Home · News · News Feb 2019 · Feb 13 2019
Wednesday February 13, 2019

House Democrats plan vast Russia probe
Axios | Mike Allen | 02/13/19

Mueller is just the beginning. House Democrats plan a vast probe of President Trump and Russia -- with a heavy focus on money laundering -- that will include multiple committees and dramatic public hearings, and could last into 2020.

The state of play: The aggressive plans were outlined yesterday by a Democratic member of Congress at a roundtable for Washington reporters. The member said Congress plans interviews with new witnesses, and may go back to earlier witnesses who "stonewalled" under the Republican majority. ...

... "If we didn't look at his business, ... we wouldn't know what we know now about his efforts to pursue what may have been the most lucrative deal of his life, the Trump Tower in Moscow -- something the special counsel's office has said stood to earn the family hundreds of millions of dollars." ... Read more

There Is a Taboo Against Criticizing AIPAC -- and Ilhan Omar Just Destroyed It
TheIntercept | Mehdi Hasan | 02/12/19

IN 2005, STEVEN Rosen, then a senior official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, sat down for dinner with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. "You see this napkin?" Rosen asked Goldberg. "In twenty-four hours, [AIPAC] could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin."

I couldn't help but be reminded of this anecdote after Rep. Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota's 5th Congressional District, was slammed by Democrats and Republicans alike over her suggestion, in a pair of tweets, that U.S. politicians back the state of Israel because of financial pressure from AIPAC ("It's all about the Benjamins baby," she declaimed). Was the flippant way in which she phrased her tweets a problem? Did it offend a significant chunk of liberal U.S. Jewish opinion? Did it perhaps unwittingly play into anti-Semitic tropes about rich Jews controlling the world? Yes, yes, and yes -- as she herself has since admitted and "unequivocally" apologized for. But was she wrong to note the power of the pro-Israel lobby, to point a finger at AIPAC, to highlight -- in her apology -- "the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry"? ... Read more

Neoliberalism or Death: The U.S. Economic War Again Venezuela
Intercepted Podcast: Neoliberalism or Death: The U.S. Economic War Again Venezuela | TheIntercept | 02/13/19 | 1hr
*The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail

The author who Jeremy Scahill calls the "quintessential unembedded reporter" visits "hot spots" around the world in a global quest to discover how we will cope with our planet's changing ecosystems

After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis--from Alaska to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest--in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.

In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find ghostly coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its melting glaciers. Accompanied by climate scientists and people whose families have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits for centuries, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion for the planet's wild places, cherishing Earth in a way he has never been able to before.

Like no other book, The End of Ice offers a firsthand chronicle--including photographs throughout of Jamail on his journey across the world--of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still can.
Bottomless Pinocchios
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, February 13 [13:10]
*The End of Ice: Dahr Jamail on Climate Disruption from the Melting Himalayas to Insect Extinction | DN | 02/12/19 | 24:50
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, February 12 (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. Venezuela Accuses U.S. of Secretly Shipping Arms After Weapons Found on Plane with Possible CIA Ties
  3. Atlanta School Cheating Scandal: The Untold Story of Corporate Greed & Criminalization of Teachers
llhan Omar: Anti-Semitism? Or Fear of Open Debate on Israel? | TRNN | 02/12/19 | 23:28
Why Are They Really Mad At Ilhan Omar? What does being a woman of color have to do with it? She said no more than other critics of American policy in the Middle East. Marc Steiner, Shir Hever, Charles Lenchner, and Phyllis Bennis discuss the issue.
Trump's Hypocritical Attacks On Ilhan Omar | TYT | 02/12/19 | 12:08
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez DESTROYS Trump | TYT | 02/12/19 | 8:54
Note: on Monday's News Page, on NPR the1a.org they discussed "Burning Pants And Bottomless Pinocchios: Fact-Checking In 2019". Pretty interesting. They have made a new catagory just for Trump 'Bottomless Pinocchios'.
The Insect Apocalypse Has Begun | TYT | 02/12/19 | 3:49
The1a.org
A Year After Parkland | 1a.org | 02/13/19 | 1hr
... Block reports that April says while the Parkland shooting "'happened 19 years later after Columbine, five years later after Sandy Hook ... schools aren't taking it seriously. It just seems like it's a problem that can't be ignored anymore.'"

Dave Cullen spent time with the families and students affected by the Parkland shooting. As the author of Columbine, he is often called upon to analyze mass shootings.

Cullen calls his latest book, Parkland: Birth of a Movement, a companion piece to Columbine. But he told Weekend Edition Sunday that he thinks the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting "may be the beginning of the end. Hopefully, 10 years from now, we'll look back and say, yeah. That's the moment where we begin to find our way out of this."
'I Just Don't Like Bullies': Former Aide Sues President Donald Trump | Morning Joe | MSNBC | 02/12/19 | 6:00
Meet The Mueller Prosecutor Who Scares Trump More Than Mueller | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC | 02/11/19 | 14:18
Click to zoom in

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Trump's Friends At Fox Don't Like The Bipartisan Deal | stephen Colbert | 02/12/19 | 6:06

02.13.2019. 09:32



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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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