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Thursday December 12, 2013
News Articles

RBS Wins 'Dumbest Bank of the Year' Award
Bloomberg | Jonathan Weil | 12/11/13

... According to a consent order released today by the New York State Department of Financial Services, RBS provided employees at its payment-processing centers in the U.K. with written instructions, containing "a step by step guide on how to create and route U.S. dollar payment messages involving sanctioned entities through the United States to avoid detection." The instructions included:

"IMPORTANT: FOR ALL US DOLLAR PAYMENTS TO A COUNTRY SUBJECT TO US SANCTIONS, A PAYMENT MESSAGE CANNOT CONTAIN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: 1. The sanctioned country name. 2. Any name designated on the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) restricted list, which can encompass a bank name, remitter or beneficiary."

In other words, RBS explicitly told employees how to cover the bank's tracks. The consent order said the bank conducted $523 million of transactions from 2002 to 2011 through New York correspondent banks involving Sudanese and Iranian customers. It also said that RBS, to a lesser extent, processed U.S. dollar transactions for clients in Cuba, Burma and Libya. ... Read more

This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense
HP | Linda Tirado | 11/22/13

This is an article/blog by a person who is poor and is trying to express to the rest of us why she feels she is poor regardless of her everyday decisions.

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of. ... Read more

Teen Avoids Prison Because He's Wealthy
HP | author | date

Ethan Couch Sentenced To Probation In Crash That Killed 4 After Defense Argued He Had 'Affluenza'

A 16-year-old avoided spending time in prison for killing four people in a car accident in June after the judge bought his lawyers' argument that he was the victim of wealth.

CBSDFW reports that Ethan Couch was sentenced to 10 years probation for the drunk driving crash that ended the lives of youth pastor, Brian Jennings; Hollie and Shelby Boyles; and Breanna Mitchell.   Prosecutors asked that Couch serve 20 years in prison. His blood alcohol level was .24, three times the legal limit for an adult.

Psychologist G. Dick Miller testified for the defense that Couch suffered from "affluenza," a condition in which "his family felt that wealth bought privilege and there was no rational link between behavior and consequences," ... Read more

Click to zoom

Want to Cut Government Spending? Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 11/25/13

If you thought the botched rollout of Obamacare, the government shutdown, or the sequester represented Washington dysfunction at its worst, wait until you hear about the taxpayer waste at the Defense Department.

Special Enterprise Reporter Scot Paltrow unearthed the "high cost of the Pentagon's bad bookkeeping" in a Reuters investigation. It amounts to $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for. The year 1996 was the first that the Pentagon should have been audited under a law requiring audits of all government departments. Oh, and by the way, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with this law. ... Read more
*Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
TYT | Shocking Government Waste at The Defense Department (11/30/13) [7:11]

Budget Deal Doesn't Cut Enough from Defense: Joseph Cirincione
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 12/12/13

If all goes according to the plan conceived by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), the co-chairs of the bipartisan budget conference committee, Congress will approve their budget deal and the government won't shut down again like it did for 16 days in October.

"I agree with what Chuck Hagel said before he became defense secretary, which is that there's plenty of room to cut," says Cirincione. "We've doubled the defense budget since 9/11 and a lot of that was to fight wars that we're now ending. There's plenty of room to shrink the military without cutting away any of the muscle."

"Even if we don't agree to eliminate nuclear weapons, it's hard to imagine why we need 50 of them or 500 of them. We have 5,000 in our arsenal.....Why do we need so many around still around particularly for the cost that they're incurring for the military, for the economy."

"We're spending $55 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs...but the really bad news is that that number is about to explode," Cirincione tells The Daily Ticker.   He explains that the U.S. will be deciding over the over the next two or three years whether to replace its existing nuclear triad of missiles, bombers and submarines, which is estimated to cost $1 trillion over the next 40 years. ... Read more
*Budget Deal Doesn't Cut Enough from Defense: Joseph Cirincione (12/12/13) [4:40]



DemocracyNow Daily News
Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, December 12 [15:39]
DN | The Anti-Apartheid Underground: Ronnie Kasrils on Meeting Mandela in an ANC Safehouse in 1962 (12/12/13) [16:18], Part 2 [8:10]
Fox News
Do we really need to debate the color of Santa Claus on National TV? Does this discussion really make the Fox staff look any smarter? Who even watches Fox?
TRNN | Fox Kelly Panel over Black Santa: Can't Take Fact to Fit Political Agenda (12/11/13) [3:05]
TRNN News
*TRNN | Phyllis Bennis: Syria's Six Wars and Humanitarian Catastrophe, Part3 (12/12/13) [15:49]
TYT News
TYT | Pope Francis Bests Snowden For Time Magazine's Top Honor (12/11/13) [8:59]
TYT | Here's Why Wall Street Regulations Are A Joke (12/11/13) [7:04]
TYT | Bipartisan Budget Deal Leaves GOP Complaining But... (12/11/13) [7:50]
Wealth and Income Inequality in America
*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]
*Wealth Inequality in the World [3:51]
Robert Reich | Inequality For All (trailer) [1:47]
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers | Robert Reich: Inequality For All [56:46]
DN | Inequality for All: Robert Reich Warns Record Income Gap Is Undermining Our Democracy [11:21], Part 2 [22:56], Part 3 [8:00]
Inequality For All website
"Inequality for all" clips
"Inequality for all" clips [11:40]
"Inequality for all" clips 2 [14:22]
More News
"The 9/11 Plot Was Hatched In Germany!" Bill Maher [7:03]
The Five Worst Weapons Still in Use [7:16]
Hamas rockets vs Israel's Iron Dome [4:20]
Diane Rehms Show
Diane Rehm Unrest In Ukraine (12/12/13) [1hr]
It appears Ukranian president Viktor Yanukovich may have had a change of heart. He has reportedly told the European Union's foreign policy chief he "intends to sign" a trade deal with the E.U. that he rejected just last month. The news comes after the U.S. says it was disgusted by government crackdowns on protesters in Kiev and that it is considering sanctions against the former Soviet republic. Ukraine is heading for default in early 2014 without financial assistance. And an agreement with the West could bring in fresh investment with E.U. nations. But Yanukovich also faces pressure from Russia, which controls the flow of cheap natural gas into the republic. Guest host, Susan Page and her guests discuss unrest in Ukraine.
Nuclear Bombs expoded
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 (hint 2053) - by Isao Hashimoto [14:25]
The above video starts out slow, but keeps building as more countries get into the act. Note: you can use the progress bar to move back and forth inside the video.
Jon Stewart - Daily Show
*Jon Stewart | Reza Aslan: "Zealot" author Reza Aslan reveals his secret plan to destroy Christianity and sizes up the nuclear deal between the United States and Iran (12/11/13) [6:55], Part 2 [6:56]
Stephen Colbert
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.

12.12.2013. 11:12



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

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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

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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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I am one of those "once" middle class, over 60, over educated, under-employed, semi retired, soon to be poor workers, that everyone is talking about. 
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