Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

*Big Banks Are Raking in Record Profits Thanks to Trump's Supposedly 'Middle-Class' Tax Cuts
AlterNet | Cody Fenwick | 04/20/18

When President Donald Trump and the Republican Party pitched their bill to overhaul the American tax code, they promised voters that their plan was aa "middle-class tax relief." As the law goes into effect, though, most Americans are seeing little benefit, while the big banks are raking in record profits.

According to new analysis by the Associated Press, six big Wall Street banks made an additional $3.59 billion dollars so far this year thanks to the tax law. ... Read more
Republican Tax Cuts Are Saving Banks BILLIONS | TYT | 04/22/18 | 7:38

*Iran Deal: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) | 04/22/18 | 21:21

Junk Raft: An Ocean Voyage and a Rising Tide of Activism to Fight Plastic Pollution by Marcus Eriksen

News media brought the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"--the famous swirling gyre of plastic pollution in the ocean--into the public consciousness. But when Marcus Eriksen cofounded the 5 Gyres Institute with his wife, Anna Cummins, and set out to study the world's oceans with hundreds of volunteers, they discovered a "plastic smog" of microscopic debris that permeates our oceans globally, defying simple clean-up efforts. What's more, these microplastics and their toxic chemistry have seeped into the food chain, threatening marine life and humans alike.

Far from being a gloomy treatise on an environmental catastrophe, though, Junk Raft tells the exciting story of Eriksen and his team's fight to solve the problem of plastic pollution. A scientist, activist, and inveterate adventurer, Eriksen is drawn to the sea by a desire to right an environmental injustice. Against long odds and common sense, he and his co-navigator, Joel Paschal, construct a "junk raft" made of plastic trash and set themselves adrift from Los Angeles to Hawaii, with no motor or support vessel, confronting perilous cyclones, food shortages, and a fast decaying raft.

As Eriksen recounts his struggles to keep afloat, he immerses readers in the deep history of the plastic pollution crisis and the movement that has arisen to combat it. The proliferation of cheap plastic products during the twentieth century has left the world awash in trash. Meanwhile, the plastics industry, with its lobbying muscle, fights tooth and nail against any changes that would affect its lucrative status quo, instead defending poorly designed products and deflecting responsibility for the harm they cause.

JUNK RAFT film (trailer) | 07/20/17 | 1:11

Know Your Plactics - Click to zoom
Know Your Plastics

Plastic Poison - Click to zoom
Plastic Poison

How Long Until They're Gone - Click to zoom
How Long Until They're Gone

Plastic Bags - Click to zoom
Plastic Bags

9 Tips for Living Without Plastics - Click to zoom
9 Tips for Living Without Plastics

Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency
New Yorker | Adam Davidson | 04/14/18

... I arrived in Baghdad on April 12th of that year, a few days after Saddam's statue at Firdos Square had been destroyed. There were a couple of weeks of uncertainty as reporters and Iraqis tried to gauge who was in charge of the country and what the general plan was. There was no electricity, no police, no phones, no courts, no schools. More than half of Iraqis worked for the government, and there was no government, no Army, and so no salaries for most of the country. At first, it seemed possible that the Americans simply needed a bit of time to communicate the new rules. By the end of April, though, it was clear: there was no plan, no new order. Iraq was anarchic.

We journalists were able to use generators and satellite dishes to access outside information, and what we saw was absurd. Americans seemed convinced things were going well in Iraq. The war--and the President who launched it--were seen favorably by seventy per cent of Americans. Then came these pictures of a President touting "Mission Accomplished"--the choice of words that President Trump used in a tweet on Saturday, the morning after he ordered an air strike on Syria. On the ground, we were not prophets or political geniuses. We were sentient adults who were able to see the clear, obvious truth in front of us. The path of Iraq would be decided by those who thrived in chaos. ... Read more

Trump Tries To Cover Up Corrupt Illegal Deals but The New Yorker Breaks Story | NY | older | 3:06

Inside Trump's Dirty Deals Abroad
New Yorker | Dorothy Wickenden | 02/22/18

What does the Trump Organization's unorthodox business conduct reveal about the Administration's political troubles with the special counsel Robert Mueller? Adam Davidson joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the Trump family's financial ties to Russian oligarchs led to extraordinarily risky behavior during the campaign, and the current questions about obstruction of justice and collusion with Putin's Russia. ... Read more

Trump's Business of Corruption
New Yorker | Adam Davidson | 08/21/17

President Donald Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow recently told me that the investigation being led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, should focus on one question: whether there was "coördination between the Russian government and people on the Trump campaign." Sekulow went on, "I want to be really specific. A real-estate deal would be outside the scope of legitimate inquiry." If he senses "drift" in Mueller's investigation, he said, he will warn the special counsel's office that it is exceeding its mandate. ... Read more