Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Oliver Stone Dives into the "Horrible Experience" of Making Snowden
VanityFair | Yohana Desta | 08/30/16

If you want to make a movie about one of the most famous whistle-blowers of all time, just know it's not going to be easy. Just ask Oliver Stone, director of Snowden--the upcoming biopic about N.S.A. whistle-blower Edward Snowden, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Assembling the production was a gargantuan task from start to finish, meticulously covered in a new report from The New York Times.

The director jumped through innumerable hoops to get the movie made; it included an extra layer of difficulty because he wanted the actual Snowden to appear in the film. Stone managed this particular feat by meeting with Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden's lawyer in Russia--who had also, curiously, written a novel based on his client's life, titled Time of the Octopus. Stone bought the rights to the book for a reported $1 million in exchange for regular access to the whistle-blower. ... Read more
Snowden by Oliver Stone (trailer) (04/27/16) [2:38]

Senator Dick Durbin Skewers GOP's Irrational Fear Of Refugees
HP | Michael McAuliff | 09/14/16

"For the record, 800,000 refugees have been accepted in the United States since 9/11," Durbin said. "Not one has been engaged in domestic terrorism. All right?"

The senator appeared to be overlooking a handful of cases that could be tied to terrorism, but his larger point still stands: The number of refugees linked to terror activities in the United States is minuscule, according to an extensive analysis by the Cato Institute that found 20 examples of refugees linked to terrorism out of more than 3.2 million refugees admitted since 1975.

Durbin said Republicans would be much better off focusing on the nation's massive flow of visitors who receive no background checks.

"We have 20 million visa waiver visitors to the United States each year," he said. "If you want to talk about security and foreigners in this country, for goodness sakes, if we did a fingerprint, biometric investigation or evidence accumulation before they got on board the plane, [it's] not too much to ask, and it would make us safer." ... Read more

The Average American Consumes a Shocking Amount of Raw Materials
AlterNet | Mary Hoff / Ensia | 09/14/16

How much raw material does it take to support you? If you're an average African, about 3 metric tons (3.3 tons) -- the equivalent of an elephant's worth of biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and nonmetallic minerals -- per year. But if you're an average North American, make that a whopping eight elephants. ...

... The report reveals some startling patterns in the use of materials around the world. Total materials use tripled between 1970 and 2010, from 22 billion metric tons (24 billion tons) to more than 70 billion metric tons (77 billion tons). Even more unsettling, per capita materials use grew from 7 metric tons (7.7 tons) to 10 (11) in 2010. And overall material efficiency -- the amount of raw material needed per unit of GDP -- has actually decreased worldwide since 2000. ... Read more

Apple Says Initial Quantities Of iPhone 7 Plus Sold Out Globally
HP & Reuters | author | 09/15/16

... Supplies of the larger size of Apple's new phone have been exhausted in all shades, and the smaller iPhone 7 has also sold out in the new jet black color, the company said.

Customers who enter Apple Stores Friday, when the gadgets hit shelves, will not be able to purchase the sold-out phones on site, but they can continue to place orders for their desired models online, Apple said. ... Read more