Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Bradley Manning Verdict Coming On Tuesday: Military Judge
HP | David Dishneau | 07/29/13

A military judge says she expects to announce a verdict Tuesday in the court-martial of an Army private charged with aiding the enemy for giving U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks.

Col. Denise Lind gave the heads-up notice Monday, her third day of deliberations in the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning at Fort Meade. Manning faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the charge. ... Read more

Financial Stocks Are On Their Way To Being The Biggest Sector In The S&P 500 Again
HP | Mark Gongloff | 07/29/13

Here's yet another thing banks are taking over: the stock market.   Financial stocks are the second-biggest sector in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and are well on the way to overtaking technology as the biggest industry in the broad stock index, Bloomberg reports. Finance's share of the stock market has nearly doubled from a low of about 8.6 percent in March 2009, just after the financial crisis, to 16.8 percent as of Friday. Tech makes up 17.6 percent of the index.

This is great news for the financial sector, which includes banks and insurance companies. But it is not necessarily great news for the rest of humanity. The financialization of everything in the past 30 years has fostered income inequality and financial crises. ... Read more

Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S.
Bloomberg | Ketaki Gokhale | 07/28/13

Devi Shetty is obsessed with making heart surgery affordable for millions of Indians. On his office desk are photographs of two of his heroes: Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi.

Shetty is not a public health official motivated by charity. He's a heart surgeon turned businessman who has started a chain of 21 medical centers around India. By trimming costs with such measures as buying cheaper scrubs and spurning air-conditioning, he has cut the price of artery-clearing coronary bypass surgery to 95,000 rupees ($1,583), half of what it was 20 years ago, and wants to get the price down to $800 within a decade. The same procedure costs $106,385 at Ohio's Cleveland Clinic, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ... Read more

Alan Grayson On Trans-Pacific Partnership: Obama Secrecy Hides 'Assault On Democratic Government'
HP | Zach Carter | 06/18/13

Progressive Democrats in Congress are ramping up pressure on the Obama administration to release the text of Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive free trade agreement with 10 other nations, amid intensifying controversy over the administration's transparency record and its treatment of classified information.

The only publicly available information on the terms of the deal has come from leaks, some of which have alarmed public health experts, environmentalist groups and consumer advocates. According to a document leaked in the summer of 2012, the deal would allow corporations to directly challenge government laws and regulations in international courts. ... Read more

Fukushima 2013: "Remaining Radioactive Mass", "Dangerous Leaking Radioactive Water", All Four Reactors are "Getting Worse"
Global Research | William Boardman | 07/11/13

The first thing to know about the danger from the radioactive mass remaining on site in the three reactors that melted down at Fukushima is that nobody knows how much radioactive material there is, nobody knows how much uranium and plutonium it contains, and nobody knows how to make it safe -- so no one knows how great the continuing danger is. ... Read more

"Worrisome" spike in deadly birth defects around leaking U.S. nuclear site -- Officials claim "it could be a complete coincidence" -- No news reports mention it's by the most contaminated area in Western Hemisphere #Hanford
Enenews.com | Gillian Mohney | 07/18/13

A report released Tuesday by the Washington State Department of Health said that, since 2010, the neighboring counties of Yakima, Benton and Franklin have an unusually high number pregnancies affected by the [neural tube] birth defect anencephaly, which results in a newborns' brains being severely underdeveloped.

In the U.S., there are approximately one or two expected cases of anencephaly for every 10,000 annual births [...] the health department found that there was an abnormally high number of cases reported from January 2010 to January 2013 with approximately eight cases of anencephaly for every 10,000 births. [...] ... Read more