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Tuesday September 03, 2013
News Articles

"Tower of Basel, The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World" by Adam LeBor
NYTimes | Michael Hirsh | 07/19/13

Adam LeBor's history of the Bank for International Settlements, 'Tower of Basel,' reads a little like a financial version of 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,' the Tom Stoppard play that places two minor characters in 'Hamlet' in the forefront of the action while the drama's major events unfold incomprehensibly in the background. In LeBor's telling, the B.I.S., an obscure 'bank for central banks' set up in Basel, Switzerland, in 1930 to facilitate World War I reparations payments from Germany, has been a critical, if secretive, actor in the global economy for more than 80 years. Today, he writes, it is 'the most important bank in the world,' an institution with virtually no accountability, and yet 'for decades it has stood at the center of a global network of money, power and covert global influence.' ... Read more

9 Scary Facts About the Yosemite Fire
MotherJones | Maggie Severns | 08/28/13

No one knows what started the Rim Fire, the 160,000 187,000 acre blaze that's ripping through the western side of Yosemite National Park. But 3,700 firefighters have been dispatched to try to stop it using helicopters, bulldozers, and flame retardants. Although the situation is starting to look up -- 20 23 percent of the fire is now contained, up from 7 percent just two days ago -- the authorities predict the fire will keep spreading, and fast, in days to come. ...

Though this season hasn't been a particularly bad season for wildfires so far, there's reason to be concerned that fires will only grow larger and more frequent as hot, dry weather becomes increasingly common in the West. Fire season now lasts two months longer and destroys twice as much land as it did 40 years ago, according to Thomas Tidwell, the head of the United States Forest Service, who testified to the Senate committee on energy and natural resources earlier this summer. ... Read more

Making the banking system safer means making it harder for banks to lend money. That makes it harder for banks to earn big profits. It also makes everything from getting a mortgage to using a credit card slightly more expensive for consumers. And it makes it harder for businesses to expand, to hire people.

Comment:True, but at least we won't crash the world again!

The 8 Groups in America That Are the Most Screwed-Over by Predatory Capitalism
magazine | author | date

We live in a society that allows one man to make $15 million a day while a low-income mother gets $4.50 a day for food, and much of Congress wants to cut the $4.50.   Are political and corporate leaders even remotely aware of the conditions of society beneath the wealthiest 10% or so?   The following are some of the victims of an economic system that has forgotten the majority of its people.

  1. Children - One out of every five American children now lives in poverty, and for black children it's nearly one out of TWO. Almost half of food stamp recipients are children.
  2. Students - Over the last 12 years, according to a New York Times report, the United States has gone from having the highest share of employed 25- to 34-year-olds among large, wealthy economies to having among the lowest. The number of college grads working for minimum wage has doubled in just five years.
  3. The Elderly - Three-quarters of Americans approaching retirement in 2010 had an average of less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts. The percentage of elderly (75 to 84) Americans experiencing poverty for the first time doubled from 2005 to 2009.
  4. Wage Earners - Workers have 30% LESS buying power today than in 1968. If the minimum wage had kept up with employee productivity, it would be $16.54 per hour instead of $7.25.
  5. The Sick and Disabled - Over 200 recent studies have confirmed a link between financial stress and sickness. In just 20 years America's ranking among developed countries dropped on nearly every major health measure.
  6. Women - Recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that women earn just 80% of men's pay. In Washington, DC and California, Hispanic women make only 44 cents for every dollar made by white men.
  7. Minorities - The Economist states: Before the 1960s...most blacks were poor, few served in public office and almost none were to be found flourishing at the nation's top universities, corporations, law firms and banks. None of that is true today.   Wrong. Much of that is true today.
  8. The Homeless - The super-rich want homeless people to get jobs. But they don't want to pay taxes to support job creation. If the richest Americans - the Forbes 400 - had paid a 5% tax on their 2012 investment earnings, enough revenue would have been generated to provide a full-time minimum wage job for every person who was homeless in America on a January night in 2012.
Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Tuesday, September 03 [11:25]
DN | In Secret AT&T Deal, U.S. Drug Agents Given Access to 26 Years of Americans' Phone Records (09/03/13) [8:29]
DN | Could U.S. Military Action Turn Syrian Civil War Into a "Widespread Regional War"? (09/03/13) [16:03], Part 2 [12:00]
DN | David Frost, 74, Remembered by Director Ron Howard, For Historic Interview with Richard Nixon [9:26]
Futurist News
Earth 2100 [1:23:45]
TYT News
TYT | "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) To Defund Obamacare? (09/02/13) [4:00]
TYT | Did Conservatives Win The War On Women? (09/02/13) [6:26]
TYT | Gilberton, Penn Police Chief Mark Kessler, "Crazy Police Chief", Threatening City Council (09/02/13) [4:58]
Police Chief Mark Kessler At Center Of Profanity Laced Gun Video Suspended (08/01/13) [1:58]
Chief Mark Kessler, Kerry & UN , can SUCK IT (07/15/13) [1:34]
Tar Sands
CRY WOLF: An Unethical Oil Story (04/11/12) [11:06]
Tipping Point - Alberta Tar Sands [1:29:49]
Drones News
Know Your Drones - Click to zoom
Fukusima
Humor
Glenn Greenwald Killed the Internet [2:01]
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.
Media | Futurist
Orwell Rolls in his Grave [3:01;53]
Earth 2100 [1:23:45]
BBC Horizon - Life In the Future (Tomorrow's World) [58:08]
Humanzees
Humanzees ; Ape Human Hybrids [44:37]
Jesse Ventura Exposes "humanzee" super-soldiers. Conspiracy Theory TV show [43:42]
Jesse Ventura Exposes "FEMA Police Camps". Conspiracy Theory TV show [43:43]
Chimera Monkeys Born In Stem Cell Experiment [5:22]
For the first time, scientists have produced monkeys composed of cells taken from separate embryos.

The animals were born after researchers combined cells from different embryos and implanted them into female monkeys.

Such animals, which contain genetically distinct groups of cells from more than one organism, are called "chimeras". Chimeras are important for studying embryonic development, but research has largely been restricted to mice.

The rhesus monkeys, which are normal and healthy, are made up of a mixture of cells representing as many as six distinct individuals.

"The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs," said co-author Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, US.

09.03.2013. 14:54



Special Interest Important stuff
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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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