomplishing.
Awesome Micro Houses on Wheels Tiny Homes (04/11/14) [8:30]

Key Democrats, Led By Hillary Clinton, Leave No Doubt That Endless War Is Official U.S. Doctrine
The Intercept | Glenn Greenwald | 10/08/14

Long before Americans were introduced to the new 9/11 era super-villains called ISIS and Khorasan, senior Obama officials were openly and explicitly stating that America's "war on terror," already 12 years old, would last at least another decade. At first, they injected these decrees only anonymously; in late 2012, The Washington Post - disclosing the administration's secret creation of a "disposition matrix" to decide who should be killed, imprisoned without charges, or otherwise "disposed" of - reported these remarkable facts.

... In May, 2013, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether it should revise the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). A committee member asked a senior Pentagon official, Assistant Secretary Michael Sheehan, how long the war on terror would last; his reply: "At least 10 to 20 years." At least. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed afterward "that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today -- atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted." As Spencer Ackerman put it: "Welcome to America's Thirty Years War," one which -- by the Obama administration's own reasoning -- has "no geographic limit." ... Read more

Airstrikes are big business for defense companies
magazine | Cliff Judy | 09/29/14

Airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria have served as launching point for far more than missiles. Those military decisions cost the U.S. millions of dollars a day, and defense contractors pocket much of that money. (Video via U.S. Navy)

Bloomberg reports in mid-September just ahead of airstrikes in Syria, defense firms Lockheed Martin, Northrop, Raytheon and General Dynamics Corporation all set stock price records. ... Read more
*Airstrikes are big business for defense companies (09/29/14) [3:17]

Woman Explains Why She Will End Her Life on November 1
AlterNet | Alyssa Figueroa | 10/08/14

Brittany Maynard and her husband were on their honeymoon when she started to get severe headaches. By January 2014, she found out she had a type of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme and was told she had ten years to live. A few weeks later, however, doctors uncovered the cancer was at stage 4, and she would only have six months to live. ... Read more
Woman Explains Why She Will End Her Life on November 1 (10/08/14) [6:30]

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, October 09 [8:31]
*DN | U.S. Faces "Massive Military Failure" as ISIS Advances on Syrian Border Town of Kobani (10/09/14) [11:26]
*DN | Iraqi Journalist Who Embedded with Shia Militias on Fighting ISIS & Why US Strategy is Bound to Fail (10/09/14) [14:28]
*DN | "Kill the Messenger" Resurrects Gary Webb, Journalist Maligned for Exposing CIA Ties to Crack Trade (10/09/14) [5:24]
*Bill Moyers | Restoring an America That Has Lost Its Way (10/09/14) [25:23]
Conservation International
*TRNN | Rob Johnson comments: Concentration of Wealth in China Keeps Wages Low (10/09/14) [12:13]
TRNN | Prof. Rashid Sumaila, Fisheries Centre, Univ. of B.C. says ocean temperatures occurring at a much faster rate than scientists had previously predicted (10/09/14) [14:24]
*TYT | This Holy Book Is Full Of Appalling Violence (10/09/14) [8:42]
TYT | Endless War Is Here To Stay - Thanks Obama! (10/09/14) [11:10]
TYT | Doomed Incumbent Senator Rallies His Lobbyist Base (10/09/14) [7:28]
Ring of Fire
*Ring of Fire | The Corporate Death Grip on America (08/13/14) [3:15]
Ring of Fire (full) (10/05/14) [57:00]
  1. 00:42 - "Obama Goes After Corporate Hyenas." David Haynes talks about the administration's plan to crack down on corporate tax evaders. #CorporateTaxCheats
  2. 09:55 - "The Death of Critical Thinking." Howard Nations explains how the right wing assault on public education has destroyed rational and critical thinking in America. #CriticalThinking
  3. 19:31 - "What Republican Obstruction Has Cost." David Hersh in Denver, Colorado discusses the ramifications of Republican obstructionism in terms of job growth and economic stability. #WorstCongressEver
  4. 28:11 - "Are Police Officers The Real Threat?" Blogger Chauncey DeVega talks about the latest police shooting caught on tape, and why poorly trained officers pose a significant risk to your safety. #Justice
  5. 37:04 - "And Give Up Showbiz?" Fred Levin discusses his career, and the hurdles he overcame to be one of the most successful trial lawyers in America. #AndGiveUpShowbiz
  6. 50:01 - "The Backstory." Sam Seder and Pap discuss Obama's plan to bomb Syria.

10.09.2014. 11:10

Wednesday October 08, 2014
News Articles

Restoring an America That Has Lost its Way
BillMoyers | author | 10/07/14

Three years ago, reporter and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert took to the road and traveled across the United States, chronicling in his new book, Losing Our Way, the stories of brave, hard-working men and women battered by the economic downturn. He found an America in which jobs have disappeared, infrastructure is falling apart and the "virtuous cycle" of well-paid workers spending their wages to power the economy has been broken by greed and the gap between the very rich and everyone else.

He tells Bill: "[W]e've established a power structure in which the great corporations and the big banks have allied themselves with the national government and, in many cases, local government to pursue corporate interests and financial interests as opposed to those things that would be in the best interests of ordinary working people… Once you do that, you lose the dynamic that America is supposed to be. It's supposed to be an egalitarian society, a society of rising standards of living, a society of a vast and thriving middle class. And we are getting farther and farther away from that ideal."

As for solutions, Herbert says, "People need to start voting against the excessive power of the great moneyed interests. But more than that, we need a movement, a grass-roots movement that will fight for the interests of ordinary men and women…" Read more

America's First Ebola Patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, Has Died

End Of The Empire
ZeroHedge | author | 10/08/14

If the top 1/100th of 1% crowding airports with their private jets isn't afraid of impoverished, disenchanted debt-serfs with pitchforks, they should be.

By End of the Empire I refer not to the collapse of American Imperial power but to the excesses and anxieties that characterize the decay of Empire. I have covered the dynamics of Imperial decay before: How Empires Fall (April 17, 2013): The imperial tree falls not because the challenges are too great but because the core of the tree has been weakened by the gradual loss of surplus, purpose, institutional effectiveness, intellectual vigor and productive investment.

... The top 1/10th of 1% has never been wealthier, the top 1% has never been wealthier, the top 5% have never been wealthier, and the top 10% have never been wealthier. People wonder why they're "poor" despite earning $250,000 a year, and yet they seem unaware of where their earnings go because they're entitled to all the goodies: by golly, we worked hard and we deserve it. ... Read more

U.S. Orders Agents To Monitor Travelers For Ebola
AP & HP | Alicia A. Caldwell | 10/08/14

The government plans to begin taking the temperatures of travelers from West Africa arriving at five U.S. airports as part of a stepped-up response to the Ebola epidemic.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said an additional layer of screening would begin at New York's JFK International and the international airports in Newark, Washington Dulles, Chicago and Atlanta. He did not give many details, but another official said separately that the new steps would include taking temperatures and would begin Saturday at JFK. ... Read more

Photos From Ebola Ground Zero In Liberia by John Moore

Inside the Bizarre Right-Wing Panic over Ebola Virus Coming to the US
AlterNet | Amanda Marcotte | 10/07/14

Of all the issues that you would think would by non-partisan, ebola should be at the top of the list. The disease is just a mindless germ that doesn't check your race, gender, social class, sexual orientation or party identification before it strikes, suggesting both liberals and conservatives have a stake in treating people exposed to the disease with compassion and care. And yet, to flip on Fox News or turn on any conservative media at all, you'd think that ebola was some kind of plague designed by the Democratic party in order to wipe out Republicans.

Blowing the threat of ebola out of proportion and trying to link it to Obama has been a constant theme on the right in recent days. Elisabeth Hasselbeck of Fox News literally demanded that we put the country on lockdown, banning all travel in and out. In a bit of race-baiting, Andrea Tantaros of Fox suggested that people who travel to the country and show symptoms of ebola will "seek treatment from a witch doctor" instead of go to the hospital. Fox host Steve Doocy suggested the CDC is lying about ebola because they're "part of the administration". Fox also promoted a conspiracy theorist who is trying to claim the CDC is lying when they caution people not to panic. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, October 08 [11:42]
DN | Bad Policy, Bad Medicine: Anti-Choice Law Leaves Vast Swaths of Texas with No Abortion Provider (10/08/14) [19:01]
DN | Migrant Women, Children Allege Harsh Conditions, Sexual Assault at For-Profit Texas Immigration Jail (10/08/14) [17:53]
Bill Moyers | Restoring an America That Has Lost its Way (preview) (10/07/14) [0:29]
Three years ago, reporter and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert took to the road and traveled across the United States, chronicling in his new book, Losing Our Way, the stories of brave, hard-working men and women battered by the economic downturn. He found an America in which jobs have disappeared, infrastructure is falling apart and the "virtuous cycle" of well-paid workers spending their wages to power the economy has been broken by greed and the gap between the very rich and everyone else.
*TRNN | Rob Johnson comments: Top 400 US Billionaires' Wealth Equals Brazil's GDP (10/08/14) [18:16]
Rob Johnson comments on the Forbes report that top 400 billionaires own 2.29 trillion dollars of wealth, up 270 billion over last year.
*TRNN | Journalist Patrick Cockburn says: Fall of Kobani Reveals Failure of U.S. Bombing Campaign (10/08/14) [10:20]
Journalist Patrick Cockburn says U.S.-led airstrikes have not degraded or destroyed the Islamic State (IS), who now control about a quarter of Iraq.
Jon Oliver
HBO | Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Civil Forfeiture (10/05/14) [16:29]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart Reacts To Narendra Modi Visit To USA - America's Top Modi (09/30/14) [3:38]
TYT | Bill Maher Finds Friends In Big Bigotry Following Ben Affleck Blow Up (10/07/14) [13:15]
TYT | Insane Villainous Threats Are An ISIS Trademark (10/07/14) [7:09]
*TYT | The Truth About Muslims Is The Same Truth About Your Family (10/07/14) [7:11]
TYT | Illinois Teen Headed For ISIS If It Weren't For One Critical Mistake (10/07/14) [4:17]
TYT | Republicans Lose Their Boner For Gay Marriage (10/07/14) [7:08]
TYT | John Stossel Being Sexist And He's Kinda Right (10/07/14) [5:05]
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.

10.08.2014. 13:08

Tuesday October 07, 2014
News Articles

At 78, Former Executive Still Flips Burgers for $7.98
Bloomberg | Carol Hymowitz | 10/07/14

"Yes, I am the burger man,''

A year ago, Bloomberg News profiled Palome's odyssey through the working world of older Americans who haven't saved enough to retire comfortably. When the story hit, "I had 15 hours of fame" that included paid speaking and consulting gigs, Palome said. Then the thrill wore off and Palome was back to his regular work life and the financial pressure of limited savings.

Following Bloomberg's story, published in September 2013 and reprinted by newspapers and websites including The Washington Post and Yahoo! Finance, strangers stopped Palome in the street, asking, "Aren't you the burger man?" ("Yes, I am the burger man,'' Palome would respond with pride.) Many others tracked him down at work to shake his hand just to "make sure I really existed," he said. ... Read more

US Hiring Plummets Most Since June 2010, Fewest Hires Since Polar Vortex Ground Economy To A Halt.

The World's Most Powerful Central Banker: Janet Who?
Bloomberg | Christopher Condonr | 10/07/14

While world financial markets hang on her every word, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen isn't making much of an impression yet on ordinary Americans.

Just 24 percent of respondents correctly identified Janet Yellen as the chair of the U.S. central bank in a survey by the Pew Research Center in Washington. Seventeen percent believed Alan Greenspan, who resigned in 2006, still holds the job. ... Read more

Joe Biden Apologizes For Telling the Truth About ISIS
MotherJones | Kevin Drum | 10/06/14

Speaking at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Mr. Biden said allies including Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had extended unconditional financial and logistical support to Sunni fighters trying to oust the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.

... "Our allies poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against al-Assad," he said, including jihadists planning to join the Nusra Front and Al Qaeda. ... Read more
CBS | Biden apologizes for gaffe that angered Mideast allies (10/05/14) [1:52]

Spain Warns "Something Went Wrong" As Suspected Ebola Cases Rise In Madrid
ZeroHedge | author | 10/07/14

Despite being described by Spain's public health director as "a national jewel," the head of Spain's Nursing Council warns "something went wrong" in the health care system's protocols.

Spanish health officials have 4 patients interned including infected initial nurse, her husband, and a 2nd nurse (male). Furthermore, 22 more possible Ebola cases are under surveillance having had direct contact with the infected nurse during her vacation after being infected (officials have said they 'don't know' how she became infected with the deadly virus). ... Read more

Click to zoom - for bigger image

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, October 07 [12:39]
*DN | Dr. Atul Gawande: Ebola is "Eminently Stoppable," But Global Response Has Been "Pathetic" (10/07/14) [13:52]
DN | Being Mortal: Dr. Atul Gawande on How U.S. Healthcare Fails to Handle the End of Life (10/07/14) [5:55]
*TRNN | Col. Larry Wilkerson: Republicans Poised to Win the Senate by Narrow Margin (10/07/14) [11:09]
Col. Larry Wilkerson: We can expect corruption, massive misrepresentation, and disequilibrium of wealth.
TRNN | Peter Lee, Journalist: Hong Kong Protests Carefully Crafted, Not Spontaneous (10/07/14) [13:09]
Tiananmen analogies are a barrier to understanding what's really going on in Hong Kong says Peter Lee, Journalist for the Asia Times On-Line.
*TRNN | Natural Gas is No Solution for Reducing CO2 (10/07/14) [6:19]
Relying on Natural Gas as a "Bridge Fuel" is a mistake because it delays the development of renewable energy and does not reduce emissions significantly enough, says Christine Shearer, post-doctoral scholar of Earth System Science at UC Irvine.
*TRNN | Why Is Putin Hanging on to Assad? (10/05/14) [13:32]
Political economist Aleksandr Buzgalin says the Russian state is pursuing geopolitical interests in Syria and Ukraine for its elite - to the detriment of ordinary citizens.
*TYT | Ben Affleck Angrily Defends Islam Against Bill Maher/Sam Harris (10/06/14) [24:12]
TYT | How Americans View Other Religions Will & Won't Surprise You (10/06/14) [12:30]
TYT | Khorasan Will Attack Tomorrow… Eventually, Says FBI Director (10/06/14) [7:10]
The Khorasan Group, the Al-Qaeda-linked cell that just landed on the US intelligence radar last month, allegedly has Americans in its ranks fighting in the Middle East whom the FBI cannot prevent from re-entering the country.

Last month, the world was introduced to yet another terrorist group -- the Khorasan Group -- a veteran group of Al-Qaeda-affiliated radicals purportedly running amok in the Middle East, which the head of the FBI says is "bent on destruction" -- and most specifically in the United States.

"Khorasan was working and you know, may still be working on an effort to attack the United States or our allies, and looking to do it very, very soon," James Comey said in an interview with 60 Minutes, a CBS news program.

10.07.2014. 11:51

Monday October 06, 2014
News Articles

American Banks Stockpile Treasuries as Deposits Top Loans
Bloomberg | Susanne Walker | 10/06/14

American banks are loading up on U.S. government debt, a sign they remain cautious on the economy even with the jobless rate at a six-year low and corporations at their healthiest in a generation.

Commercial lenders increased their holdings of Treasuries (BUSY) and debt from federal agencies in September by $54 billion to an unprecedented $1.99 trillion, data from the Federal Reserve show. Banks have now been net buyers for 12 straight months.

Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Citigroup Inc. (C) are among the lenders adding government bonds this year as loan growth fails to keep up with record deposits and banks prepare for rules that take effect in January requiring them to hold more high-quality assets. While companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index are earning more than ever and carrying the lowest debt burdens in at least 24 years, the buying suggests that loan officers are less sanguine over the outlook for the U.S. economy. ... Read more

S&P 500 Companies Spend 95% of Profits on Buybacks, Payouts
Bloomberg | Lu Wang | 10/06/14

Companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index really love their shareholders. Maybe too much. They're poised to spend $914 billion on share buybacks and dividends this year, or about 95 percent of earnings, data compiled by Bloomberg and S&P Dow Jones Indices show. Money returned to stock owners exceeded profits in the first quarter and may again in the third. The proportion of cash flow used for repurchases has almost doubled over the last decade while it's slipped for capital investments, according to Jonathan Glionna, head of U.S. equity strategy research at Barclays Plc.

Buybacks have helped fuel one of the strongest rallies of the past 50 years as stocks with the most repurchases gained more than 300 percent since March 2009. Now, with returns slowing, investors say executives risk snuffing out the bull market unless they start plowing money into their businesses. ... Read more

So now let's look at the big picture. The final totals are $59 billion, 3 percent of the total federal budget, for regular welfare and $92 billion, 5 percent of the total federal budget, for corporate welfare.

What Bubble? Record $924 Billion In 65 Million Auto Loans: 31% Of All New Loans Are Subprime
ZeroHedge | author | 10/06/14

At least we now know, definitively, what the reason for the US manufacturing surge in the late spring early summer was: a subprime credit-driven car buying binge.

  1. The total balance of auto loans outstanding in August is $924.2 billion, an all-time high and an increase of 10.8% from same time a year ago
  2. The total number of auto loans outstanding stands at more than 65 million, a record high and an increase of more than 6% from the same time last year;
  3. The total number of new loans originated through June is 12.5 million, an increase of 4.9% from same time a year ago
  4. The total balance of new loans is $254.2 billion, an increase of 6.9% from same time a year ago and representing nearly half of total new non-mortgage credit originated
  5. The total number of new loans originated year-to-date through June for subprime borrowers, defined as consumers with Equifax Risk Scores of 640 or lower, is 3.9 million, representing 31.2% of all auto loans originated this year.
  6. Similarly, the total balance of newly originated subprime auto loans is $70.7 billion, an eight-year high and representing 27.8% of the total balance of new auto loans
  7. Year-to-date in June, the average loan amount for borrowers with risk scores of 680 or lower are increasing the most, showing a 3% increase from the previous year. Loan sizes among borrowers with risk scores of 760 or higher show little change from the same time a year ago
Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, October 06 [10:15]
DN | Death of "Baby Doc" Duvalier Won't End Quest for Justice by Victims of Haiti's U.S.-Backed Dictator (10/06/14) [10:28]
DN | Black Prophetic Fire: Cornel West on the Revolutionary Legacy of Leading African-American Voices (10/06/14) [20:53]
*TRNN | Meteorologist Jeff Masters explains: New Evidence Links Global Heat Waves to Climate Change (10/06/14) [6:53]
*TRNN | Gaza Under Siege - Eva Bartlett on Reality Asserts Itself, Part 1 (10/06/14) [16:38], TRNN | Part 2 [16:27]
*TRNN |Economist Pavlina Tcherneva of Bard College explains: The Lower Unemployment Rate is a Recovery - for the Top 10% (10/06/14) [17:55]
Click to zoom - for bigger image
The Lower Unemployment Rate is a Recovery - for the Top 10%
* Corporate Welfare vs Social Welfare

Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare Programs
thinkbynumbers.org | author | 2012

http://thinkbynumbers.org

When one thinks about government welfare, the first thing that comes to mind is the proverbial welfare queen sitting atop her majestic throne of government cheese issuing a royal decree to her clamoring throngs of illegitimate babies that they may shut the hell up while she tries to watch Judge Judy. However, many politically well-connected corporations are also parasitically draining their share of fiscal blood from your paycheck before you ever see it. It's called corporate welfare. The intent here is to figure out which presents the greater burden to our federal budget, corporate or social welfare programs. ... Read more

Or read the Archived article here:
Click to zoom - for article

STUDY: U.S. Spends $59 Billion on Social Welfare…$92 Billion on Corporate Welfare
wepartypatriots.com | author | 09/21/12

A recent blog post by Mike Sinn for Think by Numbers questions if the government spends more on social welfare or corporate welfare. The GOP has attempted to turn the political discussion surrounding the upcoming election into a debate about President Obama and social welfare, while progressives have done the same with Mitt Romney and corporate welfare. But who is right!? There have got to be…facts…haven't there!?

According to analyzed numbers from the year 2006, the government spends $59 billion (3% of its total budget) on social welfare and $92 billion (5% of total budget) on corporate welfare. Perhaps more interesting is that in 1996, when new welfare reforms were signed into law by President Bill Clinton, both caseloads AND child poverty significantly dropped, saving the government gobs of money: ... Read more

Or read the Archived article here:
Click to zoom - for article
corporate-welfare_003_pa592.pdf
Walmart - The High Cost of Low Prices (2013) [1:37:37]
Cutting Corporate Welfare by Ralph Nader
In this groundbreaking pamphlet, based on testimony he delivered before Congress, Ralph Nader describes how corporations are picking our pockets, and what we can do to stop them. While the United States continues to experience unprecedented cuts in social service programs and millions of Americans go without health insurance, massive corporations continue to reap huge sums of taxpayer money through "corporate welfare"--corporate subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, and tax escapes. Cutting Corporate Welfare details numerous appalling examples of corporate welfare, including: the giveaway of the public airwaves, which by definition belong to the people, to private radio and television stations (including the latest $70 billion gift of the digital spectrum); taxpayer subsidies for giant defense corporation mergers and commercial weapons exports to governments overseas; and the practice of making patients pay twice for drugs--first, as taxpayers subsidize the drugs' development, and again, as patients, after the federal government gives monopolistic control over the chemical's manufacture to a price-gouging drug company.
Cato Institute | On Spending: No Sacred Cows
* So Who is Getting the Most Government Welfare?
Donald Rumsfeld Admits Day before 911 "2.3 TRillion Dollars Missing from DOD" () [3:57]
Daily Ticker | Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
Click to zoom - US Defense Budget
Click to zoom - Where Your Tax Dollars Go


10.06.2014. 12:55

Friday October 03, 2014
News Articles

Labor Participation Rate Drops To 36 Year Low; Record 92.6 Million Americans Not In Labor Force
ZeroHedge | author | 10/03/14

While by now everyone should know the answer, for those curious why the US unemployment rate just slid once more to a meager 5.9%, the lowest print since the summer of 2008, the answer is the same one we have shown every month since 2010: the collapse in the labor force participation rate, which in September slide from an already three decade low 62.8% to 62.7% - the lowest in over 36 years, matching the February 1978 lows. And while according to the Household Survey, 232K people found jobs, what is more disturbing is that the people not in the labor force, rose to a new record high, increasing by 315,000 to 92.6 million! ... Read more
Click to zoom - for bigger image
Click to zoom - for bigger image

STUDY: U.S. Spends $59 Billion on Social Welfare…$92 Billion on Corporate Welfare.

Americans Have No Idea How Bad Inequality Really Is
Slate | Jordan Weissmann | 09/26/14

If Michael Norton's research is to be believed, Americans don't have the faintest clue how severe economic inequality has become -- and if they only knew, they'd be appalled.

Consider the Harvard Business School professor's new study examining public opinion about executive compensation, co-authored with the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok's Sorapop Kiatpongsan. In the 1960s, the typical corporate chieftain in the U.S. earned 20 times as much as the average employee. Today, depending on whose estimate you choose, he makes anywhere from 272 to 354 times as much. According to the AFL-CIO, the average CEO takes home more than $12 million, while the average worker makes about $34,000. Read more

The Top Five Bank Bailouts We Never Heard About
Bill Moyer | Joshua Holland | 10/03/14

Gallons of ink have been devoted to Wall Street executives' lack of accountability for a global financial meltdown that was built on top of a mountain of fraud.

Nobody at the top has faced criminal prosecution. Executive compensation and bonuses have rebounded nicely. And while taxpayers committed trillions to keeping those "too-big-to-fail" institutions afloat, the foreclosure crisis persists six years after the crash.

And while the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) sparked outrage, it wasn't the only bailout Wall Street bankers have enjoyed since their casino came crashing down around them.

Elizabeth Warren flagged a special ruling by the Treasury Department that allowed AIG to carry over losses it incurred before the bailout for tax purposes. In 2012, she and several colleagues wrote in The Washington Post that the insurance giant's "profits increased a staggering $17.7 billion -- from a loss of $2.2 billion a year earlier -- because of [the] special tax breaks."

In 2010, economist Dean Baker and others argued that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's continuing losses were in fact a matter of intentional policy -- that the government-owned lenders were acting as a conduit to take bad securities off of the big banks' balance sheets without raising the public's ire by creating another TARP-style pot of cash. ...

  1. The 2012 National Mortgage Settlement (NMS)
  2. BofA's $17 billion 2014 settlement
  3. JPMorgan Chase's $13 billion 2013 settlement
  4. BofA's $10 billion settlement with Fannie Mae
  5. BofA/ Countrywide's 2008 predatory lending settlement with 11 states
Read more
*Bill Moyers | A veteran bank regulator, William K. Black, lays bare how Washington and Wall Street are joined in a culture of corruption. (10/02/14) [25:20]

JPMorgan Says Data Breach Hit 76 Million Households
HP | Mark Gongloff | 10/02/14

A cyber attack at America's biggest bank this summer affected more than half of all U.S. households -- far, far more than previously estimated, and the latest in a string of massive, unnerving data breaches. The attack at JPMorgan Chase affected the data of 76 million households and 7 million businesses, the bank said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.

... Hackers attacked the bank's computer systems periodically between mid-June and mid-August, according to The Wall Street Journal. The attackers accessed customer names, email addresses, phone numbers and physical addresses, along with "internal JPMorgan Chase information relating to such users," the bank said in its regulatory filing. The bank didn't describe what sort of information that was. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, October 03 [13:55]
*DN | Iraq Veterans Against the War: Decade-Old Group Grapples with New War, PTSD Epidemic, VA Failures (10/03/14) [24:10]
*DN | Jeremy Scahill on Obama's Orwellian War in Iraq: We Created the Very Threat We Claim to be Fighting (10/03/14) [17:49]
This is what Henry Kissinger's brand of Exceptionalism did to Laos, not to mention Cambodia or Veitnam.
*Watch the US Drop 2.5 Million Tons of Bombs on Laos *Bill Moyers | A veteran bank regulator, William K. Black, lays bare how Washington and Wall Street are joined in a culture of corruption. (10/02/14) [25:20]
*TRNN | Johns Hopkins Infectious Disease Program co-director Taha E. Taha discusses: What's Behind the Ebola Crises and are U.S. Americans at Risk? (10/03/14) [16:14]
*TYT | This Is The Income Inequality Video CEOs Don't Want Americans To See (10/02/14) [16:26]
*TYT | Profits From Syrian Airstrikes Will Churn Your Stomach (10/02/14) [8:24]
TYT | Ebola Causes Outbreak Of Fear, Panic & Obama-Hating At Fox News (10/02/14) [7:15]
TYT | Netanyahu Equates ISIS To Hamas & Then Brings Up Nazis (10/02/14) [8:01]
TYT | Justice Scalia Is Utterly Stupid, Especially On Religion & The Constitution (10/02/14) [8:15]
TYT | Orthodox Jewish Men Cause Flight Delays After Refusing To Sit Next To Women (10/02/14) [6:41]
TYT | Texas Man Diagnosed With Ebola (10/02/14) [3:27]

10.03.2014. 12:04

Thursday October 02, 2014
News Articles

Who Is Buying The Islamic State's Illegal Oil?
ZeroHedge | author | 10/01/14

"The crude is transported by tankers to Jordan via Anbar province, to Iran via Kurdistan, to Turkey via Mosul, to Syria's local market and to the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where most of it gets refined locally... Turkey has turned a blind eye to this and may continue to do so until they come under pressure from the West to close down oil black markets in the country's south." ... Read more

Health Officials Say More Than 80 People Were Exposed To Texas Ebola Patient
Reuters & HP | Lisa Maria Garza | 10/02/14

More than 80 people had direct or indirect contact with the first person to be diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus in the United States, health officials said Thursday, as four members of the patient's family were quarantined as a precaution.

... "We have tried and true protocols to protect the public and stop the spread of this disease," said Dr. David Lakey, the Texas health commissioner. "This order gives us the ability to monitor the situation in the most meticulous way." "The order is in place until the incubation period has passed and the family is no longer at risk of having the disease," Lakey said. ... Read more

Doctor Boards Atlanta Flight In HazMat Suit To Protest "Lying CDC"
ZeroHedge | author | 10/02/14

"If they're not lying, they are grossly incompetent," said Dr. Gil Mobley, a microbiologist and emergency trauma physician from Springfield, Mo. as he checked in and cleared Atlanta airport security wearing a mask, goggles, gloves, boots and a hooded white jumpsuit emblazoned on the back with the words, "CDC is lying!" As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Mobley says the CDC is "sugar-coating" the risk of the virus spreading in the United States. ... Read more
Doctor Boards Atlanta Flight In HazMat Suit To Protest "Lying CDC" (10/02/14) [1:00]

Gross Exposes $42 Trillion Bond Market's Key Flaw
Bloomberg | Lisa Abramowicz | 10/01/14

One man shook a $42 trillion bond market last week, highlighting just how vulnerable bond prices are to shocks. Bill Gross's surprise departure on Friday from Pacific Investment Management Co. sparked selloffs in some of his biggest wagers, such as inflation-protected U.S. government bonds.

... It's become increasingly difficult to buy and sell debt as new regulations prompt Wall Street banks to curtail their holdings. Average daily trading in the U.S. bond market fell to $809 billion in 2013 from $1.04 trillion in 2008...

... Banks are less willing to cushion big swings using their own balance sheets and Gross's exit shows just how little it takes to move the needle in the global bond market, which has ballooned by 48 percent since 2008. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, October 02 [8:52]
*DN | After U.S. Sanctions & Wars Tore Iraq Apart, Can American-Led Strikes Be Expected to Save It? (10/02/14) [22:58]
DN | Secret History of U.S.-Cuba Ties Reveals Kissinger Wanted to Bomb Havana for Fighting Apartheid (10/02/14) [11:04]
*TRNN | Ali Al-Ahmed says IS is a key part of Saudi Arabia's strategy in the Middle East (10/02/14) [17:45]
 Still working on this.
Ring of Fire
*TRNN | Papantonio: Roberts' 3rd World Court Predictably Screws Ohio (10/01/14) [5:04]
Other Interest
American Horror Story: Freak Show - Opening Night (preview) (09/30/14) [1:00]

10.02.2014. 14:58

Wednesday October 01, 2014
News Articles

Dimon Pep Talk Consoles Eric Cantor on Way to Wall Street
Bloomberg | Max Abelson | 09/30/14

Eric Cantor sat in his Washington office in June after one of the biggest upsets in congressional history, getting encouragement from JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon, head of the largest U.S. bank.

Dimon talked about being fired from another bank by his mentor before rebounding to an even better seat, according to two people who were there. He reassured the Virginia Republican that his career would be just fine, too.

He was right. Cantor, 51, started this month as a managing director and vice chairman of New York-based investment bank Moelis & Co. (MC), where he'll earn more than $3.4 million by the end of next year. With former White House officials and a Tea Party spokesman calling Cantor a sellout, half a dozen people close to him described his new Wall Street life as an extension of his principles rather than a betrayal of them. ... Read more

The Supreme Court has almost always sided with the wealthy, the privileged, and the powerful, a new book argues.
Slate | y Dahlia Lithwick | 09/30/14

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California--Irvine School of Law and a respected litigator with decades of experience who has argued seminal cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. This month he has come out with The Case Against the Supreme Court. The upshot of the book? That the court itself--not the Roberts court but the Supreme Court as an institution--is a massive disappointment. As he bluntly puts it: "We should realize that this is an emperor that truly has no clothes. For too long, we have treated the court is if they are the high priests of the law, or at least as if they are the smartest and best lawyers in society." The book painstakingly details the ways in which the Supreme Court has, in his view, almost always "failed, throughout American history, at its most important tasks, at its most important moments. ... Read more

Straining California's dwindling water supplies amid the state's worst-ever drought.

How Bad Could It Get? US Government Order Of 160,000 HazMat Suits Gives A Clue
ZeroHedge | author | 10/01/14

Now that Ebola is officially in the US on an uncontrolled basis, the two questions on everyone's lips are i) who will get sick next and ii) how bad could it get? We don't know the answer to question #1 just yet, but when it comes to the second one, a press release three weeks ago from Lakeland Industries, a manufacturer and seller of a "comprehensive line of safety garments and accessories for the industrial protective clothing market" may provide some insight into just how bad the US State Department thinks it may get. Because when the US government buys 160,000 hazmat suits specifically designed against Ebola, just ahead of the worst Ebola epidemic in history making US landfall, one wonders: what do they know the we don't? Read more

Mitt Romney Fans Speculation Over Another White House Run ?

Mitt Romney's Latest Excuse (Take 23) for His 47 Percent Remarks Is a Doozy
MotherJones | David Corn | 09/30/14

Now Romney has gone further in denying responsibility for the remark, blaming the 47 percent fiasco on the fellow who tossed him the question. Here's the relevant excerpt from Leibovich's piece:
"I was talking to one of my political advisers," Romney continued, "and I said: 'If I had to do this again, I'd insist that you literally had a camera on me at all times"--essentially employing his own tracker, as opposition researchers call them. "I want to be reminded that this is not off the cuff." This, as he saw it, was what got him in trouble at that Boca Raton fund-raiser, when Romney told the crowd he was writing off the 47 percent of the electorate that supported Obama (a.k.a. "those people"; "victims" who take no "personal responsibility"). Romney told me that the statement came out wrong, because it was an attempt to placate a rambling supporter who was saying that Obama voters were essentially deadbeats.

"My mistake was that I was speaking in a way that reflected back to the man," Romney said. "If I had been able to see the camera, I would have remembered that I was talking to the whole world, not just the man." I had never heard Romney say that he was prompted into the "47 percent" line by a ranting supporter.

Leibovich is right; this seems to be the first time Romney has tried to place responsibility for his comment on the person who asked him the question. That supporter was not rambling. Here's what he asked: "For the last three years, all everybody's been told is, 'Don't worry, we'll take care of you.' How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody you've got to take care of yourself?" That was a straightforward query, succinctly put, not rambling at all. It was Romney who took the point to the next level and proclaimed that a specific number of Americans were lazy freeloaders who could not and would not fend for themselves.

To recap: Romney has gone from side-stepping the remark, to owning the thrust of this comment (though noting it was not well articulated), to saying he was wrong, to denying he said what he said (and contending his words were distorted), to claiming he was only mirroring the rambling remarks of a big-money backer. This last explanation is certainly not fair to the 1-percenter who merely expressed his very 1-percentish opinion. Does this mean that Romney was thrown off his game by a simple question--or that he was trying to suck up to a donor?

In the two years since Romney was caught on tape, he just cannot come up with a clear explanation of an easy-to-understand short series of sentences that were responsive to the question presented. But there is one possible explanation he hasn't yet put forward: He said what he believed. Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, October 01 [7:03]
DN | After Censorship of History Course, Colorado Students & Teachers Give a Lesson in Civil Disobedience (10/01/14) [13:38]
DN | Accused of Stealing a Backpack, High School Student Jailed for Nearly Three Years Without Trial (10/01/14) [24:10]
DN | Mississippi County Sued for Indefinitely Holding Prisoners Without Charge or Access to Lawyer (10/01/14) [5:22]
More Humor
The White House perimeter breached yet again. Our highest government officials at risk. (09/29/14) [0:49]
Jon Stewart
Once again the comedians do better news than the major networks.
*Jon Stewart | British Parliament and the United States Congress take drastically different approaches to debating the decision to start a war against ISIS. (09/29/14) [8:56]
Jon Stewart | Hadi al-Bahra Extended Interview Pt. 1 (09/29/14) [7:55], Part 2 [7:40]
Jon Stewart | The U.N. Climate Summit draws leaders together from around the world to make little to no headway on the climate change crisis.. (09/29/14) [4:58] TRNN | Shukria Dellawar: US-Brokered Afghan Unity Government Paves Way for Continued Military Presence (10/01/14) [9:54]
TRNN | Assistant Professor Eli Friedman from Cornell University says working class and union participation has increased in subsequent occupations (10/01/14) [11:21]
*TYT | Finance Newbie To Wall Street F*ck Buddy In No Time At All (09/30/14) [11:53]
TYT | All White House Intruders Should Die, Insists Bloodthirsty Congress (09/30/14) [5:18]
TYT | Bill Maher Destroyed Again And Again By Reza Aslan (09/30/14) [8:23]
TYT | Walmart To Tracy Morgan, You're Partly To Blame For The Crash (09/30/14) [5:49]
TYT | Humans = A Virus Destroying Earth (09/30/14) [5:46]
Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire (09/28/14) [52:58]
Artist's Impression Of The Difference Between ISIS & America's Strategy In The Middle East
Click to zoom - for bigger image

10.01.2014. 11:23



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Lindsey Graham Mashups
Lindsey Graham

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

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Environment & Climate Change
Environment

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

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

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

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

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

Wall Street and Banksters

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

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Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

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

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Daniel Ellsberg | Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg

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

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Nukes
Nukes

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

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Rana Foroohar and Fall of American Business
Rana Foroohar

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

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

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

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

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Kuznick Interviews

Kuznick Interviews

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

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

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China Valley of Tunnels

China Valley of Tunnels

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

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911
911

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

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

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

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Trump's Mashups
Trump's Mashups

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

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Trump's Sexcapades
Trump's Sexcapades.

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

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

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

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