Home · News · News Dec 2018 · Dec 07 2018
Friday December 07, 2018
Bernie Sanders: Medicare For All
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
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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

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, December 07 [9:12]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Friday, December 07 (FULL) | 59:02
Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.
  1. Headlines
  2. Winona LaDuke Calls for Indigenous-Led "Green New Deal" as She Fights Minnesota Pipeline Expansion
  3. The Deadly Cost of Pipelines in Native Land: Winona LaDuke on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
  4. Progressive International: Yanis Varoufakis & Bernie Sanders Launch New Global Mvt Against Far Right
Trump Gets Cucked By Big Pharma | TYT | 12/06/18 | 10:30
Michigan Republican's Last-Minute Power Grab | TYT | 12/06/18 | 4:32
Does America Have To Choose Between Impeaching Trump and War with Russia? (w/ Stephen Cohen) | ThomHartmann | 12/06/18 | 21:01
The1a.org
Friday News Roundup -- Domestic | 1a.org | 12/07/18 | 1hr
  1. Lawmakers, friends, colleagues and family members memorialized President George H.W. Bush in Washington on Wednesday. The public mourning for the 41st president included a number of reminders of a way politics used to happen -- or at least how it seems like it used to happen.
  2. In the Mueller investigation, investigators recommended that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn serve no jail time, due to his cooperation with investigators. What could Michael Flynn have shared with investigators to get no jail time?
  3. The killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi continues to polarize Capitol Hill. Senator Lindsay Graham said, after a briefing by CIA chief Gina Haspel, that he was certain that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved. The Washington Post also reported this week that a lobbyist, funded by the Saudis, reserved 500 rooms at the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. shortly after Trump's election in 2016. The Post reported that the lobbyists spent around $270,000 to purchase these rooms.
  4. The Miami Herald reported this week about a deal that President Trump's Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, cut with lawyers for multi-millionaire Jeffery Epstein. Epstein is accused of "assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls -- with the help of young female recruiters -- to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found," according to the Herald. Epstein served 13 months in county jail and an FBI investigation into his crimes was stopped.
Friday News Roundup -- International | 1a.org | 12/07/18 | 1hr
  1. Researchers around the world warned of the escalating toll of climate change this week. Carbon dioxide emissions around the world are reaching record highs. Global emissions grew 1.6 percent in 2017, reported The Washington Post. The rise in 2018? A projected 2.7 percent. This is a bad sign as world leaders gather at the COP 24 summit in Poland to talk about ways to prevent global temperature increases.
  2. In France, the Yellow Vest Protests turned violent this week. "The French Interior Ministry estimates 136,000 protesters turned out across the country over the weekend, in addition to 280,000 in previous weeks," according to NPR.
  3. U.N.-backed peace talks for the war in Yemen began in Sweden this week. The BBC reports that the "key aim of this round is to prevent an all-out battle for the rebel-held Red Sea port of Hudaydah where thousands of civilians are trapped." The talks between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government are due to last a week.
  4. The United States and China may also have reached a slight détente in the ongoing trade war, but tensions may be exacerbated by the arrest of an executive from leading Chinese tech company Huawei by Canadian authorities. The company builds telecommunications networks and sells smartphones.
How Criminal Justice System Failed Jeffrey Epstein's Accusers | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 12/06/18 | 15:49
Bringing Down Jeffrey Epstein (2018 Documentary) | 11/01/18 | 25:31
No White House Plans For Confronting Robert Mueller Report: Atlantic | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 12/07/18 | 11:34
John Brennan: President Donald Trump Showing Us He's Incompetent | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 12/07/18 | 10:41
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
A 'Smoking Saw' In The Khashoggi Murder | Stephen Colbert | 12/07/18 | 3:26
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
White Collar Crime | Samantha Bee | 12/05/18 | 7:56

12.07.2018. 11:37



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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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