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News April 2013


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Tuesday April 30, 2013
News Articles

*While Wronged Homeowners Got $300 Apiece in Foreclosure Settlement, Consultants Who Helped Protect Banks Got $2 Billion
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 04/26/13

The upshot of this story is that in advance of that notorious settlement, the government ordered banks to hire "independent" consultants to examine their loan files to see just exactly how corrupt they were.

Now it comes out that not only were these consultants not so independent, not only did they very likely skew the numbers seriously in favor of the banks, and not only were these few consultants paid over $2 billion (over 20 percent of the entire settlement amount) while the average homeowner only received $300 in the deal -- in addition to all of that, it appears that federal regulators will not turn over the evidence of impropriety they discovered during these reviews to homeowners who may want to sue the banks.

In other words, the government not only ordered the banks to hire consultants who may have gamed the foreclosure settlement in favor of the banks, but the regulators themselves are hiding the information from the public in order to shield the banks from further lawsuits. ... Read more

Pilots and Professors Barely Scraping By? 9 Surprising Jobs That Pay a Pittance
AlterNet | Joshua Holland | 04/24/13

In the first two years of "recovery" from the Great Recession, the top one percent of households captured 121 percent of the economy's gains, according to economist Emanuel Saez, leaving the rest of us poorer than we were when the reversal began. Wall Street pay has more than bounced back, with average pay higher today than it was before the crash.

The top 25 hedge fund managers continue to take in close to a billion dollars per year each, on average. As Les Leopold noted, it would take a middle-class family 47 years to bring in what they make in just one hour. What value do they add to our society? Well, when they're not wrecking the global economy, they're pricing people out of the housing market and ripping off small investors.

As for the rest of us, the reality is that a disproportionate share of the jobs being created in America since the crash are low-income McJobs. According to a study by the National Law Employment Project, low-income jobs represented 21 percent of the total lost in the crash, but 58 percent of those added during the recovery ( PDF). In contrast, 60 percent of the jobs lost in the downturn paid a middle-class wage, but they've only made up 22 percent of those added during the recovery. ... Read more

The Billionaire Brothers Behind America's Predator Drones -- And Their Very Strange Past
AlterNet | Yasha Levine | 04/xx/13

... What we do know with a fair amount of certainty is that Linden Stanley Blue and James Neal Blue were born to a wealthy family in Colorado during the Great Depression, went to Yale, served as Air Force pilots, and have been involved in some very heavy business activities since then: They've enriched uranium, dumped radioactive waste on a Native American reservation, infiltrated and spied on environmental activists, operated plantations with one of the South America's most brutal dictator clans and tried to turn Telluride, the quaint Colorado ski town, into a giant McTractHome development.

Today the Blue brothers reside in separate mansions in the wealthy, pasty-white beach enclave of La Jolla -- the Beverly Hills of San Diego -- not far from the headquarters of General Atomics. The brothers are both approaching 80, and are extremely wary of the press. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, April 30 [8:26]
DN | Isabel Allende on "Maya's Notebook," Drug Addiction, 1973 Chilean Coup & Death of Poet Pablo Neruda (04/30/13) [14:15]
DN | Kimberly Rivera, Pregnant Mom of 4, Sentenced to Military Prison for Refusing to Serve in Iraq (04/30/13) [9:13]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | Glenn Greenwald on the High Cost of Government Secrecy (04/26/13) [25:45]
The violent Boston rampage triggered a local and federal response that, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, adds a new dimension to troubling questions about government secrecy, overreach, and what we sacrifice in the name of national security. Greenwald joins Bill to peel back layers that reveal what the Boston bombings and drone attacks have in common, and how secrecy leads to abuse of government power.
TRNN News
TRNN | Hundreds Die in Bangladesh Factory Collapse As Retailers Reject Better Safety Standards (04/30/13) [5:39]
TRNN | Only 6 Percent of Child Trafficking Cases in India Result in Prosecutions (04/30/13) [7:03]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Chemical Weapons In Syria And Calls For U.S. Intervention (04/30/13) [1hr]
Restoration Home
Restoration Home - Stoke Hall - Episode 3 [58:37]
Restoration Home - Stanwick Hall - Episode 4 [58:53]
More Fascinating Articles

Heracleion Photos: Lost Egyptian City Revealed After 1,200 Years Under Sea

HP | author | 04/29/13

It is a city shrouded in myth, swallowed by the Mediterranean Sea and buried in sand and mud for more than 1,200 years. But now archeologists are unearthing the mysteries of Heracleion, uncovering amazingly well-preserved artifacts that tell the story of a vibrant classical-era port.

Known as Heracleion to the ancient Greeks and Thonis to the ancient Eygptians, the city was rediscovered in 2000 by French underwater archaeologist Dr. Franck Goddio and a team from the European Institute for Underwater Acheology (IEASM) after a four-year geophysical survey. The ruins of the lost city were found 30 feet under the surface of the Mediterranean Sea in Aboukir Bay, near Alexandria. ... Read more

Other Videos and Documentaries

Monday April 29, 2013
News Articles

*Still stuck on central-bank life support
Reuters | Alan Wheatley | 04/28/13

... Five years after the onset of the global financial crisis, the world economy is in such a chronic condition that the European Central Bank might cut interest rates this week and the Federal Reserve is likely to indicate no let-up in the stimulus it is providing the U.S. economy.

The ECB is the most conservative of the world's main central banks. Its main short-term rate, now at 0.75 percent, is higher than the equivalent rate of the Fed, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan. And unlike its peers the ECB has not engaged in quantitative easing - printing new money to buy bonds. ... But the ECB seems to be softening. "I would argue that the ECB should be thinking of easing policy; whether they are currently is more debatable," said Stephen King, global chief economist for HSBC in London. Read more

Student Loan Bubble Cracks With Pulled Sallie Mae Bond Deal
ZeroHedge | author | 04/29/13

... As WSJ reports, Sallie Mae (SLM), the nation's largest non-government student lender just cancelled a $225 million debt offering as investors decided they simply were not getting paid enough for risk - amid rising student loan defaults. Simply put, there's a limit to what investors will tolerate. ... Read more

Billionaires Flee Havens as Trillions Pursued Offshore
Bloomberg | David de Jong | 04/29/13

Billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, Russia's 14th-richest person, and his wife, Elena Rybolovleva, have been brawling for almost five years in at least seven countries over his $9.5 billion fortune.   In a divorce complaint originated in Geneva in 2008, Rybolovleva accused her husband of using a "multitude of third- parties" to create a network of offshore holding companies and trusts to place assets -- including about $500 million in art, $36 million in jewelry and an $80 million yacht -- beyond her reach.

She has brought legal action against the 48-year-old Rybolovlev in the British Virgin Islands, England, Wales, the U.S., Cyprus, Singapore and Switzerland, and is seeking $6 billion.   The suits provide a window into the offshore structures and secrecy jurisdictions the world's richest people use to manage, preserve and conceal their assets. ... Read more

Welcome to America: Children Forced to Wear Bulletproof Backpacks, Companies Sell Shields Disguised as Whiteboards
AlterNet | Alex Kane | 04/29/13

Welcome to post-Newtown America: where gun control legislation can't be passed but companies are profiting by selling bulletproof backpacks for children in schools. The backpacks, along with ballistic safety vests and ballistic shields disguised as whiteboards in classrooms, are among the products companies are pushing in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre.

... "If you put it on her back, it almost covers her whole body," one Colorado parent whose child wears a bulletproof backpack explained to the British newspaper. "It was a very hard conversation to have but she knows that it's something that will keep her safe." ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, April 29 [15:20]
DN | Forgotten Women of the War on Terror: Author Victoria Brittain on the Wives and Families Left Behind (04/29/13) [19:21]
The Real News Network (TRNN)
*TRNN | James Henry: The top 7 percent of households, about 8 million people, have seen their net worth increase to a mean of about $3.2 million in the last three years. (04/28/13) [6:37]
*TRNN | James Henry: Swiss banks are negotiating fines to avoid prosecution, while billions of dollars continue to be hidden away from taxes. (04/26/13) [10:25]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Congress protects air travelers alone among sequesters victims. Poorer Americans are still effected. (04/26/13) [15:06], Part 2 [7:07], Part 3 [4:54], Part 4 [4:43], Part 5 [8:09]
Masterpiece Theater - Downton Abbey
PBS Masterpiece | Downton Abbey. (trailer) []
I tried to find full episodes of Downton Abbey, but couldn't find any. I watched the DVDs, and even though in the past I haven't been interested in period pieces, I found this series facinating. I don't know if I could have waited from season-to-season to see the next episode.
Dawnton Abbey on Amazon ($1.99/episode)
Masterpiece Theater - Downton Abbey - Interview
PBS | Masterpiece Downton Abbey: The Most Complicated Characters [1:36]
PBS | Downton Abbey, Season 2: A Special Q&A with the Cast [44:17]
*PBS Masterpiece Theater - Mr. Selfridge
PBS Masterpiece | Mr. Selfridge, Episode 2: See how Harry skirts scandal and faces complications in his private life. (04/07/13) [48:08]
PBS Masterpiece | Mr. Selfridge, Episode 3: Anna Pavlova causes sensation at the store. Rose makes a revelation to Roddy. (04/14/13) [48:01]
PBS Masterpiece | Mr. Selfridge, Episode 4: Harry and Rose face a moment of truth, and Ellen confronts Harry. (04/21/13) [49:24]
PBS Masterpiece | Mr. Selfridge, Episode 5: Mr. Grove takes over in Harry's absence, but faces irate temperance marchers and other challenges. How would Harry handle it?. (04/28/13) [47:11]
Restoration Home
Restoration Home - Big House - Episode Six (01/07/12) [58:48]
Will add more videos
Other Videos and Documentaries

Friday April 26, 2013
News Articles

*Matt Taibbi on Wall Street's Astronomical "Space-Age Stealing"
AlterNet | Matt Taibbi | 04/26/13

Remember when the Libor scandal surfaced, and it was consider "the biggest financial corruption case in history?"   Well, the corrupt alchemists of capital are at it again, and Matt Taibbi has a scathing new article that reveals that Libor has an evil "twin brother."

According to his feature in Rolling Stone yesterday, financial regulators suspect that some of the world's largest banks -- the same banks that were caught manipulating the interest rates in the Libor scandal -- have been manipulating the prices of interest-rate swaps. ... Read more

*Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 04/25/13
The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix.

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three -- and perhaps as many as 16 -- of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history -- MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps. ... Read more

These Classy Defense Contractors Are Already Looking to Cash In on Boston
Wired Magazine | Noah Shachtman | 04/26/13

The newly-limbless victims from the Boston Marathon attack are still being treated, and the alleged bomber has only been in custody for a few days. But for a handful of defense and intelligence contractors, it's never too early to start pimping their products as the solution to the next terrorist strike.

"The Boston Marathon bombing has proven the need for real time video and data analysis from all types of cameras, including user mobile devices, surveillance cameras, and network footage," Chris Carmichael, CEO of Ubiquity Broadcasting Corporation, says in a press release. As it happens, his company offers an intelligent video system that does just that. ... Read more

DoJ Secretly Granted Immunity to Companies that Participated in Monitoring Program
Wired Magazine | Kim Zetter | 04/24/13

The Justice Department agree to grant internet service providers that participated in a new cybersecurity monitoring program legal authorization to monitor and intercept communications traffic, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The documents show that the Justice Department secretly agreed to provide AT&T and other participating providers with so-called "2511 letters" that granted them immunity for activity that might otherwise have violated federal wiretapping laws.   EPIC obtained more than 1,000 documents last week through a FOIA request and provided them to CNET, which broke the story today. Read more

Reinhart and Rogoff: Responding to Our Critics
NYTimes | Carmen M. Reinhart | 04/25/13

LAST week, we were sent a sharply worded paper by three researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, at the same time it was sent to journalists. It asserted serious errors in our article "Growth in a Time of Debt," published in May 2010 in the Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Review. In an Op-Ed essay for The New York Times, we have tried to defend our research and refute the distorted policy positions that have been attributed to us. In this appendix, we address the technical issues raised by our critics.

These critics, Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, identified a spreadsheet calculation error, but also accused us of two "serious errors": "selective exclusion of available data" and "unconventional weighting of summary statistics." ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, April 26 [12:31]
*DN | Did FBI Focus on Controversial Stings Distract from Pursuit of Tsarnaev Before Boston Attacks? (04/26/13) [15:20]
*DN | "The Trials of Muhammad Ali": Boxing Champ's Refusal to Serve in Vietnam Was The Fight of His Life (04/26/13) [14:40]
Frontline
*PBS Frontline | "The Retirement Gamble" Facing Us All (04/23/13) [53:41]
Retirement is big business in America, but is the system costing workers and retirees more than what they're getting in return. A toxic mix of too much choice, backwards incentives, and a misplaced faith in the market's past performance has positioned America's retirement system for an uncertain future, says the founder of The Vanguard Group. The 401(k) was never designed with the middle class in mind, and may now be leaving a generation of Baby Boomers without enough to avoid poverty, says the New School economist.
60 Minutes
*60 Minutes | The Boston Bombings, Sniffing Out Bombs, The 9/11 Museum (04/21/13) [44:20]
The inside story of the Boston Marathon bombing investigation: Scott Pelley interviews Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis; Also, Lara Logan gets a rare look into the secretive world of working dogs -- some of whose capabilities are military secrets -- and their handlers; And, Lesley Stahl gets the first in-depth look at the National September 11 Memorial Museum currently under construction seven stories below ground at ground zero.
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
*Chris Hayes | What is George W. Bush legacy on the dedication of his Presidential Library. (04/25/13) [12:40], Part 2 [10:13], Part 3 [5:44], Part 4 [6:57], Part 5 [4:16]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday 04/26/13 [1hr]
International News - Friday 04/26/13 [1hr]
Jon Stewart
*Jon Stewart | Following the Boston bombing, the freedom lovers at Fox jettison Constitutional amendments like Han Solo dumping his cargo at the first sign of an Imperial cruiser. (04/25/13) [6:59]
Jon Stewart | A bipartisan task force on post-9/11 interrogation techniques concludes that the United States actively engaged in torture. (04/17/13) [4:30]
Jon Stewart | Bassem Youssef shares a heroic fantasy and gives reasons why he chose to live in a land in the midst of revolution (04/25/13) [7:49], Part 2 [6:47]
PBS Video
*PBS | The Dust Bowl (04/13/13) [1:55:15]
Program: The Dust Bowl - The grasslands of the southern Plains were rapidly turned into wheat fields. Then following the early years of the drought, storms killed crops and livestock and literally rearranged the landscape. The worst storm of them all was on April 14, 1935--Black Sunday--a searing experience for everyone caught in it, including a young songwriter from Pampa, Texas, named Woody Guthrie.
Gore Vidal
An american history lesson with gore vidal [9:22], Part 2 [7:53], Part 3 [8:19]
Other Videos and Documentaries

Thursday April 25, 2013
News Articles

CISPA Supporters Spend 140 Times As Much Money Lobbying as Opponents
USNews | Jason Koebler | 04/19/13

Activists and Internet users protesting the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act -- a cybersecurity bill that passed the House of Representatives Thursday -- have spun the battle as big business interests versus the privacy of individual citizens. If lobbying dollars are anything to go by, they're right: Pro-CISPA businesses and interests have spent 140 times more money on lobbying than anti-CISPA interests, according to the Sunlight Foundation. ... Read more

Central Banks Buying Most Gold Since 1964: Commodities
Bloomberg | Debarati Roy | 04/25/13

Central banks are the biggest losers, with about $560 billion of value erased since gold reached a record $1,921.15 an ounce in September 2011. The metal was already in the eighth year of its longest bull market since the end of World War I when reserves started expanding again in 2008. They were also buying in 1980 when bullion peaked at the equivalent of $2,400 in today's money, and selling in 1999 as prices slumped to a 20- year low.

"They aren't traders. They are looking at it as a long-term holding, as an ultimate reserve currency. With the benefit of hindsight, they tend to get it wrong more often than not." ... Read more

Central Banks Load Up on Equities as Low Rates Kill Yields
Bloomberg | Sarah Jones |04/25/13

Central banks, guardians of the world's $11 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, are buying stocks in record amounts as falling bond yields push even risk- averse investors toward equities.

... Managers of banks' assets are looking for alternatives to holding government bonds after efforts to stimulate growth from the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England helped send yields near to record lows. ... Read more

Fed Debate Moves From Tapering to Extending Bond Buying
Bloomberg |Steve Matthews | 04/25/13

Debate among Federal Reserve policy makers is shifting away from the timing of a reduction in bond buying (80 Billion/month) to the need to extend record stimulus as inflation cools and 11.7 million Americans remain jobless.

... With the Fed far from meeting its mandates for stable prices and full employment, policy makers next week will probably affirm a pledge to keep buying bonds until the job market improves "significantly," said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington and a former Fed economist.   "It's going to be full throttle until the end of this year," said Gagnon, referring to the purchases that have pushed the Fed's balance sheet to a record $3.3 trillion. The FOMC plans to meet April 30-May 1. ... Read more

The Spins Of The Fathers
ZeroHedge | author | 04/25/13

In the financial world at present the markets are fueled by the liquidity of the central banks. Not only is nothing else of importance but good news becomes the joyful noise of some divinity, bad news is elevated to good news and horrible news brings ecstasy as it will enlarge the contributions of Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Draghi. We live in a world where everything is ignored but the time will come when this ignorance will be shattered. We will pay the price for our stupidity because there is always a price to be paid. Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Draghi have been the Saviors but the church has been built on thin air and the weight of the building is increasing and increasing at an alarming rate. This kind of normal is unsustainable. The lessons of the past are being ignored once again but I caution you to not forget what you have learned. ... Read more

50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush's Presidency: A Reminder on the Day of His Presidential Library Dedication
AlterNet | Steven Rosenfeld | 04/24/13

On Thursday, President Obama and all four living ex-presidents will attend the dedication of the $500 million George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Many progressives will remember Bush as a contender for the "worst president ever," saying he more aptly deserves a multi-million-dollar prison cell for a litany of war crimes.

Amazingly, the Bush library seeks to ask visitors "What would you have done?" if you were in this president's shoes. The ex-president's defenders are betting that the public will reconsider their judgments after a hefty dose of historical amnesia. Bush has been absent from political debates in recent years, instead making millions in private speeches. Today, his popularity is even with Obama's; both have 47 percent approval rating (sad). ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, April 25 [14:23]
*DN | Yemeni Activist Farea al-Muslimi Urges U.S. to Stop the Drone War on His Country. (04/25/13) [12:35]
I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate (04/14/13) [5:54]
BB | How should money collected for Boston bombing victims be distributed (04/25/13) [6:36]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Nick Buxton: Paris and other cities have remunicipalised water that had been privatized saving users money and introducing more democracy and transparency (04/25/13) [6:47]
TYT News
*TYT | Deadly Texas Fertilizer Explosion Didn't Have to Happen (04/24/13) [9:36]
*TYT | CISPA - Corporations Buy Politicians and Your Privacy (04/23/13) [7:44]
TYT | Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Radical Religious Fundamentalism (04/24/13) [7:30]
TYT | Bill O'Reilly Raging: Let Me Get This Straight Tom Brokaw, whe should not use drones? (04/24/13) [3:25]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
*Chris Hayes | Farea alMuslimi, exchange student from Yemeni, talks about drone strikes causing people to radicalize. (04/24/13) [12:03], Part 2 [9:48], Part 3 [6:57], Part 4 [4:28], Part 5 [6:48]
Monsanto | GMOs
Click to zoom
Europes Troubles
Spain has just breached the 27% unemployment level - the highest since at least 1976, when data began following dictator Francisco Franco's death. Click to zoom
Click to zoom
Other Videos and Documentaries
BBC | Louis Theroux - The Nazis (02/01/13) [1:19:08]
Louis travels to California to get to know some of the key personalities of the American neo-Nazi movement. These people are pretty scary.
BBC | Louis Theroux - America's Most Hated Family in Crisis (02/01/13) [59:05]
BBC | Louis Theroux - Born Again Christians (02/01/13) [49:30]

Wednesday April 24, 2013
News Articles

Gun Control: Terror List Members Barred From Owning Firearms Proposal Explored By Joe Manchin
HP & AP | author | 04/23/13

A Senate sponsor of a defeated compromise on expanding gun sale background checks says he'll consider changing the measure to add people on the government's terror list to those forbidden from owning firearms. ...

ARE THESE PEOPLE NUTS?? The only way Congress can pass a bill is to tie it to terrorism? Read more

Fox News Attacks Muslims Relentlessly In Wake Of Boston Bombing
HP | Jack Mirkinson | 04/24/13

In the days following the Boston Marathon bombings, Fox News has become a haven for talk about the extreme threats posed to the United States by Muslims. Day after day, the network's hosts and pundits have warned about an Islamic menace which is poised to take down the country. ... Read more

Why Can't We See That Boston Is More Like Newtown Than 9/11?
HP | Peter Alexander Meyers | 04/23/13

A week of intense and rapid events in Boston. We are saturated after a flood of words and images. A clear description of what happened is emerging. White hat. Black hat. Two loaded bags infiltrated into the crowd. Boom. And again. Suspects on the run. One dead, the other captured. Beyond bare bones the detail, its sheer quantity, is uncanny. And still these chaotic and riveting scenes, where do they take us? ... Read more

What would the Koch brothers do to the Los Angeles Times?
WashingtonPost | Harold Meyerson | 04/23/13

... The Times is one of the eight daily newspapers now owned by the creditors who took control of the Tribune Co. after real estate wheeler-dealer Sam Zell drove it into bankruptcy. Others include the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant. The Tribune board members whom the creditors selected want to unload the papers in favor of more money-making ventures. ... Read more

How the media give business owners (i.e. Corporations) and terrorists the coverage they want
WashingtonPost | Mike Elk | 04/24/13
(Or) The Texas fertilizer plant explosion cannot be forgotten

... On Friday, as cable news networks sought desperately to fill airtime while waiting for the latest news in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, a friend asked me, "How come there's no manhunt for the owner of the Texas factory, which did far more damage than the Boston bombers?" He was right to wonder. ... Read more

You might think the above question is ridiculous , but if you really think about it: 1) they were both bombs, and 2) they were both intentional (i.e. the fertilizer plant was holding 1,300 times the amount of Ammonium Nitrate then they were suppose to have).

Watching Syria's War
magazine | author | date
A Father Mourns His Children After Attacks Outside Homs, Syria.

The New York Times is tracking the human toll of the conflict in this feature. The primary source is the online video that has allowed a widening war to be documented like no other, and posts try to put the video into context. Edited by LIAM STACK ... Read more

Wall Street Jobs Plunge as Profits Soar
Bloomberg | Max Raskin | 04/24/13

Finding work on Wall Street is getting tougher as algorithms replace traders.

Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, April 24 [13:04]
*DN | As Obama Shuns Hearing, Yemeni Says U.S. Drone War Terrifying Civilians, Empowering Militants. (04/24/13) [7:52]
*DN | The World Is A Battlefield: Jeremy Scahill on "Dirty Wars" and Obama's Expanding Drone Attacks. (04/24/13) [17:36]
Jeremy Scahill on Obama's War Machine, American Assassinations & Journalism [12:33]
Sierra Adamson talks to Jeremy Scahill, journalist and author of 'Blackwater,' about some of the under-reported issues such as drone strikes in the Middle East, Obama's kill list/Disposition Matrix, NDAA, use of the Espionage Act against whistle-blowers. Jeremy talks about the assassination of the 16 year old American citizen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike authorized by President Obama and the response Robert Gibbs recently gave us when we questioned him on it. He discusses the left's disregard of their anti-war principles in favor of being loyal to leaders in their own party and the war propaganda that is fed to Americans through mass media.
TRNN News
*Nick Buxton: A massive European fire sale is one way finance is using the crisis to entrench neo-liberalism. (04/24/13) [11:44]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Sequestration: Federal Aviation Administration Furloughs And Flight Delays (04/24/13) [1hr]
View into the Middle East
BBC | Inside the Saudi Kingdom (BBC Documentary) [59:00]
Lionel Mill's film has unique access to Prince Saud bin Abdul Mohsen, one of the rulers of the rich, powerful and secretive Saudi royal family. This is a fascinating insight into the conflicts between tradition and modernity in one of the world's most conservative and autocratic countries.
BBC | Rageh Omaar: An Islamic History of Europe [1:29:00]
In this 90-minute documentary, Rageh Omaar uncovers the hidden story of Europe's Islamic past and looks back to a golden age when European civilization was enriched by Islamic learning.

Rageh travels across medieval Muslim Europe to reveal the vibrant civilization that Muslims brought to the West.

This evocative film brings to life a time when emirs and caliphs dominated Spain and Sicily and Islamic scholarship swept into the major cities of Europe.

MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Chris Hayes investigates what we should know about the process of violent radicalization. (04/23/13) [12:17], Part 2 [8:32]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow | On-line instruction on how to make bomb muddies the waters for the law (04/23/13) [16:08], Part 2 [9:41]
Other Videos and Documentaries

Tuesday April 23, 2013
News Articles

Conservative Koch Brothers Turning Focus to Newspapers
NYTimes | Amy Chozick | 04/20/13

Three years ago, Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists and supporters of libertarian causes, held a seminar of like-minded, wealthy political donors at the St. Regis Resort in Aspen, Colo. They laid out a three-pronged, 10-year strategy to shift the country toward a smaller government with less regulation and taxes.

The first two pieces of the strategy -- educating grass-roots activists and influencing politics -- were not surprising, given the money they have given to policy institutes and political action groups... ALEC. But the third one was: media.

Now, Koch Industries, the sprawling private company of which Charles G. Koch serves as chairman and chief executive, is exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Company's eight regional newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant. ... Read more

In Case You Missed It: Congress Takes Your Internet Privacy
Care2 | Kristina Chew | 04/19/13

To the disappointent of advocates for civil liberties and internet freedom, the controversial Cyber Intelligence and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday by a vote of 288-127. 196 Republicans voted for the measure and almost half the House Democrats.

  1. Companies have new rights to monitor user actions and share data -- including potentially sensitive user data -- with the government without a warrant.
  2. Cispa overrides existing privacy law, and grants broad immunities to participating companies.
Read more

Bush and His Cronies Bear 'Ultimate Responsibility' for Torture -- So What's Stopping Us from Prosecuting Them?
AlterNet | Robert Parry | 04/22/13

Now that a bipartisan blue-ribbon panel has reached the conclusion that President George W. Bush and his top advisers bear "ultimate responsibility" for authorizing torture in violation of domestic and international law, the question becomes what should the American people and their government do.   The logical answer would seem to be: prosecute Bush and his cronies (or turn them over to an international tribunal if the U.S. legal system can't do the job). After all, everyone, including President Barack Obama and possibly even Bush himself, would agree with the principle that "no man is above the law."

At least that is what they profess in public, but they then apply this principle selectively, proving that they don't really mean it at all. The real-world standard seems to be: you are above the law if you have the political or economic clout to make prosecution difficult or painful. Then, more flexible rules apply. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, April 23 [11:03]
*DN | Jeremy Scahill: The Secret Story Behind Obama's Assassination of Two Americans in Yemen. (04/23/13) [11:15]
DN | Jeremy Scahill on Hollywood-Style, Botched Attempts by U.S. to Kill American in Yemen. (04/23/13) [2:35]
DN | Why Did the United States Kill a Denver-Born Teenager With a Drone Strike in Yemen? (04/23/13) [3:41]
The Real News Network (TRNN) News
*TRNN | Richard Wolff: Low wages, cheap money, and cheap equipment are driving higher profits and the politics of austerity. (04/21/13) [21:14]
TRNN | Bob Pollin: Study Debunking Austerity Research Sparks Wide Reaction. (04/23/13) [14:39]
Aljazeera
*Aljazeera | witness claims BP gas explosion cover-up. (04/20/13) [2:23]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
*MSNBC | Jeremy Schahill: Dirty Wars Obama's Global Battlefield. (04/23/13) [8:17]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow | The Boston bombers. The younger son is awake and communicating. What is his motives. (04/22/13) [20:44], Part 2 [7:00], Part 3 [8:45]
Other Videos and Documentaries

Monday April 22, 2013
News Articles

It Costs $333 Million to Shut Down Boston for a Day
Bloomberg BusinessWeek | Joshua Green | 04/19/13

... "Boston is a $1 billion-a-day metropolitan area," Diffley says. "But all that economic activity doesn't all go away due to the shutdown--because of telecommuting, because of information technology, a lot more of it can go on than used to be the case. Some of that activity is simply deferred until tomorrow or next week or whenever the guy is caught. ... Read more

Noam Chomsky: How Close the World Is to Nuclear War
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 04/17/13

Laray Polk: What immediate tensions do you perceive that could lead to nuclear war? How close are we?

Noam Chomsky: Actually, nuclear war has come unpleasantly close many times since 1945. There are literally dozens of occasions in which there was a significant threat of nuclear war. There was one time in 1962 when it was very close, and furthermore, it's not just the United States. India and Pakistan have come close to nuclear war several times, and the issues remain. Both India and Pakistan are expanding their nuclear arsenals with US support. There are serious possibilities involved with Iran--not Iranian nuclear weapons, but just attacking Iran--and other things can just go wrong. It's a very tense system, always has been. There are plenty of times when automated systems in the United States-- and in Russia,it's probably worse--have warned of a nuclear attack which would set off an automatic response except that human intervention happened to take place in time, and sometimes in a matter of minutes. That's playing with fire. That's a low-probability event, but with low-probability events over a long period, the probability is not low. ... Read more

*The Real US National Security Budget: 1.2 Trillion
MotherJones | Christopher Hellman | 03/01/12

Normally, in media accounts, you hear about the Pentagon budget and the war-fighting supplementary funds passed by Congress for our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That already gets you into a startling price range--close to $700 billion for 2012--but that's barely more than half of it. If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total US national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year.

Take that in for a moment. It's true; you won't find that figure in your daily newspaper or on your nightly newscast, but it's no misprint. It may even be an underestimate. In any case, it's the real thing when it comes to your tax dollars. The simplest way to grasp just how Americans could pay such a staggering amount annually for "security" is to go through what we know about the US national security budget, step by step, and add it all up. ... Read more

Click to zoom - DHS Budget $71,638,900.00??
Homeland Security Mission Funding by Agency and Budget Account.pdf
Quote: Regardless of the specifics, the basic truth is about half of your income tax is going to the military.
Click to zoom - 2012

The Jobless Trap
NYTimes | Paul Krugman | 04/21/13

... But while debt fears were and are misguided, there's a real danger we've ignored: the corrosive effect, social and economic, of persistent high unemployment. And even as the case for debt hysteria is collapsing, our worst fears about the damage from long-term unemployment are being confirmed.   Now, some unemployment is inevitable in an ever-changing economy. Modern America tends to have an unemployment rate of 5 percent or more even in good times. In these good times, however, spells of unemployment are typically brief. Back in 2007 there were about seven million unemployed Americans -- but only a small fraction of this total, around 1.2 million, had been out of work more than six months.

Then financial crisis struck, leading to a terrifying economic plunge followed by a weak recovery. Five years after the crisis, unemployment remains elevated, with almost 12 million Americans out of work. But what's really striking is the huge number of long-term unemployed, with 4.6 million unemployed more than six months and more than three million who have been jobless for a year or more. Oh, and these numbers don't count those who have given up looking for work because there are no jobs to be found. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, April 22 [11:36]
*DN | Glenn Greenwald on Boston Marathon Arrest: Will We Deny Constitutional Rights in the Name of Fear?. (04/22/13) [15:37]
DN | Earth Day Exclusive: Tim DeChristopher Speaks Out After 21 Months in Prison for Disrupting Oil Bid. (04/22/13) [19:26]
Boston Bombing Suspects Father Speaks Out [2:19]
Class Inequality | Poor
*Poor Us: an animated history [58:05]
The Real News Network (TRNN) News
*TRNN | Gerald Epstein: Big Commodity Traders Pocketed $250 Billion Profit. (04/22/13) [9:34]
TRNN | Martin Khor: Advanced countries of the North must cut emmisions in ratio to the amount they have polluted and facilitate transfer of green technology to the South or humanity will face calamity. (04/22/13) [13:22]
TYT News
*TYT | Aren't Drone Strikes Terrorism? Obama Admin Answers (04/21/13) [3:48]
*TYT | Government Sneakily Repeals Its Own Insider Trading Law (04/18/13) [5:5]
TYT | Disgust & Fury Over NRA Killing Bakground Checks (04/18/13) [7:24]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Latest Developments In Boston Bombing Case (04/22/13) [1hr]
Whistleblowers
HP | Untold Story of Four Whistleblowers Who Exposed Corporate Corruption and Illegal Surveillance at NSA (04/01/13) [28:18]
The case of four whistleblowers from the National Security Agency: Thomas Drake, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis, falsely accused of leaking in 2007, they have endured years of legal harassment for exposing the waste and fraud behind a multibillion-dollar contract for a system called Trailblazer, which was supposed to "revolutionize" the way the NSA produced signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the digital age. Instead, it was canceled in 2006 and remains one of the worst failures in US intelligence history. But the money spent on this privatization scheme, like so much at the NSA, remains a state secret.
Robert Greenwald | War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and The National Security State (trailers) (02/11/13) [3:11]
In a Democracy, citizens are entitled to the freedom of information and the freedom of the press, but what happens when that democratic government turns its back on the truth and begins to punish those who stand up to falsehood, secrecy, and deception? In Robert Greenwald's latest film for Brave New Foundation, we reveal the war targeted at the people who put the US constitution before everything. We reveal the War on Whistleblowers.
CNN | War on whistleblowers? (04/14/13) [5:41]
RT | Thom Hartmann, Robert Greenwald - The War on Whistleblowers (04/16/13) [6:16]
TRNN | Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny (01/04/12) [35:55]
NSA
NSA Utah Data Spy Center Revealed 905/19/12) [3:41]
NatGeo | Inside The NSA~Americas Cyber Secrets (08/02/12) [45:00]
Whistleblowers | Intelligence Apparatus
Office of the Director of National Intelligence - Leading Intelligence Integration
Drones
Ed Show | Robert Greenwald and Ed Schultz discuss U.S. Drone Policy on The Ed Show (01/10/13) [4:57]
Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Why the Boston bombing suspect was not read his Mairanda Rights.. (04/20/13) [15:55], Part 2 [13:36]
Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow | follows step-by-step the movement of the Bostom bombing suspects through Watertown. (04/20/13) [14:48], Part 2 [6:52], Part 3 [10:54], Part 4 [8:35]
Stephen Cobert
Stephen Cobert | Colbert Bashes Ted Cruz & Gun Control Opponents For Blocking Background Checks (04/19/13) [3:02]
Other Videos and Documentaries

Friday April 19, 2013
News Articles

*The Next Most Hated Industry In America?
HP | Mark Gongloff | 04/18/13

Banking Sector Is Slowly Replacing Big Oil As The Most Hated Industry In America

Once upon a time, not long ago, oil companies were so despised that they had to downplay their massive profits in order to keep the angry mobs away. The banking industry is now learning how that feels.

Over the past few days, our biggest, least-failingest banks have been reporting massive quarterly profits, as has become the norm in recent years. JPMorgan Chase's profits were up 33 percent. Citigroup, which nearly didn't make it out of the financial crisis alive, reported a 30 percent jump in earnings. Bank of America's earnings rose nearly sevenfold from a year ago, and that was not enough to satisfy finicky investors, who expected more. ... Read more

Zero Hedge | How Does This End?
ZeroHedge | author | 04/18/13

The fleecing of the American public continues. The theft takes different forms, but it all serves one purpose -- to transfer wealth from the average Joe to the crony corporatists and their political lackeys. Capitalism and free markets depend upon trust, integrity, property rights and the rule of law. Without these, there are no advantages to free markets. Nor are there any incentives to create wealth. Instead, an economy becomes little more than a massive plunder scheme where the powerful exploit the weak. No economic recovery is possible under such circumstances. ... Read more

Tar Sands Timmy [2:03]

Important Lessons In Domestic Terrorism
ZeroHedge | author | 04/19/13

In the first century AD, the Roman Empire was up to its eyeballs in domestic terrorism.

The biggest threat was a tiny Judaic sect known as the Zealots who routinely conducted public attacks, even against other Jews who didn't agree with their views.

This is actually where the word 'zealot' comes from, and the group constitutes history's first recorded example of terrorism.

The Zealots knew they could never defeat such a vast Empire… at least, not conventionally.

Instead, their chosen tactic was to create chaos and fear. And for a while they were successful.

Rome finally put down the threat in 74 AD with the siege of Masada. But the idea caught on, and 'terrorism' has been with us ever since.

Just in recent days, attacks on civilians have been attempted and/or carried out in Greece, the Philippines, Turkey, Kenya, Taiwan, Iraq, Kosovo, Thailand, Mali, Syria, India, Israel, Nigeria, and the United States. ...
Read more

Government Secrecy Orders on Patents Have Stifled More Than 5,000 Inventions
Wired Magazine | G.W. Schulz | 04/16/13

... The Department of Defense concluded that his invention could be a national security threat in the wrong hands and slapped Gold's patent application with a so-called "secrecy order" in 2002, which prevented him from discussing the technology with anyone. Five years later, his attorney succeeded in lifting the order, but by then, it was too late. ... Read more

*Meet the 28-year-old Student Who Exposed Two Harvard Professors Whose Shoddy Research Drove Global Austerity
AlterNet | Lynn Stuart Parramore | 04/18/13

The world of economics has just changed, and somebody has some 'splaining to do! Please savor the following twisted tale of bad math, academic folly and pundit hubris.   Since 2010, the names of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous in politic and economic circles. These two Harvard economists wrote a paper, "Growth in the Time of Debt" that has been used by everyone from Paul Ryan to Olli Rehn of the European Commission to justify harmful austerity policies. The authors purported to show that once a country's gross debt to GDP ratio crosses the threshold of 90 percent, economic growth slows dramatically. Debt, in other words, seemed very scary and bad.   But something didn't smell right.

Progressive economists I knew were shocked at what appeared to be the shoddiness of the research and the absurdity of the conclusions. In their paper " A World Upside Down? Deficit Fantasies in the Great Recession," Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson observed that R&R had truncated their sample of British data in a way that skewed their conclusions, eliminating more than a century of data in which British debt loads exploded but economic growth raced ahead (see pages 11-13). The always savvy Marshall Auerback called them out in a blog for New Deal 2.0, which I edited at the time, criticizing the relevance of the cases they had used to justify their conclusions.

But plenty of pundits took their suspect arguments as gospel. The editorial board of the Washington Post declared that "debt-to-GDP could keep rising -- and stick dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth." The economists cited were Reinhart and Rogoff, whom the WP passed off as speaking for the entire field. A new Washington consensus was born, and the public was hammered with the idea that cutting jobs, stripping away vital public services and letting infrastructure crumble was a good way to get the economy going. Most any ordinary person on the street would probably intuit that this made no sense, but there was this Academic Research By Esteemed Persons, so the argument was over. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, April 19 [11:05]
DN | Genocide Trial of Former Dictator Ríos Montt Suspended After Intervention by Guatemalan President. (04/19/13) [11:31]
*DN | Allan Nairn Exposes Role of U.S., New Guatemalan President in Indigenous Massacres. Part 1 (04/19/13) [23:05], Part 2 [13:36]
In 1982, investigative journalist Allan Nairn interviewed a Guatemalan general named "Tito" on camera during the height of the indigenous massacres. It turns out the man was actually Otto Pérez Molina, the current Guatemalan president. We air the original interview footage and speak to Nairn about the U.S. role backing the Guatemalan dictatorship. Last week, Nairn flew to Guatemala where he had been scheduled to testify in the trial of former U.S.-backed dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, the first head of state in the Americas to stand trial for genocide. Ríos Montt was charged in connection with the slaughter of more than 1,700 people in Guatemala's Ixil region after he seized power in 1982. His 17-month rule is seen as one of the bloodiest chapters in Guatemala's decades-long campaign against Maya indigenous people, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The trial took a surprising turn last week when Guatemala President Gen. Otto Pérez Molina was directly accused of ordering executions. A former military mechanic named Hugo Reyes told the court that Pérez Molina, then serving as an army major and using the name Tito Arias, ordered soldiers to burn and pillage a Maya Ixil area in the 1980s.
Howard Zinn
A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn [8:35]
A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn [1/53]
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson - Speaking Freely (2008) [6:38]
Author of Blowback, The Sorrows Of Empire and Nemesis: The Last Days Of The American Empire, Chalmers Johnson has literally written the book on the concept of American Hegemony. A former naval officer and consultant of the C.I.A., he now serves as professor Emeritus at UC San Diego. As co-founder and President of the Japan Policy Research Institute, Mr. Johnson also continues to promote public education about Asia's role in the international community.
*Conversations with History: Chalmers Johnson (2008) [59:28]
Noam Chomsky
Conversations with History: Noam Chomsky (2008) [59:08]
The Real News Network (TRNN)
*TRNN | Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky - "Manufacturing Consent': All the problems of the propaganda media model we talked about in the book have grown worse. (04/19/13) [11:43]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday 04/19/13 [1hr]
International News - Friday 04/19/13 [1hr]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | FBI releases photos of suspects in Boston Marathon bombing. (04/18/13) [4:39], Part 2 [2:37]
Between DOD, Homeland Security, and Nuclear weapons (DOE), we spend way over a Trillion dollars. When we buy a stick of gum with a credit card it takes seconds to clear the processing center. When we drive a car EVERYONE has to have a drivers license and I think in most states car insurence. But we can't pass a law requiring a gun background check!
Chris Hayes | The Senate's gun vote: cynicism at its best (04/18/13) [7:04]
Chris Hayes | Examining work safety in light of the Texas fertilizer plant explosion (04/18/13) [4:43], Part 2 [7:07]
30,000 people die each year from gun violence, over 90% of American want Universal Background Checks. Yet our Congressmen can't even get a waterdown bill passed.
*Chris Hayes | Gun fatalities exceeded 30,000/yr and terror fatalities total about 3,400 since 1970. (04/17/13) [5:35], Part 2 [9:18], Part 3 [4:45]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow
On Rachel Maddow an undercover reporter bought $2,600.00 worth of guns from multiple gun shows. Never once was he challenged. And when he bought an assult rifle it took 70 seconds.
Rachel Maddow | FBI releases images of Boston bombing suspects (04/18/13) [10:59], Part 2 [5:22], Part 3 [7:46]
Rachel Maddow | What makes it into the news? What should we do about gun control? How about Terrorism? (04/17/13) [14:31], Part 2 [5:54], Part 2 [9:49]
Other Videos and Documentaries

Thursday April 18, 2013
News Articles

Fertilizer plant explosion injures at least 160 in central Texas; 5 to 15 feared dead
WashingtonPost | Ernesto Londoño | 04/18/13

A massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in central Texas on Wednesday night left more than 160 people wounded and killed an estimated five to 15 people, officials said, likely including firefighters who had been battling the blaze at the factory that triggered the explosion. ... Read more

The Growing Sentiment on the Hill For Ending 'Too Big To Fail'
Rolling Stone | Matt Taibbi | 04/03/13

... Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail... Since part of the Sanders discussion is going to be about "What we can do about it," it's worth noting that at least as far as the Too Big to Fail issue is concerned, there's been a bit of an interesting development of late -- some momentum is building in Washington toward reforming the banks.

Start with the most recent news: last week, Sanders announced plans to introduce an interesting new bill, one that's a direct response to comments made recently by the likes of Eric Holder about the difficulty in prosecuting big banks. Holder said some institutions have grown so large that prosecuting its executives may have a "negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy." ... Read more

*The unwinnable war on terrorism?
Washington Post | Aaron Blake | 04/17/13

For the first time since the so-called war on terrorism began, the United States is physically on the defensive, dealing with the fallout of the first successful home-soil attack since 9/11.   But in the minds of the American people, the United States hasn't been winning the war on terrorism for nearly a decade.   Even as the U.S. has notched some big wins and avoided large-scale attacks like the one at the Boston Marathon on Monday, Americans have rarely seen their side as actually winning the war. ... Read more

*How Being Poor in America Shaped Every Part of My Life and Forced Me to Live on the Streets
AlterNet | Lee Stringer | 04/17/13

... Had the Welfare Department found out, they would have reduced the monthly check they sent by an amount equal to what this extracurricular work brought in and we'd have been no better off for the effort.

I understood that this rule was an effort to protect the taxpayer, the idea being to guard against anyone using public assistance as supplementary income. But since most employment available to people like my mother was low paying, often leaving less spending money--after taxes, transportation and other costs associated with the workplace--than what public assistance provided, it also worked against her honest efforts at providing for herself. Therein, another hidden effect: Rules that work for the haves, can often work against the have-nots. ... Read more

Here Are The Twitter Handles Of The Senators Who Voted No On Background Checks Bill
HP | author | 04/17/13

The Senate rejected a bipartisan compromise amendment to expand gun background checks on Wednesday, casting a 54 to 46 vote that drew sharp responses from supporters who had seen the measure as a small, significant and viable step forward on gun control.

  1. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) - @SenAlexander
  2. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) - @KellyAyotte
  3. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) - @SenJohnBarrasso
  4. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) - @MaxBaucus
  5. Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) - @SenatorBegich
  6. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) - @RoyBlunt
  7. Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) - @JohnBoozeman
  8. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) - @SenatorBurr
  9. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) - @SaxbyChambliss
  10. Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) - @SenDanCoats
  11. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) - @TomCoburn
  12. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) - @SenThadCochran
  13. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) - @SenBobCorker
  14. Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas) - @JohnCornyn
  15. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) - @MikeCrapo
  16. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) - @SenTedCruz
  17. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) - @SenatorEnzi
  18. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) - @SenatorFischer
  19. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) - @JeffFlake
  20. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) - @GrahamBlog
  21. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) - @ChuckGrassley
  22. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) - @SenOrrinHatch
  23. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) - @SenatorHeitkamp
  24. Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) - @SenDeanHeller
  25. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) - @SenJohnHoeven
  26. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) - @jiminhofe
  27. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) - @SenatorIsakson
  28. Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) - @Mike_Johanns
  29. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) - @SenRonJohnson
  30. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) - @SenMikeLee
  31. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) - @McConnellPress
  32. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) - @JerryMoran
  33. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) - @lisamurkowski
  34. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) - @SenRandPaul
  35. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) - @robportman
  36. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) - @SenMarkPryor
  37. Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) - @SenatorRisch
  38. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) - @SenPatRoberts
  39. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) - @marcorubio
  40. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) - @SenatorTimScott
  41. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) - @SenatorSessions
  42. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) - @SenShelbyPress
  43. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) - @SenJohnThune
  44. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) - @DavidVitter
  45. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) - @SenatorWicker
Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, April 18 [13:55]
*DN | Filmmaker Robert Greenwald on "War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State". (04/18/13) [6:52]
DN | "Devastation Beyond Description": Dozens Feared Dead in Texas Fertilizer Plant Blast, 100+ Wounded. (04/18/13) [13:54]
DN | A Rush to Misjudgment: CNN Faulted for Racially Charged, Erroneous Reports on Boston Marathon Case. (04/18/13) [16:25]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Boston Bombings And Ricin Letters 04/18/13 [1hr]
The Real News Network (TRNN)
Does High Public Debt Stifle Economic Growth? (04/18/13) [16:16]
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart | Hammers CNN On Boston Reporting: 'Completely F*cking Wrong' (04/18/13) [5:45]
*Building Neighborhoods of the Future
The roads are in. We are currently working on the utilities. Then we will start building the neighborhoods of the future. Stake out your claim early so you won't loose out on that special view of the tailings pond...
Click to zoom
And if you want to be close to the golden sulfur mountains, shown in the image below, please give us a call before all the prime lots have been snapped-up.
Click to zoom
Drill, Baby, Drill: Can Unconventional Fuels Usher in a New Era of Energy Abundance? by David Hughes (article - Scribd)
This is our Energy Reality (01/21/13) [4:49]
You Are Here: The Oil Journey (Narrated by Peter Coyote) [29:34]
<-- Videos Go with Article to the Left
NRA's latest ad detailing Mayor Bloomberg's insane comments about crazy things like "background checks."
Other Videos and Documentaries

Wednesday April 17, 2013
News Articles

Banks Got Nowhere to Run To
Bill Moyers | Greg Kaufmann | 04/13/13

Last year, U.S. Bank held its annual shareholders meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of its corporate headquarters.   "Our members asked CEO Richard Davis direct questions about issues like principal reductions and foreclosures, and payday lending," said Eric Fought. "We were really effective in holding them accountable, so this year they looked for another solution -- to hide from us."

Payday Horror Story:
Miranda Davis who was disabled at 19 but as a single mother of two kids still "works to make ends meet." When her car broke down, she used her utility money to repair it so she could commute to work -- and then she took out a $300 payday loan to cover her utility bill. She was only able to pay back the $75 per month interest, and eventually needed another $300 loan.

"She's now paying nearly $200 per month in interest alone," said Sterling. "She can work as hard as she can and she won't ever make enough money to pay off those loans."

ICAN and Minnesotans for a Fair Economy have been pushing for a 36 percent cap in their states -- the same one mandated by the federal government for members of the military and their families. Arizona, Montana and Oregon have also adopted a 36 percent cap on all payday loans.
"US Bank is draining resources out of families' pockets and Idaho's economy as a whole," said Hall.... Read more

Obama Ricin Letter: Poison-Tainted Mailer To President Intercepted At Screening Facility
HP | author | 04/17/13

Less than a day after police intercepted a letter laced with the poison ricin that was sent to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), reports of two more poison-tainted letters have emerged, including one to President Barack Obama. ... Read more

Goldman Throws In The Towel On A 2013 "Recovery" As Does Bank Of America
ZeroHedge | author | 04/17/13
Read more

Comment: while I was reading the comments for an article I was considering posting, I ran across the interchange below. The dialog was so on target that I thought I would reproduce the comments here.

Person 1: I think someone forgot that we live in a capitalist economy. Money runs everything. It also corrupts everything. We need a completely new system.

Person 2: Once upon a time (in my lifetime) our capitalist economy was able to coexist with a representative democracy where people believed their votes counted. I may be naive, but I believe it could happen again.

Person 3: Why not have a balanced mix? No country is purely capitalistic, including the US.

Person 4: Tightly regulated, strictly enforced, and we're golden. what we haves is a rigged market plagued by criminal insider trading, captured regulatory agencies, monopolies of key industries, and out-of-control speculative bubbles.

Automakers Spur $3 Billion Boom for Made-in-Mexico Steel
Bloomberg | Brendan Case | 04/17/13

Mexico's auto production has almost doubled since 2009. Now its steel industry is trying to catch up by spending almost $3 billion on new and improved factories.   "Auto exports are going to be the new oil for the Mexican economy," Marco Oviedo, chief economist of Barclays Plc in Mexico, said in a telephone interview from Mexico City. ...

... Steelmaker Altos Hornos de Mexico SA, known as Ahmsa, has almost completed a $2.3 billion expansion designed partly to supply automakers. Ternium SA (TX) and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. (5401) are teaming up on a $330 million investment to finish rust-resistant steel, and South Korea's Posco (005490) is spending $300 million to more than double capacity for similar products. ... Read more

Dan Loeb Simultaneously Solicits, Betrays Pension Funds
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 04/11/13

There's confidence. There's chutzpah. And then there's Dan Loeb, hedge fund king extraordinaire and head of Third Point Capital, who's getting set to claim the World Heavyweight Championship of Balls.

On April 18, Loeb will speak before the Council of Institutional Investors, a nonprofit association of pension funds, endowments, employee benefit funds, and foundations with collective assets of over $3 trillion. The CII is an umbrella group that represents the institutions who manage the retirement and benefit funds of public and corporate employees all over America -- from bricklayers to Teamsters to teachers to employees of Colgate, the Gap and Johnson and Johnson.

In other words, Loeb has been soliciting the retirement money of public workers, then turning right around and lobbying for those same workers to lose their benefits. He's essentially asking workers to pay for their own disenfranchisement (with Loeb getting his two-and-twenty cut, or whatever obscene percentage of their retirement monies he will charge as a fee). If that isn't the very definition of balls, I don't know what is. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, April 17 [12:15]
DN | After Obama Shuns Probe, Bipartisan Panel Finds "Indisputable" Evidence U.S. Tortured Under Bush. (04/17/13) [25:18]
Huffington Post
*HP | Amy Goodman On Boston Bombing: 'What's Critical Is No One Jump To Any Conclusions' (04/17/13) [27:13]
Bloomberg
BB | BofA's Ugly Turnaround in Weak Environment: Kopecki (04/17/13) [2:53]
BB | World's Biggest Yachts: A Battle of Billionaires (04/17/13) [1:21]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | Born on a Native American reservation, Sherman Alexie has been navigating the cultural boundaries of American culture in lauded poetry, novels, short stories, screenplays (04/12/13) [39:24]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Latest On The Boston Investigation And The Limits Of Security 04/17/13 [1hr]
The Real News Network (TRNN)
TRNN | Peter Lee: The US will not accept a rapprochement with North Korea with nuclear weapons, not because they are a real threat, but it would cause South Korea and Japan to seek nuclear weapons and thus weaken American dominance in the region. (04/17/13) [16:36]
Aljazeera
*Aljazeera | Empire : Diplomacy, Obama and the Middle East (04/01/13) [47:30]
Aljazeera | Empire : Syria and the US: The complicity of silence (02/01/13) [47:30]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes - All In
Chris Hayes | Over 1000 investigators are gathering in Boston to gather all the evidence of the bombing. (04/16/13) [8:53]
Chris Hayes | Report: US engaged in torture after 9/11. (04/16/13) [5:06]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow | Dan Borelli, former senior FBI agent, was a "pressure cooker bomb" and very commonly used around the world. (04/16/13) [14:53]
Rachel Maddow | Arizon Senator Jeff Flake who rather than simply vote against background check for gun control but will filibuster. (04/16/13) [2:36]
Jon Stewart
*Jon Stewart | Aliens vs. Senators: The bipartisan Senate "gang of eight" finally builds a barrier that immigrants won't be able to get past. Part 1 (04/16/13) [3:45], Part 2 [3:22]
Jon Stewart | Former President Jimmy Carter explains how his organization nearly eradicated guinea worm infections from the third world.. Part 1 (04/09/13) [6:47], Part 2 [4:30]
Other Videos and Documentaries
Permaculture vs Agriculture - permies.com website
permaculture - join the r-evolution [7:51]
$50 underground house eco building [10:16]
eco house - mike oehler PSP ridgetop eco house [4:04]
Author of the $50 and up underground house book is building another eco house masterpiece! This is an above ground structure on top of a steep mountain ridge in north idaho. This may be the sixth eco house built on this property. Some of Oehler's eco structures are underground and some are underground-ish. This eco house is clearly above ground and just has a thick earthen roof.
Wood stove vs. rocket mass heater [1:22]

Tuesday April 16, 2013
News Articles

All American Airlines Flights Grounded
ZeroHedge | author | 04/16/13

For those flying in the northeast today, especially in and out of Boston, it is just not their day (all the more so if there are terroristy-looking, Arab-speaking passengers nearby). The day just got much worse for those flying American Airlines. Via BBG:

  1. FAA says all American flights grounded at airline's request
  2. FAA says American groundings due to airline computer problems
  3. American Airlines says Sabre Reservation system offline
  4. American Airlines reports reservation system outage on twitter
  5. Sabre says there are no problems with airline booking system
Must be the evil Chinese hackers' fault again, and it is about time the government stepped in and regulated the entire Internet, preferably with a kill switch to get rid of all the pesky, fringe elements. Read more

Police tackle a complex scene
WashingtonPost | Mary Beth Sheridan | 04/16/13

Police here are scouring hours of videotape and thousands of photographs in an effort to learn who detonated two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, blasting runners off their feet, killing at least three people and injuring more than 170 others, 17 of them critically. ... Read more

Mitt Romney was right (on taxes)
Washington Post | Chris Cillizza | 04/15/13

More than eight in 10 Americans believe that you should do everything you can to pay the lowest tax rate possible, according to new Washington Post-ABC News polling, a finding that suggests that people likely hold politicians to a standard of conduct they themselves don't adhere to.

Eighty-five percent of Americans-- and 86 percent of registered voters-- say they approve of people "doing everything within the law to lower their taxes." Nearly six in 10 say they "strongly" approve of doing all you can to pay as little as possible. Those numbers are remarkably consistent across party lines, with 90 percent of self-identified Republicans expressing that view, as well as 83 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of independents. ... Read more

A Tax System Stacked Against the 99 Percent
NYTimes | Joseph E. Stiglitz | 04/14/13

... What should shock and outrage us is that as the top 1 percent has grown extremely rich, the effective tax rates they pay have markedly decreased. Our tax system is much less progressive than it was for much of the 20th century. The top marginal income tax rate peaked at 94 percent during World War II and remained at 70 percent through the 1960s and 1970s; it is now 39.6 percent. Tax fairness has gotten much worse in the 30 years since the Reagan "revolution" of the 1980s. ...

... With such low effective tax rates -- and, importantly, the low tax rate of 20 percent on income from capital gains -- it's not a huge surprise that the share of income going to the top 1 percent has doubled since 1979, and that the share going to the top 0.1 percent has almost tripled, according to the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Recall that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own about 40 percent of the nation's wealth, and the picture becomes even more disturbing. ... Read more

Quote: We've drawn our most talented young people into financial shenanigans, rather than into creating real businesses, making real discoveries, providing real services to others. More efforts go into "rent-seeking" -- getting a larger slice of the country's economic pie -- than into enlarging the size of the pie.

Poverty Expert Peter Edelman Explains How Low Wages and Racial Politics Line the Pockets of the Rich
AlterNet | Adele M. Stan | 04/16/13

To help America's neediest, we've got to raise tax rates on corporations and wealthy Americans back to the levels they paid in 2001.

Edelman finds his answers in the tangle of racialized politics, mass incarceration, displacement caused by globalization, the explosion of low-wage jobs and the dilution of democracy by moneyed interests. In his 2012 book, So Rich, So Poor: Why It's So Hard to End Poverty in America, Edelman writes, "The American economy did not stagnate over the past 40 years: it grew, but the fruits of that growth went to those at the top." ... Read more

Secrets of FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Revealed in Court Fight
Wired Magazine | Kim Zetter | 04/09/13

A legal fight over the government's use of a secret surveillance tool has provided new insight into how the controversial tool works and the extent to which Verizon Wireless aided federal agents in using it to track a suspect.

Rigmaiden, who is accused of being the ringleader of a $4 million tax fraud operation, asserts in court documents that in July 2008 Verizon surreptitiously reprogrammed his air card to make it respond to incoming voice calls from the FBI and also reconfigured it so that it would connect to a fake cell site, or stingray, that the FBI was using to track his location.

Air cards are devices that plug into a computer and use the wireless cellular networks of phone providers to connect the computer to the internet. The devices are not phones and therefore don't have the ability to receive incoming calls, but in this case Rigmaiden asserts that Verizon reconfigured his air card to respond to surreptitious voice calls from a landline controlled by the FBI. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, April 16 [15:29]
DN | "Like a War Scene": From the Streets to Hospitals, Witnesses & Medics Rushed to Help Bombing Victims. (04/16/13) [15:47]
DN | Sportswriter Dave Zirin: Prayers For the People in Boston, Baghdad and Mogadishu. (04/16/13) [4:44]
Explosions at the Boston Marathon (04/15/13) [2:42]
Bill Moyers
*Bill Moyers | The United States of Inequality (04/12/13) [13:33]
Comment: I just heard an interview where Larry Wilkerson (see interview below), who worked with Colin Powell during the Bush Administration, use the term "Military Terrorist Industrial Complex", and how it is maintained to keep a few select Corporations very wealthy.
Quote: Regardless of the specifics, the basic truth is about half of your income tax is going to the military.
Click to zoom - 1985
Click to zoom - 2012
The Real News Network (TRNN)
*Larry Wilkerson: Six big arms monopolies profit from tension and war; promote a strategic vision that favors their short term commercial interest. (04/16/13) [15:42]
*TRNN | Eric Margolis: The nuclear weapons program is the only card North Korea has to force the US to negotiate a normalization of relations. (04/16/13) [12:42]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Latest On The Boston Investigation And The Limits Of Security 04/16/13 [1hr]
Cass Sunstein: "Simpler: The Future of Government" 04/16/13 [1hr]
*TYT News
Interesting Lifestyle Video
Vice | Faustino's Patagonian Retreat () [35:31]

Monday April 15, 2013
News Articles

Why Derivatives Threaten Your Bank Account
WebOfDebt | Ellen Brown | 04/09/13

... In the US after the Glass-Steagall Act was implemented in 1933, a bank could not gamble with depositor funds for its own account; but in 1999, that barrier was removed. Recent congressional investigations have revealed that in the biggest derivative banks, JPMorgan and Bank of America, massive commingling has occurred between their depository arms and their unregulated and highly vulnerable derivatives arms. Under both the Dodd Frank Act and the 2005 Bankruptcy Act, derivative claims have super-priority over all other claims, secured and unsecured, insured and uninsured. In a major derivatives fiasco, derivative claimants could well grab all the collateral, leaving other claimants, public and private, holding the bag. ...

  1. Restore the Glass-Steagall Act separating depository banking from investment banking. Support Marcy Kaptur's H.R. 129.
  2. Break up the giant derivatives banks. Support Bernie Sanders' "too big to jail" legislation.
  3. Alternatively, nationalize the TBTFs, as advised in the New York Times by Gar Alperovitz.
  4. Make derivatives illegal, as they were between 1936 and 1982 under the Commodities Exchange Act.
  5. Support the Harkin-Whitehouse bill to impose a financial transactions tax on Wall Street trading.
  6. Establish postal savings banks as government-guaranteed depositories for individual savings.
  7. Establish publicly-owned banks to be depositories of public monies, following the lead of North Dakota, the only state to completely escape the 2008 banking crisis.
Read more

Army's Disaster Prep Now Includes Tips From the Zombie Apocalypse
Wire Magazine | Spencer Ackerman | 04/12/13

... Officers at Fort Sam Houston in Texas actually brought Max Brooks, author of the latter-day classic zombie novel World War Z, to attend the U.S. Army-North's Hurricane Rehearsal of Concept drill this week. Not that the soldiers were anticipating any zombies. From Brooks' perspective, whether you're confronting extreme weather that shorts out a power grid or running from a marauding horde of the undead, preparation is the key to survival. ... Read more

The Secret of the Seven Sisters
Aljazeera | author | 4/12/13

On August 28, 1928, in the Scottish highlands, began the secret story of oil.

Three men had an appointment at Achnacarry Castle - a Dutchman, an American and an Englishman.

The Dutchman was Henry Deterding, a man nicknamed the Napoleon of Oil, having exploited a find in Sumatra. He joined forces with a rich ship owner and painted Shell salesman and together the two men founded Royal Dutch Shell.

The American was Walter C. Teagle and he represents the Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller at the age of 31 - the future Exxon. Oil wells, transport, refining and distribution of oil - everything is controlled by Standard oil.

The Englishman, Sir John Cadman, was the director of the Anglo-Persian oil Company, soon to become BP. On the initiative of a young Winston Churchill, the British government had taken a stake in BP and the Royal Navy switched its fuel from coal to oil. With fuel-hungry ships, planes and tanks, oil became "the blood of every battle".

Read more

Is this guy for real??
Quote of the day
Republican Steve Stockman campaign bumper sticker, "If babies had guns, there wouldn't be abortions".

As Wall St. Soars in Tough Era, Company Size Is a Big Factor
NYTimes | Nelson D. Schwartz | 04/14/13

It's tough to make sense of the economy these days. The latest jobs numbers show hiring is down. Taxes are up, austerity reigns in Washington and consumers are skittish. Yet the stock market is defying gravity, marching ever higher in spite of it all.

Behind this seeming riddle lies a confluence of economic forces that is likely to continue to produce good times for the biggest American companies -- and the stock market -- even if growth, as expected, slows in the coming months.

By pumping hundreds of billions of dollars a month into the global economy, central banks like the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan have encouraged investors to put their money into stocks and other riskier investments, increasing their prices. Bullish traders now count on a supportive Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, much as their predecessors did in the 1990s when Alan Greenspan held that job.   At the same time, American giants are benefiting from productivity gains and renewed growth in China and other overseas markets, allowing them to increase profits even if business at home remains lackluster. ... Read more

Hedge Fund Titans' Pay Stretching to 10 Figures
NYTimes | Julie Creswell | 04/15/13

... Certainly, plenty of hedge fund titans took home billion-dollar paydays last year despite the fact they lagged the big gains in stocks. For example, Steven A. Cohen, who controls $15 billion in assets at SAC Capital Advisors, which has been under intense scrutiny by government investigators, fell just short of the market's returns for 2012. His take-home pay, however, was about $1.4 billion, earning him the No. 3 spot among the best-paid hedge fund managers. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, April 15 [13:05]
DN | Tax Day: While Millions Rush to Meet Deadline, Resisters Continue Longstanding Refusal to Fund War (04/15/13) [12:24]
Click to zoom
WarResisters League (website)
(NWTRCC) National War Tax Resistance (website)
World War Z (trailer) (Jun 2013) [4:49]
The Secret of the Seven Sisters - 4 Part Series
*Al Jazeera | The Secret of the Seven Sisters - Desert Storms. Part 1 (04/12/13) [47:30]
*Al Jazeera | The Secret of the Seven Sisters - The Black El Dorado. Part 2 (04/12/13) [47:30]
The Real News Network (TRNN)
*TRNN | Joseph Minarik (former chief economist of the Office of Management and Budget for eight years during the Clinton Administration) take on President Obama's proposed changes to Social Security. (04/14/13) [28:15]
*TRNN | James Henry: Global tax revenue lost to tax havens is between USD $190 billion and $255 billion per year ($20 Trillion total), assuming a 3% capital gains rate and a 30% capital gains tax rate. (04/14/13) [12:39]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes: All In
*Chris Hayes | As North Korea threatens South Korea and Japan, the hype stateside is being fueled by... . (04/12/13) [16:45]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow Show
*Rachel Maddow | Nicole Hockey, whose son Dylan was killed in Sandy Hook, talks about putting a human face on the tragedy. (04/12/13) [16:17]
*Rachel Maddow | The House Republicans, who are in the majority, rule by allowing the Democrates to do the Heavy Lifting (sad). (04/12/13) [5:26]
Rachel Maddow | Virginia abortion rights undermined by TRAP lwas designed to close abortion clinics. (04/12/13) [9:16]
A Little Bit of Humor
Veep Season 2: Trailer #2 [1:31]
Other Videos and Documentaries

Friday April 12, 2013
News Articles

Meet the NRA's Board of Directors
Mother Jones | Dave Gilson | older 01/16/13

The National Rifle Association claims to speak for more than 4 million gun owners. But the shots are really called by a hush-hush group of 76 directors. The majority are nominated via a top-down process and elected by a small fraction of NRA members. A breakdown of the current board, based on their official bios:

  1. 87% are men.
  2. 93% are white.
  3. 25% are current or former lawmakers or officials.
  4. 22% are current or former law enforcement officers.
  5. 30% are current or former members of the military.
  6. 24% are lawyers.
  7. 12% are entertainers or athletes.
  8. 64% are hunters.
  9. 71% are sport or competitive shooters.
  10. At least 71% were nominated, endorsed, or selected by the NRA's Nominating Committee.
Some notable members of the NRA's current board of directors: Read more

In the G8 8 out of 9 are...

5 Juicy Tax Breaks That Corporations Enjoy That the Public Can't Touch
AlterNet | Scott Klinger | 04/10/13

Corporations are quick to claim "corporate personhood" and their First Amendment rights when it comes to their ability to donate to political candidates, influence elections, and lobby or when it comes to advertising their products, especially those deemed dangerous or socially destructive. But on tax day, corporations are quite content with a tax code full of perks and privileges for corporations that are not available to living, breathing human beings.

  1. When corporations break the law, they get a tax break.
  2. When corporations fall on hard times, the tax code helps makes them whole.
  3. Many corporations get to choose where in the world to report their income, allowing them to choose a nation with low or no taxes.
  4. Superstorm Sandy devastated millions of American families, but corporations got to deduct the full value of their losses from their taxes.
  5. If you are an American citizen working abroad you pay American taxes on your foreign earnings; if you are an American corporation you can indefinitely delay paying U.S. taxes on income you earn abroad.
Read more

10 Facts Obama Doesn't Want You to Know About His Social Security Slashing Budget Plan
AlterNet | Richard Eskow | 04/11/13

The "chained CPI" proposal in President Obama's budget continues to draw much-deserved fire, which is only likely to increase as more information about it becomes known.   Here are ten embarrassing facts about the chained CPI which the White House and its defenders would prefer to see overlooked:

  1. Of course it's a benefit cut.
  2. Of course it's a tax hike.
  3. And it's a tax hike for everybody but the wealthy.
  4. You could save much more money in other ways.
  5. 5. The White House's proposed "bump" disproves its own argument.
... Read more

Solar Flare, 2013's Most Powerful So Far, Sparks Radio Blackout, NASA Says
HP | Tariq Malik | 04/11/13

  1. The most powerful solar flare of the year erupted from the sun today (April 11) sparking a temporary radio blackout on Earth, NASA officials say.
  2. The solar flare occurred at 3:16 a.m. EDT (0716 GMT) and registered as a M6.5-class sun storm, a relatively mid-level flare on the scale of solar tempests.
  3. Today's M-class solar flare was about 10 times weaker than X-class flares, which are the strongest flares the sun can unleash.
  4. When aimed directly at Earth, major solar flares and coronal mass ejections can pose a threat to astronauts and satellites in orbit.
Read more

Stephen Hawking: Space Exploration Is Key To Saving Humanity
HP | Alicia Chang | 04/10/13

The 71-year-old Hawking said he did not think humans would survive another 1,000 years "without escaping beyond our fragile planet."

The British cosmologist made the remarks Tuesday before an audience of doctors, nurses and employees at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he toured a stem cell laboratory that's focused on trying to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig's disease.   Hawking was diagnosed with the neurological disorder 50 years ago while a student at Cambridge University. He recalled how he became depressed and initially didn't see a point in finishing his doctorate. But he continued to delve into his studies. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, April 12 [14:41]
DN | Bishop Thomas Gumbleton Speaks Out For Sexual Abuse Victims; Reflects on Lifetime of Activism. (04/12/13) [7:19]
Jon Stewart | Stephen Cobert Report
*Stephen Cobert | Colbert Lambasts Exxon's 'Drunk Guy' Cleanup Techniques For Arkansas Oil Spill (04/10/13) [3:02]
*Jon Stewart | Author David Stockman: "The Great Deformation" explains why the bailout premise was fatally flawed, and how the economy can get away from "too big to fail.". (04/08/13) [8:10], Part 2 [8:41], Part 3 [5:51]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday 04/12/13 [1hr]
International News - Friday 04/12/13 [1hr]
MSNBC | Chris Hayes All In
*Chris Hayes | Talks with former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Salon columnist David Sirota about Gun Violence and the NRA. (04/11/13) [14:41]
*Chris Hayes | Republicans attempt to undermine the family by tricking us about the 40-hour work week. (04/11/13) [4:08]
*Chris Hayes | 4 million homeowners that were forclosure on got $3.6 Billion, the 7 consulting firms (who worked for the banks) got $2 Billion. (04/11/13) [8:07]
*Chris Hayes | Discusses how the austerity measures used in the Greek economy can foretell what could happen in the US. Part 1 (04/11/13) [8:08], Part 2 [5:40]
MSNBC | Rachel Maddow Show
Rachel Maddow | Dustin McDaniel, Arkansas Attorney General, talks about keeping Exxon accountable for the Mayflower spill. (04/12/13) [10:48]
The Real News Network (TRNN)
*TRNN | The "chained" CPI ignores research that shows senior's costs are going up as they get older and women are most affected (04/12/13) [8:02]
TRNN | Michael Ratner: Kissinger files show important role Wikileaks continues to play revealing real history of US foreign policy. (04/12/13) [20:41] *Users can search or browse PlusD via WikiLeaks' website.
Aljazeera News
*Aljazeera | Inside Story - Obama's budget: A deal with the Republicans? (04/11/13) [25:00]
US President Barack Obama's budget is 244 pages long but it is one paragraph on page 46 that has earned him praise from the Republicans. On first reading, it seems like a simple accounting change. The president plans to switch the way social security benefits are indexed for inflation - from the standard Consumer Price Index to what is called the chained CPI. But in fact the action has enormous significance, not just to the millions of poor and elderly who may find themselves unable to keep up with the cost of living in the future, but to the whole debate over budgets in Washington.
Aljazeera | People & Power - Brazil: All the President's Torturers (04/11/13) [25:01]
With an ambitious, progressive government, a population of around 193 million, now well established federal democratic structures and apparent political stability, many even see it as a global superpower in the making, perhaps even deserving of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council in the not too distant future.

But its solid international reputation has not always been so glossy. Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil was ruled by a military regime that was frequently accused - both at home and abroad - of serious human rights abuses.
Other Videos and Documentaries

Thursday April 11, 2013
News Articles

*Seeking Relief, Banks Shift Risk to Murkier Corners
NYTimes |Susanne Craig | 04/10/13

Banks have been shedding risky assets to show regulators that they are not as vulnerable as they were during the financial crisis. In some cases, however, the assets don't actually move -- the bank just shifts the risk to another institution.   This trading sleight of hand has been around Wall Street for a while. But as regulators press for banks to be safer, demand for these maneuvers -- known as capital relief trades or regulatory capital trades -- has been growing, especially in Europe.

Citigroup, Credit Suisse and UBS have recently completed such trades. Rather than selling the assets, potentially at a loss, the banks transfer a slice of the risk associated with the assets, usually loans. The buyers are typically hedge funds, whose investors are often pensions that manage the life savings of schoolteachers and city workers. The buyers agree to cover a percentage of losses on these assets for a fee, sometimes 15 percent a year or more. ... Read more

Dick Cheney Warns GOP On North Korea: 'We're In Deep Doo Doo'
HP | Gabrielle Dunkley | 04/10/13

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told Republicans they should be very wary of recent threats from North Korea, CNN reported on Tuesday.   "We're in deep doo doo," Cheney warned top GOP lawmakers, a Republican leadership aide told CNN.

Cheney reportedly expressed concern about the lack of intel on young North Korean leader Kim Jung-Un, making him very unpredictable. The former vice president cited his past experience with Saddam Hussein and added, "you never know what they're thinking." ... Read more

*Obama Meets With His Handlers, Blankfein, Dimon and Moynihan Today
Boomberg | Dawn Kopecki | 04/11/13

President Barack Obama is meeting today with 15 heads of the world's biggest banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)'s Lloyd C. Blankfein and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)'s Jamie Dimon, White House officials said.

The state of the U.S. economy will be among the topics for the discussion, which will also include Bank of America Corp. (BAC)'s Brian T. Moynihan, Citigroup Inc. (C)'s Michael Corbat, American International Group Inc. (AIG)'s Robert Benmosche and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC)'s John Stumpf, according to an administration official, who requested anonymity because the meeting is private. ... Read more

*We Have Discovered The Boom! Record Jobs For Those Who Make Stuff Up
Zero Hedge | author | 04/11/13

In what may be the most appropriate chart to summarize not only the entire US "recovery", the "all time high stock market" and the daily newsflow, we present the number of jobs for those in the motion picture and sound recording industries, i.e, those who "make stuff up." It just hit a record high. And with "circus" jobs at all time highs, we can only assume jobs for makers of bread, if the BLS actually broke it out, would be off the charts as well. We will just leave it at that. Original article
Click to zoom



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, April 11 [14:42]
DN | Rally for Citizenship: Tens of Thousands Flood Capitol Hill in Massive Call for Humane Reform. (04/11/13) [12:50]
DN | Immigration Debate "A Battle Over What America Will Look Like in 21st Century". (04/11/13) [9:59]
Jon Stewart
*Jon Stewart Shreds Gun Control Legislation: Senate Arms Treaty Vote Proves We're 'Our Own Worst Enemies' (04/11/13) [5:03]
The Real News Network (TRNN)
*TRNN | Michael Hudson: Obama's "bargain" on social security reform will push more retirees into poverty... (04/11/13) [12:21]
Michael Hudson: Obama's "bargain" on social security reform will push more retirees into poverty in exchange for a minor increase in high end income tax - a class that receives most revenue from capital gains...
*TRNN | Bob Pollin: Costs of Social Security and Medicare have nothing to do with rise in fiscal deficit. (04/11/13) [11:24]
TRNN | Bill Black: Obama Sends Lew to Europe Preaching Growth While Practicing Austerity at Home. (04/11/13) [7:21]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Assessing The North Korean Threat 04/11/13 [1hr]
Bit Coin Articles

How Hackers Could Burst The Bitcoin Bubble
HP | Gerry Smith | 04/11/13

Today, the money is in Bitcoin, a virtual currency with a skyrocketing value. And that value has caught the attention of today's digital bank robbers -- hackers.

Over the past week, hackers have stolen bitcoins from digital wallets and hijacked computers to create new bitcoins -- the equivalent of minting money.   But hackers have also found a way to bring financial ruin to most everyone involved in the Bitcoin craze. They have shut down sites where bitcoins are exchanged for cash, creating a panic that causes values to plummet, then buying up cheap bitcoins and profiting when the currency rebounds.

"Attackers try to exploit any system where they think they can profit and get away with it, whether that is robbing banks, stealing online banking credentials, or attacking a Bitcoin exchange," Gavin Andresen, chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to standardize and promote the digital currency, said in an email. ... Read more

BitCoin Halted?
Zero Hedge | author | 04/11/13

Yes, it is supposedly distributed, but that does not prevent BTC trading platform MtGox from halting trading for a bit, or 12 hours as the case may be.   In other news, according to today's leaked memo from the bearded chairman, one should move out of the BitCoin bubble and boldly go into the S&P bubble. Ha Ha Read more

Other Videos and Documentaries

Wednesday April 10, 2013
News Articles

Obama Proposes $3.77 Trillion Budget to Revive Debt Talks
Bloomberg | Roger Runningen | 04/10/13

President Barack Obama sends a $3.77 trillion spending plan to Congress today that calls for reductions in Social Security and Medicare in a political gamble intended to revive deficit-reduction talks. Obama's budget for fiscal 2014 proposes $50 billion for roads, bridges and other public works, $1 billion to spur manufacturing innovation and $1 billion for an initiative to revamp higher education, according to administration officials who briefed reporters and asked to not be identified.

It renews his request to raise $580 billion in revenue by limiting deductions and closing loopholes for top earners. Obama again seeks adoption of the Buffett rule, named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett, to impose a 30 percent minimum tax on households with more than $1 million in annual income.   The administration projects the deficit for fiscal 2014 would be $744 billion, or 4.4 percent of the economy. That would mark the first budget shortfall of less than $1 trillion since Obama took office. ... Read more

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth.
NPR | staff | 04/09/13

When the CIA came into being in 1947, its mandate was to keep tabs on events around the world. Gather intelligence about foreign governments. Spy. But the agency has evolved away from this original mission, as Mark Mazzetti reports in a new book, The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth. ... Read more

Washington's Vanishing Lobbyists Hide Behind the Rules
Mother Jones | Erika Eichelberger | 04/09/13

When President Obama took office in 2009, he promised to curb the influence of special interests. Yet his new lobbying rules and a Bush-era law passed in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal appear to have done little to curb lobbying--and may have created new loopholes for influence peddling. Even as the number of lobbyists has decreased, spending on lobbying has gone up, which experts attribute to a growing number of lobbyists operating under the radar.

A recent report by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) found that there were close to 15,000 officially registered lobbyists in 2007; by last year that number had dropped to slightly more than 12,000. In 2007, total spending on lobbying approached $3 billion, and by 2012 it had jumped to around $3.3 billion. "An amazing amount of money continues to go up, even as the number of people [lobbying] goes down," ... Read more

Bitcoin, Explained
Mother Jones | Adam Serwer | 04/10/13

Everything you need to know about the new electronic currency.

What is a Bitcoin? How did you pay for your coffee this morning, by cash? By credit card? If a growing number of bank-fearing techies have their way, you'll soon be able to pay for that mocha latte through an untraceable virtual currency called Bitcoin. As of this month, Bitcoins are worth over a billion dollars, and interest in the currency is skyrocketing. Here's everything you need to know about a currency that sounds like it belongs in a fantastical realm: You can't touch it, it's prized in the underworld, its creator disappeared in a cloud of mystery, and if you want to keep it safe, you should keep it hidden in a bunch of different places. ... Read more

Groundbreaking 'War on Whistleblowers' Investigation Exposes Obama Admin's Record of Censorship and Persecution of Unsung Heroes and Journalists
AlterNet | Steven Rosenfeld | 04/09/13

The 9/11 attacks on America did not just launch Washington's war on terrorism; they launched a new White House war on whistleblowers, first under President George W. Bush and then under President Barack Obama, according to a bold new documentary directed by filmmaker Robert Greenwald.

War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State traces how two of the most powerful and secretive Washington power centers--the Pentagon's military-industrial complex and Internet era's national security state--ran amok after 9/11 and declared war on a handful of whistleblowers who went to the press to expose lies, fraud and abuses that meant life or death for troops and spying on millions of Americans. It explores why Obama, who promised the most transparent administration, became the most secretive president in recent decades and even more vindictive to intelligence-related whistleblowers than George W. Bush. ... Read more

Washington's Vanishing Lobbyists Hide Behind the Rules
Mother Jones | Erika Eichelberger | 04/09/13

When President Obama took office in 2009, he promised to curb the influence of special interests. Yet his new lobbying rules and a Bush-era law passed in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal appear to have done little to curb lobbying--and may have created new loopholes for influence peddling. Even as the number of lobbyists has decreased, spending on lobbying has gone up, which experts attribute to a growing number of lobbyists operating under the radar.

A recent report by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) found that there were close to 15,000 officially registered lobbyists in 2007; by last year that number had dropped to slightly more than 12,000. In 2007, total spending on lobbying approached $3 billion, and by 2012 it had jumped to around $3.3 billion. "An amazing amount of money continues to go up, even as the number of people [lobbying] goes down," ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, April 10 [14:31]
*DN | Way of the Knife: NYT's Mark Mazzetti on CIA's Post-9/11 Move From Spying to Assassinations Part 1 (04/10/13) [8:46], Part 2 [22:46]
*DN | Undercover Activist Details Secret Filming of Animal Abuse & Why "Ag-Gag" Laws May Force Him to Stop (04/09/13) [22:25]
ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) - The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act (AETA)
"Animal or ecological terrorist organization" means any association, organization, entity, coalition, or combination of two or more persons with the primary or incidental purpose of supporting any {optional language insert "politically motivated"} activity through intimidation, coercion, force, or fear that is intended to obstruct, impede or deter any person from participating in a lawful animal activity, animal facility, research facility, or the lawful activity of construction, mining, foresting, harvesting, gathering or processing natural resources.
ALEC Exposed
Bit Coin
Peter Schiff | What Is Bitcoin? Tom Woods Talks to Erik Voorhees (03/10/13) [30:32]
*How to Use Bitcoin for Non-Technical Users - The Bitcoin Show [19:35]
Aljazeera | Inside Story: Cashing in on the Bitcoin boom (04/05/13) [25:00]
RT | Keiser Report: Bitcoin vs Banksters (E426) (04/02/13) [25:46]
WeUseCoins.org website
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm President Obama's 2014 Budget Proposal 04/10/13 [1hr]
The Real News Network (TRNN)
*TRNN | Oliver Stone Pt.1: I volunteered to fight in Vietnam and voted for Reagan; I started seeing through the lies and realized I had to start by understanding why we dropped the atomic bomb. (04/09/13) [17:40]
TRNN | Oliver Stone Pt.2: There are moments in history, from Wallace to Kennedy, where it could have gone another way. (04/09/13) [17:29]
*TRNN | Bill Black: An international collaboration of investigative journalists has released the names of wealthy individuals stashing as much as three times the American GDP in tax havens. (04/09/13) [13:12]
Nightmare Scenario [19:27]
Other Videos and Documentaries
Velikovsky
Worlds in Collision- Immanuel Velikovsky. [45:22]
Immanuel Velikovsky a Brilliant Scientist who research the creation and was finally to be found correct with his discoveries.

These were all documented in the Mabinogi a Welsh book that escaped the Roman Churches desire to hide all Ancient British History. By calling it the Mabinogian it was classed as childrens fairy tales or bedtime stories which the Church was not interested in. Mabinogi meants creation and refers to the creation of the Universe. This was against the dogma of the churches how the world was created and on the seventh day god rested. Which is bullshite and unbelievable but in ancient times anyone speaking out against the church was swiftly dealt with and silenced.

The Church attempted to destroy all British History including all the Ancient Kings, However in order to do so they must destroy all the evidence too which they were unable to do so.

Velikovsky was discredited by academics who were only interested in their own agenda's and reputations. However people started to sit up and realise his research was correct.

Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett realised this years ago too and have long been the victims of Religious zealots and academics who are only interested in protecting their own names and reputation and will say anything in order to discredit anyone who attempts to tell the truth.
Velikovsky, The Dogon & The Sirius Mystery. [1:18:47]
Debuting on the show, author/researcher Laird Scranton discussed the controversial assertions of Velikovsky, as well as the cosmology and scientific knowledge of the Dogon tribe in West Africa. According to Velikovsky, a large body smacked into Jupiter and as a result of that impact, Venus was ejected as a brilliant comet; it then impacted Mars directly, and proceeded on to have close passes with Earth, before it moved into its current orbit. This suggests that because Earth is similar to Venus, it may have been formed the same way, Scranton said.

In ancient times, Venus was reportedly so bright it could be seen in the daytime-- it was not considered a planet, but on par with the Sun and the moon; but after 1500 BC, texts refer to cataclysmic events that could be associated with the close approach of an astronomical body, Scranton detailed. Recent space probe missions have revealed that Venus does have some comet-like properties, and could be a young planet, he continued. Interestingly, Velikovsky was good friends with Einstein, and it's been said that his Worlds in Collision was the one book found open on Einstein's desk at the time of his death.

Dogon Cosmology - NASA baffled by N.W. African people. [6:07]
The Dogons: An extraordinary set of people from Mali, West Africa have baffled Nasa Astronauts and well known Rocket Scientists around the world with their sophisticated and advanced knowledge of the universe. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent fleeing religious persecutions and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. The Dogon star, which scientists call Sirius B, wasn't even photographed until it was done by a large telescope in 1970. How did the Dogon gain this knowledge thousands of years ago?
The Dogon Tribe -- Hidden Meanings. [51:10]
BBC | West African Dogon Masks Documentary. [58:58]
Josh Reeves - Hidden History & The Sirius Star System [1:13:39]
Josh Reeves Discussing Hidden History & The Sirius Star System. For More Information On The Show Plz Visit http://www.theglobalreality.com/ .

Tuesday April 09, 2013
News Articles

WikiLeaks PlusD Launch: Organization Releases 1.7 Million U.S. Diplomatic Records Comprising 'The Kissinger Cables'
HP | Adam Goldberg | 04/08/13

WikiLeaks has announced the release of a huge archive of U.S. diplomatic records dubbed "The Kissinger Cables."   The trove of more than 1.7 million documents contains "205,901 records relating to former US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger." The massive data collection is part of the launch of the WikiLeaks Public Library of US Diplomacy, or PlusD, which a press release describes as holding "the world's largest searchable collection of United States confidential, or formerly confidential, diplomatic communications." PlusD holds "2 million records comprising approximately 1 billion words." Read more

Obama Tells Donors of Tough Politics of Environment
NYTimes | Michael D. Shear | 04/04/13

Appearing at the home of an outspoken critic of the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama on Wednesday night told a group of high-dollar donors that the politics of the environment

Mr. Obama appears to be leaning toward the approval of the pipeline, although he did not specifically mention it to the donors. But he acknowledged that it is hard to sell aggressive environmental action -- like reducing pollution from power plants -- to Americans who are still struggling in a difficult economy to pay bills, buy gas and save for retirement. ... Read more

5 Obama Appointees with Wall Street Ties
are2.com | Kevin Mathews | 04/08/13

President Barack Obama has done it again: appointed yet another friend of Wall Street to an important government position. Not only do these appointments introduce a number of conflicts of interest, but they also beg a critical question: why does a President who vows to hold the banks responsible keep giving power to friends of these same banks? Here are 5 alarming examples:

  1. Mary Jo White
  2. Jeffrey Immelt
  3. Gene Sperling
  4. Lawrence Summers
  5. William Daley
Read more

Broke And Broker: US Casino Spending Tumbling Back To Great Recession Levels
ZeroHedge | author | 04/09/13

With most of the gambling these days taking place in your retail brokerage screen with bets on when the Fed's record high house of superglued cards finally comes tumbling down, perhaps consumers have merely changed their definition of gambling. It was once known as "investing." Read more

Small Businesses Planning To Hire: 0%
ZeroHedge | author | 04/09/13

In a shocking state of affairs, it would appear the stock market's wealth effect is not rubbing off on the real economy. The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) shows 0% of their members planning to hire. One can only presume we need moar QE. ... Read more

Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA [10:46]


DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, April 09 [13:10]
DN | Undercover Activist Details Secret Filming of Animal Abuse & Why "Ag-Gag" Laws May Force Him to Stop (04/09/13) [22:25]
*DN | Debate: After Activists Covertly Expose Animal Cruelty, Should They Be Targeted With "ag-gag" Laws? (04/09/13) [23:21]
*Users can search or browse PlusD via WikiLeaks' website.
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has just published "the Kissinger cables," 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic and intelligence documents from 1973 to 1976 that include many once-secret memos written by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. While the documents have been available to the public at the National Archives, WikiLeaks has created a searchable online database to allow anyone in the world to quickly search them.
Banks |Banking History |Powerful Families |Elites
*All Wars Are Bankers' Wars [43:34]
Script for the video above
George, Nicholas, Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins. Part 1 [9:54], Part 2 [9:53], Part 3 [10:00], Part 4 [9:47], Part 5 [9:23]
*The Essence Of The Banking Industry... [1:43]
    The International (Trailer) [2:08]
PBS | FreshAir: The 'Alchemists' Who Control The Purse Strings Of The Economy [39:09]
60 Minutes News
*60 Minutes | Families of Newtown victims want the tragic memory of 12/14 - the date of the Connecticut massacre -- to spur new gun control legislation in the U.S. Part 1 (04/07/13) [14:19], Part 2 [12:16], Part 3 [1:35]
48 Hours News
48 Hours | The Writing on the Wall: The head of security for a televangelist is threatened, his wife and sons are murdered. Who wanted this family dead? (04/01/13) [43:09]
TYT News
Other Videos and Documentaries
Thirteen Days [2:19:38]
The film is set during the two-week Cuban missile crisis in October of 1962, and it centers on how President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and others handled the explosive situation.
The Fog of war [1:43:46]
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 American documentary film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara as well as illustrating his observations of the nature of modern warfare. The film was directed by Errol Morris and the original score is by Philip Glass. The title is related to the military phrase "Fog of War".
Illuminati Film Studies: 7 Days in May: The film the Pentagon did not want made! (old) [1:57:42]
Seven Days in May; U.S. military leaders plot to overthrow the President because he supports a nuclear disarmament treaty and they use fear of a 'Soviet sneak attack' to implement their 'standing' plot for complete overthrow of the U.S. government.

President John F. Kennedy had read the novel and believed the scenario as described could actually occur in the United States. According to Frankenheimer in his director's commentary, production of the film received encouragement and assistance from Kennedy through White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, who conveyed to Frankenheimer Kennedy's wish that the film be produced and that, although the Pentagon did not want the film made, the President would conveniently arrange to visit Hyannis Port for a weekend when the film needed to shoot outside the White House.

Monday April 08, 2013
News Articles

'We've lost a great leader'
All Newspapers | author | 04/08/13

Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, dead at 87

Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the grocer's daughter whose overpowering personality, bruising political style and free-market views transformed Britain and transfixed America through the 1980s, died Monday after a stroke, her spokesman said in a statement. She was 87. ... Read more

More Than 101 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job
ZeroHedge | author | 04/08/13

The jobs recovery is a complete and total myth.

The percentage of the working age population in the United States that had a job in March 2013 was exactly the same as it was all the way back in March 2010. In addition, as you will see below, there are now more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job. ... Read more

*Journalists Expose Trove of Hidden Offshore Bank Accounts (04/05/13) || Offshore Leaks: Tax Fraud 160 Times Bigger Than Wikileaks !!! (04/05/13) see videos to the right

The leak of 2 million emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens..

In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it..

The names have been unearthed in a novel project by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ICIJ], in collaboration with the Guardian and other international media, who are jointly publishing their research results this week..

The naming project may be extremely damaging for confidence among the world's wealthiest people, no longer certain that the size of their fortunes remains hidden from governments and from the people..

BVI's clients include Scot Young, a millionaire associate of deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Dundee-born Young is in jail for contempt of court for concealing assets from his ex-wife..

Young's lawyer, to whom he signed over power of attorney, appears to control interests in a BVI company that owns a potentially lucrative Moscow development with a value estimated at $100m..

Another is jailed fraudster Achilleas Kallakis. He used fake BVI companies to obtain a record-breaking £750m in property loans from reckless British and Irish banks..

As well as Britons hiding wealth offshore, an extraordinary array of government officials and rich families across the world are identified, from Canada, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, China, Thailand and former communist states..

The data seen by the Guardian shows that their secret companies are based mainly in the British Virgin Islands. Sample offshore owners named in the leaked files include:
  1. Mongolia's former finance minister. Bayartsogt Sangajav set up "Legend Plus Capital Ltd" with a Swiss bank account, while he served as finance minister of the impoverished state from 2008 to 2012. He says it was "a mistake" not to declare it, and says "I probably should consider resigning from my position"..
  2. A senator's husband in Canada. Lawyer Tony Merchant deposited more than US$800,000 into an offshore trust. He paid fees in cash and ordered written communication to be "kept to a minimum"..
  3. A dictator's child in the Philippines: Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, a provincial governor, is the eldest daughter of former President Ferdinand Marcos, notorious for corruption..
  4. Spain's wealthiest art collector, Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, a former beauty queen and widow of a Thyssen steel billionaire, who uses offshore entities to buy pictures..
  5. US: Offshore clients include Denise Rich, ex-wife of notorious oil trader Marc Rich, who was controversially pardoned by President Clinton on tax evasion charges. She put $144m into the Dry Trust, set up in the Cook Islands..
It is estimated that more than $20 trillion acquired by wealthy individuals could lie in offshore accounts. The UK-controlled BVI has been the most successful among the mushrooming secrecy havens that cater for them..

The Caribbean micro-state has incorporated more than a million such offshore entities since it began marketing itself worldwide in the 1980s. Owners' true identities are never revealed.

Even the island's official financial regulators normally have no idea who is behind them..

They claim the tax-free offshore companies provide legitimate privacy. Neil Smith, the financial secretary of the autonomous local administration in the BVI's capital Tortola, told the Guardian it was very inaccurate to claim the island "harbours the ethically challenged"..

He said: "Our legislation provides a more hostile environment for illegality than most jurisdictions"..

Smith added that in "rare instances ...where the BVI was implicated in illegal activity by association or otherwise, we responded swiftly and decisively"..

The Guardian and ICIJ's Offshore Secrets series last year exposed how UK property empires have been built up by, among others, Russian oligarchs, fraudsters and tax avoiders, using BVI companies behind a screen of sham directors..

Such so-called "nominees", Britons giving far-flung addresses on Nevis in the Caribbean, Dubai or the Seychelles, are simply renting out their names for the real owners to hide behind..

The new BVI data contains more than 200 gigabytes, covering more than a decade of financial information about the global transactions of BVI private incorporation agencies. It also includes data on their offshoots in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Cook Islands in the Pacific..


DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, April 08 [12:22]
*DN | "The Kissinger Cables": Three Years After "Collateral Murder," WikiLeaks Explores U.S. Diplomacy (04/08/13) [17:35]
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has just published "the Kissinger cables," 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic and intelligence documents from 1973 to 1976 that include many once-secret memos written by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. While the documents have been available to the public at the National Archives, WikiLeaks has created a searchable online database to allow anyone in the world to quickly search them.
DN | Icelandic Lawmaker Birgitta Jonsdottir on Challenging Gov't Secrecy From Twitter to Bradley Manning (04/08/13) [23:32]
Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir played a critical role in Wikileaks' release of the "Collateral Murder" video, which showed a U.S. military helicopter in July 2007 as it killed 12 people and wounded two children in Iraq. Jonsdottir joins us on her first trip to the United States since a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, began its investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. She also discusses her role at the center of another closely watched legal case -- challenging of the government's effort to obtain her Twitter records without a warrant, and why she has come to the United States to champion the cases of military whistleblower Bradley Manning and the accused hacker Jeremy Hammond.
DN | Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013): Tariq Ali on Late British PM's Legacy From Austerity to Apartheid (04/08/13) [5:01]
Are Wars Financial Tools??
*All Wars Are Bankers' Wars [43:34]
Commanding Heights - The Battle for the World Economy... the story of Ronald Reagan & Margaret Thatcher
The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy is a book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, first published as The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World in 1998. In 2002, it was turned into a PBS documentary of the same title.   Commanding Heights attempts to trace the rise of free markets during the last century, as well as the process of globalization. The book attributes the origin of the phrase "commanding heights" to a speech by Vladimir Lenin referring to the control of perceived key segments of a national economy.
*Commanding Heights - The Battle for the World Economy - EP01 [1:55:30], Agony of Reform, EP02 [1:55:30], New Rules of the Game, EP03 [1:55:31]
Banksters & Taxsters! Wealth Extraction
Basel Banksters: Secretive elite group pulls strings of finance (01/10/13) [2:36]
The "Crooks" Are Being Exposed Worldwide! (04/04/13) [1:07]
PBS | Journalists Expose Trove of Hidden Offshore Bank Accounts (04/05/13) [7:29]
Around the world, government officials and individuals use offshore accounts to hide their wealth and evade heavy taxes. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Gerald Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, about the findings of a massive cross-border collaborative investigation.
*Offshore Leaks: Tax Fraud 160 Times Bigger Than Wikileaks !!! [1:20]
Are hackers the good guys? (current) [7:26]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Bill Black: Investigation Reveals Trillions Hidden in Tax Havens (04/04/13) [13:12]
Massive leak of sensitive information on offshore tax havens (04/03/13) [2:52]
Max Keiser
*Keiser Report (E428) Financial Narcissism (04/06/13) [25:46]
Max Keiser talks to Simon Rose of SaveOurSavers.co.uk about the 'Nicosian beheading' of UK savings that has been confiscated through quantitative easing by the Bank of England.
Keiser Report (E427) Silver (04/04/13) [29:16]
Keiser Report (E426) Bitcoin (04/02/13) [25:46]
*Keiser Report (E425) Plunderball - Ponzi Lottery (03/30/13) [25:46]
Max Keiser talks to former Scotland Yard fraud squad detective, Rowan Bosworth-Davies of Rowans-Blog.blogspot.co.uk about the evidence he gave to the Parliamentary Committee on Banking Standards that went missing and how it is that the British banking system is remarkably similar to an organized crime racket.
Other Videos and Documentaries
*Ted Gunderson
I have watched many videos about Ted Gunderson through the years, especially about the Franklin Scandal and Cover-up, and was sorry to learn tht he died in 2011. Over the weekend I tried to Google more information on him and came up with a lot of conflicting data. I decided to list his videos here and continue investigating. These resources are in no way exhaustive and the reader is encouraged to do his/her own searches.
Ted Gunderson Former FBI Chief - Most Terror Attacks Are Committed By Our CIA And FBI. Part 1 [8:45], Part 2 [10:55], Part 3 [10:55], Part 4 [10:55], Part 5 [10:55], Part 6 [10:55], Part 7 [10:55], Part 8 [10:55]
Gundersons site: http://educate-yourself.org/tg/
Ted Gunderson (from the Archives)
Are the FBI, and CIA hurting Americans? - Ted Gunderson - 2007 [56:37]
Satanism and the CIA: The International Trafficking of Children [1:09:24]
The Franklin Cover-Up
John DeCamp interview & Ted Gunderson [57:12]
The Franklin Cover-Up & Johnny Gosch Story [40:58]
*Conspiracy Of Silence (The Franklin Scandal) [59:52]
Conspiracy of Silence was a documentary about child trafficking in the U.S. that was to be shown in the United Kingdom, but it was suppressed by the Discovery Channel. However, a rough-cut of the documentary was leaked..this is the leaked version. The book "The Franklin Scandal" by Nick Bryant deals with the same pedophile ring. The Franklin Scandal is the story of a nationwide pedophile ring that pandered children to a cabal of the rich and powerful. The ring's pimps were a pair of political powerbrokers who had access to the highest levels of our government. Nebraska legislators nearly exposed the ring in 1990, but its unveiling had the potential to produce seismic political aftershocks.The legislators' efforts resulted in rash of mysterious deaths and the overpowering corruption of federal and local law enforcement, including the FBI, Secret Service, and Justice Department, effecting an immaculate cover-up of the trafficking network.
Books & Articles
Book - The Franklin Scandal by John DeCamp (pdf), or here: Book
Caradori Leads List.pdf
USA Today Magazine | Nick Bryant: Sexual Abuse's Second Shame (1/2012)
Court papers between State of Nebraska and Alisha Owens.
Websites
Website - http://www.franklincoverup.com
Website - http://www.franklincase.org/
Wikipedia - Franklin child prostitution ring allegations
NeoCons - Project for the New American Century
Project for the New American Century [1:34:21]

Friday April 05, 2013
News Articles

TPP - Neoliberal Overload
Counter Punch | Nile Bowie | 04/03/13

...In addition to the United States, the countries participating in the negotiations include Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Japan has expressed its desire to become a negotiating partner, but not yet joined negotiation, partly due to public pressure to steer-clear. The TPP would impose punishing regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented rights to demand taxpayer compensation for policies they think will undermine their expected future profits straight from the treasuries of participating nations ...

...TPP would push the agenda of Big PhaRMA in the developing world to impose longer monopoly controls on drugs, drastically limiting access to affordable generic medications that people depend on. The TPP would undermine food safety by limiting labeling and forcing countries like the United States to import food that fails to meet its national safety standards, in addition to banning Buy America or Buy Local preferences. ... Read more

Exxon's Unfriendly Skies: Why Does Exxon Control the No-Fly Zone Over Arkansas Tar Sands Spill?
DeSmogBlog Project | Steve Horn | 04/03/13

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a "no fly zone" in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM and will be in place "until further notice," according to the FAA website and it's being overseen by ExxonMobil itself. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon's permission.

Mayflower is the site of the recent major March 29 ExxonMobil Pegagus tar sands pipeline spill, which belched out an estimated 5,000 barrels of tar sands diluted bitumen ("dilbit") into the small town's neighborhoods, causing the evacuation of 22 homes. ... Read more

Tar Sands Tax Loophole Cost US Oil Spill Fund $48 Million in 2012, Will Cost $400 Million by 2017
DeSmog Canada (www.desmog.ca) | Carol Linnitt | 04/03/13

A tax loophole exempting tar sands pipeline operators from paying an eight-cent tax per barrel of oil they transport in the US is costing the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund millions of dollars every year. With expected increases in tar sands oil production over the next five years, this loophole may have deprived US citizens of $400-million dollars worth of critical oil-spill protection funds come 2017. ... Read more

Efforts to Deliver "Kill Shot" to Paid Sick Leave Tied to ALEC
prwatch | Brendan Fischer | 04/03/13

...Advocates have helped pass paid sick days laws in cities like San Francisco, Washington DC, Seattle and Portland, but big business has been pushing back. Corporate-backed bills have passed at the state level in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Mississippi that would preempt (or as one GOP operative put it, "deliver the kill shot" to) local laws requiring paid sick days. Similar bills are on the legislative docket in Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Washington. This paid sick days preemption effort can be traced back to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ... Read more

How Bush won the war in Iraq - really!
gregpalast.com | Greg Palast | 03/29/13

If you thought it was "Blood for Oil"--you're wrong. It was far, far worse.

Because it was marked "confidential" on each page, the oil industry stooge couldn't believe the US State Department had given me a complete copy of their secret plans for the oil fields of Iraq. Actually, the State Department had done no such thing. But my line of bullshit had been so well-practiced and the set-up on my mark had so thoroughly established my fake identity, that I almost began to believe my own lies. I closed in. I said I wanted to make sure she and I were working from the same State Department draft. Could she tell me the official name, date and number of pages? She did. ... Read more
Read the pdf



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, April 05 [10:29]
*DN | Digital Disconnect: Robert McChesney on "How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy" (04/05/13) [17:41]
DN | At National Conference for Media Reform, Activists Hope to Stop Murdoch, Koch-Backed Consolidation (04/05/13) [7:13]
ExxonMobil Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Ruptures in Arkansas as Obama Ponders Fate of Keystone XL (04/01/13) [7:52]
Short News Clips
China's Official Bird Flu Reports Start to Raise Questions (04/03/13) [2:16]
Note: I support the message, not necessarily the messenger.
On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned About Serving the Common Good (04/01/13) [4:07]
Fair Trade not Free Trade
TPP - Trans-Pacific Partnership
Bill Moyers | Interview with Lori Wallach (older) [13:58]
*Conversations w/Great Minds Lori Wallach - The Trans-Pacific Partnership Threat, Part 1 (06/16/12) [11:54], Part 2 [12:35]
Lori Wallach has been director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division for nearly 20 years. She is an expert on the operations and outcomes of trade policies like NAFTA and the WTO - and currently is leading her organization's efforts to reveal the truth behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Lori has appeared on a variety of television networks - including CNN, the BBC and PBS - and she also the author of numerous articles and books - including her most recent book Whose Trade Organization? What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership - a so-called free-trade deal that the US is close to signing? What are the specifics of the deal - and just how much harm is it going to do to you and me?
Public Citizen Lori Wallach @ Anti-TPP Rally, Addison, Texas (05/14/12) [5:27]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Domestic News - Friday 04/05/13 [1hr]
International News - Friday 04/05/13 [1hr]
Chris Hayes
Chris Hayes | Exon Major Oil Spill, Pipeline Spill Mayflower Arkansas (04/01/13) [11:28]
AMAZING Aerial Footage of Arkansas Exxon Oil Spill! (04/02/13) [4:52]
What I would like to see
1) Get the Money out of Politics.
2) Get the Money out of Lobbying (get rid of Lobbyist)?
3) Stop the Revolving Door in Washington.
4) Reinstitute/Reinstall Glass-Stegal.
5) Stop Naked Options selling.
6) Stop Derivatives Speculation/gambling.
7) Raise the Required Reserves for the banks.
8) Debt Jubilee for individuals (and SMALL business)?
9) Let the banks fail with their different bubbles (bonds, derivatives).
9b) Put Criminal Bankers in jail.
---
10) Get rid of Fractional Currency and the FED.

Take positive steps against Crony Capitalism and GREED. We currently don't have capitalism, but Corporate Welfare which is only going to get worst with TPP - Trans-Pacific Partnership!
How Money Is Created [18:00]
Greg Palast
Bush Family Fortunes (Trailer) [1:36]
*Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (full) [55:55]
Other Videos and Documentaries

Thursday April 04, 2013
News Articles

Eric Holder Gets Busy: Enron's Skilling May Be Released From Prison Over A Decade Early
ZeroHedge | author | 04/04/13

Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling may be the latest beneficiary of the culture of pervasive permitted, even at times encouraged, crime. After being sentenced to prison for 24 years in the aftermath of Enron's spectacular 2001 bankruptcy, the former CEO may be released after serving well less than half of his term. As a result his prison term, which scheduled to end in 2028, may be cut by more than half as a result of a new agreement with the Department of Justice. It appears that AG Eric Holder is so busy not prosecuting Wall Street for being Too Big To Prosecute, he has decided it is far wiser to spend his time productively by commuting the sentences of convicted financial felons, because apparently there is nothing more important to do. ... Read more

Secret Files Expose Offshore's Global Impact
HP| Gerard Ryle | 04/04/13

Dozens of journalists sifted through millions of leaked records and thousands of names to produce ICIJ's investigation into offshore secrecy

...The leaked files provide facts and figures -- cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals -- that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike. The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories. ... Read more

Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
ICIJ | author | 04/04/13

The offshore information totaled more than 260 gigabytes of useful data. ICIJ's analysis of the hard drive showed that it held about 2.5 million files, including more than 2 million e-mails that help chart the offshore industry over a long period of explosive growth. It is one of the biggest collections of leaked data ever gathered and analyzed by a team of investigative journalists.

The drive contained four large databases plus half a million text, PDF, spreadsheet, image and web files. Analysis by ICIJ's data experts showed that the data originated in 10 offshore jurisdictions, including the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and Singapore. It included details of more than 122,000 offshore companies or trusts, nearly 12,000 intermediaries (agents or "introducers"), and about 130,000 records on the people and agents who run, own, benefit from or hide behind offshore companies. ... Read more

Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore
TheGuardian | David Leigh | 04/03/13

Exclusive: Offshore financial industry leak exposes identities of 1,000s of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world

Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife.   The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens. ... Read more

Mapping The Witch-Hunt Of The World's Offshore Bank Account Holders
ZeroHedge | author | 04/04/13

A cache of 2.5 million files of cash transfers, incorporation dates, and links between companies and individuals has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts. The secret records lay bare the names behind covert companies used by people from American doctors to Russian executives and international arms dealers in more than 170 countries (as shown in the map below).

Key Findings
  1. Government officials and their families and associates in Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts.
  2. The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.
  3. Many of the world's top's banks -- including UBS, Clariden and Deutsche Bank -- have aggressively worked to provide their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore hideaways.
  4. A well-paid industry of accountants, middlemen and other operatives has helped offshore patrons shroud their identities and business interests, providing shelter in many cases to money laundering or other misconduct.
  5. Ponzi schemers and other large-scale fraudsters routinely use offshore havens to pull off their shell games and move their ill-gotten gains.
Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, April 04 [12:22]
New Era of Nuclear-Armed North Korea Forces U.S. to Reconsider War Games at Regime's Door (04/04/13) [12:16]
John Nichols: Democracy vs. Dollarocracy (03/29/13) [2:52]
Breaking News - Off-Shore Tax Havens
HP | Secret Files Expose Offshore's Global Impact (04/04/13) [6:00]
Learn how to stash your cash (interactive)
The Guardian - Offshore secrets
BBC | Panorama S60E45 Undercover How To Dodge Tax (03/02/13) [29:56]
Comment
Many of the world's top's banks -- including UBS, Clariden and Deutsche Bank -- have aggressively worked to provide their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore hideaways.
More Banking Stories
Looting of America exposed by Catherine A Fitts (06/08/11) [59:57]
Former Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H.W. Bush Catherine Austin Fitts blows the whistle on how the financial terrorists have deliberately imploded the US economy and transferred gargantuan amounts of wealth offshore as a means of sacrificing the American middle class. Fitts documents how trillions of dollars went missing from government coffers in the 90's and how she was personally targeted for exposing the fraud.
BBC | The Money Trap | How Banks Control the World Through Debt (11/24/12) [39:31]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Stephanie Seguino: Elites profit from "smaller" government while youth unemployment soars, Part 2 (04/03/13) [11:33]
TRNN | Stephanie Seguino: Stagnant Wages, Speculation, and Income Inequality Triggered the Crisis, Part 1 (04/02/13) [13:36]
Roof Top Farming!
Gotham Greens (current) [5:19]
Gotham Greens is the first commercial-scale rooftop hydroponic greenhouse in the world. By going vertical in the city, Gotham Greens is using less water, eliminating pesticides, putting an end to fertilizer runoff and leading the way to a sustainable agriculture future in the sky.
Books I'm Currently Reading
The Great Deformation is a searing look at Washington's craven response to the recent myriad of financial crises and fiscal cliffs. It counters conventional wisdom with an eighty-year revisionist history of how the American state--especially the Federal Reserve--has fallen prey to the politics of crony capitalism and the ideologies of fiscal stimulus, monetary central planning, and financial bailouts. These forces have left the public sector teetering on the edge of political dysfunction and fiscal collapse and have caused America's private enterprise foundation to morph into a speculative casino that swindles the masses and enriches the few.
In The Great American Stickup, celebrated journalist Robert Scheer uncovers the hidden story behind one of the greatest financial crimes of our time: the Wall Street financial crash of 2008 and the consequent global recession. Instead of going where other journalists have gone in search of this story--the board rooms and trading floors of the big Wall Street firms--Scheer goes back to Washington, D.C., a veritable crime scene, beginning in the 1980s, where the captains of the finance industry, their lobbyists and allies among leading politicians destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning effectively since the era of the New Deal.
Other Videos and Documentaries
Former Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H.W. Bush Catherine Austin Fitts blows the whistle on how the financial terrorists have deliberately imploded the US economy and transferred gargantuan amounts of wealth offshore as a means of sacrificing the American middle class. Fitts documents how trillions of dollars went missing from government coffers in the 90's and how she was personally targeted for exposing the fraud.

Fitts explains how every dollar of debt issued to service every war, building project, and government program since the American Revolution up to around 2 years ago - around $12 trillion - has been doubled again in just the last 18 months alone with the bank bailouts. "We're literally witnessing the leveraged buyout of a country and that's why I call it a financial coup d'état, and that's what the bailout is for," states Fitts.

Massive amounts of financial capital have been sucked out the United States and moved abroad, explains Fitts, ensuring that corporations have become more powerful than governments, changing the very structure of governance on the planet and ensuring we are ruled by private corporations. Pension and social security funds have also been stolen and moved offshore, leading to the end of fiscal responsibility and sovereignty as we know it.!

Fitts explained how when she was in government she tried to encourage the creation of small businesses, new jobs and new skills to compete in a globalized world otherwise the American middle class was toast, only to be forced out by the feds using dirty tricks. The elite instead wanted Americans to take on more credit card, mortgage and auto debt that corporations and insurers knew they couldn't afford, while quietly moving their jobs abroad in the meantime.

This is a key interview in understanding precisely how the financial collapse was deliberately planned from the outset as a means of eviscerating the American middle class and we encourage all our subscribers to watch it now at Prison Planet.tv by visiting the "video reports" section.

Wednesday April 03, 2013
News Articles

Inside the NRA's Koch-Funded Dark-Money Campaign
MotherJones | Peter Stone | 04/02/13

... Overall, the NRA spent just north of $25 million on last year's election: $7 million supporting Republican candidates, and $18 million attacking Democrats. ...

... But in the past couple of years, the NRA has also turned to deep-pocketed conservative allies. Last year an organization allied with the donor network of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch gave between $2 million and $3 million to the NRA's election efforts ...

... The NRA also forged stronger links with conservative advocacy groups. Crossroads GPS, the dark-money group cofounded by Karl Rove, funneled at least $600,000 to the NRA's lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), in the last two elections. ... Read more

Comment - Retired Veteran
It isn't our patriotic duty to believe government. It is our patriotic duty to question government and hold them to? task. The government works for us.

The Corruption of Capitalism in America
NYTimes | David A. Stockman | 03/30/13

The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor's 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market's last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.

Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later -- within a few years, I predict -- this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.

Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the "bottom" 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans. ... Read more

The nihilism of David Stockman
Washington Post | Neil Irwin | 04/01/13

I was probably the only kid in my high school who knew who David Stockman was. I found the former Reagan budget director's memoir to be a fascinating window into the world of economic policy. So that makes it a bit ironic that he and I both have books coming out this week that have completely opposite takes on the most crucial questions of how the U.S. economy ought to work.

Stylistically, our books are very different: "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America" is a long, spittle-filled diatribe on how the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, FDR, and Richard Nixon ruined America. (Or so I gather -- the book only came out today. But here are Stockman's Sunday New York Times piece (see below) and an early review by Marcus Brauchli.) Mine is a reported narrative of the rise of central banking and the response of the leading central bankers to the 2007 to 2012 crisis. ... Read more

Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters
AlterNet | Lynn Stuart Parramore | 04/01/13

American business has always had cheaters and crooks, but today they are escaping prosecution and are incentivized to cheat more.

Hustlers. Cheaters. Crooks. American business has always had them, and sometimes they've been punished. But today, those who cheat and put the rest of us at risk are often getting off scot-free. The recent admission of Attorney General Eric Holder that systemically dangerous megabanks may escape prosecution because of their size has opened a new chapter in fraud history. If you know your company won't be prosecuted, a perverse logic says that you should cheat and make as much money for shareholders as you can.

Jim Chanos is one of America's best-known short-sellers, famed for his early detection of Enron's fraudulent practices. In deciding which companies to short (short-sellers make their money when the price of a stock or security goes down), Chanos acts as a kind of financial detective, scrutinizing companies for signs of overvaluation and shady practices that fool outsiders into tlhinking that they are prospering when they may be on shaky financial footing. Chanos teaches a class at Yale on the history of financial fraud, instructing students in how to look for signs of cheating and criminal activity. I caught up with Chanos in his New York office to ask what's driving the current era of rampant fraud, who is to blame, what can be done, and the ways in which fraud costs us financially and socially. ... Read more

This Company Is Kickstarter for Solar Power
Mother Jones | Kate Sheppard | 03/27/13

Oakland-based Mosaic figured out that pricy solar panels are much more affordable when the crowd chips in.

Clark, the group's executive director, had dreamed of solar panels on YEP's headquarters but couldn't find a way to pay for them. "We have this big sunny roof," she said, "but we didn't have the expertise, the connections, or even the thought process of how you would put this together."   Then Clark connected with Mosaic, an Oakland-based startup company that connects solar-power-seeking businesses and nonprofits with hundreds of investors. Soon, YEP had brand new solar panels, a $40,000 project paid for by 51 individuals. Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, April 03 [11:23]
DN | Silent on Assault-Weapons Ban Defeat and NRA-Backed Dems, Has Obama Collapsed on Gun Control? (04/03/13) [15:42]
DN | NRA's "School Shield" Call for Armed Guards Seen as Path to Further Criminalize Youth of Color. (04/03/13) [15:31]
DN | A Gun In Every Home? Nelson, Georgia Residents Debate New Law Mandating Forced Ownership of Firearms. (04/03/13) [15:54]
City Council members in Nelson, Georgia, voted unanimously to require heads of households to own guns and ammunition on Monday. The so-called Family Protection Ordinance requires a gun in every home in order to "provide for the emergency management of the city" and "protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants."
Watch the First Flight of Europe's Killer Drone Prototype nEUROn Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) [0:34]
David Stockman
Reuters | David Stockman: U.S. should've let AIG fail [2:57]
*Chris Martenson | David Stockman: We've Been Lied To, Robbed, And Mislead (03/30/13) [56:34]
David Stockman, former director of the OMB under President Reagan, former US Representative, and veteran financier is an insider's insider. Few people understand the ways in which both Washington DC and Wall Street work and intersect better than he does.

In his upcoming book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, Stockman lays out how we have devolved from a free market economy into a managed one that operates for the benefit of a privileged few. And when trouble arises, these few are bailed out at the expense of the public good.

By manipulating the price of money through sustained and historically low interest rates, Greenspan and Bernanke created an era of asset mis-pricing that inevitably would need to correct. And when market forces attempted to do so in 2008, Paulson et al hoodwinked the world into believing the repercussions would be so calamitous for all that the institutions responsible for the bad actions that instigated the problem needed to be rescued -- in full -- at all costs.
David Stockman: Ben Bernanke Is The Most Dangerous Man In US History (04/01/13) [6:32]
BB | David Stockman: The Federal Reserve Has Become A 'Serial Bubble Machine' (04/01/13) [7:48]
Reuters | Stockman, Orszag in budget battle royale (full) (04/02/13) [56:49]
Former White House budget directors David Stockman and Peter Orszag spar over the stimulus, healthcare, defense spending and whether President Eisenhower was a monetary genius in a debate moderated by Sir Harold Evans at Reuters' headquarters.
David Stockman: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts the Free Market (12/02/12) [35:43]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Mapping The Human Brain 04/03/13 [1hr]
*David Stockman: "The Great Deformation" 04/03/13 [1hr]
David Stockman, the former budget director under President Ronald Reagan, says the economy will not improve until the United States rethinks its habits of borrowing, spending and money printing. His new book, "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America," argues that Washington has enabled Wallstreet to fuel financial bubbles and alter the markets, all while crushing middle class families.
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers | Bryan Stevenson: On Evening the Odds in American Justice (03/29/13) [29:34]
Bill Moyers | Martin Clancy and Tim O'Brien on the Death Penalty's Fatal Flaws (03/29/13) [20:25]
PBS | Frontline
In a special two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland (The Farmer's Wife, Country Boys) creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a divorced single mother living on North Dakota's Spirit Lake Reservation. Sutherland follows Robin as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child.
*PBS Frontline | Kind Hearted Woman Part 1 (04/01/13) [1:54:58], Part 2 [2:54:15]
PBS NOVA | Meteor Strike: A meteor burst into a fireball over Siberia. Can we spot the next deadly asteroid in time (03/27/13) [52:37]
A blinding flash of light streaked across the Russian sky, followed by a shuddering blast strong enough to damage buildings and send more than 1,000 people to the hospital. On the morning of February 15, 2013, a 7,000-ton asteroid crashed into the Earth's atmosphere. According to NASA, the Siberian meteor exploded with the power of 30 Hiroshima.
Other Videos and Documentaries
*David Stockman on TARP, the Fed, Ron Paul and Reagan (01/03/11) [42:06]
At the very start of the "Reagan revolution," David Stockman exposed the myth that Ronald Reagan and the modern Republican Party are dedicated to small government.

In 1981, the 35-year-old Stockman gave up his Michigan seat in Congress to become Reagan's budget director. A vocal critic of what he continues to call the "welfare-warfare state," Stockman had signed on because he believed in the limited government rhetoric that Reagan espoused. Once inside the White House, Stockman quickly became disenchanted, and gave an interview to journalist William Greider that became the basis for an explosive Atlantic Monthly article in which Stockman admitted that Reagan's spending cuts had been a "Trojan horse" used to justify tax cuts. In his 1985 memoir, The Triumph of Politics, Stockman chronicled Reagan's reluctance to fulfill his campaign promise of shrinking the size and scope of government and balancing the budget. The result? The gross federal debt tripled while Reagan was in office.

Last fall, Stockman was the GOP-defector du jour once more, arguing against extending George W. Bush's tax rates in the New York Times, on 60 Minutes, the Colbert Report, Parker-Spitzer, ABC, NPR, and MSNBC. Stockman's argument - that it's irresponsible to cut taxes when cumulative U.S. debt is steadily mounting as a percentage of GDP - is based on the simple principle that balanced budgets come only when revenues actually meet expenditures. If we're not willing to actually shrink government spending, he says, then we should pay full freight now, rather than forcing our children and grandchildren to foot the bill down the line.

Here's what didn't come across in Stockman's media blitz: Since writing The Triumph of Politics he says he has "completed his homework" by reading libertarian economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard. He thinks TARP was a big-government boondoggle and the bailouts of GM and Chrysler unconscionable. Stimulus spending is a hoax. He sees the abandonment of the gold standard in favor of floating exchange rates as the root cause of both the country's fiscal problems and the 2008 financial crisis. He says that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is the only politician today "who gets it" and he's hopeful that Paul's growing power may begin to shed light on "the scholastic arrogance" of the Federal Reserve. He's still against the welfare-warfare state and he thinks government should be cut down to size.
Bill Moyers | David Stockman on Crony Capitalism - Bill Moyers (01/03/11) [33:04]
Reaganomics FAILED us ALL (01/03/11) [7:26]
The Forgotten Cause of Sound Money | David Stockman (01/03/11) [1:08:04]

Tuesday April 02, 2013
News Articles

What Is the "Monsanto Protection Act," and How Did It Sneak Into Law?
AlterNet | Natasha Lennard | 03/29/13

Slipped into the Agricultural Appropriations Bill, which passed through Congress last week, was a small provision that's a big deal for Monsanto and its opponents. The provision protects genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health risks and has thus been dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act" by activists who oppose the biotech giant. President Barack Obama signed the spending bill, including the provision, into law on Tuesday.

Since the act's passing, more than 250,000 people have signed a petition opposing the provision and a rally, consisting largely of farmers organized by the Food Democracy Now network, protested outside the White House Wednesday. Not only has anger been directed at the Monsanto Protection Act's content, but the way in which the provision was passed through Congress without appropriate review by the Agricultural or Judiciary Committees. The biotech rider instead was introduced anonymously as the larger bill progressed -- little wonder food activists are accusing lobbyists and Congress members of backroom dealings. ... Read more

Hanford Nuclear Reservation Workers Hit By Sequestration Layoffs
HP | Arthur Delaney | 03/21/13

Terry Smith of West Richland, Wash., learned this week that he'll be losing his job in a few days thanks to federal budget cuts.   "It stinks," Smith, 56, said in an interview. "I think people in Washington, D.C., don't have a clue. It just kinda stinks."   Smith said he's worked since 2009 as a radiation control technician at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, where the government has been trying to clean up nuclear waste since the end of the Cold War.

It is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. And now federal budget cuts known as sequestration may interfere with the cleanup efforts being carried out by the 9,000 men and women who work there. ... Read more

Think you know the facts about Iraq War? Think again.
McClatchy | Hannah Allam | 03/19/13

A decade after the beginning of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, myths and distortions persist about how the conflict evolved into the current incarnation of Iraq as a fragile, highly sectarian state with a domestic political crisis that's only exacerbated by volatile neighbors Syria and Iran.

The old distortions have cropped up, unchecked, in the adultery scandal that brought down former Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus and in Senate confirmation hearings for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other officials in the Obama administration. ... Read more

Stockman On Bernanke's Actions: "The Ultimate Consequence Will Be A Train-Wreck"
Zero Hedge | author | 04/02/13

There is "not a chance," that the Fed will be able to unwind its balance sheet in an orderly manner, "because everybody is front-running [them]," as the Fed is creating "serial bubbles," that are increasingly hard to manage since "we're getting in deeper and deeper every time." David Stockman has been vociferously honest in the last few days and his Bloomberg Radio interview with Tom Keene was extremely so. While Keene tries his best to remain upbeat and his permabullish self, Stockman just keeps coming with body blow after body blow to the thesis that this 'recovery' is sustainable. "They are using a rosy scenario forecast for the next ten years that would make the rosy scenario of the 1981 Reagan administration look like an ugly duckling," he exclaims, adding that the Keynesian Krugmanites' confidence is "disingenuous" - "the elephant in the room - the Fed," that are for now enabling rates to stay where they are. The full transcript below provides much food for thought but he warns, if the Fed ever pulled back, even modestly, "there would be a tremendous panic sell off in the bond market because it is entirely propped up... It's to late to go cold turkey." ... Read more

Mary Schapiro's New "Revolving Door" Employer
Zero Hedge | author | 04/02/13

When Mary Schapiro quit as the US stock market regulator, the only question was which Wall Street firm the latest SEC "revolving door" migrant would end up with, with most bets being on, naturally, Goldman and JPM. Today, to some surprise, the news hit that the former head of the internet porn-addicted regulator (which like clockwork always complains about its low budget: maybe get a refund for that bangbus.com subscription?) has decided to join none other than the revolving door extraordinaire consulting firm Promontory Financial. ...

... So who is Promontory? Nothing short of an "expert network" of all former government workers who having moved on, are willing to spill the beans about all the secrets of government operations... for a fee of between $1000 and $10,000 per hour. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, April 02 [15:14]
*DN | The Monsanto Protection Act? Debate On Controversial Measure Over Genetically Modified Crops. Part 1 (04/02/13) [12:54], Part 2 [13:38]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm The Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline & Ongoing Debate Over US Energy Policy 04/02/13 [1hr]
TRNN News
TRNN | Bill Black: Gender Wage Gap is Shrinking - Male Wages are Going Down (04/02/13) [12:55]
*TRNN | Stephanie Seguino: Stagnant Wages, Speculation, and Income Inequality Triggered the Crisis (04/02/13) [13:36]
The three additional charts below go with this video.
Click to zoom
Click to zoom
Click to zoom
Stockman: FED has Become "Serial Bubble Machine"
*BB | Stockman: FED has Become "Serial Bubble Machine". (04/01/13) [7:48]
Note: to see the video, click on image then scroll down 1 inch.
TYT News
TYT | More Kids Than Ever Diagnosed with ADHD (04/02/13) [4:12]
TYT | Surviving The Harsh Siberian Wilderness (04/02/13) [6:12]
*TYT | Dark Money - Did Big Oil Money Launder to Bust Unions? (03/31/13) [7:32]
TYT | Why Didn't Anything Change After Sandy Hook? (03/31/13) [5:37]
TYT | FAKE Ambulances Get the Rich Through Traffic (03/30/13) [2:55]
*TYT | Did DOJ Chief Go After Bankers? Or Cash In? (03/30/13) [3:20]
Other Videos and Documentaries

Monday April 01, 2013
News Articles
*Left vs Right, conservative vs progressive
Until a year ago I didn't care if I was on the Left or Right of a political issue. I only judged the merit of an issue on its' sanity (common sense). I actually wasn't sure if I was a conservative or a progressive. And I guess I'm an Independent, because I hate to be pigeonholed into a classification of Democrat vs Republican. Then I found the following infochart and it helped me understand where I fit in the political world.
Click to zoom

Iraqi oil: Once seen as U.S. boon, now it's mostly China's
McClatchy | Sean Cockerham | 03/27/13

Ten years after the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, the country's oil industry is poised to boom and make the troubled nation the No.2 oil exporter in the world. But the nation that's moving to take advantage of Iraq's riches isn't the United States. It's China.

America, with its own homegrown energy bonanza, isn't going after the petroleum that lies beneath Iraq's sands nearly as aggressively as is China, a country hungry to fuel its rise as an economic power. ... Read more

B-2 bombers based in Missouri send message to North Korea
McClatchy | Mike McGraw | 03/29/13

... Following weeks of North Korean bluster, the U.S. on Thursday took the unprecedented step of announcing that the nuclear-capable bombers joined joint military drills with South Korea, dropping dummy practice bombs on an island range.   The bombers made the 13,000-mile nonstop round trip from Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster. ...

... The $2.2 billion B-2, with its 40,000-pound capacity of nuclear or conventional bombs, is an especially effective weapon in North Korea, Coté said, because the B-2 is "absolutely immune" to North Korea's Vietnam-era radar defense system. ...

... The North Koreans reacted late Thursday. The government-controlled Korean Central News Agency website said the B-2 mission "from Whiteman air force base in Missouri State ... proves the brigandish ambition of the U.S. imperialists for aggression." ... Read more

*Stockman Warns of Crash of Fed-Fueled Bubble Economy
Bloomberg | Richard Rubin | 04/01/13

The U.S. economy is in a bubble inflated by "phony money" from the Federal Reserve and will burst within a few years, warned David Stockman, who was budget director for President Ronald Reagan.

In an essay published yesterday in the New York Times (NYT), Stockman wrote that the Fed's quantitative easing policies following the credit crisis have flooded stock markets with cash even while the "Main Street economy" remains weak. The combination, he wrote, is "unsustainable." ... Read more

Bernanke Breaks Down: "This Whole Thing Is A Kleptocracy"
ZeroHedge | author | 04/01/13

In an unprecedented abandonment of his carefully scripted responses to Congressional questions, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke unleashed what appeared to be a heart-felt and spontaneous disavowal of the financial and political systems of the United States.

Asked a question about the wealth effect, Bernanke paused and said, "The wealth effect. Ah, right." He then smiled faintly and shook his head. "You want to know about the wealth effect? Well, I'll be candid with you. This whole thing is a kleptocracy--the financial system, the political system, it's one big kleptocracy. That's the real wealth effect."

Seeming to find his footing, Bernanke continued with a passion that startled the audience. "You know, I told myself to just repeat the party line for another year so I could step down quietly and let Yellen or another of the toadies take over, but I realized that I can no longer stomach the lies, the obfuscation and the plundering." ... Read more

Highly lethal and highly under-regulated
Economist | Andrew Feinstein | 11/02/11

Mr Feinstein is the author of the new book "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade", out this week in Britain and America. A former South African MP, he resigned in 2001 in protest against the government's refusal to allow an investigation into a corrupt £5 billion arms deal. ... Read more

Iceland vs Greece: Pick The Winner
ZeroHedge | author | 04/01/13
Click to zoom

Arkansas Oil Spill: Exxon Shuts Pegasus Pipeline After Rupture
HP & Reuters | Kristen Hays | 03/31/13

... Exxon's Pegasus pipeline, which can carry more than 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude from Patoka, Illinois to Nederland, Texas, was shut after the leak was discovered late Friday afternoon in a subdivision near the town of Mayflower. The leak forced the evacuation of 22 homes.

Exxon also had no specific estimate of how much crude oil had spilled, but the company said 12,000 barrels of oil and water had been recovered - up from 4,500 barrels on Saturday. The company did not say how much of the total was oil and how much was water. ... Read more



DemocracyNow Daily News
*BB | Stockman: FED has Become "Serial Bubble Machine". (04/01/13) [7:48]
Note: to see the video, click on image then scroll down 1 inch.
TRNN News
*TRNN | Dimitri Lascaris: New director of SEC was a Wall St. defense attorney who will now regulate former clients (04/01/13) [12:59]
*TRNN | Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese: Obama led trade initiative Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) aims to isolate China while strengthening corporate legal rights (04/01/13) [10:36]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Update On Gun Control Legislation 04/01/13 [1hr]
Global/International Arms Trade
*MoxNews | United States IS The Global Arms Trade (11/23/11) [3:58]
Comment of the Day
I'm not surprized or shocked. And I doubt most intellegent people are either. The only surprize is the this was aired onCNN.
Click to zoom

Click to zoom
Congressional Research Service | Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations.pdf, 2004-2011
Aljazeera News
*Aljazeera | Inside Story - Controlling global arms trade (03/30/13) [25:01]
It was hailed as an historic step towards regulating the global arms trade. A landmark UN treaty aimed at preventing weapons from ending up in the wrong hands. But after years of negotiations, Iran, Syria and North Korea stopped the treaty in its tracks. As the arms trade treaty conference fails to reach consensus, what is next for the UN's efforts to police the planet?
Click to zoom
Aljazeera | Listening Post - Media mea culpas and the Iraq war (03/30/13) [25:01]
The 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq has prompted some to reflect on a decade that began with the fall of a dictator but descended into a maelstrom of deadly violence. Benefiting from a heavy dose of hindsight the world has been asking "what went wrong?"

Some of the soul-searching has been by the media itself. A handful of journalists have admitted to misjudgements in the run-up to the invasion -- but is owning up to a mistake the same as questioning your culpability? As the US government beat the drums for war, journalists, commentators and TV anchors did more than just report the news they played along, taking dubious intelligence as fact and waving the flag when more of them should have been raising alarm bells.

How can journalists be a check on power if they cannot admit to a collective capitulation of their duty to question? And if the media cannot admit to their failings, whither the next ill-advised military adventure, when the drums sound once again.
Aljazeera | Inside Story - Cyber warfare: Where are the limits? (03/29/13) [25:01]
A NATO-commissioned report suggests an alleged US cyberattack on Iran's uranium enrichment programme was an 'act of force' that was likely illegal. And Microsoft with Google admitted it allowed the FBI to spy on its customers. So was the Stuxnet attack an illegal act of force? Are the US offensive cyber policies crossing the limits? And are the private rights of the American citizens at risk? Inside Story Americas is joined by guests: David Kravets from Wired magazine; Alfredo Lopez, an internet freedom activist; and Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Insitute who focuses on technology and civil liberties.
Aljazeera | South2North - Foreign aid: A blessing or a curse? (03/30/13) [25:01]
Explores the different facets of foreign aid, and analyses if it could become a practice of the past.
Fukushima
*Fukushima Rad News 3/29/13: Nuclear Watch: Missed Opportunity (03/29/13) [16:16]
Fukushima The Truth Behind the Chain of Meltdowns (08/17/12) [49:56]
Japan's Nuclear Waste: Managing a Lethal Legacy; NHK Documentary (03/23/13) [48:41]
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann | Free Trade is Killing the U.S. Economy! (03/29/13) [7:14]
Other Videos and Documentaries
Aljazeera | 101 East - Diminishing ray of hope (03/29/13) [25:01]
In this edition of 101 East, Chan Tau Chou explores the trail of manta gills from the seas to the shops and investigates how humans threaten the existence of one of the most graceful creatures in the ocean. How long can the manta population survive?
Aljazeera | Inside Story - America's abortion war (03/30/13) [25:01]
As anti-abortion activists have refocused their efforts on the state level, are pro-choice advocates keeping up?Shihab Rattansi, speaks to Tammi Kromenaker, the clinical director of the Red River Women's Clinic - the only abortion clinic in tNorth Dakota; Heidi Williamson, a policy analyst on women's health and reproductive rights at the Center for American Progress; and from New York, Farah Diaz-Tello, staff attorney for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

04.01.2013. 10:23



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

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Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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Lindsey Graham Mashups
Lindsey Graham

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

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Environment & Climate Change
Environment

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

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

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

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

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

Wall Street and Banksters

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

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Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

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

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Daniel Ellsberg | Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg

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

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Nukes
Nukes

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

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Rana Foroohar and Fall of American Business
Rana Foroohar

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

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

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

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

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Kuznick Interviews

Kuznick Interviews

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

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

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China Valley of Tunnels

China Valley of Tunnels

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

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911
911

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

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

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

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Trump's Mashups
Trump's Mashups

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

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Trump's Sexcapades
Trump's Sexcapades.

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

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

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

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