Sep 25 2013 - News Sep 2013 - News - Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Wednesday September 25, 2013

News Articles

Truthdigger of the Week: Greg Palast
TruthDigger | Alexander Reed Kelly | 09/22/13

... Summers is undeniably right. More direction from the man whose performance in Clinton's Treasury department helped create the 2008 economic crisis and the ongoing horrors that followed runs directly against the interests of all Americans, including those in the ruling and owning class. But I and many others were looking forward to a hearing to confirm Summers. Why? Because as the Indian news service Niti Central may have been the first to point out, Summers could have been asked to publicly explain the meaning of a secret 1997 Treasury memo (viewable here) reminding him to pick up a phone and reassure the most powerful CEOs in the world that plans to tear apart laws protecting the economies of 156 nations from predatory bankers were going ahead as scheduled. ... Read more

Larry Summers and the 'End-Game' Memo

The year was 1997. US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks. That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks. It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game: "derivatives trading." JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as "assets."

AIG CEO Compares Anger At Wall Street Bonuses To The Lynching Of Black People In The South
ZeroHedge | Michael Krieger | 09/24/13

The uproar over bonuses was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that--sort of like what we did in the Deep South. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.

- AIG CEO Robert Benmosche in a Wall Street Journal Interview this past weekend

Over 360,000 Gun Deaths Since 9/11 -- From the Outside It Looks Like America Is a Country Gripped by Civil War
AlterNet | Henry Porter | 09/24/13

... The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path (it is 40% lower than in 1980). If this perennial slaughter doesn't qualify for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does. ...

... That's America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks -- last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard -- and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis -- a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families -- the maiming and killing of children -- just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe. ... Read more

The government is watching you

Phones

91% of adults in the U.S. have cell phones, most of which are smartphones.
In 2011, the government made 1.3 million requests for subscriber phone data.
The FISA court has rejected just 11 out of 33,900 government applications for surveillance.

Email

The government can access your email with either a warrant or subpoena depending on how old messages are.
Google granted about 90% of government requests for user data in 2012.
Microsoft granted about 65% of government requests.

Internet

Government agencies can gain access to online behavior through warrants, subpoena, court order.
Even a deleted Facebook account remains in backup logs for up to 90 days.
Most search engines use cookies to keep user data for 180 days.

IRS

Total number of individual tax returns for fiscal year 2012: 146 million.
Total number examined or audited: 1.5 million (1%).

Credit Cards

In 2009, there were 21.6 billion credit card transactions.
The government can monitor when and where a credit card was used and how much was charged.

Cameras

30 million surveillance cameras are watching Americans.
There are 4,000 cameras in part of Lower Manhattan alone.
Cameras on toll roads and at intersections record car data that can be shared with insurance companies.

Drones

The FAA expects 30,000 drones to patrol U.S. skies within 20 years.
81 agencies have been approved to use drones in the U.S.
The FBI has acknowledged that the bureau used aerial drones for surveillance in the United States.

Travel

742,713 people traveled by plane in the U.S. during 2012.
TSA shares information with 6 airlines to make expedited pre-screening of passengers available.
The TSA keeps information on frequent travelers for up to two years as part of the Known Travelers list.

The Shadow Commander
NewYorker | Dexter Filkins | 09/30/13

Qassem Suleimani is the Iranian operative who has been reshaping the Middle East. Now he's directing Assad's war in Syria.

Last February, some of Iran's most influential leaders gathered at the Amir al-Momenin Mosque, in northeast Tehran, inside a gated community reserved for officers of the Revolutionary Guard. They had come to pay their last respects to a fallen comrade. Hassan Shateri, a veteran of Iran's covert wars throughout the Middle East and South Asia, was a senior commander in a powerful, Ã©lite branch of the Revolutionary Guard called the Quds Force. The force is the sharp instrument of Iranian foreign policy, roughly analogous to a combined C.I.A. and Special Forces; its name comes from the Persian word for Jerusalem, which its fighters have promised to liberate. Since 1979, its goal has been to subvert Iran's enemies and extend the country's influence across the Middle East. Shateri had spent much of his career abroad, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, where the Quds Force helped Shiite militias kill American soldiers. ... Read more

DemocracyNow Daily News

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, September 25 [14:25]

DN | Obama and Rouhani Welcome New Talks, Offering Hope to US, Iranians relations (09/25/13) [18:51]

*DN | Jeremy Scahill: Al-Shabab's Nairobi Mall Rampage Tied to "Disastrous" U.S. Meddling in Somalia (09/25/13) [17:04]

Disaster Capitalism

*Author Lewis Says Wall Street Is `Making America Worse' (03/16/10) [42:18]

Michael Lewis, author of "Liars' Poker," talks with Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker about the subprime mortgage crisis and his new book "The Big Short." The book is a chronicle of four sets of players in the subprime mortgage market who had the foresight and gumption to short the riskiest mortgage deals: Steve Eisman of FrontPoint, Greg Lippmann at Deutsche Bank, three partners at Cornwall Capital, and Michael Burry of Scion Capital. (Source Bloomberg)

The Iron Triangle - The Carlyle Group Exposed (2009) [46:43]

Guess who George H W Bush was meeting with the morning of 9/11 in Washington? The Carlyle Group and Osama bin Laden's brother.

*The Biggest Bank Heist Ever! (shorter version of Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job") [49:43]

The award winning documentary 'Inside Job' [2011 | US] by the veteran crusader, Charles Ferguson is the most insightful and illuminating amongst a number of such attempts that deal with the global financial crisis, which is wrecking lives and economies across the world to this day.

The reason is that it successfully challenges the myths and lies surrounding the root causes of the crisis and tells us exactly how and why it happened, in a simple and straightforward way that anyone can understand.

Inside Job (full movie) [1:48:39]

TRNN News | Islamophobia in America

TRNN | Simran Jeet Singh: Columbia Professor Latest Sikh Hate Crime Victim (09/24/13) [11:54]

Diane Rehms Show

The US And Iran At The UN (09/25/13) [1hr]

MSNBC Chris Hayes - All In

*Chris Hayes | Ted Cruz: Munich on the Potomac: Cruz's 'filibuster' (09/24/13) [14:26]

Chris Hayes | The US, Iran, and a historic opportunity (09/24/13) [7:09]

*Chris Hayes | Climate denial 2.0 (09/24/13) [8:04], Part 2 [4:37]

MSNBC Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow | Cruz a spectacle with faux filibuster (09/24/13) [18:07]

Rachel Maddow | Common sense UN gun treaty not liked by the NRA (09/24/13) [4:44]

*Rachel Maddow | Leaker, Navy Yard gunman cleared by same firm (09/24/13) [14:51]

So who is the REAL terrorist??

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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.

Secret Missions of the X-37B [11:07]

09.25.2013. 12:30

NPR

PBS

Special Interest Important stuff

GOOD Shorts Videos

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GOOD Short Videos

Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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Newer Documentaries

Documentaries You've Never Seen

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

Good YouTube Documentaries

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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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Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

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