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Monday November 04, 2013
News Articles

Who Buys the Spies? The Hidden Corporate Cash Behind America's Out-of-Control National Surveillance State
TRNN News | Thomas Ferguson | 10/23/13

In early June 2013, Glen Greenwald, then of the Guardian, with an assist from journalists at The Washington Post, electrified the world with stories drawn from documents and testimony from Edward Snowden, an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton working under contract with the National Security Agency, who had fled the country. They broke the news that the U.S. government had been collecting vast amounts of information on not only foreigners, but also American citizens. And the U.S. had been doing this for years with the cooperation of virtually all the leading firms in telecommunications, software, and high tech electronics, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Verizon, and Facebook. Sometimes the government even defrays their costs. ... Read more

Atlantic Storms to Hit Europe in Warmer-Than-Usual November

No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A.
NYTimes | Scott Shane | 11/02/13

... From thousands of classified documents, the National Security Agency emerges as an electronic omnivore of staggering capabilities, eavesdropping and hacking its way around the world to strip governments and other targets of their secrets, all the while enforcing the utmost secrecy about its own operations. It spies routinely on friends as well as foes, as has become obvious in recent weeks; the agency's official mission list includes using its surveillance powers to achieve "diplomatic advantage" over such allies as France and Germany and "economic advantage" over Japan and Brazil, among other countries. ... Read more

The Battle of the NSA Surveillance Bills
MotherJones | Dana Liebelson | 11/01/13

Privacy experts say that the FISA Improvements Act, which passed 11-4, codifies current surveillance practices instead of fixing the law to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans: "This was an opportunity for Congress to really recalibrate the statute, and it's very disappointing that they've used this opportunity to cement domestic spying programs instead," says Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU. ...

... Also worrisome to privacy experts is the fact that the bill expands the NSA's powers, by allowing the agency to track cellphone's of non-Americans believed to be located abroad for 72 hours after they enter the United States. The bill additionally levies a penalty of up to 10 years in prison on anyone who accesses NSA information without authorization, like Snowden did. ... Read more

5 Infuriating Quotes from Politicians About the NSA
Care2.com | Kevin Mathews | 11/02/13

Representative Mike Rogers, Republican from Michigan
"If the French citizens knew exactly what that was about, they would be applauding and popping champagne corks. It's a good thing."
General Keith Alexander, head of the NSA
"I think it's wrong that newspaper reporters have all these documents… and are selling them and giving them out… We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don't know how to do that. That's more of the courts and policymakers, but, from my perspective, it's wrong to allow this to go on."
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina
"I'm glad that the NSA is trying to find out what the terrorists are up to overseas and in our country. I'm glad that activity is going on, but it is limited to tracking people who are suspected to be terrorists and who they may be talking to… Yes, I am sure that that's what they're doing."
Representative Peter King, Republican from New York
"The president should stop apologizing, stop being defensive. The reality is the NSA has saved thousand of lives -- not just in the United States, but also in France and Germany and throughout Europe."
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat from California
"I am not a high-tech techie, but I have been told that is not possible."
When Edward Snowden reported that he had the ability to wiretap anyone, Feinstein claimed that it couldn't be done. Feinstein provided Congressional oversight for the NSA, but didn't actually understand how any of it works. In essence, her role was to merely ask if the NSA was behaving and then relay what she was told. Talk about oversight
Read more

5 Ways Super-Rich Are Betraying America
AlterNet | Paul Buchheit | 11/03/13

As they accumulate more and more wealth, the very rich have less need for society. At the same time, they've convinced themselves that they made it on their own, and that contributing to societal needs is unfair to them. There is ample evidence that this small group of takers is giving up on the country that made it possible for them to build huge fortunes. ...

... Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot and member of the Forbes 400, had this to say about any American who might object to all the greed: "Who gives a crap about some imbecile?" ...

  1. They've Taken $25 Trillion of New Wealth While Paying Less Taxes
  2. For the First Time in History, They Believe They Don't Need the Rest of Us
  3. They Soaked the Middle Class, and Now Demand Cuts in the Middle-Class Retirement Fund
  4. They Continue to Insist that They "Made It on Their Own"
  5. As a Final Insult, Many of Them Desert the Country that Made Them Rich
Read more

Be Very Afraid: The American Economy Is Cannibalizing Itself, and We the People Are Going to Pay a Huge Price
AlterNet | Robert Reich | 11/03/13

... The larger reality is that most Americans are still living in the Great Recession. Median household income continues to drop. In last week's Washington Post-ABC poll, 75 percent rated the state of the economy as "negative" or "poor."   So why is Washington whacking safety nets and services that a large portion of Americans need, when we still very much need them? ...

... It's not just that the top 10 percent have jobs and their wages are rising. The top 10 percent also owns 80 percent of the stock market. And the stock market is up a whopping 24 percent this year. ...

... Big corporations can also borrow at rock-bottom rates these days in order to buy back even more of their stock -- courtesy of the Fed's $85 billion a month bond-buying program. (Ichan also wants Apple to borrow $150 billion at 3 percent interest, in order to buy back more stock and further enrich himself.) ... Read more

Ender's Game (trailer) [2:07]


DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, November 04 [13:46]
DN | Inside the "Electronic Omnivore": NSA Spying on U.N., Climate Summit, Text Messaging Worldwide (11/04/13) [7:32], Part 2 [11:49]
New York Times reporter Scott Shane, who reports that the NSA has "as an electronic omnivore of staggering capabilities, eavesdropping and hacking its way around the world to strip governments and other targets of their secrets, all the while enforcing the utmost secrecy about its own operations."
Drone Wars
CNN coverage of Congressional briefing for drone strike survivors (11/29/13) [8:54]
CNN coverage of the Congressional briefing called for by Rep. Alan Grayson (FL-09) for the drone strike survivors and Robert Greenwald's documentary "Unmanned: America's Drone Wars."
Martin Bashir interviews family of drone strike survivors (11/28/13) [7:49]
Interview with Nabila, 9-year-old survivor of a drone strike (11/28/13) [2:38]
UNMANNED: America's Drone Wars
UNMANNED: America's Drone Wars (trailer) [1:18]
*UNMANNED: America's Drone Wars by Robert Greenwald (full) (10/28/13) [1:03:55]
*Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill
*Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill
The Untold History Of The US by Oliver Stone
The Untold History Of The United States Episode 01 [58:00], Episode 02 [58:00], Episode 03 [58:00], Episode 04 [58:00], Episode 05 [58:00], Episode 06 [58:00], Episode 07 [58:00], Episode 08 [58:00], Episode 09 [58:00], Episode 10 [58:00]
Oliver Stone: Untold History - An Interview with Bob Woodruff (11/26/12) [1:33:59]
Beating The Bomb [1:12:22]

Nuclear Bombs expoded
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 (hint 2053) - by Isao Hashimoto [14:25]

Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Analysis Of President Obama's Leadership And Management Style (11/04/13) [1hr]
TYT News
Thom Hartmann
Jon Stewart Daily Show
Jon Stewart | A Bugged Life, If you're a world leader and you put the USB stick Russia gave you into your computer, you deserve to have them f**k with your screensaver. (10/31/13) [3:08], Part 2 [6:20]
Other Videos and Documentaries I Ran Across
Note: I don't endorse any of the videos in this section.
As I construct My News Pages I constantly run across a lot of NEW videos, and since I find YouTube frustrating trying to re-find videos, I save the links in this section so I can find them again.

11.04.2013. 08:45



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

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I'm still working on this

GOOD Short Videos
Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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

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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