Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Trump's White House needs another special prosecutor
Salon | Arn Pearson, Bill Moyers | 06/04/17

Trump and his inner circle cashing in on the White House is its own growing scandal

It's been one revelation after the other these days about President Trump's attempts to shut down the FBI's Russiagate investigation. Turn on the news and you're bound to hear comparisons to Nixon's Watergate scandal and phrases like "obstruction of justice," "intimidating a witness" and "cover-up" being hotly debated.

And then last Wednesday, the Department of Justice finally bowed to reality and appointed a special prosecutor, former FBI Director Robert Mueller. "Based upon the unique circumstances the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command," wrote Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. ... Read more

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin by Dan Kovalik (06/06/17)

Since 1945, the US has justified numerous wars, interventions, and military build-ups based on the pretext of the Russian Red Menace, even after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and Russia stopped being Red. In fact, the two biggest post-war American conflicts, the Korean and Vietnam wars, were not, as has been frequently claimed, about stopping Soviet aggression or even influence, but about maintaining old colonial relationships. Similarly, many lesser interventions and conflicts, such as those in Latin America, were also based upon an alleged Soviet threat, which was greatly overblown or nonexistent. And now the specter of a Russian Menace has been raised again in the wake of Donald Trump's election.

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia examines the recent proliferation of stories, usually sourced from American state actors, blaming and manipulating the threat of Russia, and the long history of which this episode is but the latest chapter. It will show readers two key things: (1) the ways in which the United States has needlessly provoked Russia, especially after the collapse of the USSR, thereby squandering hopes for peace and cooperation; and (2) how Americans have lost out from this missed opportunity, and from decades of conflicts based upon false premises. These revelations, amongst other, make The Plot to Scapegoat Russia one of the timeliest reads of 2017.

The Panic President
TheAtlantic | David A. Graham | 06/04/17

Rarely does a leader in a liberal democracy embrace, let alone foment, fear. But that's exactly what Donald Trump did in response to attacks in London, as he has often done before.

After a terrorist attack, there are two steps nearly every leader takes: first, condemn the violence; second, appeal for calm. London Mayor Sadiq Khan followed that familiar playbook in the wake of Saturday night's attacks. ...

... Early Sunday morning, President Trump logged onto Twitter, offering not condolences to Britain or support in fighting terrorism (though he did do that in a call with Prime Minister Theresa May, according to a White House readout), but instead an angry "I told you so" and an attack on Khan ... Read more

John Paulson Is Struggling to Hold On to Client Money
Bloomberg |Miles Weiss | 06/05/17

A decade after Paulson shot to fame betting on the collapse of the U.S. housing market, the hedge-fund mogul is struggling to persuade investors to stick with him after a string of missteps on everything from gold to European bonds to drug stocks.

Since the end of 2015 alone, assets at Paulson & Co. have fallen by $6 billion from losses and client withdrawals. The decline, underscored in the firm's most recent regulatory filing, leaves Paulson and his employees with just $2 billion in client money. Most of the remaining $8 billion is Paulson's own fortune. ... Read more

The GOP Must Take Responsibility for Trump (#82) | Keith Olbermann | 06/02/17 | 7:43

Alec Baldwin Gets Under Trump's Skin
TheAtlantic | Chris Jones | May 2017

Alec baldwin collapses onto his dressing-room couch at Saturday Night Live like a man participating too enthusiastically in a trust fall. He is 58 years old. He has three children under 4. He has been dividing what's left of his time between filming a movie with Emilio Estevez in Cincinnati and answering the call from NBC whenever it comes, which, because of his now-signature portrayal of Donald Trump, has been many weeks this season. His appearances gather eyes like car accidents; some clips have been watched on YouTube more than 20 million times. Those legions of viewers have formed a kind of makeshift resistance, a community of the gaslit, together feeling a little less crazy for knowing that at least Alec Baldwin can see what they are seeing. Turning the president into a running joke might prove the most consequential work of his career. It's at least been the most consuming. ... Read more

Stunning Photos of the Arctic Circle As It Literally Melts Away
Bloomberg | James Gaddy | 06/01/17

The latest monograph from photographer Diane Tuft provides a little-seen portrait of beauty and loss.

Artist and photographer Diane Tuft, whose work is included in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum, the International Center of Photography in New York City, and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York, has focused her life's work on traveling to remote areas to record environmental changes on the Earth's landscape. Her first monograph, UNSEEN: Beyond the Visible Spectrum, was a collection of 10 years' worth of photographs from the American West, Nepal, North Africa, and Iceland. She spent six weeks on the continent of Antarctica for her second book, Gondwana: Images of an Ancient Land.

Her latest, The Arctic Melt: Images of a Disappearing Landscape (Assouline), brings her back to the Arctic Circle, where her unconventional landscape photography turns frozen tundra and ice from the North Pole, Norway, and Greenland into a staggering record of beauty and loss. ... Read more

The Arctic Melt by Diane Tuft

The Arctic Melt: Images of a Disappearing Landscape is a brilliant new monograph by universally acclaimed art and environmental photographer Diane Tuft. Following on the heels of Tuft's previous publication, Gondwana: Images of an Ancient Land, this new book showcases her breathtaking and visually astounding journey to capture the ice in the Arctic Circle before the constant melt renders the once-frozen landscape unrecognizable. The Arctic Melt features photographs of the North Pole, the mountain glaciers of Svalbard, Norway, and the icebergs and ice sheet of Greenland. In a remarkably new take on illustrating the effects of global warming, and with more than fifty stunning photographs, The Arctic Melt chronicles Tuft's passage through the waning tundra as millennia of ice thaw at a faster rate than ever before.