Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

*Nomi Prins Author of “All the Presidents Bankers“ on Upcoming Collapse
Greg Hunter | older interview, but good

Best-selling author Nomi Prins warns, “Never before have the Government and the Fed collaborated so extensively by propping up the banking system to the detriment of the population.” Prins lays out a long history of the relationships between U.S. Presidents and bankers that date back to Teddy Roosevelt and JP Morgan. On her new book titled “All the Presidents’ Bankers,” Prins contends, “That connection with Teddy Roosevelt was a very powerful established entity between two people that has allowed all this stuff that has happened in the last hundred years to really happen. The friendships, the social ties, the idea that the bankers could sort themselves out with Treasury Department help if it needed to. ... Read more
*Nomi Prins-Financial Crash-Collapse Coming, It Should Have Happened Already (older, but I like Nomi Prins) [19:40]

Iraq Crisis-$150 to $200 Oil Might Seem Cheap-Chris Martenson
Greg Hunter | older interview, but good

... Martenson, who holds a PhD in pathology and an MBA, contends 2008 was just a warm up to a much bigger calamity. Martenson says, “2008 was the shot across the bow. That’s when our credit experiment broke, and we have been doing everything possible to paper over it since. . . . When you take real stuff out of the ground, you grow food, you take oil out of the ground, you process ore into steel and you manufacture real things–that’s real wealth. The claims (such as stocks, bonds and currencies) have to be in proportion to the real wealth. The claims have been growing and growing and growing for so long that they are way out of balance to the real stuff, and the real stuff isn’t growing like it used to. You can see that in the GDP numbers for the U.S. or the world at large. Growth is slowing, slowing, slowing, and the claims are getting larger and larger. ... Read more

*Chris Martenson-People Will Be Wiped Out In Coming Crash (older, but I like Chris Martenson) [30:09]

*Chris Martenson | This 'Accelerated' Crash Course video condenses over 4.5 hours' worth of detailed material on the trends most likely to shape your future into an easy-to-follow exploration that takes less than an hour to view. () [56:25]

*Albert Bartlett | Sustainability 101: Exponential Growth - Arithmetic, Population and Energy () [1:13:54]

GDP Deja Vu Stunner: Over Half Of US Growth In The Past Year Is From Inventory Accumulation
ZeroHedge | author | 07/30/14

As we showed in December of 2013, where the scramble to accumulate inventory in hopes that it will be sold, profitably, sooner or later to buyers either domestic or foreign, is most visible, is in the data from the past 4 quarters, or the trailing year starting in Q2 2013 and ending with the just released revised Q2 2014 number. The result is that of the $675 billion rise in nominal GDP in the past year, a whopping 52%, or over half, is due to nothing else but inventory hoarding. ... Read more

Earth Is In The Early Days Of A New Mass-Extinction Event, Researchers Warn
HP | author | 07/25/14

Scientists have previously classified five large-scale losses of animal life as mass-extinction events, all of which occurred millions of years ago. In recent years, the planet has seen the loss of hundreds of species of animals, and according to a new analysis from an international team, the planet may be in the early days of its sixth mass-extinction event.

As part of the study, researchers analyzed previous studies and scientific data to draw their conclusion that human activities and population surges worldwide -- not a catastrophic event, like an asteroid impact, for example -- are responsible for the drastic decline of animal life. Lead author Rodolfo Dirzo, a biology professor at Stanford University, cites actions like overexploitation of resources and habitat destruction as examples of harmful human activities. ... Read more

The Deadly Spread Of Ebola Mapped
AP & HP | author | 07/30/14

The doctor who lead Sierra Leone's fight against Ebola died of the disease on Tuesday, according to local authorities.

The death of Sheik Umar Khan, who was hailed as a national hero by Sierra Leone's health ministry, comes as more than 670 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have died of Ebola since it broke out in February. Read more
Fears ebola virus could spread to U.S. (07/30/14) [2:43]
Click to zoom - Ebola Map

The Fed's Failure Complicates Its Endgame
ZeroHedge | author | 07/30/14

That the Federal Reserve's policies have failed is now so painfully evident that even the political class is awakening to this truth. Rather than re-ignite broad-based, self-sustaining economic growth, the Fed's loose-money policies (zero-interest rate policy a.k.a. ZIRP, and quantitative easing a.k.a. QE or free money for financiers), have perversely distorted the economy and widened wealth and income inequality.

After six long years of unprecedented monetary expansion and intervention--more than enough time to have succeeded in its stated purpose of restarting the real economy-- political and financial blowback is forcing the Fed to withdraw its monetary heroin. ... Read more

Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]

A Dangerous Idea: The Progressive Vision of American Exceptionalism
Bill Moyers | Harvey J. Kaye | 07/29/14

American exceptionalism sounds like a very conservative idea, right?

But you know what? For more than 200 years, American exceptionalism was a radical idea. It was an idea of liberals and progressives. It was an idea that didn’t say “we are superior” — that we have all the answers. No, it was an idea about what America could be, should be and, if we act on it, would be.

Think back to the words of someone like Thomas Paine — “We have it in our power to begin the world over again” — and to his call for the creation of an unprecedented democratic republic. Think about the Founders and the writing of the US Constitution. We hear about the Constitution’s conservatism. And yet those first words, “We the People.” Those are radical words. Those kinds of words provided American life with democratic imperative. They embedded a democratic impulse in American life. ... Read more

Anti-Poverty Leaders Respond to Paul Ryan
Bill Moyers | author | 07/27/14

TalkPoverty.org believes that if we are to dramatically reduce poverty in the United States we will need a strong and diverse movement that is led by people who know poverty firsthand.

Yesterday, Representative Paul Ryan’s unveiling of his new proposal to address poverty offered the opportunity to gather responses from some of the people who might lead such a movement. Here is what they had to say: ... Read more

Yesterday, Representative Paul Ryan’s unveiling of his new proposal to address poverty at American Enterprise Inststute (AEI) (07/26/14) [56:06]

Bill Moyers | Kristi Jacobson and Mariana Chilton on How Hunger Hurts Everyone (current) [40:44]

Documentary Calls for "A Place at the Table" for Hungry (PBS Review) [7:37]

Blacklisted: The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist
firstlook.org/theintercept | Jeremy Scahill | 07/23/14

... The rulebook, which The Intercept is publishing in full, was developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nation’s intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI. Emblazoned with the crests of 19 agencies, it offers the most complete and revealing look into the secret history of the government’s terror list policies to date. It reveals a confounding and convoluted system filled with exceptions to its own rules, and it relies on the elastic concept of “reasonable suspicion” as a standard for determining whether someone is a possible threat. ... Read more

166 Page Watchlist RuleBook.pdf

Mapping Africa's "Totally Out Of Control" Ebola Epidemic
ZeroHedge | author | Last month

"The epidemic is totally out of control," warns medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières of the deadly Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. "There is a real risk of it spreading to other areas...Ebola is no longer a public health issue limited to Guinea: it is affecting the whole of West Africa." As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the number of cases at 362 -- more than any other outbreak on record. Here's everything you need to know about Ebola...

Ebola has a fatality rate of up to 90 percent and there is no vaccine and no known cure. The virus initially causes raging fever, headaches, muscle pain, conjunctivitis and weakness, before moving into more severe phases with vomiting, diarrhoea and haemorrhages. ... Read more
Click to zoom - Ebola's Spread

Ebola Victim On The Run In West Africa Capital
ZeroHedge | author | 07/25/14

It's gone from bad (Mapping Africa's "Totally Out Of Control" Ebola Epidemic) to worse, (Head Doctor Fighting Africa's "Out Of Control" Ebola Epidemic Contracts The Virus), to much worse (Liberian Man Tested For Ebola In World's Fourth Most Populous City), to having run out of comparaitves - although we are leery of using a superlative just yet as we have a feeling Africa's Ebola's epidemic will deteriorate before it gets better. But the latest news is bad enough: as Reuters reported moments ago, Sierra Leone officials appealed for help on Friday to trace the first known resident in the capital with Ebola whose family forcibly removed her from a Freetown hospital after testing positive for the deadly disease. ... Read more

Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare Programs
thinkbynumbers.org | author | older, but good

About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006. Before we look at the details, a heartfelt plea from the Save the CEO's Charitable Trust:

There's so much suffering in the world. It can all get pretty overwhelming sometimes. Consider, for a moment the sorrow in the eyes of a CEO who's just found out that his end-of-year bonus is only going to be a paltry $2.3 million. ... Read more

Ten Examples of Welfare for the Rich and Corporations
HP | Bill Quigley | older

Iraq War Facts, Results & Statistics at January 31, 2012
usliberals.about.com | Deborah White | older 05/19/14

... Lost & Unaccounted for in Iraq - $9 billion of US taxpayers' money and $549.7 milion in spare parts shipped in 2004 to US contractors. Also, per ABC News, 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles.

Lost and Reported Stolen - $6.6 billion of U.S. taxpayers' money earmarked for Iraq reconstruction, reported on June 14, 2011 by Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen who called it "the largest theft of funds in national history." (Source - CBS News) Last known holder of the $6.6 billion lost: the U.S. government. ... Read more

Liberian Man Tested For Ebola In World's Fourth Most Populous City
ZeroHedge | author | 07/25/14

Yesterday, when reporting on the latest tragic development in the wost ever Ebola outbreak to sweep through west Africa, namely that the head doctor tasked with containing the virus had himself contracted it, we commented that the "only good news, if any, is that even as the epidemic which has raged for months, and now appears to be out of control, it has not spilled out of Africa into other continents yet." That may not be the case for much longer following an update earlier today by Reuters that a Liberian man in his 40s is being tested for the deadly Ebola virus in Nigeria's commercial capital of Lagos, a megacity of 21 million people, the Lagos State Health Ministry said on Thursday. ... Read more

Bank of America and Other Megabanks Say They Want to Make Nice With Poor People: Don't Buy It
AlterNet | Lynn Stuart Parramore | 07/24/14

How do we hate thee, Bank of America? Let us count the ways. We hate thee for thy mortgage misdeeds, foreclosure frauds and grotesque fees. For unnecessarily kicking people out of their homes, extorting money from military families through predatory loan rates, and treating thy customers like garbage. For basically being too-big-to-fail/too-big-to-jail blight on the economy and society thou hast proven to be, time and again.

Under increasing pressure from regulators and widely despised by the public, Bank of America now wants us to believe hat it will make nice with poor people. In a recent report in the New York Times, we learn that BofA and other giant banks are trying to launder their public images by talking about offering low-fee services to people who have been left out of the banking system. BofA has launched a banking account it claims is intended to prevent troubled customers from running up fees for overdrawing their balances. Read more

Can a University Transform a City?
Politico | Mark Peterson | Photo Essay

What happens when a university begins to transform the city around it? Just look at Powelton Village, Philadelphia. Fashioned as an upscale, Gilded Age suburb for wealthy industrialists looking to cross the Schuylkill River and escape the clamor and the grime of Center City, Powelton is an architectural gem, still packed with the three-story Italianate villas and Victorian twins its prosperous settlers built 150 years ago. Now a national historic district, the neighborhood has survived a rocky evolution—from tycoon stomping ground, though depression-driven decline and 1950s gang violence, to 1960s countercultural hub—only to be rediscovered in the 1980s by upper-middle-class Philadelphians with the money to refurbish Powelton’s stately homes. Now, the area is in transition once again—into the backyard of fast-growing and ambitious Drexel University. ... Read more

No Safe Place in Gaza: How Silence Encouraged a Genocide
TRNN News | Yousef Al-Helou | 07/25/14

As the Israeli military offensive on Gaza entered its third week, there's been more horrific mass killings committed because of indiscriminate Israeli tank shelling and bombardment throughout the besieged Gaza Strip.

After the massacres in Shujaeyyah and Khoza, now the supposedly safe United Nations-run schools have also become targets. A school in the northern Gaza strip town of Beit Hanon, which sheltered hundreds of displaced people who thought they would be safe on United Nations-controlled premise, came under Israeli fire. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least thirteen civilians were killed and more than 200 were injured. UNRWA spokesman said that his agency was not warned. ... Read more

Why The World Is Spinning Into Crisis Everywhere
HP | Howard Fineman | 07/23/14

Israel vs. Hamas. Ukraine vs. Russia. Unaccompanied minors at the Texas border. Syria in flames, with a militant “caliphate” at the door. Iran stalling for time on nukes. A rising China sowing fear throughout the rest of Asia. The world seems dangerously unmanageable these days.

President Barack Obama is paying a political price at home, with 55 percent of Americans polled by Pew now disapproving of his handling of foreign affairs -- a dramatic reversal from 2009, when his approval rating was 56 percent. While experts argue about how much Obama and his policies are really to blame, the truth is that he occupies the Oval Office at a time of historic flux and of diminished clout, not only for the U.S. but also for the idea of a dominant global power.

To understand that, you need to revisit an influential article published in Foreign Affairs in 2008 by Richard Haass. It’s called “The Age of Nonpolarity,” and Haass wrote it as he was advising presidential candidates behind the scenes in both parties.

Haass, the longtime president of the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations (and before that a staffer for President Jimmy Carter and the two Bushes), painted a grim picture of an unsettled, chaotic and dangerously diffuse world Familiar methods of diplomacy, statecraft and war had become feeble, if not useless, in the 21st century, he wrote. The ages of “unipolar” power (i.e., a dominant United States) were over; so were the times of “multi-polar” power, such as the first half of the 20th century.

Now the world faced a free-for-all in which “non-state actors” -- terrorists, global corporations, religious and ethnic tribes, sovereign wealth funds and nonprofit charities, to name a few -- were as crucial as countries in shaping the order of a “nonpolar” world. ... Read more
Why The World Is Spinning Into Crisis Everywhere

AIPAC Is the Only Explanation for America's Morally Bankrupt Israel Policy
HP | Stephen M. Walt | 07/22/14

The official name for Israel's latest assault on Gaza is "Operation Protective Edge." A better name would be "Operation Déjà Vu." As it has on several prior occasions, Israel is using weapons provided by U.S. taxpayers to bombard the captive and impoverished Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll now exceeds 500. As usual, the U.S. government is siding with Israel, even though most American leaders understand Israel instigated the latest round of violence, is not acting with restraint, and that its actions make Washington look callous and hypocritical in the eyes of most of the world. ... Read more

How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza
The Jewish Daily 'Forward.com' | J.J. Goldberg | 07/10/14

In the flood of angry words that poured out of Israel and Gaza during a week of spiraling violence, few statements were more blunt, or more telling, than this throwaway line by the chief spokesman of the Israeli military, Brigadier General Moti Almoz, speaking July 8 on Army Radio’s morning show: “We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard.”

That’s unusual language for a military mouthpiece. Typically they spout lines like “We will take all necessary actions” or “The state of Israel will defend its citizens.” You don’t expect to hear: “This is the politicians’ idea. They’re making us do it.”

Admittedly, demurrals on government policy by Israel’s top defense brass, once virtually unthinkable, have become almost routine in the Netanyahu era. Usually, though, there’s some measure of subtlety or discretion. This particular interview was different. Where most disagreements involve policies that might eventually lead to some future unnecessary war, this one was about an unnecessary war they were now stumbling into. ... Read more

Don’t Tell Anybody About This Story on HFT Power Jump Trading
ZeroHedge & Bloomberg | Saijel Kishan | 07/23/14

Far from Wall Street in a Chicago neighborhood once synonymous with urban blight, two futures industry veterans are using secrecy and speed to mint fortunes.

Their firm, Jump Trading LLC, was all but invisible until it was among six companies subpoenaed in April by New York prosecutors. Jump has ascended the ranks of high-frequency traders during the past 15 years to become one of the top firms on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where $925 trillion of derivatives changed hands last year. Its annual revenue has exceeded half a billion dollars. ... Read more

Is There a Connection Between CEOs’ Narcissism and Corporate Tax-Dodging?
BillMoyers | Sam Pizzigat | 07/23/14

... This new research — out of the University of Southern California and the University of Arizona — examines the impact of CEO narcissism on corporate tax policies. That impact turns out to be fairly robust. The corporations that America’s most narcissistic CEOs run seem to be prone to engaging in highly risky corporate tax-avoidance maneuvers.

How did the authors of this new research, Kari Joseph Olsen and James Stekelberg, identify the narcissists in America’s top CEO suites? They used a variety of yardsticks, everything from the pay gap between CEOs and their fellow execs to the prominence of CEO photos in corporate annual reports. ... Read more

A Revolving Door Farce: CFTC Commissioner Bails To Head Regulator's Biggest Opponent
ZeroHedge | author | 07/23/14

There is no better way to describe what the recently departed CFTC commissioner Scott O'Malia just did when he bailed from the commodity watchdog to become the new head of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, aka ISDA, the biggest banking group that has constantly opposed every intervention and attempt to regulate the swaps market by the CFTC since the Lehman crisis, than an epic farce.

For those who are unaware ISDA is a global OTC derivative lobby group, counting the world's largest investment banks among its members, and has frequently fought regulatory efforts to reform the market after the financial crisis. ISDA itself was exposed as a complete joke during the European crisis when due to the overhang of avoiding Europe's insolvent reality, it made CDS protection obsolete as protection from sovereign restructurings and credit events, in the process crushing one of the key ways to hedge for credit event risk. ... Read more

Getting Rid of Cable TV: The Smartest Ways to Cut the Cord
WSJ | author | 07/15/14

Going without cable—or at least with considerably less of it—is easier than you think. Last week, I sliced my bill from $212 to $75 without giving up the stuff I really watch. Yes, cable and satellite companies lock away some content for subscribers. But you don't have to be an online pirate to see what you want.

Broadcasters give away the most popular HD channels free over the air, and Internet video services like Hulu, "smart" TVs and streaming boxes make it possible to remain a full-fledged couch potato. None of this is as simple as clicking channel up and down on your cable remote. But for the app-savvy, Internet streaming wins not just because of price, but because of convenience. ... Read more

State of the Climate in 2013 Report Release
NOAA | author | 07/17/14

In 2013, the vast majority of worldwide climate indicators—greenhouse gases, sea levels, global temperatures, etc.—continued to reflect trends of a warmer planet, according to the indicators assessed in the State of the Climate in 2013 report, released online July 17, 2014, by the American Meteorological Society.

Scientists from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., served as the lead editors of the report, which was compiled by 425 scientists from 57 countries around the world (highlights, visuals, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on air, land, sea, and ice. ... Read more

The 10 Best Small Cities in America
HP |David Jefferys, CNTraveler.com | 07/22/14

These spots, voted among the best in the U.S. by Condé Nast Traveler's readers, have plenty of cultural attractions, stylish hotels, and charm to spare. ... Read more

State of the Climate Change
CBS | Wildfire plows through Washington (07/18/14) [1:41]
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) website

The World Just Had Its Hottest June On Record
AP & HP |Seth Borenstein | 07/22/14

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday that last month's average global temperature was 61.2 degrees, which is 1.3 degrees higher than the 20th century average. It beat 2010's old record by one-twentieth of a degree.

While one-twentieth of a degree doesn't sound like much, in temperature records it's like winning a horse race by several lengths, said NOAA climate monitoring chief Derek Arndt.

And that's only part of it. The world's oceans not only broke a monthly heat record at 62.7 degrees, but it was the hottest the oceans have been on record no matter what the month, Arndt said. "We are living in the steroid era of the climate system," Arndt said. Arndt said both the June and May records were driven by unusually hot oceans, especially the Pacific and Indian oceans. ... Read more
Click to zoom - Hottest June on Record
NOAA - State of the Climate, June 2014

9/11 Commission Report A Decade Later: Threats Have Evolved, U.S. Hasn't
HP | Sam Stein | 07/22/14

The report, released Tuesday, praises some federal actions for making the country "better equipped to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks than in 2001." The commission, led by Chairman Tom Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, points to the federalization of airport security, upgraded security at ports of entry, and the devotion of hundreds of billions of dollars to the intelligence community as policy movements in the right direction

Yet the report finds foreboding gaps. The authors argue that the U.S. remains under-resourced on cyber-terrorism and under-appreciative of emerging threats, predominantly in the Middle East. They note that while core al Qaeda "has been damaged in recent years, its affiliates and associated groups … now have a presence in more theaters of operation than they did half a decade ago, operating today in at least 16 countries." ... Read more

The New Scariest Chart In America
ZeroHedge | author | 07/22/14

For the last few years, the 'scariest' chart for Europeans has been the unending surge in youth unemployment. However, amid all the sound and fury of mainstream US media discussions of the 'recovery' in America and the President's employment track record, Constantin Gurdgiev notes another 'scariest chart of the US recovery' that remains in full 'crisis mode'... Read more
Click to zoom - New Scariest Chart In America

Israel-Gaza Conflict: Gaza Suffers Its Deadliest Day After 'Heinous Massacre'
AlterNet | Kim Sengupta | 07/20/14

A night and day of ferocious violence has resulted in more than 100 deaths in Gaza, with Palestinian accusations that a bloody assault on the town of Shuja'iya by Israeli forces, leaving bodies on the streets and buildings destroyed, was motivated by revenge for the deaths of 13 soldiers

The Israeli losses were one of the largest in one operation suffered in recent times by the Jewish state. Al Quds Force, the military wing of Hamas, had claimed that it had lured troops into a minefield. But the Israeli military stated that the deaths came in separate incidents overnight involving improvised explosive devices and a firefight. ... Read more

This Is Where You Don't Want Your Tax Dollars Going
HP | Danielle Higgins | 07/19/14

I'll admit, that moment that I received my first paycheck from my first real-world, post-college job, I was stunned that the amount I calculated I would have for rent, loan payments and happy hours was much less than I thought.

However, my instinct was not, and still is not, that there should be no health care, no social security, no public benefits, or any of the number of expenditures that conservatives protest against paying for with their tax dollars.

It is entirely possible to be critical of where your tax money is going without "becoming conservative" and letting go of the liberal notion that higher tax rates -- when allocated effectively -- can create a more even playing field, domestically through welfare programs and abroad through foreign aid. ... Read more

Women's Rowing Team's Naked Calendar Briefly Banned On Facebook
HP | Nina Bahadur | 07/18/14

Students from the Warwick women's rowing team decided to strip down for charity -- and found themselves held up to a double standard.

This week, Facebook banned the group's page citing "inappropriate content" -- but allowed an identical page for the men's team's naked calendar to remain. ... Read more

Cost Of Military Jet Could House Every Homeless Person In U.S. With $600,000 Home
HP | author | date

Just days before its international debut at an airshow in the United Kingdom, the entire fleet of the Pentagon’s next generation fighter plane — known as the F-35 II Lightning, or the Joint Strike Fighter — has been grounded, highlighting just what a boondoggle the project has been. With the vast amounts spent so far on the aircraft, the United States could have worked wonders, including providing every homeless person in the U.S. a $600,000 home. ... Read more

Cheney Never Shoots Straight
HP | Joe Peyronnin | 07/16/14

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is trying hard to salvage his legacy, so he is resorting to spin, distortion and lies. But why is the media paying attention to him? Not even Cheney himself could erase from history the devastating record he has amassed, especially working with President George W. Bush.

A 2012 New York Times report revealed all of the warnings the Bush/Cheney administration received in the spring and summer of 2001 of a terrorist threat against the United States from within. On May 1, 2001, the CIA warned Bush a "group presently in the United States" was planning an attack. In July, the CIA warned that the attacks could be "imminent." On August 6, Bush received a classified document entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." None of the dots were connected by the White House, which dismissed criticism by saying they were not told when or where the attacks would occur. The attacks occurred on September 11, with devastating consequences. ... Read more

NBC News Pulls Veteran Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children
The Intercept | Glenn Greenwald | 07/17/14

Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who personally witnessed yesterday’s killing by Israel of four Palestinian boys on a Gazan beach and who has received widespread praise for his brave and innovative coverage of the conflict, has been told by NBC executives to leave Gaza immediately. According to an NBC source upset at his treatment, the executives claimed the decision was motivated by “security concerns” as Israel prepares a ground invasion, a claim repeated to me by an NBC executive. But late yesterday, NBC sent another correspondent, Richard Engel, along with an American producer who has never been to Gaza and speaks no Arabic, into Gaza to cover the ongoing Israeli assault (both Mohyeldin and Engel speak Arabic). ... Read more

Ukraine says Malaysian airliner shot down, 295 dead: agency
Reuter | author | 07/17/14

A Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine by militants on Thursday, killing all 295 people aboard, a Ukrainian interior ministry official was quoted as saying by Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

The aircraft, which other sources said was a Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, came down near the city of Donetsk, stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, Anton Gerashchenko said, adding that it was hit by a ground-to-air missile. ... Read more

Microsoft To Lay Off Up To 18,000 Workers Over Next Year
AP & HP | author | 07/17/14

Microsoft has announced the biggest layoffs in its history, saying it will cut up to 18,000 jobs or 14 percent of its staff as it works to cut down on management layers and integrate the Nokia cellphone business it bought in April. The news sent Microsoft's stock up 3 percent in morning trading.

Although the job cuts had been expected, the extent of them was a surprise. It's the boldest move by CEO Satya Nadella since he took the reins from Steve Ballmer in February. In a public email to employees Thursday, he said the changes were needed for the company to "become more agile and move faster. ... Read more
Microsoft to cut up to 18,000 jobs in next year, CEO says in message to employees (07/17/14) [1:37]

Capitalism's Deeper Problem
Bill Moyers | Richard Wolff | 07/15/14

Recent press reports refer to troubling price increases for such assets as real estate, government bonds, companies targeted for acquisition and artwork. A New York Times front-page headline read "The Everything Boom, or Maybe the Everything Bubble."

Yet while asset prices soar, the production of goods and services, employment and workers' incomes are not recovering and resuming growth. Instead, Western Europe, North America and Japan are stuck in a longer, deeper crisis than almost anyone expected. Millions have left the labor force. Wages, benefits and job security are declining; the so-called "middle classes" are evaporating. Having promised "recoveries," desperate governments inject massive new quantities of money into their economies. What they accomplish most are fast-rising asset prices. ... Read more

Bill Moyers | Richard Wolff on Curing Capitalism (older) [30:22]

Grand Designs - "The Cob Castle" (01/30/14) [46:55]

Rupert Murdoch Is Trying To Buy Time Warner For A Huge Pric
HP | Jack Mirkinson | 07/16/14

Rupert Murdoch has made an ambitious play to buy media giant Time Warner, setting in motion a potentially massive merger. The New York Times was the first to break the news about Murdoch's plans. The paper said that 21st Century Fox, one of the two huge media conglomerates owned by Murdoch, offered to purchase Time Warner for $80 billion, but was turned down.

21st Century Fox eventually confirmed that it had made an offer, but said it was not currently in discussions with Time Warner. That could easily change, though. Murdoch is used to such rejection and may have even expected it. After all, others, such as the former owners of the Wall Street Journal, have also pushed away his initial takeover offers. Murdoch now owns the Journal. ... Read more

Hottest March-June On Record Globally, Reports Japan Meteorological Agency
Click to zoom - Hotest June on Record
thinkprogress.org/ | Joe Romm | 07/15/14

You may recall that the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) reported last month that March-May was the hottest in more than 120 years of record-keeping. Well, the JMA reported Monday that last month was the hottest June in more than 120 years of record-keeping. That makes 3 straight record-breaking months for JMA -- the hottest second quarter on record. It also means we had the hottest March-June on record.

And these records occurred despite the fact we're still waiting for the start of El Niño. It is usually the combination of the underlying long-term warming trend and the regional El Niño warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records. ... Read more

California Braces for the Worst: El Niño May Be Too Little, Too Late to Save It From Drought
AlterNet | author | 07/16/14

California has imposed statewide water-use regulations for the first time as its three-year drought worsens. Yesterday, state regulators approved stringent new measures limiting outdoor water, which include $500 fines for using an outdoor hose without a shut-off nozzle.

Meanwhile, hopes that the drought would break by autumn have been tempered. The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center downplayed the help that El Niño may bring to the drought-plagued West in its monthly report of Pacific Ocean weather patterns. While the Center is still projecting that sea surface temperatures will be warmer than usual--a phenomenon known as El Niño--it is now saying that the effect will be only "weak to moderate." ... Read more

Israeli Arms Company Plans 'Star Wars' Style Laser Defense System
JNS.org. | author | 02/14/14

Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems unveiled its latest missile defense system, called Iron Beam, which uses lasers to destroy incoming rockets and mortars.

According to Rafael, the Iron Beam system is designed to intercept super close-range drones, rockets, and mortars that aren't in the air long enough for the Iron Dome system to pick up. Military experts agree that it will be a potentially effective addition to Israel's battlefield-tested Iron Dome system. ... Read more

Environmental Crime: The Prosecution Gap
The Crime Report.org | Graham Kates | 07/14/14

... Although the federal government extolled the win against BP Gulf oil spill as the start of a new era of environmental policing, an analysis by The Crime Report of thousands of records compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reveals that enforcement of corporate environmental crime remains extremely rare.

More than 64,000 facilities are currently listed in agency databases as being in violation of federal environmental laws, but in most years, fewer than one-half of one percent of violations trigger criminal investigations, according to EPA records. ... Read more

An Exceptional Decline for the Exceptional Country?
Bill Moyers | Tom Engelhardt | 07/14/14

For America's national security state, this is the age of impunity. Nothing it does -- torture, kidnapping, assassination, illegal surveillance, you name it -- will ever be brought to court. For none of its beyond-the-boundaries acts will anyone be held accountable. The only crimes that can now be committed in official Washington are by those foolish enough to believe that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth. I'm speaking of the various whistleblowers and leakers who have had an urge to let Americans know what deeds and misdeeds their government is committing in their name but without their knowledge. They continue to pay a price in accountability for their acts that should, by comparison, stun us all.

As June ended, the New York Times front-paged an account of an act of corporate impunity that may, however, be unique in the post-9/11 era (though potentially a harbinger of things to come). In 2007, as journalist James Risen tells it, Daniel Carroll, the top manager in Iraq for the rent-a-gun company Blackwater, one of the warrior corporations that accompanied the US military to war in the twenty-first century, threatened Jean Richter, a government investigator sent to Baghdad to look into accounts of corporate wrongdoing. ... Read more

What It's Like On The Ground In Gaza
HP | Sophia Jones | 07/15/14

Headless bodies. Screaming children. Entire neighborhoods fleeing on foot. The unmistakable sounds of Hamas rockets and the booms of Israeli strikes. It's been a bloody week here in Gaza, with the death toll now at more than 190 people, the majority of them civilians. While Palestinians here decry the number of deaths, Israel says it doesn't target civilians and that the deaths are unavoidable if Hamas launches rockets from heavily populated areas. There have been no reported deaths in Israel, largely due to the Iron Dome rocket interceptor, although some Israelis have been injured.

On Tuesday, Israel agreed to ceasefire terms brokered by Egypt, but Hamas rejected the proposal on the grounds that it had not been consulted. There remains little hope here that a lasting ceasefire will take effect. ... Read more

Citigroup Will Pay $7 Billion To End DOJ Mortgage Investigation
HP & Reuters | author | 07/14/14

Mission Accomplished: Retail Piles In To Stocks As Pros Pile Out
ZeroHedge | author | 07/14/14

With year-end target after year-end target having been met and raised by the oh-so-ethical sell-side strategists and asset-gatherers, it appears the Fed's grand plan of dragging every bit of cash into the increasingly more risky equity markets is working. After a rally driven more by financial engineering that real sustainable growth, Bloomberg reports, individual investors are plowing money back into the U.S. stock market just as professional strategists say gains for this year are over. As one senior equity manager warned, "if Wall Street, after poring over all known data, comes up with a target and we're already there, and you still see individual investors buying and they're typically the ones that are late to the party, it would seem there is limited upside," but that didn't stop about $100 billion being added to equity mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the past year, 10 times more than the previous 12 months. We have found this cycle's greater fool and once again it is the retail investor. ... Read more

Still Think First Quarter Earnings Were Strong? Then Look At This Chart
Click to zoom - Chart of the Day
ZeroHedge | author | 07/14/14

Contribution to annualized nominal 1Q GDI growth: Real Gross Domestic Income plunged 2.6% in 1Q, nearly matching the decline in GDP. Looking at the components (only available in nominal terms), the biggest driver of the decline was a collapse in corporate profits, which offset a trend-like increase in wages and salaries. The decline in corporate profits is indicative of weaker aggregate demand and a drop in productivity. ... Read more

Have We Gone From a Post-War to a Pre-War World
HP | Walter Russell Mead | 07/07/14

On June 28, 1914, a chauffeur panicked after a failed bomb attack on his boss, took a wrong turn and came to a complete stop in front of a café in Sarajevo where Gavrilo Princip was sitting. Princip, discouraged at the apparent failure of the planned murder, seized the unexpected opportunity and fired the shots that began the First World War, a cataclysm which claimed over nine million lives, ended four empires and set in motion events from the Communist Revolution in Russia to the rise of Nazi Germany.

One hundred years later, the world is nervously keeping its eyes peeled for misguided chauffeurs and asking itself whether history could repeat. The great powers are at peace, and trade and cultural ties between nations seem closer than ever before, yet the international scene is in many ways surprisingly brittle. In particular, a rising naval power is challenging an established hegemon, and a "powder keg" region replete with ethnic and religious quarrels looks less stable by the day.

In 1914, Germany was the rising power, the U.K. the weary hegemon and the Balkans was the powder keg. In 2014, China is rising, the United States is staggering under the burden of world leadership and the Middle East is the powder keg. ... Read more

10 Supreme Court Rulings -- Before ‘Hobby Lobby’ -- That Turned Corporations Into People
Bill Moyers & MotherJones | author | 07/11/14

Last week’s Hobby Lobby ruling charted new legal territory by granting corporations the same religious rights as real people. The rationale behind the decision — that expanding constitutional rights to businesses is necessary to “protect the rights of people associated with the corporation” — is far from novel. A line of Supreme Court rulings stretching back 200 years has blurred the distinction between flesh-and-blood citizens and the businesses they own, laying the groundwork for Hobby Lobby and the equally contentious Citizens United ruling. Here’s a timeline of the corporation’s human evolution:

CEO Of Europe's Largest Insurer Pops The Utopia Bubble: "Nothing Is Solved And Everybody Knows It"
ZeroHedge | author | 07/11/14

“The fundamental problems are not solved and everybody knows it,” Maximilian Zimmerer, CEO of Allianz, said at Bloomberg LP’s London office. The “euro crisis is not over,” he said. “There is only one country where the debt level last year was lower than 2012 and this is a signal the debt crisis can’t be over, only a recognition of the debt crisis has changed,” Zimmerer said on July 9. “If the debt levels are not going down in the end we will have a problem, that is for sure.” ... Read more

Are “failed U.S. policies” to blame for the rise in unaccompanied Central American migrant children?
borderfactcheck.org | author | 07/10/14

The Facts: It’s unlikely that Central American families are paying such close attention to discussions of administrative changes within the U.S. executive branch. Even leaving this aside, there are at least four reasons why the House members’ letter’s claims are inaccurate.

Congress' Leaders Showed Exactly How Broken They Are In Just 10 Minutes
HP | Michael McAuliff | 07/09/14

Like the base ball bawlers, Reid said, the GOP's tirades are just for show, a way to distract from other problems and perhaps give their team a lift.

"It was a gimmick many times, a distraction meant to sidetrack one side and rally the other," Reid said. "In the House of Representatives, the Republican leadership in the House are trying a similar tactic by threatening to bring suit against the president of the United States. They're searching desperately for something -– anything -– to keep the radicals within their own caucus over there, to keep 'em happy. That's hard to do as we've seen. They want to do this to divert the American people's attention from their very own inaction." ... Read more
Congress' Leaders Showed Exactly How Broken They Are In Just 10 Minutes (07/10/14) [2:31]

Salon
Salon & AlterNet | author | 07/02/14

The British government dealt a strong blow to creationists last week when they clarified and extended their laws banning creationism in the classroom to not only free schools, but to academies as well.

Academies, including free schools, are the UK’s version of the charter schools in the US, and there were concerns that, since academies are often run by religious organizations who taught and endorsed creationism in the classroom, kids who attend them were not being taught actual science. ... Read more

Futures Tumble, Bunds Soar To Record, Gold Surges As Europe Is Broken Again; Espirito Santo Halted
ZeroHedge | author | 07/10/14

But... but... the VIX said everything is ok, and European rates were the lowest they have been in centuries... How can something possibly go wrong? It just did.

The scandal which we first reported yesterday, after observing the record collapse in the bonds of troubled Portuguese lender Espirito Santo International following the failure to make a bond payment, has quickly escalated and overnight went nuclear. ... Read more
Click to zoom - European Stocks

The Great Barrier Reef Will Be Ravaged By El Niño
MotherJones | Oliver Milman | 07/08/14

The Great Barrier Reef is set to be ravaged by the expected El Niño weather phenomenon and scientists warn that similar warming events have significantly impacted upon the reef’s coral.

Research by the University of Queensland studied large Porites coral colonies, a type of coral considered more resistant than others to changes in the environment.

By analysing and dating coral samples, researchers found there was a significant correlation between mass coral mortality events and spikes in sea surface temperature over the past 150 years. ... Read more

The Giant Methane Monster That Can Wipe Out the Human Race
AlterNet | Thom Hartmann | 07/04/14

Underneath the frozen Arctic are 1,000 gigatons of the world's most deadly greenhouse gas.

... Methane is one of the strongest of the natural greenhouse gases, about 80 times more potent than CO2, and while it may not get as much attention as its cousin CO2, it certainly can do as much, if not more, damage to our planet.

That's because methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and there are trillions of tons of it embedded in a kind of ice slurry called methane hydrate or methane clathrate crystals in the Arctic and in the seas around the continental shelves all around the world. ... Read more

Tiny Houses Big With U.S. Owners Seeking Economic Freedom
Bloomberg | Nina Glinski | 07/09/14

“I wanted to have an edge against career vagaries,” said Immel, a former real estate appraiser. A dwelling with minimal financial burden “gives you a little attitude.” He invests the money he would have spent on a mortgage and related costs in a mutual fund, halving his retirement horizon to 10 years and maybe even as soon as three. “I am infinitely happier.”

Dramatic downsizing is gaining interest among Americans, gauging by increased sales of plans and ready-made homes and growing audiences for websites related to the niche. A+E Networks Corp. will air, beginning today, “Tiny House Nation” a series on FYI that “celebrates the exploding movement.” ... Read more

One Company Finally Admits: It Wasn't The "Harsh Weather" After All
ZeroHedge | author | 07/09/14

Yesterday we heard from the CEO of the world's biggest company that the exuberant jobs data did not reflect any economic reality Wal-Mart was seeing. Overnight, William Arthur Tindell, CEO of The Container Store, further destroyed the myth of a 'recovery' stalled by 'weather' and threw the rest of his 'retailer' brethren under the bus: "We thought our sluggish sales were all because of weather and calendar shift...but now we've come to realize it's more than that, consistent with so many of our fellow retailers, we're experiencing a retail funk." ... Read more

The Psychology of the Sunni-Shia Divide
Politico | David Myers | 07/06/14

Why is there so much animosity between groups that seem so similar?

More than a decade after the Iraq war began, it still boggles our minds: Sunni and Shia--both revering the Quran, following Muhammad and praying to Allah--killing one another. It brings to mind the 3,500-plus dead from the clashes between Northern Ireland's Protestants and Catholics--all, at least nominally, following the same Prince of Peace

One wonders: Why such animosity among those so ethnically and religiously similar? Certainly, Sunni-Shia violence has deep historical-political roots. Ditto the Protestant-Catholic clashes. As the late Ed Cairns, leader of the University of Ulster's Peace and Conflict Research Group, once explained to me, religious labels can sometimes be markers for just those kinds of deep cultural divisions. ... Read more

2,500 Oklahoma Earthquakes Linked To Fracking, Scientists Say
ThinkProgress.org | Emily Atkin | 07/07/14

More than 2,500 small earthquakes have hit Oklahoma in the past five years, and nearly all of them can be linked to the process of drilling for oil and gas, according to a recent study published in the journal Science.

The study, led by Cornell University geophysics professor Katie Keranen, is the latest of many scientific studies showing a probable connection between earthquakes and drilling-related activity across the country. Specifically, the quakes are linked not to the fuel extraction itself, but to a process called "wastewater injection," in which companies take the leftover water used to frack wells and inject it deep into the ground. ... Read more

Federal judge says Supreme Court should "stfu"
Salon | Elias Isquith | 07/07/14

In the wake of the Hobby Lobby ruling, George H.W. Bush appointee Judge Richard George Kopf has some advice for how the Supreme Court can guard against losing even more prestige and legitimacy in the eyes of the public: STFU.

"[T]his term and several past terms has proven that the court is now causing more harm (division) to our democracy than good by deciding hot button cases that the court has the power to avoid," Kopf writes at his personal blog, Hercules and the Umpire. Read more

5 of the Worst Pundits Spreading Propaganda About the Middle East
AlterNet | Alex Kane | 07/08/14

From CNN to Time to ABC , the mainstream media is absolving the U.S. of blame for Iraq, and allowing pro-Israel pundits to get away with falsehoods. Here are five of the worst pundits and hosts talking about Middle East crises.

Report Reveals Walmart Cut its Taxes by $104 million by giving Executives Lavish "Performance-Based" Bonuses
Tax Fairness | author | 06/04/14

Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) today released a report revealing that Walmart received $104 million in taxpayer subsidies over a six-year period due to tax deductions for "performance-based" executive compensation. During that time, eight top executives pocketed more than $298 million in "performance pay" that was fully tax deductible.

The study shows that Walmart was able to lower its federal tax payments by $40 million because of lavish pay packages awarded to just one executive -- recently retired CEO Michael Duke. Duke pocketed $116 million in stock options and other performance-based compensation between 2009 and 2014. ... Read more

Why Walgreens Shouldn't Be Allowed to Influence Corporate Citizenship if It Becomes Swiss
Bill Moyers |Robert Reich's blog | 07/07/14

Like His Dad, Charles Koch Was a Bircher
Progressive Magazine | Lisa Graves | 07/08/14

Today, as announced on Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow!, the Progressive Inc. and the Center for Media and Democracy are publishing new information and analysis documenting that billionaire oil industrialist Charles Koch was an active member of the controversial right-wing John Birch Society during its active campaigns against the civil rights movement.

Many commentators have noted that the father of the controversial Koch Brothers, Fred Koch, was a leader of the John Birch Society from its founding in 1958 until his death in 1967. But, in fact, Charles Koch followed his father's footsteps into the John Birch Society for years in Wichita, Kansas, a hub city for the organization in that decade of tremendous societal unrest as civil rights activists challenged racial segregation. ... Read more
Koch Exposed website

A Scary Super Typhoon Is Bearing Down on Japan…and Its Nuclear Plants
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | 07/07/14

Japanese forecasters are calling it a "once in decades storm." And at Kadena Air Base, a US military installation on the island of Okinawa, one commander dubbed the storm "the most powerful typhoon forecast to hit the island in 15 years."

Super Typhoon Neoguri, currently sporting maximum sustained winds of nearly 150 miles per hour and just shy of Category 5 strength, is heading straight at Japan's islands, and its outer bands are currently battering the island of Okinawa. Here's the forecast map from the Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center. As you can see, the forecast for tomorrow brings the storm up to maximum sustained winds of 140 knots (161 miles per hour), or Category 5 strength: ... Read more

In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are
WashingtonPost | Barton Gellman | 07/05/14

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.

Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else. ... Read more

Top American corporate tax avoiders
Fortune Magazine | author | 07/07/14

The S&P 500 stock index supposedly includes the largest public American companies. It turns out that 28 of them are incorporated in places like Ireland and Switzerland to avoid high U.S. tax rates. These companies sure seem American--except when it comes to paying taxes ... Read more

Congress is* in session
Washington Post | Dana Milbank | 07/01/14

The people’s representatives can’t agree on much of anything these days -- even calling a recess. When senators and members of the House went home for their Independence Day break, they didn’t, or couldn’t, agree on an adjournment resolution. So they did what they usually do: They went into “pro-forma session,” a status when they are technically working but don’t actually do anything. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much how it is when they’re in town, too.

Lawmakers are home. Staffers in the Capitol lounge in open-collar shirts. But make no mistake: Congress is in session. President Obama made this mistake. He made recess appointments during a pro-forma session, claiming it was really a recess, and the Supreme Court unanimously smacked him down last week: “The Senate is in session when it says it is, provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business.” ... Read more

What's A Caliphate?
NPR | Greg Myre | 06/30/14

The Islamic caliphates had a long and glorious run, but in the 21st century, they seemed consigned to history. Simply put, a caliphate is an Islamic state led by a supreme religious and political leader, and it has existed in one form or another for most of the 1,400-year history of Islam.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago marked the end of the last caliphate, an extraordinarily powerful one that had survived for more than four centuries. ... Read more

Bill O’Reilly: Laura Ingraham plan dooms GOP
Politico | Kendall Breitman | 07/04/14

Bill O’Reilly is pegging Laura Ingraham’s opinion of using mass deportation to address illegal immigration as a “draconian” idea that would “destroy the Republican Party.” The heated debate arose on Wednesday after O’Reilly asked on his Fox News show, “The O’Reilly Factor,” what Ingraham would do to address the tens of thousands of children and adults that have been apprehended trying to cross the U.S-Mexico border.

“No. 1, first thing you do is start deporting people, not by the hundreds, not by the dozens, by the thousands,” the conservative radio talk show host said. “That means entire families, not just the father or mother, but we keep families unified by deporting all people who are here illegally.” ... Read more

Chicago Shootings Over July 4th Weekend Leave At Least 9 Dead, Dozens Wounded
HP | Jade Walker | 07/07/14

Yet Another 12 Mind-Blowing Documentaries To Watch On Netflix
HP | Lauren Duca | 07/01/14

Whose Security? How Washington Protects Itself and the Corporate Sector
Bill Moyers & TomDispatch | Noam Chomsky | 07/03/14

... There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements and public discourse. It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the US and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat. ...

Instead, a series of fraudulent pretexts for the invasion were concocted that collapse instantly on examination. The media chimed in enthusiastically, lauding the magnificent achievement of defeating Panama, unconcerned that the pretexts were ludicrous, that the act itself was a radical violation of international law, and that it was bitterly condemned elsewhere, most harshly in Latin America. Also ignored was the US veto of a unanimous Security Council resolution condemning crimes by US troops during the invasion, with Britain alone abstaining. ... Read more

Whose Security? How Washington Protects Itself and the Corporate Sector
Bill Moyers & TomDispatch | Noam Chomsky | 07/03/14

... There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements and public discourse. It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the US and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat. ...

Instead, a series of fraudulent pretexts for the invasion were concocted that collapse instantly on examination. The media chimed in enthusiastically, lauding the magnificent achievement of defeating Panama, unconcerned that the pretexts were ludicrous, that the act itself was a radical violation of international law, and that it was bitterly condemned elsewhere, most harshly in Latin America. Also ignored was the US veto of a unanimous Security Council resolution condemning crimes by US troops during the invasion, with Britain alone abstaining. ... Read more

What’s a caliphate? News puts focus on ancient form of government
McClatchy | Lindsay Wise | 07/03/14

When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria announced Sunday that it was changing its name and reviving the caliphate, the news lit up the Internet and headlined news reports around the world. But what is a caliphate? And what is the self-described Islamic State hoping to achieve with its declaration?

The answers, experts say, have more to do with the Sunni militant group’s rivalry with al Qaida than with any plan to replicate the last caliphate, which was abolished in 1924 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Understanding the history of the caliphate and its powerful symbolism is key to comprehending what the Islamic State’s declaration means. It’s the latest salvo in an inter-Muslim battle for territory and influence in the Middle East and beyond _ a conflict that not only pits Sunnis against Shiites but radical Sunni jihadis against each other. ... Read more
Click to zoom - Caliphate

Nature Is Magical--and These 10 Stunning Photos Prove It. Happy Birthday, Yosemite!
MotherJones | James West | 06/30/14

On this day 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act to protect Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in California. It was the first time the US had set aside wilderness, in this case roughly the size of Rhode Island, especially for preservation. These days, 4 million people enjoy the park every year to marvel at its famous soaring granite peaks and waterfalls, and enjoy a rare serenity. Here are photos of Yosemite's epic landscapes, past and present, to celebrate the its sesquicentennial year. Happy Birthday, Yosemite! ... Read more

This "Tough-As-Nails" Banking Watchdog Isn't That Tough-As-Nails
MotherJones | Erika Eichelberger | 07/03/14

"Mary Jo is…tough as nails." That's just a sampling of the many compliments paid to former Wall Street defense lawyer Mary Jo White in January 2013, when President Barack Obama nominated her to run the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a major banking watchdog. But after more than a year in charge, White hasn't lived up to the hype, instead crafting weak regulations, delaying new rules to rein in the industry, and granting special privileges to a bank involved in fraud.

White has made some aggressive moves--she slapped more than 60 penalties on financial firms for violations including insider trading and refusals to cooperate with investigations. Last year, she announced that the SEC will start to force more bad-behaving banks into admissions of wrongdoing instead of allowing firms to just settle without admitting or denying guilt. But overall, White has not been the hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners reformer Obama and his fellow Democrats promised. Here are five reasons why: ... Read more

The Disaster We've Wrought on the World's Oceans May Be Irrevocable
Newsweek | Alex Renton | 07/11/14

By the end of this century, many fish may be history due to man's reckless abuse of the planet. As we keep dumping greenhouse gases into the air, the oceans keep sucking them up, making the waters deadly to their inhabitants.

... The last is the least understood of these phenomena. Along the coasts and out in the deep, huge "dead zones" have been multiplying. They are the emptiest places on the planet, where there's little oxygen and sometimes no life at all, almost entirely restricted to some unicellular organisms like bacteria. Vast blooms of algae--organisms that thrive in more acid (and less alkaline) seawater and are fed by pollution--have already rendered parts of the Baltic Sea pretty much dead. A third of the marine life in that sea, which once fed all of Northern Europe, is gone and may already be beyond hope of recovery. ...

... Carbon dioxide, one of the key perpetrators in the lineup of man-made greenhouse gases, is absorbed by seawater, causing a chemical reaction near the ocean surface that results in lowered pH levels. And about one-third of all the man-made carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere ends up absorbed by the oceans. Carles Pelejero, a scientist working less than a mile from La Boqueria at the Institut de Cienciès del Mar (ICM), on Barcelona's seafront, calls it "climate change's evil twin." ... Read more

Inside the Struggle to Preserve the World's Data
Newsweek | Newsweek | 07/02/14

When masked gunmen smashed their way into the offices of the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism, the staff knew what was coming. For years, the center had been a lone crusading voice exposing corruption in Ukrainian government circles while defying threats of violence and attempts to close it down ...

... By the time the center's site was finally shut down in March--albeit put back up soon after--everything it contained, including more than 5,000 videos, had been preserved and made accessible online. It was another coup for Internet Archive's founder, Brewster Kahle, who is also behind the hugely popular Wayback Machine, an enormous online museum that enables users to see what a website looked like at any time since 1996, the year Kahle set up his first commercial web crawl company. Kahle's operation now costs around $10 million a year, covered by revenue generated by web crawling services, grants, donations and a foundation established by Kahle and his wife.

Kahle is a history-maker: on the front line with other archivists around the world deciding what digital artifacts should be gleaned from the universe of information and stored for future generations to access. "Websites disappear into the digital equivalent of a black hole all the time.… Their average online life in the U.K. is just 75 days," says Helen Hockx-Yu, who leads the British Library's web archiving operation, rated by experts in the field as among the best in the business. "A lot of material, including sites dealing with the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 and the 2008 financial crisis, has been lost because we weren't able to capture it in time." ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, July 03 [8:56]

TRNN | Author Todd Miller: Corporations Making a Killing as Billions Are Poured into Border Enforcement (07/03/14) [10:47]

Ring of Fire | Papantonio: Kochs Buying What's Left of Our Democracy (07/03/14) [6:42]

We're Fishing the Oceans Dry. It's Time to Reconsider Fish Farms.
MotherJones | Maddie Oatman | 07/02/14

... For many consumers, aquaculture lost its appeal after unappetizing news spread about commercial fish farms--like fish feed's pressure on wild resources, overflowing waste, toxic buildup in the water, and displacement of natural species. But consider this: Our appetite for seafood continues to rise. Globally, we've hungered for 3.2 percent more seafood every year for the last five decades, double the rate of our population. Yet more than four-fifths of the world's wild fisheries are overexploited or fully exploited (yielding the most fish possible with no expected room for growth). Only 3 percent of stocks are considered underexploited--meaning they have any significant room for expansion. If we continue to fish at the current pace, some scientists predict we'll be facing oceans devoid of edible marine creatures by 2050.

But unlike alot of fishermen, Belov has a stash of treasure in his warehouse, as he soon shows me: a golf-cart-size container of plump trout, their glossy bodies still taut from rigor mortis. The night before, Belov drove north to Humboldt to help "chill kill" the fish by submerging them live into barrels of slushy ice water. Belov can count on shipments of these McFarland Springs trout every week--because he helped grow them himself on a farm. ... Read more
Farmed Fish That's Better Than Wild? (07/02/14) [3:20]

Forget the Bahamas. Michigan is one of the best places to SCUBA dive
Michigan Radio | author | 2014

When it comes to great places to SCUBA dive, lots of people immediately think of the waters of the Caribbean or Mexico, with lots of amazing underwater life, beautiful coral, gentle warm water.

But there's a hardy group of SCUBA divers who point to Michigan as one of the best places to dive. ... Read more

Bill Moyers Essay: What We Can Learn From Lawrence of Arabia
Bill Moyers | author | 06/27/14

As fears grow of a widening war across the Middle East, fed by reports that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) envisions a region-wide, all controlling theocracy, we found ourselves talking about another war. The Great War – or World War I, as it would come to be called — was triggered one hundred years ago this month when an assassin shot and killed Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Through a series of tangled alliances and a cascade of misunderstandings and blunders, that single act of violence brought on a bloody catastrophe. More than 37 million people were killed or wounded.

In America, if we reflect on World War I at all, we think mostly about the battlefields and trenches of Europe and tend to forget another front in that war — against the Ottoman Empire of the Turks that dominated the Middle East. A British Army officer named T.E. Lawrence became a hero in the Arab world when he led nomadic Bedouin tribes in battle against Turkish rule. ... Read more

Now Wall Street Is Calling for Climate Sanity. Don't Expect the Right to Listen.
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | 06/30/14

Hank Paulson and Robert Rubin are teaming up to make the business community's case for addressing climate change. But will it matter?

... We'll get to that, but first, witness the latest attempt, which is aimed at swaying the business community. This weekend on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, two former treasury secretaries, Henry Paulson (a Republican) and Robert Rubin (a Democrat), went on the air to discuss climate change and, in particular, the new "Risky Business" report with which they're closely affiliated. The report, emerging from a partnership that also includes Michael Bloomberg and the environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer, makes the case that climate change will have dire economic costs. On the air, Paulson said point blank that climate inaction entails "radical risk taking." Rubin added that the risk is "catastrophic." ... Read more

Risky Business Report Press Conference (06/24/14) [40:34]

Truthloader | Kiribati: The country killed by climate change (06/18/14) [5:11]

Living large in 150 square feet: Why the tiny house movement is taking off
Salon | Lindsay Abrams | 06/28/14

Come across one of the many photos of the “tiny houses” circulating on blogs and Pinterest, and your first reaction will probably be how cute they are — itty, bitty, bite-size domiciles straight out of a fairy tale. Your second reaction, depending on who you are, is either: How do people fit in there? Or simply, why? Or, for a select group of individuals: How do I get one of my own?

Ryan Mitchell became enamored with the idea of tiny houses back in 2008, he tells Salon. He’s been an enthusiastic member of the movement since then, blogging about the homes at TheTinyLife.com and publishing a book, out July 14, that functions both as a treatise of the tiny house lifestyle and how-to guide for “building and living well in less than 400 square feet.” On the eve of — at long last — moving into a 150-square home he’s built himself, Mitchell spoke with Salon about the economic and environmental benefits of tiny living. ... Read more

Tiny House on the Bay

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Writes Scathing 35-Page Dissent In Birth Control Case
HP | Laura Bassett | 06/30/14

The Supreme Court delivered a blow to universal birth control coverage on Monday, ruling that closely-held corporations can refuse to cover contraception in their health plans for religious reasons. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sharply disagreed with the five conservatives on the court, delivering a scathing, 35-page dissent and defense of mandatory contraception coverage.

"In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs," Ginsburg wrote. She said she feared that with its decision, the court had "ventured into a minefield." ... Read more

The First Iraq War Was Also Sold to the Public Based on a Pack of Lies
Bill Moyers | Joshua Holland | 06/27/14

... Across the ideological spectrum, there's broad agreement that the first Gulf War was "worth fighting." The opposite is true of the 2003 invasion, and a big reason for those divergent views was captured in a 2013 CNN poll that found that "a majority of Americans (54%) say that prior to the start of the war the administration of George W. Bush deliberately misled the U.S. public about whether Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction."

But as the usual suspects come out of the woodwork to urge the US to once again commit troops to Iraq, it's important to recall that the first Gulf War was sold to the public on a pack of lies that were just as egregious as those told by the second Bush administration 12 years later. ... Read more

How DC's Political Intelligence Biz Made Fat Cats Fatter
Bill Moyers | Michael Winship | 06/30/14

Looking over the last few weeks of news, if you would seek a single headline that sums up the Hulk-like grip in which corporate America holds the US Congress, this might be it: "Eric Cantor's Loss a Blow to Wall Street."

So wrote The Wall Street Journal, that Pravda of the One Percent, on the day after House Majority Leader Cantor lost his Virginia GOP primary to tea party upstart David Brat. "Since he was first elected to Congress," the Journal noted, "Mr. Cantor has been Wall Street's go-to guy on issues big and small… he was a top recipient of Wall Street donations and he regularly stood up for the banks, securities firms and insurance companies."

So it's actually somewhat heartening that Cantor's loss was due in part to those very same connections. His opponent David Brat told a campaign rally, "All the investment banks up in New York and DC, whatever, those guys should have gone to jail. Instead of going to jail, where'd they go? They went onto Eric's Rolodex."

Brat made particular reference to the Stock Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act -- the STOCK Act -- passed into law in 2012. That's the legislation, authored by Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York, which requires members of Congress and their staffs to disclose all of their stock transactions -- an effort to make sure they're not trading on insider information gleaned from their governmental wheeling-dealings. (This is the bill that languished on the Hill for years until a 60 Minutes report embarrassed Congress into passing it.)

Unfortunately, before it became law, stripped from the legislation were requirements that family members publicly reveal their stock trades as well as disclosure requirements for companies engaged in gathering political intelligence. And guess who was singlehandedly responsible for gutting the bill of these provisions? Yep, Eric Cantor, with the heavy hands of lobbyists pushing from behind. ... Read more

Noam Chomsky: Our Govt. Is Capable of Creating Total Catastrophe for Humankind
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 07/01/14

The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs. In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons. First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact. Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it. Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the U.S. -- and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices. The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond. ... Read more