Dec 11 2014 - News Dec 2014 - News - Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Thursday December 11, 2014

News Articles

I guess they are kind of pissed off with all the attention they are getting. Now, does anyone go to jail?

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VICE | The Architect of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Program (12/10/14) [25:00]

Democrats Revolt Against 'Wall Street Giveaway' In Deal To Prevent Government Shutdown
HP | Zach Carter | 12/10/14

Democrats on Wednesday raged against a government funding bill that would provide taxpayer subsidies to risky Wall Street derivatives trading. "The House of Representatives is about to show us the worst of government for the rich and powerful," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the Senate floor. She urged her colleagues not to support a "deal negotiated behind closed doors that slips in a provision that would let derivatives traders on Wall Street gamble with taxpayer money and get bailed out by the government when their risky bets threaten to blow up our financial system."

... "[It's] an awful invitation for another financial disaster," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, told reporters Wednesday. "A number of us are very concerned." ... Read more

How Wal-Mart Fabricated And Lied About Its "Strong" Chinese Sales For Years
ZeroHedge | author | 12/11/14

For many, if not most, companies and especially retailers, the great wildcard that is the "massive" Chinese market with the potential of hundreds of millions of buyers in the country's nascent middle class, has been a slam dunk when it comes to boosting stock prices. After all, what can go wrong? America's largest retailer was one of those hoping to capitalize on just this shareholder euphoria for Chinese exposure, and just like everyone else, it milked its Chinese exposure for many years. And then, unexpected everything did go wrong: as Bloomberg explains, "After years of heralding China as one of its best markets, Wal-Mart in August said its performance there was among the worst in its major countries." How is that possible? Read on to find out how Wal-Mart fabricated, lied and misled investors for years using every single trick in the book and then some. ... Read more

CNBC | Millionaires' poll
Thirty-one percent of 500 millionaires polled by CNBC said Hillary Clinton was their top choice to become the next president. Jeb Bush was the runner up with the support of 18 percent of the respondents.

Respondents got to choose among nine potential candidates in the survey: Clinton; Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); Vice President Joe Biden; Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J.); Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas); Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); former Governor Jeb Bush (R-Fla.); Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Governor Scott Walker (R-Wis.)

Washington's coming budget battles
BillMoyers & Robert Reich | Robert Reich | 12/09/14

In Washington's coming budget battles, sacred cows like the tax deductions for home mortgage interest and charitable donations are likely to be on the table along with potential cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

But no one on Capitol Hill believes Wall Street's beloved carried-interest tax loophole will be touched. Don't blame the newly elected Republican Congress.

Democrats didn't repeal the loophole when they ran both houses of Congress from January 2009 to January 2011. And the reason they didn't has a direct bearing on the future of the party.

First, let me explain why this loophole is the most flagrant of all giveaways to the super-rich.

Carried interest allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers, as well as many venture capitalists and partners in real estate investment trusts, to treat their take of the profits as capital gains -- taxed at a maximum rate of 23.8 percent instead of the 39.6 percent maximum applied to ordinary income.

It's a pure scam. They get the tax break even though they invest other peoples' money rather than risk their own.

The loophole has no economic justification. As one private equity manager told me recently, "I can't defend it. No one can."

It's worth about $11 billion a year -- more than enough to extend unemployment benefits to every one of America's nearly 3 million long-term unemployed.

The hedge fund, private equity and other fund managers who receive this $11 billion are some of the richest people in America. Forbes lists 46 billionaires who have derived most of their wealth from managing hedge funds. Mitt Romney used the carried-interest loophole to help limit his effective tax rate in 2011 to 13.9 percent. ...

PBS Newshour | CIA and Senate Battle Over Interrogation Torture Report 911/01/14) [7:23]

Robert Reich - What is a good society?

Robert Reich | The Politics and Economics of Inequality (06/30/14) [54:49]

DemocracyNow - http://www.democracynow.org/

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, December 11 [9:37]

*DN | "These Are Crimes": New Calls to Prosecute Bush Admin as Senate Report Reveals Brutal CIA Torture (12/11/14) [17:56]

DN | "We Are Like the Walking Dead": Latin American Indigenous Groups Decry Corporate Destruction of Land (12/11/14) [5:41]

DN | Putting People Before Profit: Thousands March in Peruvian People's Climate March in Lima (12/11/14) [11:17]

DN | From the Streets to the Suites, Protesters Call for Climate Justice at Corporate Gathering in Lima (12/11/14) [6:03]

Elizabeth Warren

Democrats Revolt Against 'Wall Street Giveaway' In Deal To Prevent Government Shutdown (12/10/14) [6:44]

*Elizabeth Warren on Main Street, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve (12/10/14) [22:54]

Paul Krugman on Main Street, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve (12/10/14) [36:56]

TRNN News - http://therealnews.com/

TRNN | Michael Ratner says: The Torturers: Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney (12/11/14) [16:16]

TRNN | Congress and Pentagon Shielding Weapons Contracts from Budget Cuts (12/11/14) [11:01]

TRNN | Keep The Oil in the Soil (12/11/14) [6:58]

TYT News - http://www.tytnetwork.com/

TYT | Obama Strongly Against Torture & Prosecuting Torturers (12/10/14) [11:01]

TYT | Torture Report Causes Awesome Eruption From Fox News Anchor (12/10/14) [5:27]

TYT | Trillion Dollar Spending Bill Rigs The System More Than Ever (12/10/14) [9:49]

TYT | Teen Jailed 30 Days For Studying History While Black (12/10/14) [5:51]

TYT | Spending Bill Hurts The Poor, Weakens Dems & Does It For $1.1 Trillion (12/10/14) [5:45]

TYT | Afghanistan War Over... So Why Is Obama Sending More Troops? (12/10/14) [3:56]

Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across

Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

Ayn Rand Institute

Inequality: Should We Care? (05/09/14) [1:42:17]

12.11.2014. 12:00

NPR

PBS

Special Interest Important stuff

GOOD Shorts Videos

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GOOD Short Videos

Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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Newer Documentaries

Documentaries You've Never Seen

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

Good YouTube Documentaries

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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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