Home · News · News Sep 2017 · Sep 18 2017
Monday September 18, 2017

Twitter Man vs. Rocket Man
Politico | Susan B. Glasser | 09/18/17

What the heck is happening with North Korea? I asked two people who actually know, and they are as scared of Trump as of Kim Jong Un.

Back in July, President Donald Trump was already escalating his rhetoric against North Korea as it became clear the rogue state was on the brink of a major breakthrough in its nuclear program, development of a ballistic missile capable of striking the continental United States. Still, he insisted, “I don’t draw red lines,” and wouldn’t be sucked into doing so.

But that was before North Korea conducted its largest nuclear weapon test ever and sent missiles flying directly over Japan. And before Trump threatened “fire and fury” and declared a North Korean bomb capable of reaching the United States “unacceptable.” And before Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser, warned on Friday that, all talk to the contrary, “there is a military option.”

All of which means that, whether he calls it one or not, Trump now has a red line – a move that a number of U.S. national security hands I’ve spoken with recently consider to be a serious and even “self-inflicted” escalation of what has become a genuine crisis with North Korea. ... Read more

“A single point of failure in the U.S. government-collateralized repo market, which is huge and is essentially the liquidity engine for the country, is a little bit unnerving just in itself,” said Adam Dean, managing director at Square 1 Asset Management. “It’s not an ideal situation.”

Wall Street’s Trillion-Dollar Monopoly Has Repo Traders on Edge
Bloomberg | Liz McCormick | 09/17/17

Come mid-2018, just one entity -- the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. -- will be responsible for ensuring almost two trillion dollars of securities financed by so-called repurchase agreements are cleared and settled each and every day. With its lone longtime rival, JPMorgan Chase & Co., exiting the business, BNY Mellon began the process of moving over clients this summer.

... It’s hard to overstate how important the repo market is to modern American finance. The short-term loans, which dealers usually get by putting up U.S. government debt as collateral, serve a crucial role in day-to-day trading on Wall Street. Not only do repos support liquidity in the $14.1 trillion Treasury market, but the financing they provide also helps grease the wheels of trading in assets as varied as stocks, corporate bonds and currencies. ... Read more

Trump Leaves CNN Panel Dumbfounded with a Tweet that Shows Him Hitting Hillary Clinton with a Golfball
AlterNet | David Edwards / Raw Story | 09/17/17

Pundits on CNN were caught speechless on Sunday after President Donald Trump retweeted a video of him hitting Hillary Clinton with a golfball.

“The president of the United States retweeted that this morning,” CNN host John King noted. “Why?” “He’s a disrupter,” New York Times reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis explained. “He has these impulses, he enjoys engaging on social media. You hear him talking about that, that is so important to his identity. People want to hear from him.” ... Read more
John King: Trump tweet of him hitting Hillary with golfball is 'insane' | RawStory | 09/17/17 | 5:02

The Storm after the Storm
60Minutes | author | 09/03/16

FEMA administrator Brock Long has warned the recovery will be a "slow and frustrating process." Assessing the property loss and repairing or replacing homes and businesses will take years. And it will cost tens of billions of dollars in insurance settlements. The victims are relying on it.

But, as we first reported some two and a half years after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of the East Coast, Sandy's victims were hit by another disaster -- we called it "the storm after the storm."

Many people said they were cheated out of their insurance claims. Thousands of claims remained unresolved for years, and there was evidence that many homeowners were victims of apparent wide-scale fraud -- where original damage reports were later changed to make it look like the damage wasn't as bad. ... Read more

As Hurricane Harvey survivors face a difficult future, 60 Minutes looks back at Hurricane Sandy and why so many families didn't get the help they deserve | 60Minutes | 09/03/17 | 13:23
Note: You might have to click 4 times on the vertical scrollbar and 1 click on the horizonatal scrollbar to center the video.
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, September 18 [13:38]
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, September 18 (FULL) | 59:02
Note: on the full 59:02 video look for small white (or black) circles on the Progressbar they denote the different news stories. You can move the pointer on the Progressbar to jump to each story, and around the video.
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  1. Headlines
  2. Naomi Klein Warns Europe May Water Down Paris Accord to Win Support from Trump
  3. Naomi Klein: We Are Seeing the Shock Doctrine in Effect After Hurricanes Harvey & Irma
  4. No Is Not Enough: Naomi Klein on Bernie's Medicare-for-All Bill & Future of Democratic Party
The1a.org
Propaganda In Your Politics | 1a.org | 09/18/17 | 1hr
Americans are free to believe anything they want -- even what’s reported on a cable news channel funded by the Kremlin. The U.S. federal government considers Russia Today (RT) propaganda and wants it to register as a foreign agent.

But RT says there’s no difference between it and the BBC in the UK, and that many of the stories they report -- like the Seth Rich murder conspiracy -- also receive coverage on Fox News.

How is Russia influencing what we know? And will we see more propaganda popping up on-air and online soon?
The Vietnam War by Ken Burns with Lynn Novick, 18 hours of the miniseries (which are spread across 10 parts)

The brilliant, infuriating, boring, hypnotic Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War
Vox | Todd VanDerWerff | 09/08/17

... The Vietnam War, the filmmaker’s latest, which he co-directed with Lynn Novick, reflects the present in ways that can be uncomfortable. It’s about an unpopular president — actually, two unpopular presidents — who stews about unfair treatment from the press and protesters. It’s about a country that seems on the brink of fracturing over very different ideals of what that country should be. And it’s about the rise of a movement that believes “law and order” is more important than any other fundamental right. ... Read more
Episode 01 | Déjà Vu (1858-1961) - After a century of French occupation, Vietnam emerges independent but divided. | PBS | 09/18/17 | 1:25:46 |

After a long and brutal war, Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end nearly a century of French colonial occupation. With the Cold War intensifying, Vietnam is divided in two at Geneva. Communists in the north aim to reunify the country, while America supports Ngo Dinh Diem’s untested regime in the south.
Episode 02 | Riding the Tiger (1961-63) - President Kennedy inspires idealistic young Americans to serve their country and wrestles with how deeply to get involved in South Vietnam. As the increasingly autocratic Diem regime faces a growing communist insurgency and widespread Buddhist protests, a grave political crisis unfolds.
The Vietnam War debuts Sunday, September 17 at 8 pm Eastern on PBS in most markets. You should, as is always the case with PBS, check your local listings. Further episodes will air through Thursday, September 28, taking Friday, September 22 and Saturday, September 23 off. The first five episodes will be available to stream on PBS’s website on Sunday, September 17, and the last five episodes will be available Sunday, September 24.
The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick website
New York Times Uncovers Russia's 21st Century Propaganda Machine | MSNBC Morning Joe | 09/18/17 | 7:58
'This is wrong': Trump retweets golf ball animation | MSNBC Morning Joe | 09/18/17 | 9:31
Reporter: Find Me An Enthusiastic Rex Tillerson Advocate In White House | MSNBC Morning Joe | 09/18/17 | 4:40
A 'Controversial Option' That May Work In North Korea? | MSNBC Morning Joe | 09/18/17 | 8:01
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
Life After Hate | Samantha Bee | 09/13/17 | 7:02

09.18.2017. 12:09



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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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