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Monday June 10, 2013
News Articles

US in damage control mode after Edward Snowden's explosive NSA leaks
TheGuardian | Dan Roberts | 06/10/13

Washington was struggling to contain one of the most explosive national security leaks in US history on Monday as public criticism grew of the sweeping surveillance state revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Political opinion was split with some members of Congress calling for the immediate extradition of a man they consider a "defector", but other senior politicians on both parties questioning whether US surveillance practices had gone too far.

Daniel Ellsburg, the former military analyst who revealed secrets of the Vietnam war through the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971, described Snowden's leak as even more important and perhaps the most significant leak in American history. ... Read more

Key to government's monitoring power lies in war, technology
Washington Post | Craig Timberg | 06/07/13

Expanded government surveillance was cast as a price of war in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Yet nearly a dozen years later, the war on terrorism is showing signs of ebbing while the surveillance systems created to fight it continue unabated.   If anything, they are becoming more powerful.

That's because the nation went to a war footing at a time of profound technological change that fueled an explosion of personal data. Governments and businesses have developed the ability to mine, sort and analyze this information as never before -- and show little inclination to relinquish that power. ... Read more

Comment: "The fact that there would be so much data collected on U.S. persons has got to be mind-blowing," said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "The sense we have now is that the system of checks and balances has simply collapsed."

How Congress unknowingly legalized PRISM in 2007
Washington Post | Timothy B. Lee | 06/06/13

On Sept. 11, 2007, the National Security Agency signed up Microsoft as its first partner for PRISM, a massive domestic surveillance program whose existence was reported by the Washington Post today. That's barely a month after Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Protect America Act.

The Bush Administration portrayed the PAA as a technical fix designed to close a gap in America's surveillance capabilities that had been opened by a then-recent ruling of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). It proved to be much more than that. ... Read more

Better Late Than Never on Deeming Nonbanks Too Big to Fail
NYTimes | Agnes T. Crane | 06/04/13

New systemic-risk tags are better late than never. The American International Group, GE Capital and Prudential Financial are among the first nonbank firms to be deemed systemically important financial institutions by the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

All three financial giants on Monday said they had been flagged for the stiffer oversight bestowed on systemically important institutions, but A.I.G. and GE Capital seem especially deserving. Uncle Sam had to swoop in to help both during the financial crisis, with A.I.G. receiving a $182 billion lifeline and GE Capital a federal guarantee for its new debt. ... Read more

Pressure in Britain Over What to Do With Bailed-Out Banks
NYTimes | Mark Scott | 06/06/13

The three stalwarts of the British establishment -- Justin Welby, Nigel Lawson and Mervyn King -- are all calling for the breakup of the part-nationalized Royal Bank of Scotland.

... Now, nearly five years after British taxpayers first took stakes in the lenders, the government is preparing to reduce its holdings before the next general election, which is expected in early 2015. The government owns 81 percent of R.B.S. and 39 percent of Lloyds. ... Read more

Quote of the Day: "Lucifer spells his name J. P. Morgan," he added.

Debt Deal in Alabama Will Cost JPMorgan
NYTimes | Mary Williams Walsh | 06/05/13

Under the deal to settle the bankruptcy of Jefferson County, Ala., firms that invested in its distressed debt will have the most to gain, JPMorgan Chase will face a big loss, and residents will be wondering whether there will be any relief for them

When the dust finally settles, JPMorgan Chase, which many in the county hold responsible for the financial collapse in the first place, will have given up nearly $1.6 billion as a result of its dealings with the county and its ill-fated effort to finance sewer repairs. The new deal calls for the bank to forfeit $842 million on the $1.22 billion of sewer debt that it holds, which comes on top of $647 million it forgave in termination fees on derivatives contracts with the county and a $75 million penalty it paid to settle a complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission. ... Read more

A Message From Your Friendly ECHELON/Total Awareness/Boundless Informant Surveillance System
ZeroHedge | author | 06/10/13

... In my routine search of your public records, and all 11,379 emails, texts, message board posts and phone calls you've made in recent years, I found a disturbing trend I am obligated to report to you: your affection for pepperoni pizza with hot chilis and olives (most often from Frank's Pizza Parlor, 1.34 miles from your home) appears to be negatively impacting your health, as your medical records indicate high blood pressure and high cholesterol. ...

Read more

Dirty War... type documentaries
BBC | Untold Story of the Iraq War, Dirty Wars and Col. James Steele (03/22/13) [51:08]
A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic reveals how retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played a key role in training and overseeing US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centers in Iraq. Another special forces veteran, Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had been sent into Iraq to organize the Iraqi security services.


DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, June 10 [14:38]
*DN | "You're Being Watched": Edward Snowden Emerges as Source Behind Explosive Revelations of NSA Spying (06/10/13) [15:27]
*DN | Glenn Greenwald on How NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Helped Expose a "Massive Surveillance Apparatus" (06/10/13) [15:15]
Speaking from Hong Kong where he broke the story of Edward Snowden outing himself as the NSA whistleblower, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald joins us to discuss Snowden's actions and the multiple disclosures he's revealed about government surveillance. "There is this massive surveillance apparatus being gradually constructed in the United States that already has extremely invasive capabilities to monitor and store the communications and other forms of behavior not just of tens of millions of Americans, but of hundreds of millions, probably billions of people, around the globe," Greenwald says. "It's one thing to say that we want the U.S. government to have these capabilities. It's another thing to allow this to be assembled without any public knowledge, without any public debate, and with no real accountability. What ultimately drove [Snowden] forward -- and what ultimately is driving our reporting -- is the need for a light to be shined on what this incredibly consequential [surveillance] world is all about and the impact it's having both on our country and our planet."
*DN | "On a Slippery Slope to a Totalitarian State": NSA Whistleblower Rejects Gov't Defense of Spying (06/10/13) [11:27]
Fat, Bald, White Guys Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warns the recent leaks could "render great damage to our intelligence capabilities"
*1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surveillance platform by DARPA [4:41]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm *What's Private In The Modern Age 06/10/13 [1hr]
An ex-CIA computer technician and a relatively low level consultant for Booze Allen Hamilton has admitted that he was the source of the series of leaks on the us surveillance programs. The revelations shed light on NSA programs that collect data from smartphones, tables, social media, email, and many other forms of electronic communication. Advances in technology allow analysts to sift through this vast trove of data in what some say amounts to something of a universal dragnet. The disclosures prompted a lengthy defense from President Obama last week.
NSA - Utah Data Center
In Washington Congress can't agree on anything, but ...

"These goals have considerable support in Congress. Last November a bipartisan group of 24 senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to approve continued funding through 2013 for the Department of Energy's exascale computing initiative" (the NSA's budget requests are classified).

2 Billion Dollars Data Center
And I'm sure the 2 billion dollars is just a drop in the bucket to what it will really cost!

Computer Capacity
  1. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world's fastest computer in 2009.
  2. But alas, by late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan's "K Computer," with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops.
  3. Its next goal is to reach exaflop speed, one quintillion (1018) operations a second, and eventually zettaflop (1021) and yottaflop.

Storage Capacity
  1. Total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes.
  2. Global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year.
  3. A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.
  4. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

Needs and Costs
  1. Initially Electricity will come from the center's own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag -- about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.
    When the computer gets to yottaflop size...
  2. It will have an extraordinary appetite for electricity, eventually using about 200 megawatts, enough to power 200,000 homes. The computer will also produce a gargantuan amount of heat, requiring 60,000 tons of cooling equipment, the same amount that was needed to serve both of the World Trade Center towers.
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section. As I construct the News Page I run across a lot of videos I never have seen before. Since I find YouTube frustrating because once you are past the video, it is usually hard to find it again, I save the link in this section so I can find the video at a later date.

06.10.2013. 11:51



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

Note: To view a video, click on code at left of the title

I'm still working on this

GOOD Short Videos
Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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I'm still working on this

Newer Documentaries
Documentaries You've Never Seen

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Documentaries (small | pop-up)
Documentaries (big | full screen)
Good YouTube Documentaries

Note: To view a video, click on its name/title
Great YouTube Docs. (small | pop-up)
Good YouTube Docs. (big | full screen)

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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