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Wednesday November 12, 2014
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*Demonocracyinfo | US Debt in Physical $100 bills [2:10]
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Wednesday November 12, 2014
News Articles

Greed, Power, and Endless War -- James Risen Tears the Lid off America's Dirty Wars
AlterNet | James Risen | 10/31/14

Throughout the war on terror, greed and power have flourished just as readily back home in the United States, where the government's surging counterterrorism spending created a new national security gold rush. The post-9/11 panic led Congress to throw cash at the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon faster than they were able to spend it. Soon, a counterterrorism bubble, like a financial bubble, grew in Washington, and a new breed of entrepreneur learned that one of the surest and easiest paths to riches could be found not in Silicon Valley building computers or New York designing clothes ...

... Montgomery was the maestro behind what many current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the case now believe was one of the most elaborate and dangerous hoaxes in American history, a ruse that was so successful that it nearly convinced the Bush administration to order fighter jets to start shooting down commercial airliners filled with passengers over the Atlantic. Once it was over, once the fever broke and government officials realized that they had been taken in by a grand illusion, they did absolutely nothing about it. The Central Intelligence Agency buried the whole insane episode and acted like it had never happened. The Pentagon just kept working with Montgomery. Justice Department lawyers fanned out across the country to try to block any information about Montgomery and his schemes from becoming public, invoking the state secrets privilege in a series of civil lawsuits involving Montgomery. ...

... Montgomery's story demonstrates how hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the war on terror went to waste. With all rules discarded and no one watching the bottom line, government officials simply threw money at contractors who claimed to offer an edge against the new enemies. And the officials almost never checked back to make sure that what they were buying from contractors actually did any good--or that the contractors themselves weren't crooks. A 2011 study by the Pentagon found that during the ten years after 9/11, the Defense Department had given more than $400 billion to contractors who had previously been sanctioned in cases involving $1 million or more in fraud. ... Read more

Caught Rigging FX and Gold? Your Punishment Will Be A Bonus Capped At Just 200% Of Your Base Salary.

Bank of England Fires Chief FX Dealer Participating In Currency-Rigging Scandal
ZeroHedge | author | 11/12/14

Early in 2014, when the FX rigging scandal was still news, one of the most disturbing developments to emerge was that none other than the venerable Bank of England itself had been engaged in collusion with various manipulating parties, explicitly those participating in "The Bandits Club", "Cartel" and other chatrooms, as described in "Bank Of England Encouraged Currency Manipulation By Banks." As Bloomberg reported at the time ...

... Today, as widely reported previously, 5 banks settled with regulators such as US CFTC, UK's CFA and Swiss Sifma, for a total amount of $3.3 billion ($1.4 billion to the CFTC, $1.75 billion to the CFA). The banks were:

  1. HSBC Holdings PLC
  2. Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC
  3. UBS AG
  4. Citigroup Inc.
  5. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Hilariously, as a result of "cooperating" the 5 banks received a 30% discount on their British settlement. Because when it comes to admitting one's crime there is apparently a pre-Thanksgiving blue light special.

Oddly enough, none of the other usual suspect banks, such as Goldman, Credit Suisse or Deutsche, all of whom also fired legacy FX traders and dealers, were once again completely forgotten, because clearly one can't disturb the two banks that pull the strings in the US, Goldman, and in Europe, Deutsche. ... Read more

Crime Pays: How An FX Rigger Made "Most Peoples Year" In One Trade
Rarely are we speechless, but this occasion, when UBS made $513,000 from just one fix, as the FCA's complaint against the criminal Swiss bank reveals, is the rare exception.

Russia To Have SWIFT Alternative By May
ZeroHedge | author | 11/12/14

As the West (US and its pressured allies) attempt to 'isolate' Russia more and more, the inevitable cornering further and further incentivizes Putin to develop alternatives to the status quo. In the past, western sanctioners have sabre-rattled cutting off Russian from SWIFT - the international inter-bank payment system - as a next step in squeezing the oligarchs into submission (though 'independent' SWIFT distanced itself from those calls). Now however, as RT reports, Russia intends to have its own international inter-bank system up and running by May 2015. The Central of Russia says it needs to speed up preparations for its version of SWIFT in case of possible "challenges" from the West. If successful, this would pose a further challenge to the USD's reign as sanction blowback reverberates once again. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Wednesday, November 12 [7:14]
*DN | Obama Reaches Climate Deal with China -- and GOP Congress May Not Be Able to Stop It (11/12/14) [7:45]
*DN | Why We Lost: Retired U.S. General Calls for Public Inquiry into Failures of Iraq, Afghan Wars (11/12/14) [14:39]
Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, a three-star U.S. general who helped command troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, joins us to discuss his new book, "Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars." Bolger writes: "I am a United States Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism. It's like Alcoholics Anonymous; step one is admitting you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. So do my peers. And thanks to our problem, now all of America has a problem, to wit: two lost campaigns and a war gone awry." Bolger is now calling for a public inquiry along the lines of the 9/11 Commission to look into why the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone so poorly.
The Fed (The Federal Reserve) Won: America's 0.1% Are Now Wealthier Than The Bottom 90%.
U.S. Wages Stagnate, Despite Doubled Worker Productivity(.pdf)
U.S. wages barely increased in real terms since 1974, the year before Fast Track was first enacted, even as American worker productivity doubled. In 1974, the average hourly wage for American workers in today's dollars was $18.46, while in 2012 it was up only 7 percent to $19.76. Over the same period, U.S. workers' productivity more than doubled.
*DN | Obama Calls for Net Neutrality, But His Own Industry-Tied FCC Appointee Could Stand in the Way (11/12/14) [13:18]
*TRNN | Capitalism's Stunning Contradiction (11/12/14) [14:11]
Economist Richard Wolff says every capitalist tries to systematically reduce wages and then can't sell what wage workers have produced.
*TRNN | Policy Research Economist David Rosnick: Household Wealth has considerably fallen to 1988 levels for a Majority of households (11/12/14) [9:55]
A new report from the Center for Economic Policy Research by David Rosnick and Dean Baker shows that most households now have net less wealth than they did in 1989. The report, titled The Wealth of Households: An Analysis of the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances, shows little or no gain for the majority of Americans over the last 25 years.
The Wealth of Households: An Analysis of the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances.pdf
TRNN | On the Verge of a Historic Nuclear Energy Deal with Iran? (11/12/14) [9:39]
Unknown contents of President Obama's letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran under scrutiny by Republicans and the blogosphere as a historic deal nears, says Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council.
Here Comes the Sun: America's Solar Boom, in Charts
Click to zoom - for Images
TYT | Marijuana Use Shrinks The Brain, Study Shows (11/11/14) [4:37]
TYT | Ukraine Takes A Bad Turn, Ceasefire Threatened (11/11/14) [6:57]
TYT | Filibuster Abuse Set For A Big Comeback Under GOP Rule (11/11/14) [6:31]

11.12.2014. 11:49



Special Interest Important stuff
GOOD Shorts Videos

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Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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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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