Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Bernie Sanders: Medicare For All Isn't A Fringe Idea Anymore | Stephen Colbert | 12/07/18 | 11:00

A New Study About the World's Worst Mass Extinction Should Make You Very Nervous for Our Future.
MotherJones | Jackie Flynn Mogensen | 12/06/18

Climate change is a path the Earth has been on before. Just ask scientists studying "The Great Dying."

Some 250 million years ago, back when the world was still comprised of the single, supercontinent Pangea, a geologic catastrophe wiped out nearly every single ocean-dwelling creature on the planet: fish, crustaceans, mollusks, even microbes. As few as 4 percent of ocean species survived, including, most famously, the Nautilus. On land, about 30 percent survived. It was the worst extinction event in Earth's history.

Appropriately, scientists nicknamed the event the "Great Dying" (also known in science speak as the "Permian-Triassic extinction"). But despite the magnitude of the disaster, only in the past two decades did paleontologists find clues of it in the fossil record -- and discover it coincided with a massive volcanic event in modern-day Siberia.

Still, there was a major blind spot in scientists' understanding of the Great Dying: While they knew about the extinction and they knew about the volcanic eruption, it was unclear just how the two were related and what exactly caused the massive die-off. Scientists had long suspected the volcano's release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere played a role, though they didn't know the precise mechanism by which it happened. (It's sort of like how a doctor who may know that a person died in a car accident, but can't pinpoint the exact cause of death.)

Now, a new study published Thursday in the journal Science suggests the culprit of the Great Dying -- and the connection between the two events -- was likely something the planet is all too familiar with today: global warming, and, as a result, high ocean temperatures and a loss of oxygen in the water.... Read more
Click to zoom in

Yemen's warring sides gather for peace talks in Sweden
Axios | Faisal Edroos of Al Jazeera | 12/07/18

Rimbo, Sweden -- The UN's special envoy has appealed to Yemen's warring sides to "act now" for the future of the country, as representatives from the government and Houthi rebels gathered for UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden.

Why it matters: For only the second time in more than three years of war, officials from President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government and representatives from the Houthi rebel movement joined the talks aimed at discussing ways to end the fighting that has killed an estimated 56,000 people and left a staggering 22 million needing humanitarian assistance. ... Read more

Donald Trump Rages On Twitter Ahead Of Developments In Mueller Probe
HP | Paige Lavender | 12/07/18

President Donald Trump sent a flurry of tweets criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller and others ahead of several anticipated developments in the Russia investigation. The typo-ridden rant on Twitter, sent over the course of an hour early Friday, questioned Mueller's work and criticized key figures from Justice Department official Bruce Ohr to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Mueller's office is expected to submit a document Friday detailing how Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, violated his plea agreement. Many of Trump's tweets attempted to preemptively undermine the report. ... Read more

George H.W. Bush (1924-2018), American War Criminal
TheIntercept | Jeremy Scahill | 12/05/18

The U.S. and international news media are engaging in sick propaganda. Leave the stories about how classy Bush supposedly was, how cool is marriage was, how he built a father-son relationship with Bill Clinton, how he was nice to Barack Obama, how he always wore those funny socks -- leave all of that to the family in their private memorials. But for the rest of us, the rest of the world, we must remember that his incalculable crimes were committed in public, from the highest chambers of power, in the most dominant nation in the world. The accounting for his crimes should also be done in public. But no, we're told we have to have respect. We're told that it's not the time to discuss any of this. We're told that we must pretend that he was not a mass murderer with so much blood on his hands.

You know what? Donald Trump doesn't even have enough time left in his life to commit even a fraction of the international crimes that Bush carried out during his decades in power, whether it was at the helm of the CIA, or as vice-president, or as president. Not even close. Journalist today believe that they're so brave in calling out Trump's lies, in investigating his real estate deals, in probing his associates. And yet none of them have the spine to accurately describe the well-documented, indisputable crimes committed by George Herbert Walker Bush. What we're witnessing is a powerful media class and an elite political class whitewashing the life of a man who used his various positions not to make the world better, but to wage unthinkable wars, to undermine democratic movements, to kill innocent people, to orchestrate coups and invasions. And the reason this doesn't happen, that we don't talk about this, is because it's a sacrilege in the religion of American exceptionalism. ... Read more
Intercepted | Jeromy Scahill George H.W. Bush (1924-2018), American War Criminal | TheIntercept | 12/05/18 | 1hr