Sunday, March 31, 2013

Brick TeeVee's Easter Special!


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Easter Special All the so-called Sunday "news" shows will have their so-called "experts" on "faith" and the Easter Bunny to assuage the masses that still tune in to their tripe. Who tunes in? For example AlterNet's Joshua Holland asks Are Americans Too Stupid For Democracy? .....Widespread ignorance of objective reality poses a genuine threat to democracy. The people of the United States have ignorance in abundance. The way representative democracy is supposed to work is pretty simple: you protect the fundamental rights of the minority (so it doesn't become two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner), and then the majority of citizens, acting in their own rational self-interest, elect representatives who will pursue the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens. That's the theory, but “rational” is a key word in that formulation. What happens when lots of citizens don't have a solid grasp of what's going on in the real world? Consider some examples that are especially relevant to our current political scene....... Go read all of this! Then Mark Morford answers in Human Stupidity Is Destroying the World at the San Francisco Chronicle via AlterNet Six percent of Americans believe in unicorns. Thirty-six percent believe in UFOs. A whopping 24 percent believe dinosaurs and man hung out together. Eighteen percent still believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Nearly 30 percent believe cloud computing involves… actual clouds. A shockingly sad 18 percent, to this very day, believe the president is a Muslim. Aren’t they cute? And Floridian? Do you believe in angels? Forty-five percent of Americans do. In fact, roughly 48 percent – Republicans and Democrats alike – believe in some form of creationism. A hilariously large percent of terrified right-wingers are convinced Obama is soon going to take away all their guns, so when the Newtown shooting happened and 20 young children were massacred due to America’s fetish for, obsession with and addiction to firearms, violence and fear, they bought more bullets. Because obviously. In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption. Perhaps beyond caring about anything they have to say in the public sphere ever again. Sorry, Kansas. ....... It is this bizarre, circular, catch-22 kind of question, asked almost exclusively by intellectual liberals because intellectual conservatives don’t actually exist, given how higher education leads to more developed critical thinking (you already know the vast majority of university professors and scientists identify as Democrat/progressive, right?) which leads straight to a more nimble, open-minded perspective. In short: The smarter you are, the less rigid/more liberal you become. Until you get old. Or rich. And scared. And you forget. And you clamp down, seize up, fossilize. And the GOP grabs you like a mold...... Read on for the exciting conclusion! When you get to the end Morford directs us to an Article at The Atlantic We're Screwed: 11,000 Years' Worth of Climate Data Prove It ...But the key, said lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University, is that temperatures are shooting through the roof faster than we've ever seen. "What we found is that temperatures increased in the last hundred years as much as they had cooled in the last six or seven thousand," he said. "In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we've seen in the whole Holocene," referring to the current geologic time period, which began around 11,500 years ago..... Justin Elliot at ProPublica has some great research on Obomber's pick for new energy secretary Ernest Moniz Drilling Deeper: The Wealth of Business Connections for Obama’s Energy Pick When President Obama nominated Ernest Moniz to be energy secretary earlier this month, he hailed the nuclear physicist as a “brilliant scientist” who, among his many talents, had effectively brought together “prominent thinkers and energy companies” in the continuing effort to figure out a safe and economically sound energy future for the country. ...... But beyond his job in academia, Moniz has also spent the last decade serving on a range of boards and advisory councils for energy industry heavyweights, including some that do business with the Department of Energy. That includes a six-year paid stint on BP’s Technology Advisory Council as well as similar positions at a uranium enrichment company and a pair of energy investment firms. Such industry ties aren’t uncommon for cabinet nominees, and Obama specifically praised Moniz for understanding both environmental and economic issues. Still, Moniz’s work for energy companies since he served in President Clinton’s Energy Department has irked some environmentalists “His connections to the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries threaten to undermine the focus we need to see on renewables and energy efficiency,” said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. ...... Reaction to Moniz’s nomination has been mixed among environmental groups, ranging from support (Natural Resources Defense Council) to concerned acceptance (Sierra Club) to outright opposition (Food and Water Watch). What criticism there has been has focused on his support for nuclear power and for natural gas extracted through fracking as a “bridge fuel” to transition away from coal. Here’s what we know about Moniz’s recent involvement with the energy industry: ..... Read on for more shocking info on Moniz and watch Justin Elliot on Democracy Now! below! NEXT at AlterNet Marshall Auerback asks about the Cyprus Fallout: Is Your Money Safer in a Mattress? .... Regardless of the ultimate form this bailout takes, it is increasingly hard to view Cyprus as a “one-off,” which has no implications for us here in the US. What Cyprus has demonstrated is that even with deposit insurance, your deposits are not in fact a risk-free guaranteed asset, but actually simply another branch in the creditor tree in relation to your bank if it fails. That was made abundantly clear by no less than the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bankers’ bank back in the heart of the financial crisis. The BIS noted that bank failures had become increasingly expensive for governments and taxpayers and therefore recommended an “Open Bank Resolution,” which would ensure that, as far as possible , “any future losses are ultimately borne by the bank’s shareholders and creditors." (See primer on the Open Market Resolution concept by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.) Why does this matter? Because, you, as a depositor are legally considered a “creditor” of your bank, not simply a customer who may have entrusted your entire life savings with the very same institution. ...... So in an ideal world, how should we do proper financial reform and prevent the recurrence of another Cyprus? In the first instance, the banks: [bullet points] .... Given the importance of financial needs in order for the economic process to start, financial institutions are essential components of the system at all stages of the economic process in order for the economy to grow properly. But the paradox is that for a proper functioning free market economy, the banks have to be tightly regulated. Otherwise, an unshackled financial sector will engender instability, in particular, by promoting the position-making desk (i.e. traders) and reducing the role of the loan-officer desk. Absent regulation which severely curtails the dangerous practices of financial institutions systemic instability will be an ongoing problem, and our deposits may well be safer hidden in our collective mattresses. Simply trying to respond to each financial crisis by layering on an increasingly complex set of new regulations doesn’t work (as Dodd-Frank is already demonstrating). Indeed, many rapidly become obsolete, because they are insufficiently flexible enough to deal with financial innovations. Innovations are usually used by financial institution to bypass existing rules so unless innovations can be accounted for as they appear, regulations will not work properly to prevent the growth of financial fragility induced by the growth of leverage and/or the decline in the quality of leverage. The end result of the latter is an ever more complex banking system, constantly prone to financial disasters and, ultimately, threats to your very deposits. ...... For more we go to Web of Debt's Ellen Brown who explains how It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors ..... Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills. The 15-page FDIC-BOE document is called “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” It begins by explaining that the 2008 banking crisis has made it clear that some other way besides taxpayer bailouts is needed to maintain “financial stability.” Evidently anticipating that the next financial collapse will be on a grander scale than either the taxpayers or Congress is willing to underwrite, the authors state:
    An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company [meaning the depositors] into equity [or stock]. In the U.S., the new equity would become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities. In the U.K., the same approach could be used, or the equity could be used to recapitalize the failing financial company itself—thus, the highest layer of surviving bailed-in creditors would become the owners of the resolved firm. In either country, the new equity holders would take on the corresponding risk of being shareholders in a financial institution.
No exception is indicated for “insured deposits” in the U.S., meaning those under $250,000, the deposits we thought were protected by FDIC insurance. This can hardly be an oversight, since it is the FDIC that is issuing the directive. ..... If our IOUs are converted to bank stock, they will no longer be subject to insurance protection but will be “at risk” and vulnerable to being wiped out, just as the Lehman Brothers shareholders were in 2008. .......... An FDIC confiscation of deposits to recapitalize the banks is far different from a simple tax on taxpayers to pay government expenses. The government’s debt is at least arguably the people’s debt, since the government is there to provide services for the people. But when the banks get into trouble with their derivative schemes, they are not serving depositors, who are not getting a cut of the profits. Taking depositor funds is simply theft.....
Go read the rest of this! Then go to the Move Your Money Project "a nonprofit campaign that encourages individuals and institutions to divest from the nation's largest Wall Street banks and move to local financial institutions" before next inevitable crash!
LIBRUL MEDIA BIAS? Dean Baker writes at truth-out.org Senate Unanimously Votes Against Cuts to Social Security: Media Don’t Notice There are few areas where the corruption of the national media is more apparent than in its treatment of Social Security. Most of the elite media have made it clear in both their opinion and news pages that they want to see benefits cut. In keeping with this position they highlight the views of political figures who push cuts to the program, treating them as responsible, while those who oppose cuts are ignored or mocked. This pattern of coverage was clearly on display last weekend. Both the New York Times and Washington Post decided to ignore the Senate's passage by voice vote of the Sanders Amendment. This was an amendment to the budget put forward by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders that puts the Senate on record as opposing the switch to the chained CPI as the basis for the annual Social Security cost of living adjustment (COLA). ....... It is also worth noting, in contrast to the claims of the pretentious elites, there is no, as in zero, nada, none, basis for the claim that the chained CPI would give a more accurate measure of the rate of inflation experienced by seniors. Research by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that the rate of inflation seen by seniors is actually higher than the CPI that provides the basis for the current COLA. While this research is far from conclusive, the answer for those interested in accuracy would be to have the BLS construct a full CPI for seniors. But the Washington elites don't give a damn about accuracy, which is why not one of them has called for a full elderly CPI. The elite want cuts to Social Security; accuracy is just something they talk about to children and reporters for major media outlets. This is why the vote on the Sanders amendment should have been newsworthy. Here was an opportunity for all the senators who have explicitly or implicitly supported the adoption of the chained CPI to step up and say why the switch to the chained CPI was a good and necessary measure. However, not one senator was prepared to stand up and argue the case. Not one member of the senate wanted to go on record in support of this cut to Social Security...... If the chained CPI were put to a vote of the people it would lose in a landslide. But the elites are prepared to use their control of the political process and the media to do everything they can to push this cut forward.
Code Pink set up ThePeoplesResponse.org THE PEOPLE’S RESPONSE to the George W. Bush Library & Policy Institute April 22 – 26, 2013, Dallas, Texas ..coinciding with the dedication of the Bush Presidential Center on April 25. Bush administration officials, past and sitting presidents, the top of the 1%, and the international press are expected to be there. Will you? Workshops, teach-ins, art, music, creative direct action, internationally known speakers, and – of course – dance party for peace!
Writing for WarIsACrime.org David Swanson calls for Bradley Manning's Nobel Peace Prize Whistleblower Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he should receive it. No individual has done more to push back against what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism" than Bradley Manning. The United States is the leading exporter of weapons and itself spends as much preparing for more wars as the rest of the world combined. Manning is the leading actor in opposition to U.S. warmaking, and therefore militarism around the world. What he has done has hurt the cause of violence in a number of other nations as well. And right now, remaining in prison and facing relentless prosecution by the U.S. government, Manning is in need of the Nobel Peace Prize. ......... Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Movement in the Icelandic Parliament, the Pirates of the EU; representatives from the Swedish Pirate Party, and the former Secretary of State in Tunisia for Sport & Youth. The nomination states, in part: "These revelations have fueled democratic uprisings around the world, including a democratic revolution in Tunisia. According to journalists, his alleged actions helped motivate the democratic Arab Spring movements, shed light on secret corporate influence on the foreign and domestic policies of European nations, and most recently contributed to the Obama Administration agreeing to withdraw all U.S. troops from the occupation in Iraq." The Norwegian Nobel Committee (send them a note) can either begin awarding the peace prize to opponents of war or continue on its current course -- one which already has many questioning, not whether Manning is worthy of the prize, but whether the prize is worthy of Manning.
Investigative Journalist Robert Parry dissects the Christian Science Monitor's Bani Sadr Iran hostages piece on Raygun's "October Surprise" in ‘October Surprise’ and ‘Argo’ ... Bani-Sadr’s commentary focused mostly on historical inaccuracies in “Argo,” which depicted how six U.S. Embassy staffers made their escape when the embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants on Nov. 4, 1979, in protest of the U.S. government admitting the deposed – and widely despised – Shah of Iran for medical treatment. In the commentary published by the Christian Science Monitor on March 5, Bani-Sadr, now 79 and living outside Paris, said the movie ignored the fact that most government officials favored freeing all the American personnel quickly. He criticized “Argo” for portraying Iranian officials of that time as radical and irrational. The ex-president noted that “Argo” did quote him accurately as saying he expected the Americans to be freed within a few days – revealing that he based that comment on a conversation he had had with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – but Bani-Sadr criticized the movie for leaving “the impression that the Iranian government supported the occupation of the embassy and that I was a lone voice in opposing it. This could not be further from the truth.” Bani-Sadr said he and all other major candidates for the Iranian presidency supported releasing the hostages. He noted that after taking that position, he won the election with 76 percent of the vote. He added: “Overall, 96 percent of votes in that election were given to candidates who were against [the hostage-taking]. Hence, the movie misrepresents the Iranian government’s stand in regard to hostage-taking. It also completely misrepresents Iranians by portraying us as irrational people consumed by aggressive emotion.” However, after becoming president on Feb. 4, 1980, he found his efforts to resolve the hostage crisis thwarted..... Read on for more details and context. Once again Hollywood presents an incomplete and inaccurate history.
Following up on our coverage of Hugo Chavez and Dr. Kevin Barrett's piece Chavez: Another CIA Assassination Victim? we present for your consideration from SOTT.net December 2010 Assassinations by induced heart attack and cancer. Very interesting!
THEN Our Man in Pipelineistan Pepe Escobar has the low-down on BRICS go over the wall Reports on the premature death of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been greatly exaggerated. Western corporate media is flooded with such nonsense, perpetrated in this particular case by the head of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Reality spells otherwise. The BRICS meet in Durban, South Africa, this Tuesday to, among other steps, create their own credit rating agency, sidelining the dictatorship - or at least "biased agendas", in New Delhi's diplomatic take - of the Moody's/Standard & Poor's variety. They will also further advance the idea of the BRICS Development Bank, with a seed capital of US$50 billion (only structural details need to be finalized), helping infrastructure and sustainable development projects. Crucially, the US and the European Union won't have stakes in this Bank of the South - a concrete alternative, pushed especially by India and Brazil, to the Western-dominated World Bank and the Bretton Woods system. ..... But some long-term prospects are inevitable. BRICS will eventually become more forceful at the International Monetary Fund. Crucially, BRICS will be trading in their own currencies, including a globally convertible yuan, further away from the US dollar and the petrodollar. The BRICS push is part of an irresistible global trend. Most of it is decoded here, in a new United Nations Development Programme report. The bottom line; the North is being overtaken in the economic race by the global South at a dizzying speed. According to the report, "for the first time in 150 years, the combined output of the developing world's three leading economies - Brazil, China and India - is about equal to the combined GDP of the long-standing industrial powers of the North". The obvious conclusion is that, "the rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and propelling billions more into a new global middle class." And bang in the middle of this process, we find an Eurasian epic; the development of the Russia-China strategic relationship. It's always about Pipelineistan:.... Read on for more details! And listen to Scott Horton's interview with Pepe below!
Tavis Smiley has a new special series on his radio show and PBS EDUCATION UNDER ARREST Wrting at HuffPoAOL Education Under Arrest: Taking America Out of Its Comfort Zone ..... I've done a number of these primetime specials on education for PBS, but I must confess that this one, in many ways, was the most depressing yet inspiring one that I've produced. When you look these kids in the eyes and discover that they've been expelled from school or locked up for things such as gum-chewing, truancy, talking in class or alcohol and drug abuse, your heart bleeds. Schools have literally become gateways to prison, instead of gateways to learning. When we wrapped filming, I kept thinking to myself, "There has to be a better way." Thankfully, there is. .....In "Education Under Arrest," advocates, experts and our youth detail an escalating national calamity. It's time for national, state and local policy-makers, thought-leaders and influencers -- not just students like Kenyatta -- to be shaken out of their comfort zones and moved to action.
CHICAGO SCHOOLS UPDATE: In DN! Thursday headlines Thousands Protest School Closings in Chicago Thousands of teachers, school workers, parents and students joined a mass protest led by the Chicago Teachers Union Wednesday against the city’s plan to close 54 schools, most of them in African-American neighborhoods. About 150 people sat down in the road outside Chicago City Hall and locked their arms together, prepared to risk arrest. Roughly 130 people were detained by police. Teacher Phil Cantor was one of them. Phil Cantor: "CPS has been closing schools for about 12 years now. Closing schools to save them is not a way to improve schools. Now they’re closing 54 or more in one year. It’s outrageous. It’s not going to help our students. It’s not going to help our schools. It’s going to destroy neighbors. We’re doing civil disobedience because we have to stand up. We cannot just keep letting these things happen without reacting." Some 30,000 students will be impacted by the closings. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff, has defended the closings, saying he does not want students trapped in failing schools. For a good primer see this link at The Sam Seder Show on Rahm Emanuel now Chicago's mayor
Watch this video with Black Agenda Report's Glen Ford: Corporate Assault on Public Education for context and go to Crazy Crawfish's Blog for A Confederacy of Reformers I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed by all the rapid changes happening in the education sphere. I’m positive I’m not alone in feeling this way - based on the feedback, articles and correspondence I’ve been receiving from local and national groups and individuals. As I struggled to zero in on a topic where I could help or enlighten the most, something else even more screwed up would be sent to me. I’ve started and stopped work on several pieces, which may make their appearances later, but I feel the need to get my bearings again. All this crazy “stuff” (not my first word choice) needs to be sorted out and organized before I can make any more forward progress. I think the mistake I was making, and many others are probably making, is not connecting all the dots and figuring out what kind of picture they reveal. Right now hundreds (and probably thousands) of disparate groups are polishing their individual pieces of the puzzle and identifying a few corners and straight edges here and there . . . maybe the occasional face piece. All of us are focusing on our own small pieces of what is actually a very complex puzzle. If we could put them all together, it would surely show a grand scheme, but we’re all convinced we’re holding the key. I can’t solve this puzzle on my own, but what I can do is show you the pieces I’ve managed to put together, and what I think I’m starting to see. These are my pieces:..... READ ALL OF THIS! There is NO DOUBT big factions are determined to destroy public education and privatize it for corporate profits and leave millions of students with an education promoting "that humans probably herded dinosaurs just a few thousand years ago, and they probably still exist in hidden enclaves such as Loch Ness or off the Japanese coast. Students are taught that evolution is impossible (because it seems complicated) that Climate change is either not happening because God would not allow it, or if it is happening it is part of God’s will and plan and not caused by burning rainforests or manufacturing everything in Chinese coal powered factories. Schools are teaching slavery was just a misunderstood part of our nation’s history, and not a very bad one. They are being taught that hippies and liberals are Satan Worshipping amoral communists trying subvert all that is great and decent in society." Is this the way our schools are supposed to teach? Speaking at the National Academy of Sciences in 2009 Obama said, "Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been. And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it's today." Yet his personal henchmen, from Rahm to Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling are actively creating a two-tier public-private system designed to make profits for their cronies and break teachers' unions at the same time.
Watch Thom Hartmann's THE BIG PICTURE from Thursday Full Show 3/28/13: Chicago to Close 54 Public Schools! and this segment with Lee Fang The conservative State Policy Network is sneaking into your state & will change America and see Lee Fang at The Nation investigating how The Right Leans In in state after state. ..... Though Democrats largely outperformed electoral expectations at the federal level last year, Republicans made significant gains in several states. The GOP is using this shift to redistribute wealth by cutting taxes on the rich while raising them on working-class citizens, largely through sales tax increases. What makes this year different from past Republican realignments, however, is the massive increase in funds available to conservative think tanks operating on the state level, as well as how these groups have made the goal of consolidating power through attacking unions and similar tactics central to their agenda. These media-savvy organizations — which frequently employ former journalists to churn out position papers, news articles, investigations and social media content with a hard-right slant — bolster the pro-corporate lobbying efforts of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Like ALEC, State Policy Network groups provide an ideological veil for big businesses seeking to advance radical deregulatory policy goals. Interviewed at the San Francisco event this past January, SPN's Sharp maintained that her organization is loosely connected and has no coordinated agenda. But if the last four years are any guide, conservative think tanks are on the march, working from a similar script to tear down organized labor and promote extreme right-wing policies in state capitols from Alaska to Florida. Financial support for SPN-affiliated think tanks has increased by tens of millions of dollars over the last four years, disclosures show. ..... This increased spending has helped Americans for Prosperity recruit conservative activists and deploy them during contentious policy debates. Audit reports collected by the New York State Attorney General's office show that Americans for Prosperity went from spending about $4.9 million on state chapter activities in 2009 to $10.6 million in 2011, the last available disclosure. Those figures do not necessarily account for the television, radio and Internet advertising purchased by the group when lobbying on state policy issues (which has reportedly reached over $4 million in places like Wisconsin), or the ubiquitous bus tours it has sponsored around the country. ....... Consultants associated with State Policy Network have also set up supposedly nonpartisan "government transparency" websites. These sites, which neglect the topic of highly paid government contractors while at times exaggerating the pay of public sector employees like teachers — have recently cropped up in almost every state. In Ohio, the Buckeye Institute, an SPN-affiliated think tank, provided the underlying data for a database on public employee pay, which came under criticism after the Associated Press reported that it was "riddled with errors and omissions." ..... Much more so click over for the rest! It seems the American Left (or what's left of it) have no equvalent to ALEC or the State Policy Network. In Ohio we have ProgressOhio.org but they don't get nearly the ink or $$$$$ the Buckeye Institute gets. As Lee Fang points out the CONservative/Right is following through by taking over state legislatures across the country with little or no push-back. The dilemma is that so many of the peeps who are directly affected by this CONservative agenda keep voting FOR these troglodytes every election, no doubt brainwashed by the "Librul Media" and the constant stream of misinformation. As Morford and Holland demonstrate vividly, most peeps are clueless and/or completely misinformed on the major topics that affect us all. The scary thing is that these peeps vote in HUGE numbers against their own interests! How to turn this around? One thing is certain: teaching our kids absolute crap cannot be helpful to them or us. Teaching kids critical thinking and real science and how the world really is will work; instead of the corporate model of rote learning to a rigged moving-target test and ripping the teachers' unions apart. Obomber's "Race to the Top" and Dim Son's "No Child's Behind Left" have two things in common: dumb down the population and make money doing it. Now that Ohio repealed (ALEC-backed) KaSICK's War on Unions initiative Strongsville, Ohio's school teachers have been on strike and are pushing back. Here's the latest: Striking Strongsville teachers obtain documents they say detail district expenditures. Showing EXACTLY this corporate model of "cost savings" via slashing employee wages ... At a rate of $175 a day for each substitute teacher, the school district will spend $550,000 through four weeks, according to the union. The district also pays an additional $30 a day per substitute to the company that provides the replacements. (There's yer "for profit": outsource to a "private" company providing scabs! -Ed.) That 20 percent fee is expected to cost the district an estimated $110,000 through Saturday. ... In a recent Plain Dealer story, Herrmann said the district paid $150,000 for substitutes during the second week of the strike, while the striking teachers typically earn about $460,000 in a week. Although that alone represents a savings of $310,000, Herrmann and Krupinski both balked at calling the lower cost of substitutes a savings. WHY? Tad Colbeck, an Ohio Education Association representative working with the striking teachers, said Herrmann's estimate of $460,000 is probably low, and he questioned whether she included insurance and retirement system costs in the total. Follow this story on the The Strongsville Patch and read Striking teachers, students and parents rally to defend education in Cleveland area at wsws.org for more info. Surprisingly the so-called "librul" CREDO Action website asks Support the Strongsville, Ohio school BOARD! Unbelievable. You might want to reevaluate your CREDO subscriptions. And tell them about it by writing organize@credoaction.com too.
Always around this time some idiot peeps will buy cute wittle wabbits for their kids for Easter, not knowing rabbits are social creatures that live up to ten years or more (our DeeJay is 7 and da kwazy wabbits Dot-n-Dash are 5). And so nobody knows what to do with or how to raise their new fuzzy friends and once the novelty wears off in a few weeks the dear buns are left in their cages for their remaining life much like solitary confinement. We conclude with In My Cage by Mary Brandolino at all-creatures.org


    I remember Easter Sunday
    It was colorful and fun
    The new life that I'd begun
    In my new cage.


    I was just a little thing
    When they brought me from the store
    And they put me on the floor
    In my cage.


    They would take me out to play
    Love and pet me all the time
    Then at day's end I would climb
    In my cage.


    But as days and weeks went by
    I saw less of them it seemed
    Of their loving touch I dreamed
    In my cage.


    In the night outside their house
    I felt sad and so neglected
    Often scared and unprotected
    In my cage.


    In the dry or rainy weather
    Sometimes hotter sometimes colder
    I just sat there growing older
    In my cage.


    The cat and dog raced by me
    Playing with each other only
    While I sat there feeling lonely
    In my cage.


    Upon the fresh green grass
    Children skipped and laughed all day
    I could only watch them play
    From my cage.


    They used to take me out
    And let me scamper in the sun
    I no longer get to run
    In my cage.


    Once a cute and cuddly bunny
    Like a little ball of cotton
    Now I'm grown up and forgotten
    In my cage.


    I don't know what went wrong
    At the home I did inhabit
    I just grew to be a rabbit
    In my cage.


    But they've brought me to the pound
    I was once loved and enjoyed
    Now I wait to be destroyed
    In my cage.

inmycage
Please support House Rabbit Society - rabbit.org
approved by wabbits everywhere!
DeeJay
Dot-n-Dash



BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!©

Democracy NOW!

Democracy Now's Iraq interactive timeline
Monday, March 25, 2013

Tuesday, March 26, 2013 Wednesday, March 27 Thursday, March 28, 2013 Friday, March 29, 2013

GRITtv GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders

»»» FEATURED SHOW The Gaza Kitchen Under blockade from Israel and blocked off by Egypt, the sliver of land that is the Strip is most often seen in the West (when it's seen at all), as a war zone or a humanitarian disaster, but the place is more than its pain. As Schmitt and El-Haddad show, Gaza is also its food, it's culture; not only what's been lost, but also what is deliciously surviving.

BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!©

»»» NCAA Tournament on CBS More bracket-busting! Check your local listings!

»»» NBA on TNT TUESDAY Doubleheader! Knicks @ Heat 8 pm et then Mavericks @ Lakers 10:30 pm et

»»» NBA on TNT THURSDAY Doubleheader! Bulls @ Nets 7 pm et then Spurs @ Thunder 9:30 pm et

»»» SUNDAY NIGHT BASEBALL on ESPN Rangers @ Astros 8 pm et

**** MLB OPENING DAY MONDAY **** Get the hot dogs, peanuts & cracker jack and beer ready! ESPN 1 PM - Red Sox @ Yankees; 4 PM - Giants @ Dodgers; 7 PM - Braves @ Phillies; 10 PM - Cardinals @ Diamondbacks! Check your local listings for your team's openiong day game! Play ball! Batter up!

BRICK TEEVEE ACTION!©

The 1st Amendment is Our Permit Our permit to occupy is The First Amendment. Quickly sign the following statement which will be delivered to mayors, police chiefs and major media across the country:

    Our permit to occupy public squares and parks is in The First Amendment, which affirms "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered those protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them. Those other societies don’t have a First Amendment. Yet Washington affirmed the universal right to assembly and protest. We do have a First Amendment. The force being used to clear nonviolent protesters from public squares in our country is unacceptable. It must stop.

StrikeDebt.org & RollingJubilee.org! A bailout of the people by the people Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits. ADDENDUM: Naked Capitalism reports Top Tax Expert Confirms Our Doubts About Occupy Wall Street’s Debt Buying/Forgiveness Scheme

STOP the ACHE NEW WEBSITE! AcheAct.org and Appalachian Community HEALTH EMERGENCY Advocating for government action and protection of the public from the health crisis in mountain top removal communi ties

    Lawmakers concerned about the health effects on humans from mountaintop removal coal mining set forth legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives today. Representatives Dennis Kucinich (OH), Louise Slaughter (NY), Maurice Hinchey (NY), Earl Blumenauer (OR), Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA), John Yarmuth (KY), Lynn Woolsey (CA), Judy Chu (CA), Raúl Grijalva (AZ), James Moran (VA), Michael Honda (CA), John Conyers (MI), and Keith Ellison (MN) introduced the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency (ACHE) Act H.R. 5959 which would place a moratorium on permitting for mountaintop removal coal mining until health studies are conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services. The ACHE coalition presently consists of participants from Coal River Mountain Watch, Mountain Health and Heritage Association, and Christians for the Mountains. “We encourage you, if you’re concerned about mountaintop removal’s effect on your community’s health, to join us in making your voice heard,” said Allen Johnson, executive director of Christians for the Mountains. “Please contact us, learn about the issue, and take action to protect your community.”

Community-Wealth.org community-wealth.org a project of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland Community-Wealth.org brings together, for the first time, information about the broad range of community wealth building activity. Featuring Community Wealth Building in Action: The Cleveland Model Something important is happening in Cleveland. The Democracy Collaborative—the host of C-W.org—in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, Shorebank Enterprise Cleveland, the City of Cleveland, and the city's major hospitals and universities—is helping to implement a new model of large-scale worker-owned and community-benefiting businesses. The Evergreen Cooperative Initiative is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation's decaying economy. Increasingly, this model is being referred to nationally as The Cleveland Model. Initial planning is now underway to assist other cities in Ohio and nationwide to replicate and adapt this innovative approach to economic development, green job creation, and neighborhood stabilization. Find more many resources at Community-Wealth.org!

NET NEUTRALITY! SaveTheInternet.com Declaration of Internet Freedom Tired of fighting bad bills like SOPA, PIPA and CISPA? Want to stand up against those who are trying to control what we do and say online? It's time for something different. A group of more than 1,500 organizations, academics, startup founders and tech innovators has come together to produce a Declaration of Internet Freedom, a set of five principles that put forward a positive vision of the open Internet. Our goal: Get millions of Internet users to sign on to this Declaration. Build political power for Internet users to make sure that we get a seat at the table whenever, and wherever, the future of the Internet is being decided. It's time to stop playing defense and start going on the offensive. The open Internet is central to people’s freedom to communicate, share, advocate and innovate in the 21st century. But powerful interests want to censor free speech, block the sharing of information, hinder innovation and control how Internet users get online. And all too often, people in power are making political decisions behind closed doors about how the Internet should operate — and they're doing this without the involvement of actual Internet users. The result: policies that could close down the open Internet and destroy our freedom to connect. It’s time for us to reclaim the Internet for its users. Take action now and sign the Declaration of Internet Freedom. ACTION! Meet the New CISPA. Same as the Old CISPA. Last year, thanks to a public outcry, the effort to pass overreaching cybersecurity legislation stalled in the Senate. Now supporters have reintroduced the House version of that legislation — the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The “new” version is in fact identical to the original CISPA — and poses the same threat to our digital civil liberties. If CISPA becomes law, it will be a major blow to our online privacy. But more than that, CISPA’s passage would have a chilling effect on our freedom to connect online. We won’t feel as free to state unpopular opinions, or to speak truth to power, if we know that Big Brother could get a feed of everything we say and do. This is not what the free and open Internet is about. We must tell Congress: Vote NO on CISPA and bury this bill for good.

NEW!!! Stop Media Consolidation! Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is trying to change the agency’s ownership rules to pave the way for Murdoch to get exactly what he wants. Worse, Genachowski and Murdoch are keeping this all very hush-hush, hoping you won't notice.3 These changes wouldn’t just benefit Murdoch. If the FCC proposal passes, one company could own the major daily newspaper, two TV stations and up to eight radio stations in your town. And that one company could be your Internet provider, too. What is the FCC thinking?!? We can still stop the agency from taking this perilous step — but we have less than a month to do it. By taking action, you’re joining a movement of millions who are working to stop big media from getting even bigger. Please take action today. Click HERE to view our infographic and send a message to the FCC! More info at Another FCC Cave-In: Julius Genachowski’s Media Consolidation Christmas Gift to Murdoch at StopTheCap.com! And Sign Senator Bernie Sanders petition to the FCC Protect Media Diversity: Stop Media Consolidation!

CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE American Majority Rejects Washington Austerity Consensus – And We Demand Media Coverage by Roger Hickey, President, Campaign for America's Future: No more silent majority. The Campaign for America’s Future is joining with the Center for Economic and Policy Research (whose Co-Director, Dean Baker blogs regularly about economic bias in the media) and with FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) to monitor the media’s coverage and representation of the American Majority views as they go into covering the big deficit fight. But we want to enlist YOU too. Send us accounts of unbalanced coverage in the national media and in your local newspapers and television. Call up reporters, editors, assignment people and tell them when they are under-representing the views of the American Majority. We should have at least half the experts, pundits, quotes and real people represented in their coverage. In a debate as important as the one we are going into, we can’t allow the media to ignore the American Majority. Much more at www.ourfuture.org

MOVE TO AMEND! www.movetoamend.org SIGN HERE NOW! And check out more actions on the Move to Amend Calendar for more! Also visit Rep Alan Grayson's site www.savedemocracy.net GET INVOLVED! And Alan Grayson is BACK in the 113th Congress! Help out at CongressmanWithGuts.com

REPRESENT.US IT’S TIME TO GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS SO THE GOVERNMENT CAN REPRESENT US. Represent.Us is a fresh campaign to pass the American Anti-Corruption Act: a law that would overhaul campaign finance, impose strict lobbying and conflict of interest laws, and end secret political money. We are mobilizing millions of Americans — conservatives and progressives, young and old, every issue group fighting K Street, online and offline — to join this campaign. Represent.Us is not just building a movement to pass the Act. The campaign will use hard-hitting accountability tactics to unseat politicians who fail to endorse the Act. If passed, the Act will completely reshape American politics and policy-making and give people a voice. See this Guest Blog at Greenpeace by Executive Director Josh Silver The $6 Billion Auction: Finally, A Plan to Get Money Out of Politics for more information!

SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT See CourageToResist.org and Bradley Manning Support Network UPDATE! From the Bradley Manning Support Network Daniel Ellsberg and Michael Moore invite you to a Bradley Manning event with Birgitta Jonsdottir On April 3rd, Icelandic Parliamentarian, activist WikiLeaks contributor and “poetician” Birgitta Jonsdottir is making her first visit to the United States since the release of the “Collateral Murder” video. This video is one of the most graphic and devastating pieces of journalism from the war in Iraq. Bradley Manning, who has now been in jail for over 1000 days without trial, leaked this video to raise awareness. On Friday April 5th, we invite you to an evening of art and discussion to sow the seeds of resistance against illegal imperialist wars, and to discuss the present state of free speech and freedom of the press. Your presence at Judson Memorial Church would send a clear signal that we the people value truth and stand against the unbelievable lack of ethics and accountability this, and other leaks, consistently reveal. Doors will open at 5:30 PM, for two hours of drinks, refreshments, and artwork , including stills from Collateral Murder, art prints by Molly Crabapple, and Laura Poitras’s five-minute documentary. Then at 8 PM, we’ll move to a discussion among Birgitta, independent journalist Alexa O’Brien, FireDogLake’s Kevin Gosztola, and FAIR media critic Peter Hart, moderated by Sam Seder.

DONATE YOUR OLD CELL PHONES TO T.J. MARTELL FOUNDATION Help save lives. Donate your old & used iPhone, Blackberries, Droid and other phones to help the T.J. Martell Foundations fund life-saving cancer & AIDS research. For more information, go to www.tjmartellfoundation.org CELLULAR PHONE TASK FORCE EDUCATION, ADVOCACY, SUPPORT at CellPhoneTaskForce.org The Cellular Phone Task Force is dedicated to halting the expansion of wireless technology because it cannot be made safe. We provide: education to the public concerning electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog); advocacy for an electromagnetically cleaner environment; support for individuals disabled by radiation from wireless technology and other sources.

B R I C K T E E V E E

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image ©2006 arkysue

The essential guide for watching government propaganda!

THEY report. YOU throw bricks.© Get your Foam Bricks at ThrowThings.com HERE!

IRAQ: 4,486 US Military Dead as of April 21, 2012

AFGHANISTAN: 2,192 US Military Dead as of March 29, 2013

The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises

Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read

  • This Week (ABC) Host George Stephanopoulos
    • Archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan
    • ROUNDTABLE: Newark Mayor Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. with ABC News political analyst and special correspondent Matthew Dowd, ABC News senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny, and editor and publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel.
    • Religion and Politics ROUNDTABLE: writer and religious scholar Reza Aslan; Rev. Calvin Butts, Pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York; author and atheist Susan Jacoby; Dr. Richard Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission; and Sojourners president Rev. Jim Wallis, author of "On God's Side."
    • SPOTLIGHT: former White House photographer Eric Draper discusses his new book, "Front Row Seat: A Photographic Portrait of the Presidency of George W. Bush."

  • Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
    • Cardinal Dolan
    • Imam Suhaib Webb
    • Rabbi David Wolpe
    • Pentecostal Bishop Harry Jackson
    • North Korea

  • 60 Minutes (CBS)
    • The Pioneer Hotel Fire - Damning testimony from a crucial witness and modern methods of investigating arson present new evidence that could free a man in prison after nearly 42 years. Steve Kroft reports on the latest twist in the Pioneer Hotel fire in Tucson that killed 28 in 1970. James Jacoby and Michael Karzis are the producers
    • The Lost Boys - Bob Simon reports on the Sudanese refugees who have resettled in the U.S. Their odyssey began when they were forced to flee on foot from a Sudanese civil war 25 years ago that destroyed their homes and families. 60 MINUTES has been following them for 12 years. Draggan Mihailovich is the producer. This is a two-segment report.

  • Meet the Press (NBC) Host David Gregory
    Microsoft, NBC News Dissolve MSNBC.com Joint Venture NBC is buying Microsoft's 50 percent interest in the MSNBC website for an undisclosed amount. MSNBC.com will be rebranded as NBCNews.com, and readers who logged into MSNBC.com late Sunday were automatically redirected to NBCNews.com. Microsoft is preparing to launch its own news service this fall. Although he declined to provide many details about the operation general manager of MSN.com Bob Visse said the news staff will be about the same size as the roughly 100 people who created original content for the MSNBC.com. "There is no question that we are going to have more flexibility to make our own decisions," said Vivian Schiller, NBC News' chief digital officer. "This is really an amicable breakup. We think competition will make us better." Okay then.
    • Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
    • Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
    • ROUNDTABLE: Actor Rob Reiner, who was a vocal critic of California’s Proposition 8 and attended the hearings this week; President of the National Organization for Marriage Brian Brown; the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan; founder and President of the National Action Network, MSNBC’s Rev. Al Sharpton; and NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams.
    • ROUNDTABLE II: former top adviser to President Obama, David Axelrod; Former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA); the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson and the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan.

  • State of the Union With Candy Crowley (CNN) At 9 AM ET, Candy talks to the power players: politicians, business leaders and international newsmakers who will make Monday morning's headlines. At NOON ET, Candy wraps it all up with fresh interviews and the best of the earlier hours.
    • Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
    • Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
    • Prop 8 opponents David Boies and Ted Olson
    • Senate Chaplain Barry Black & House Chaplain Patrick Conroy.
    • ROUNDTABLE: Donna Brazile and Kevin Madden, along with CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jessica Yellin.

  • HEAD ON RADIO with Bob Kincaid
    HEAD ON
    Headon Radio with Bob Kincaid 6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific, 2300 GMT. Duration: 3 hrs. To be part of Conversation Radio on Head-on Radio, call toll-free (877) 443-2366, or use our Liberal community line at 304-658-3333. Email bob [at] headonradio [dot] com during the show!
    • THORN IN THE SIDE THURSDAY!!!!! Pull up a chair and a cold one! Listen NOW HERE!! Keep Bob on the air HERE ya hear? Amen to the White Rose Society! Donate to Head On HERE! And join Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net!

  • YOUR GREEN NEWS REPORT
    desi-n-bradOhFrack
    The Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen: 6 minutes of green news, politics, analysis & snarky comment! BOOKMARK greennews.bradblog.com NOW!
    'Green News Report' - March 28, 2013 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Scotland has a message for Donald Trump's hot air on wind farms; The IMF has a message for the oil industry (and they're not gonna like it); PLUS: A whole lotta frackin' going on --- from PA to CA, new revelations --- and earthquakes --- crack the fracking industry's facade ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
    • IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): Iceland baffled by Chinese tycoon's Arctic golf resort; How US can shift from oil & gas; Iraqi oil now mostly China’s; Solar energy brings voters to the polls in Kenya; Republican mayor leads CA city to nation's first solar energy mandate; Water wars: NM farmers vs. fossil fuel industry; Another bleak drought season for U.S.; Red states use more energy than blue states; UK's record weather extremes linked to Arctic sea ice loss; White House supports relaxing nuke rules; Rat poison manufacturer fights EPA ban ... PLUS: "You Can Have More Fossil Fuel. Or You Can Have Water. Your Choice." ... and much, MUCH more! ...
    • BRADCAST UPDATE! Brad and Mike Papantanio on Holder's 'Too Big to Jail' BS The Attorney General claimed that he's 'concerned' about the lack of prosecution of big banks, but Brad and Mike, on Ring of Fire ain't buying it for a second...
    • BRADCAST UPDATE! Prop 8, DOMA & More on a Big Gay KPFK 'BradCast'! Infamous 'outing' journalist Mike Rogers joins Brad to discuss this week's historic hearings at SCOTUS and the cloud of shame hanging over the last decade...

  • The Peter B. Collins Show PODCAST!
    pbc show
    Listen at PeterBCollins.com!
    The Peter B. Collins Show covers American news and politics from the Left Coast. Veteran talk radio personality Peter B. Collins, based in San Francisco, delivers fresh interviews, commentary and analysis on a range of important topics, with views and voices you don’t often find in the corporate media.
    Holiday Break and Website Changes
      To my valued listeners: We are making some changes to the website and our terms, effective in January. We will continue to offer free podcasts–my new daily news and commentary. Our in-depth interviews will be available for $1 per episode, or to subscribers who pay $5 per month or more. Loyal listeners who simply can’t afford it should send an email to peter@peterbcollins.com, as we will be offering a limited number of scholarships to our friends who are hurting during these tough times. More information will be posted as we complete the revisions. I’m grateful to each of you for listening and supporting this work, and hope that the new model will enable us to keep it going well into the future. All the best, -pbc
    • Peter B Collins, Truthout | Op-Ed An Insider's View of the Progressive Talk Radio Devolution
    • PBC Standard Podcast March 27, 2013 Andy Worthington Reports Gitmo Hunger Strike Much Bigger than Pentagon Admits; Whistleblower Julia Davis on Her Tussle With Former Bush Lackey Scott Bloch
    • PBC Standard Podcast March 29, 2013 Boiling Frogs: 2012 Presidential Candidate Rocky Anderson Offers Sharp Criticism of Obama’s Contempt for Bill of Rights
    • PBC News & Comment March 28, 2013PBC News & Comment: Gitmo Hunger Strikers Report Cutoff of Drinking Water
    • PBC News & Comment March 27, 2013 PBC News & Comment: Supremes Likely to Strike Down DOMA

  • Ring of Fire Radio
    rofheader
    Find us at http://ringoffireradio.com and http://goleft.tv/ hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder
    Ring of Fire Radio - GoLeft TV - Robert F. Kennedy, Mike Papantonio, Sam Seder - Politics, Commentary, and News.
    This Weekend on Ring of Fire Radio! Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern.
    • Progressive TV and Radio host Thom Hartmann will join us to talk about the failures of the mainstream media.
    • Congressman Sean Maloney will have the latest on the budget battle in Washington, D.C.
    • Attorney Howard Nations will give us his assessment of the Republican autopsy report.
    • Author and political strategist Mike Lux will discuss the hurdles that Congressional Democrats need to overcome this year.
    • And journalist David Dayen will tell us how why Republicans are warming up to the idea of breaking up the banks.
    • VIDEO! THE HISTORY OF CORPORATE CORRUPTION & FRAUD with Robert Kennedy Jr & Mike Papantonio “Call us if you have a personal story about Fraud on Taxpayers or False Claims for Payment made by Corportations at 1-866-389-FIRE (3473) or contact us by email at info@ringoffireradio.com if you have evidence of fraud that robbed taxpayer dollars. If our government is paying too much due to fraud by a corporation, Ring of Fire wants to do a story on it.”
    • VIDEO! Papantonio: DOJ Continues To Cave To Big Banks (VIDEO) The following video is from the March 24th, 2013 episode of Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV (freespeech.org/ringoffire.) According to the Justice Department, the banks that crippled our economy are simply too big and too important to prosecute. Even with all of the evidence of how they stole from investors, defrauded the government, and illegally foreclosed on millions of homes, Eric Holder says they are untouchable. Mike Papantonio discusses Holder’s ridiculous claim with investigative journalist Brad Friedman (www.bradblog.com.)
    • VIDEO! Papantonio: Privatization Push Killing Public Schools (VIDEO) Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio appears on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann to discuss the Chicago education protests, and the general assault on public education by elected officials who wish to privatize our school systems in order to enrich their corporate friends.
    • NEW! This Week on Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV! Sundays at NOON!
    • It’s been 10 years since the US invaded Iraq, and we’ll talk with progressive TV and radio host Thom Hartmann about how the mainstream media helped push the War Hawks’ talking points.
    • Drug companies pull in higher profits than almost any other industry, often as the result of government-funded research. We’ll discuss the possibilities of the federal government reclaiming some of the profits that they helped create for Big Pharma with attorneys Mike Burg and Joe Cotchett.
    • Linda Lipsen, the CEO of the American Association for Justice, will stop by to tell us about the shady organizations trying to take away our rights to a fair trial.
    • Attorney Ben Gordon will give us the latest on a deadly dialysis medication known as GranuFlo.
    • And the Republican Party is in a complete free fall, and we’ll find out from attorney Howard Nations why the recent Autopsy Report won’t help revive the GOP.
    • Join our blog at www.ringoffireradio.com. You can now SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST by clicking on the "Podcast" tab at the top of the Ring of Fire blog. Please help support progressive radio by signing up! Ring of Fire Radio Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder: Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts 8-11 et Sunday evenings on Chicago's Progressive Talk WCPT AM & FM and 4 pm et on Sirius/XM 167 featuring The PAP Attack! "We’ll bring you the stories that the mainstream media didn’t feel like reporting this week."

  • Majority Report with Sam Seder Streaming LIVE weekdays 12 NOON et @ Majority.fm!

    • MONDAY 3/25/13 Heather C. McGhee: Money Over Democracy With Matt & Michael
    • TUESDAY 3/26/13 Dan Cantor: Why The Working Families Party Works, Richard Heinberg the End of Growth
    • THURSDAY 3/28/13 Steven Brill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing US & Dr. James Kimmey
    • FRIDAY 3/29/13 Lawrence Lessig: Fixing Democracy & Ani Fete: How Health Exchanges Work & Aasif Mandvi
    • MORE Podcast Interviews at majorityfm.libsyn.com!

  • KEISER REPORT Podcasts and more @ MaxKeiser.com!
    maxheaderhiyall
    "HI Y'ALL! Tell the people! Tell the people!"
    WHO IS MAX KEISER? Max Keiser is a financial expert, Prediction Markets analyst, inventor and filmmaker. He is the creator of the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) the first Prediction Market. Max Keiser co-hosts "The Truth About Markets" on ResonanceFM 104.4 in London. He also produces and presents documentary films covering markets and finance for Al Jazeera’s "People & Power" series. Max Keiser started his career on Wall Street in 1983. He is the creator of KarmaBanque a site that enables activists to challenge corporate power.
    • VISIT PirateMyFilm.com!!! Crowd Funding for Pirates!
    • MaxKeiserTV on YouTube! MaxKeiserTV
    STACY SUMMARY: For once and for all, here are our real Facebook pages, the other ones are fake. But if you feel like chatting to the fake ones, by all means, go ahead.
    The Battle of Cyprus: The Long-planned Deposit Confiscation Scheme by Ellen Brown - The deposit confiscation scheme has long been in the making. US depositors could be next . . . .Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.
    It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors by Ellen Brown - Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.........
    FDIC & Bank of England Create Resolution Authority for Unlimited Cyprus-Style “Bail-Ins” for TBTF Banks! by The Doc - *BREAKING SD ALERT* On Wednesday, SD broke the news that Canada had buried a provision for depositor bail-ins for systemically important banks deep inside its official 2013 budget, and stated that the Cypriot bail-in was not just a one-off event, but is in fact the new collapse template for the entire Western banking system. We suspected that the same policy change had been made by the US & the UK, but was simply yet to be discovered, buried in the website of a Federal agency. We suspected correctly… Click here for the BREAKING STORY that the US & UK are pursuing the Cyprus Bail-In Template!
    Herbert’s Headlines: Carbon Emissions, Immoral Morals and Libor Suits by stacyherbert.
    This is apparently becoming a trend—a disturbing one by maxkeiser - READ Overwhelming Student Debt Has Parents Getting Life Insurance Policies on Their Kids When my parents first announced at Thanksgiving that they were taking out a life insurance policy on me, I was taken aback and slightly offended. In fact, I thought it was a cruel joke. Why would they need to do such a thing? I’m only 27. The mere thought of it was grim. But they did have a reason: my student loan debt. Since they co-signed with me for the loans, they’d be left with the debt if I ever—god forbid—died.
    • KEISER REPORT [KR423] Keiser Report: ‘Yes, No, Maybe’ World Order We discuss the new world order called Yes, No, Maybe in which secret downgrades and confiscation plans are certain only to a few insiders whilst chaos and confusion reigns for the rest of the population. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to Leah McGrath Goodman, author of The Asylum: Inside the Rise and Ruin of the Global Oil Market, about the definitive proof that oil markets were manipulated to $100 in 2008 by ConAgra traders and what the US government response was to the information.
    •KEISER REPORT [KR424] Keiser Report: Plunderball – New Euro Banking Game We discuss the PLUNDERBALL games in Europe and how the United Kingdom turned from Aspiration Nation to Asphyxiation Nation. They also talk about the ‘mega-caust’ of the financial markets in which those who worried about their gold being confiscated have now lost their bank deposits instead! In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to Mitch Feierstein, author of Planet Ponzi, about the implications to all bank depositors of the confiscation of some funds in Cyprus.
    • KEISER REPORT [KR425] Keiser Report: Ponzi Lottery We discuss the previously successful UK economy which who has become addicted to gambling and spending fortunes on spread betting and so has turned to operating ponzi schemes in order to keep the appearance of economic activity. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to former Scotland Yard fraud squad detective, Rowan Bosworth-Davies of Rowans-Blog.blogspot.co.uk about the evidence he gave to the Parliamentary Committee on Banking Standards that went missing and how it is that the British banking system is remarkably similar to an organized crime racket.
    • ON THE EDGE On the Edge with Greg Hunter An interview with Greg Hunter of USA Watchdog.
    • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS Truth about Markets NYC – 03/15/13: Max and Stacy continue taking the banksters and financial terrorists to task in this entertaining installment. Thanks Gary Null and the Progressive Radio Network for having us on… Download show HERE (mp3) • Donate to ResonanceFM here!

  • The Scott Horton Radio Show
    scotthorton
    Scott Horton is host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles and KUCR 88.3 in Riverside, and the Scott Horton Show on No Agenda Radio. (You can listen live Monday through Friday, excluding Thursday, from 12-2 PM Eastern HERE.) Plenty of archives too!
    • Scott Horton Radio Show 3/29/13 Philip Giraldi: Philip Giraldi, executive director of the Council for the National Interest, discusses Obama’s recent visit to Israel and Palestine; why Israel really apologized to Turkey for the flotilla massacre; Obama’s speech calling on Israelis to push their government toward peace; and why Obama won’t seriously pursue diplomacy with Iran, even though he doesn’t want war.
    • Scott Horton Radio Show 3/29/13 Pepe Escobar: Globetrotting journalist Pepe Escobar discusses the invasion of Iraq, 10 years on; the events leading to the height of sectarian violence in 2006-2007; Iran’s willingness to supply military aid to allied governments under threat in Syria and Iraq; how the US unintentionally made Muqtada al-Sadr Iraq’s most influential religious leader; and why Israel’s formal apology to Turkey for the flotilla massacre may indicate a new unity on Syrian regime change.
    • Listen to more interviews at The Scott Horton Show!
    SCOTT HORTON July 5, 2012: Scott says goodbye to Antiwar.com. Scott Horton is the former host of Antiwar Radio. Visit his blog Stress. Due to budget cuts Scott lost his gig at AntiWarRadio.com! Whoa! See ScottHortonShow.com for archives! Send emails to Scott at scotthorton.org to help Scott keep his podcast going!
    • Older interviews at Antiwar Radio!


  • fauxnews
    • Capt. Mark Kelly, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
    • Cardinal Donald Wuerl the Archbishop of Washington

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Brick TeeVee - THEY report. YOU throw bricks. ©

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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Brick TeeVee's IRAQ after TEN YEARS


Your Guest List for Sunday's Talking Head News Shows beamed across America by Corporate Media PLUS reports from the best lib/prog media! If you have related STORIES share below! DEBUNK HERE! Throw Bricks! First brick is on us! Get your Foam Bricks at ThrowThings.com

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ALL LINKS OPEN A NEW WINDOW!!! Click on anything below and be INSTANTLY SMARTER!
IRAQ 10 Years later We ran out of time last week to report on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Hearing focusing on JP morgan's now infamous "London Whale" scheme that blew up real good. Go to Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi for his Live-Blogging the Senate Hearing on J.P. Morgan Chase and the Infamous 'London Whale' Episode for comments like
  • In other words, never mind that I lied -- the OCC should have been able to figure this out on their own, because we were sending them reports with all the raw data. Of course, they didn't send data all the way throughout, as McCain quickly pointed out...
  • This is a blatant lie, a market-altering lie -- how many people didn't sell Chase stock because they believed federal regulators were on top of any potential problems at the bank, when in fact not only did the OCC not know anything about these positions, there were people in the bank's senior management who didn't understand them? How is this not actionable? It's crazy.....
  • What we find out from this hearing and from the research that spurred it into existence is that the accounting procedures at a bank like Chase, particularly with regard to derivatives, are closer to being an exercise in creative writing than real accounting. This giant mountain of a company is made up of a core of optimistic assumptions, almost kid-like fantasies, and in some cases, outright lies. It's really incredible....
  • If the numbers look bad, change them, throw off the regulators, but just try not to put it in writing. The failure of superiors to step in and actually change the bad behavior is the constant. At every juncture in this story, from the changing of the methodology of calculating the value of the SCP to the decision to not tell regulators about the losses, there is a moment where a higher-up has a chance to step in and stop the problem. And instead of doing so, he or she always just finds a way to institutionalize the whitewashing procedure....
Also live-blogging this hearing was Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith Live Blogging JP Morgan Senate Hearing – a Rogue Institution on the Hot Seat I wasn’t planning on liveblogging this hearing, but listing to the introductory remarks, the knives are really out for JPM. In all the post-crisis hearings I’ve watched, I’ve never seen such unanimity between the Democrats and the Republicans on the severity of the problem and the need for more regulation.... And read FDL's masaccio's take Lessons From the Senate Hearing on the London Whale Trades. NEXT Bill Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, exposes The NY Times Calls Third Way “Center-Left” and Turns a Study on its Head at NewEconomicPerspectives.org Some lies will not die. As I have demonstrated repeatedly, Third Way is Wall Street on the Potomac. It is funded secretly by Wall Street (it refuses to reveal its donors), it is openly run by Wall Street, and it lobbies endlessly for Wall Street. Third Way, like every Pete Peterson front group, is dedicated to shredding the safety net as its highest priority and throwing the Nation back into a gratuitous recession through self-destructive austerity. ...... I had not counted on the New York Times failing to clear such a tiny research hurdle. Sadly, on March 20, 2013 the New York Times gave prominent coverage to a study sponsored by Third Way, which the reporter called “a center-left policy research organization” in an article entitled “As Men Lose Economic Ground, Clues in the Family.” Once again, Wall Street’s cynical effort to mislead by labeling its far-right economic policies and its lobbying group as “a center-left policy research organization” has triumphed. It triumphed because the curve of Wall Street’s cynicism intersected with the curve of lazy journalism at their respective maxima. The reporter emphasized Third Way’s faux “center-left” politics and its faux “research” function to make his story and the report seem more credible to the reader. The “central-left” aspect was supposed to lend credibility because the study was portrayed as supporting some extremely conservative memes. If even lefties admit that conservatives are right about the family and marriage, then surely the study is correct. It also suggests that Third Way must be a remarkable research organization because it is a “center-left” group, that sponsors research, that discredits “center-left” family policies. None of this faux legitimacy is warranted. Third Way is a lobbyist for Wall Street. It conducts minimal research. Its publications overwhelmingly read like crude propaganda attacking the safety net, trying to create a “moral panic” about the deficit, and praising big finance. Third Way religiously avoids discussing the massive growth of inequality (driven largely by finance). ...... The NYT fell for the scam hook, line, and sinker because its reporter did not bother to do even the most basic research on Third Way’s real nature. The reporter had plenty of clues – Third Way provided an introduction to Autor’s work that states that Third Way is commissioning papers for the express purpose of “challeng[ing]” Democratic Party policies in a “provocative” manner. I want to be clear as to my comments about Autor’s policy views. I do not argue that his views or research should be disregarded because he is opposed to so many “center-left” policies. The point I am making is that Wall Street designed Third Way, and Third Way designed how it packaged and promoted the Autor piece, to mislead journalist, readers, and policy makers into believing that the study was entitled to a presumption of unusually great credibility because it was a “center-left” sponsored study that purportedly reported results hostile to “center left” policies. The reader will see that the thrust of this article is demonstrating that Autor’s findings refute the spin that Third Way put on his work and the New York Times accepted as revealed truth. ...... Much much more details from Black as always so go read all of this! CYPRUS HAIRCUT: For some background Charles Hugh Smith at OfTwoMinds.com explains The Deeper Meanings of Cyprus The deposit-confiscation "bailout" of Cyprus reveals much about the Eurozone's fundamental neocolonial, neofeudal structure. At long last, Europe's flimsy facades of State sovereignty, democracy and free-market capitalism have collapsed, and we see the real machinery laid bare: the Eurozone's political-financial Aristocracy will stripmine every nation's citizenry to preserve their power and protect the banks and bondholders from absorbing losses. The deposit-confiscation "bailout" of Cyprus confirms the Eurozone's fundamental neocolonial, neofeudal structure and the region's political surrender to financialization. The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model (May 24, 2012) Let's list what Cyprus reveals about the true state of financial-political power in Europe: 1. The Core-Periphery terminology masks the real structure: the E.U. operates on a neocolonial model. In the old Colonialism 1.0 model, the colonizing power conquered or co-opted the Power Elites of the periphery regions, and proceeded to exploit the new colonies' resources and labor to enrich the Imperial core. In Neocolonialism, the forces of financialization (debt and leverage controlled by State-enforced banking cartels) are used to indenture the local Elites and populace to the financial core: the peripheral "colonials" borrow money to buy the finished goods manufactured in the core economies, enriching the Imperial Elites with A) the profits made selling goods to the debtors B) interest on credit extended to the peripheral colonies to buy the core economies' goods and "live large", and C) the transactional skim of financializing peripheral assets such as real estate and State debt. In essence, the core banks of the E.U. colonized the peripheral nations via the financializing euro, which enabled a massive expansion of debt and consumption in the periphery. The banks and exporters of the core exacted enormous profits from this expansion of debt and consumption. Now that the financialization scheme of the euro has run its course, the periphery's neocolonial standing is starkly revealed: the assets and income of the periphery are flowing to the core as interest on the private and sovereign debts that are owed to the core's central bank and its crony money-center private banks. This is not just the perfection of neocolonialism but of neofeudalism as well. The peripheral nations of the E.U. are effectively neocolonial debtors of the core (quasi-Imperial) banks, and the taxpayers of the core nations (now reduced to Germany and The Netherlands) are now feudal serfs whose labor is devoted to making good on any bank loans to the periphery that go bad. Though we can term the E.U. a plutocracy or oligarchy, the neofeudal structure compels us to distinguish a class of those holding wealth and political power that is not limited to national border: this is an Aristocracy. Serving the Aristocracy is a well-paid technocrat class of factotums, lackeys, toadies and enforcers. Below this well-compensated caste of technocrats is the larger class of debt-serfs, enslaved to interest payments on either their own debts or the debts of others, and bound by their class powerlessness to protecting banks and bondholders from losses. Cyprus merely adds an expropriation twist to this well-oiled plunder: deposits will be expropriated directly to insure no Imperial (core) banks or bond holders lose money on their absurdly risky loans to periphery nations and serfs. .... Read 2-6 at the link! Also at FDL blogger DSWright has the scoop Cyprus Parliament Preparing To Reject Bailout Due To Deposit Taxes Update 3:21 pm EST: The Cypriot Parliament has formally rejected the bailout. "The Cypriot Parliament rejected an international bailout package on Tuesday that had sought to tax bank depositors to pay a big part of the bill, despite a revision that would have exempted small bank accounts from the levies." For more we go to Andy Dabilis at GreekReporter.com (Cyprus banks allegedly lent a ton of Euros to Greece - oops) Cyprus Rejects Bank Deposit Tax for EU Bailout, Plan B Coming The Cypriot Parliament late on March 19, by a vote of 36-0 with 19 abstentions, overwhelmingly rejected a proposal put forth by international lenders and backed by President Nicos Anastasiades to confiscate up to 9.9 percent of bank deposits to help pay for a bailout. The rejection of the tax throws into doubt an international bailout for the troubled euro zone member needed to avert default and a banking collapse. Anastasiades had rejected the idea before he was elected in February but backed it when Eurozone officials on March 15 gave him a “take it or leave it” ultimatum, saying the European Central Bank would withdraw liquidity from state banks unless he did, leading to their collapse. The initial plan to seize 6.75 percent of all deposits under 100,000 euros ($130,000) and 9.9 percent for those above that amount was revised to exempt accounts under 20,000 euros ($25,900) but that created a 400 million euros ($515.4 million) shortfall as the Eurozone said Cyprus had to raise 5.8 billion euros ($7.5 billion) from deposits. The Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) said it would put up 10 billion euros ($13 billion) to bail out Cyprus but insisted on the bank accounts confiscation because the economy needs nearly 17 billion euros ($21.8 billion) to stay afloat, an amount that couldn’t be repaid if taken only in loans. ....... Ahead of the vote, it was obvious the proposal was doomed when Cyprus Speaker Yiannakis Omirou urged MPs to say “No to blackmail” as angry crowds also called for the lawmakers to reject it and held up signs warning that that other financially crippled European nations like Italy and Spain could be next in line. “There can only be one answer: no to blackmail,” Omirou, of the Socialist EDEK party told deputies who met in emergency session. “Our demand must be that this deal must be renegotiated. If we pass this tax there will be no foreign investor who will keep their money here,” he warned, the newspaper Kathimerini reported. ..... George Perdikes of the Green party told Parliament: “There is now a creditocracy where countries lose their sovereignty for an illegal loan agreement that is supposedly good for them but kills growth.” European Party MP Demetris Syllouris charged that the bailout terms were designed to destroy the banking sector in Cyprus that had been flourishing for decades, and especially hit Russian investments. “Our lenders came not to support us, they wanted to annihilate the pillar of our economy which is the service sector … they (Germany) must find another way to resolve their differences with Russia,” he said. Many Cypriots blame Germany for leading the crippling demands imposed in return for the bailout, in a bid to punish Russia, where investors have placed vast amounts of cash in the island’s banks. “Why are the foreigners to blame, we won’t accept it, we would rather take the hit 100 percent on our wages and pensions rather than on those who supported us,” said Syllouris. Thousands of protesters lined the streets leading to the parliament building in Nicosia, many of them waving Russian flags, an Agence-France-Press reporter said. Defense Minister Fotis Fotiou told Greece’s SKAI TV that Cyprus was examining other options in case Parliament voted down the deposit tax. “If this does not pass through Parliament then it is part of responsible politics for us to look at Plan B, which we are examining but can’t discuss publicly,” he said, keeping it a secret from Cypriots. Over at ZeroHedge.com Tyler Durdan warns Unsecured Depositors Of The World, Unite... And Get The Hell Out Of These Countries!! And has this late-breaking update Cyprus-Troika Talks "Delicate" But Schaeuble "Won't Be Blackmailed" Some late news indicates that the 'deal' is further away than many hoped (or rumored) earlier in the day. Welt am Sonntag reports that German FinMin Schaeuble exclaimed "I won't allow myself to be blackmailed," adding his responsibility to the stability of the Euro. Simply put, he adds Cyprus must respect the rules, insistent that, "Cyprus is a hard road to go either way; but that is not the result of European stubbornness, but a business model that no longer works." With that as background, Cyprus President Anastasiades will be meeting with the IMF's Christine Lagarde tomorrow morning with talks at a "delicate point," with his spokesperson admitting the situation is "very difficult." The disinformation-to-total-confusion train pushes on forward; beggars can be choosers and 'demanders' won't be blackmailed.
  • *STYLIANIDES SAYS ANASTASIADES DEPARTS FOR BRUSSELS 7:15 AM
  • *STYLIANIDES SAYS ANASTASIADES WILL MEET WITH IMF'S LAGARDE
  • *CYPRUS EUROGROUP MEETING TO BEGIN AT 7 P.M., SPOKESMAN SAYS
  • *SCHAEUBLE SAYS WRONG DECISION NOW WOULD DO EURO A DISSERVICE
  • *SCHAEUBLE SAYS CYPRUS MUST RESPECT THE RULES: WELT AM SONNTAG
Much more up-to-date Cyprus coverage at ZeroHedge.com! Now we see why Christine Lagarde was INSTALLED as the head of the U.S.-led I.M.F. and why neo-socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn WAS FRAMED to oust him from the IMF Chair and so he would NOT run for France's presidency. Sez Paul Craig Roberts then "Strauss-Kahn was the first IMF director in my lifetime, if memory serves, who disavowed the traditional IMF policy of imposing on the poor and ordinary people the cost of bailing out Wall Street and the Western banks." Ah but Christine has no such qualms now, does she? For perspective on the Troika Squeeze and how proposed U.S. austerity is part of the same scheme watch Prof. Richard Wolff on Thom Hartmann's The Big Picture from Thursday Cyprus - Is this the next phase in austerity - naked theft? You MUST watch this! 10th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq: Professor Robert Jensen at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin writes at truth-out.org An Illegal Anniversary On the 10th anniversary of the United States' illegal invasion of Iraq, we can expect the war's supporters to argue that military action seemed necessary at that moment, while critics will remind us of the suffering that resulted from that tragic miscalculation. But amid the rationalizations and critiques, we should linger on this uncomfortable term: "illegal invasion." No matter how much we all ignore it, here is the reality: The US invasion of Iraq was unlawful. The leaders who planned and executed the war are criminals. US citizens bear some responsibility for not holding those leaders accountable. The charter of the United Nations is clear about when the use of force in international relations is legal. War must be authorized by the UN Security Council, and in this case, the council rejected a resolution authorizing war. The only other condition under which a member state can go to war is in self-defense when attacked, a principle that is extended to the right to respond to an imminent attack, what is sometimes called "the customary right of anticipatory self-defense." The basic principles are uncontroversial and clearly articulated in articles 39 and 51 of the UN Charter, though there is debate among legal experts about interpreting terms such as "imminent" and "anticipatory." But whatever one's position in those debates, there is no way to stretch the facts of this invasion to justify a self-defense claim. ...... The moral force of law, domestic or international, lies in the consistent application of clear standards. When laws are applied only to the poor, and the rich act with impunity, for example, we understand that as a perversion of the law. Over and over in the United States, we proclaim our commitment to the rule of law - we are a nation of laws not men. If that were the case, we would turn over to the International Court of Justice high-ranking figures from the Bush administration, which initiated the war; from the Obama administration, which continued the war; from Congress, which enabled the war; and from the military, which prosecuted the war. We would determine the amount of reparations we owe Iraq and begin to make payments. And we would apologize to the Iraqi people and to the world. Why is that unthinkable in our political culture? Perhaps it is because we worship power rather than respect law. Perhaps it is because we have no intention of acting on the moral principles we routinely impose on others. Perhaps it is because we are not the people we tell ourselves we are. Last week we pointed you to Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, One Day Even the Drones Will Have to Land at TomDispatch. Peter Van Buren writes "Mission Unaccomplished - Why the Invasion of Iraq Was the Single Worst Foreign Policy Decision in American History" Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the U.S. did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long, long time. The Dissenter Kevin Gosztola asks at FDL Iraq War: An Eight-Year Massive Crime—But the US Political Class & Press Ask, ‘Was It Worth It?’ Fareed Zakaria on his show on CNN on Sunday asked neoconservative hawk and former Bush administration official Paul Wolfowitz whether the Iraq war was “worth the price in American lives and treasure.” Representatives Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Cotton, who “went from the battlefields of Iraq to the halls of Congress” were on CNN to answer whether the price of war was “worth it” to America. Numerous headlines for news stories or op-eds reflecting on the ten-year anniversary are framed in terms of costs versus benefits for America. .... It cannot be said there was no cost or suffering for Americans, however, that should not be the focus of reflection. It should not matter whether Americans think it was “worth it” or not, whether those who engineered the war still find it to have been “worth it,” or even whether troops who served happen to believe what they did was “worth it.” The primary focus should be the cost to Iraqis. Do Iraqis think it was “worth it” to be invaded in 2003 so the US could prevent Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction that did not exist? Was it “worth it” to be occupied by US military forces and private military contractors for eight years? Do they approve of the invasion, which really built on the Gulf War launched by President George H.W. Bush and the sanctions and air strikes against the country that occurred when President Bill Clinton was in office? ...... There should be reflection on the crime that was the Iraq war. Throughout the week, government documents revealing the conspiracy and corruption should be highlighted. Stories from Iraqis who were subjected to bombings, torture, arbitrary detention, night raids, Iraqi security forces backed by the US that conducted themselves as death squads, abusive and exploitative private contractors, corruption that propped up Iraq’s ruling elites, etc, should all receive attention. The American people do not know this war. They do not know what really happened or what has been happening after. The ignorance, to some extent, is chosen. Who really wants to know how their country destroyed a country? But, also, President Barack Obama’s administration, Congress and others in government do not want to see a real outpouring of empathy and remorse for what happened. That would undermine the idea of America, the myth of the country being a force for good in the world. .... Lots more to read! Here are a few more from Gosztola You can READ Iraq veteran Tomas Young's letter at Truthdig.com The Last Letter - A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran and WATCH DN! for the interview (link below). And also watch Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail on Wednesday's show. PAY ATTENTION because Dahr talks fast and covers lots of ground! Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting FAIR.org has a rundown of media quotes in Iraq War, Ten Years Later Today marks the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the bombing and invasion of Iraq. The war could not have proceeded as it did without the support of a compliant, servile press corps. Some pundits have expressed remorse over their performance, though as the Huffington Post's Michael Calderone (3/18/13) noted, "Some prominent pro-war voices a decade ago still occupy high-profile perches on op-ed pages, cable news or Sunday show roundtables." Indeed, having been wrong about Iraq almost seems like a prerequisite for being taken seriously as an establishment pundit. In real time, FAIR collected--and debunked--much of the spin and propaganda in the news about Iraq. The following excerpts are drawn from FAIR's "Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline" (Media Advisory, 3/19/07). At The Nation Greg Mitchelll covers Reviewing This Week's Mea Culpas on Iraq: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Leslie Savan dissects how Ten Years Later, NPR Still Lets War Hawks Make Pathetic Excuses covering Renee Montagne’s interview of Richard ("the Prince of Darkness”) Perle on Wednesday’s Morning Edition. We heard that pablum from Perle too and wrote Renee the following:
    Dear Renee, WE heard your interview with Richard Perle on Wednesday. The House Armed Services Committee interviewed Richard Perle in 2002 BEFORE the "armed conflict" (Congress never did declare "WAR") and again in April 2005. WE watched the 2005 hearing on CSPAN and repeatedly Perle was found WRONG. His foil in BOTH hearings? General Wesley Clark. It appears the transcripts and videos of these hearings have been scrubbed from the internet (at least WE can't find them; maybe you and the crack NPR staff can?). The best WE can find is Dana Milbank at the WaPo Thursday, April 7, 2005; Page A10 "Same Committee, Same Combatants, Different Tune". If you think Perle is a good interview FOR the war (who plainly got everything wrong then and still does now) then WE URGE YOU to contact GENERAL WES CLARK and have him recap his testimony from BOTH 2002 & 2005 and give his reflections of what has happened since and what is going on in Iraq now. The Knight-Ridder (now McClatchy) reporters got it right then. So did General Clark. Please interview Wes Clark to rebut Richard Perle's distorted view of the events of ten years ago and its consequences.
So there! HA! And mysteriously Renee split to do a fund-raiser for some far-off NPR affiliate on Friday! Our BTV SoCal Desk Investigative Blogger ms_in_la when given a bone will not let go! Here we go to the Series of Toobs we call the internet! Alas the link to the 2002 HASC hearing has been scrubbed. Try for yourself!
    http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has269000.000/has269000_0f.htm
We urge you to post below anything you can find relating to the Perle-Clark testimonies, including the CSPAN vids and House/Senate hearings transcripts if you can find them! We're gonna write Dana Milbank and see what he has in his files! While the Obomber-in-Chief tours the Mideast and specifically Israel Rolling Stone's Jon Blistein reports Roger Waters Calls for Boycott of Israel Pink Floyd's Roger Waters says a boycott of Israel, similar to the one implemented against South Africa during apartheid, is the "way to go." He accuses the Israeli government of running a similar regime by occupying the West Bank and Gaza territories in a new interview with the Electronic Intifada. Waters became an outspoken supporter of the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel after visiting the West Bank in 2006, where he spray-painted the lyric "We don't need no thought control" from Pink Floyd's famous anthem "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" on the Israeli West Bank barrier. "They are running riot," said Waters of the Israeli government, "and it seems unlikely that running over there and playing the violin will have any lasting effect." Waters currently serves as a juror on the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which seeks to bring attention to how Western governments and companies assist Israel in what they perceive to be violations of international law. The singer plans to publish an open letter to his peers in the music industry asking them to join him in the BDS movement. In a realted matter ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ Turns 40 – Celebrate With Pink Floyd Global Listening Party This Weekend! Originally released in 1973, The Dark Side of The Moon became Pink Floyd's first number 1 album in the US, remaining on the chart for 741 weeks between 1973 and 1988. One of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed albums of all time, The Dark Side of The Moon also introduced the iconic album cover artwork by Hipgnosis, after a request for a 'simple and bold' design. If you’d like to participate in this “global playback event” visit pinkfloyd.com and participate thru Twitter by tweeting memories, thoughts, and pictures, using the hashtag, #DarkSide40. Check out these versions at the link: DISCOVERY EDITION; EXPERIENCE EDITION; IMMERSION EDITION; VINYL EDITION too! For more information and full tracklisting, click here. And give Dark Side of the Rainbow a try! Dark Side of the Rainbow – also known as Dark Side of Oz or The Wizard of Floyd – refers to the pairing of the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon with the visual portion of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.[1] This produces moments where the film and the album appear to correspond with each other. The title of the music video-like experience comes from a combination of the album title and the film's song "Over the Rainbow". Band members and others involved in the making of the album state that any relationship between the two works of art is merely a coincidence.[2] More Oz-making can be found throughout the Beltway Bubablas' Sunday Morning Funnies! Start with CHRISTIANE ANAMPOUR's FOREIGN POLICY ROUNDTABLE on This Snafugopolis then Face the Bob's roundtable with Tom "Flat Earth" Friedman. Throw bricks at WAYNE "Guns for everybody makes us safer" LAPIERRE and RALPH "who is Jack Abramoff" REED on Mett the David plus GARY "I'm not gay" BAUER on FAKE SNOOZE. Many many links to more 10th Anniversary truth-tellers below including more DAHR JIMAIL and DANIEL ELSBERG interviews with SCOTT HORTON, MAX & STACEY on the unfolding Cyprus fiasco/experiment PLUS a fantastic post exclusively on maxkeiser.com by Ellen webofdebt.com Brown "The Battle of Cyprus: The Long-planned Deposit Confiscation Scheme", MATT TAIBBI with SAM SEDER, BRAD "bradblog" FRIEDMAN on Ring of Fire TV at NOON Sunday plus DESI DOYEN talking about DEPLETED URANIUM MUNITIONS in Iraq as she guest-hosts The Young Turks! And find much more 10th Anniversary coverage on DN! including ARUNDHATI ROY who responds to a TONY BLAIR clip saying "Maybe they need to be put into a padded cell and given some real news to read, you know? ... Now, isn’t that like—isn’t it insane? I mean, I don’t know how to respond to something like that" AND DN's interactive timeline so CLICK ANYTHING and be INSTANTLY SMARTER! The Brick TeeVee Crew has most of their NCAA brackets busted so we'll be watching Sunday's Cactus League Tribe game while we get our "magic seeds" started indoors for this year's garden! You should too! Have a great week and we'll see you next Sunday for more Bricks in The Wall!

For Arne Duncan.

BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!©

Democracy NOW!

Monday, March 18, 2013

Tuesday, March 19, 2013 Wednesday, March 20 Thursday, March 21, 2013 Friday, March 22, 2013
  • Maggie O'Kane, multimedia investigations editor at The Guardian BBC-Guardian Exposé Uses WikiLeaks to Link Iraq Torture Centers to U.S. Col. Steele & Gen. Petraeus As we continue to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, we turn today to a shocking new report by The Guardian newspaper and BBC Arabic detailing how the United States armed and trained Iraqi police commando units that ran torture centers and death squads. It’s a story that stretches from the U.S.-backed involvement in Latin America to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning. With Maggie O'Kane, multimedia investigations editor at The Guardian. She is a former foreign correspondent. Her past awards include British journalist of the year and foreign correspondent of the year.

GRITtv GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders

»»» FEATURED SHOW Want Fair Elections? Meet the Goldwater Institute Those who, like New York’s lawmakers are seeking to overhaul their democracy are up against powerful opposition but that’s no reason not to push onwards. New York, in fact, stands a good chance of becoming a defiant model. There are voting rights and there’s the right to buy votes and the same cabal attempting to limit the former are just as vigorously defending the latter. Those who, like New York’s lawmakers are seeking fairer elections are up against powerful opposition, says Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy, but that’s no reason not to push on. New York, in fact, stands a good chance of becoming a defiant model for the nation. New York legislators are currently considering a Fair Elections law that would lower overall contribution limits, provide real-time disclosures of all donations and, critically, match small donations. more...

BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!©

»»» NASCAR on FOX NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at California Auto Club Speedway 3 pm et

»»» NCAA Tournament on CBS More bracket-busting! Check your local listings!

»»» NBA on TNT TUESDAY Doubleheader! Knicks @ Celtics 7 pm et then Clippers @ Mavericks 10:30 pm et

**** MLB OPENING DAY IN 8 DAYS! ****

BRICK TEEVEE ACTION!©

The 1st Amendment is Our Permit Our permit to occupy is The First Amendment. Quickly sign the following statement which will be delivered to mayors, police chiefs and major media across the country:

    Our permit to occupy public squares and parks is in The First Amendment, which affirms "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered those protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them. Those other societies don’t have a First Amendment. Yet Washington affirmed the universal right to assembly and protest. We do have a First Amendment. The force being used to clear nonviolent protesters from public squares in our country is unacceptable. It must stop.

StrikeDebt.org & RollingJubilee.org! A bailout of the people by the people Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits. ADDENDUM: Naked Capitalism reports Top Tax Expert Confirms Our Doubts About Occupy Wall Street’s Debt Buying/Forgiveness Scheme

STOP the ACHE NEW WEBSITE! AcheAct.org and Appalachian Community HEALTH EMERGENCY Advocating for government action and protection of the public from the health crisis in mountain top removal communi ties

    Lawmakers concerned about the health effects on humans from mountaintop removal coal mining set forth legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives today. Representatives Dennis Kucinich (OH), Louise Slaughter (NY), Maurice Hinchey (NY), Earl Blumenauer (OR), Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA), John Yarmuth (KY), Lynn Woolsey (CA), Judy Chu (CA), Raúl Grijalva (AZ), James Moran (VA), Michael Honda (CA), John Conyers (MI), and Keith Ellison (MN) introduced the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency (ACHE) Act H.R. 5959 which would place a moratorium on permitting for mountaintop removal coal mining until health studies are conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services. The ACHE coalition presently consists of participants from Coal River Mountain Watch, Mountain Health and Heritage Association, and Christians for the Mountains. “We encourage you, if you’re concerned about mountaintop removal’s effect on your community’s health, to join us in making your voice heard,” said Allen Johnson, executive director of Christians for the Mountains. “Please contact us, learn about the issue, and take action to protect your community.”

Community-Wealth.org community-wealth.org a project of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland Community-Wealth.org brings together, for the first time, information about the broad range of community wealth building activity. Featuring Community Wealth Building in Action: The Cleveland Model Something important is happening in Cleveland. The Democracy Collaborative—the host of C-W.org—in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, Shorebank Enterprise Cleveland, the City of Cleveland, and the city's major hospitals and universities—is helping to implement a new model of large-scale worker-owned and community-benefiting businesses. The Evergreen Cooperative Initiative is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation's decaying economy. Increasingly, this model is being referred to nationally as The Cleveland Model. Initial planning is now underway to assist other cities in Ohio and nationwide to replicate and adapt this innovative approach to economic development, green job creation, and neighborhood stabilization. Find more many resources at Community-Wealth.org!

NET NEUTRALITY! SaveTheInternet.com Declaration of Internet Freedom Tired of fighting bad bills like SOPA, PIPA and CISPA? Want to stand up against those who are trying to control what we do and say online? It's time for something different. A group of more than 1,500 organizations, academics, startup founders and tech innovators has come together to produce a Declaration of Internet Freedom, a set of five principles that put forward a positive vision of the open Internet. Our goal: Get millions of Internet users to sign on to this Declaration. Build political power for Internet users to make sure that we get a seat at the table whenever, and wherever, the future of the Internet is being decided. It's time to stop playing defense and start going on the offensive. The open Internet is central to people’s freedom to communicate, share, advocate and innovate in the 21st century. But powerful interests want to censor free speech, block the sharing of information, hinder innovation and control how Internet users get online. And all too often, people in power are making political decisions behind closed doors about how the Internet should operate — and they're doing this without the involvement of actual Internet users. The result: policies that could close down the open Internet and destroy our freedom to connect. It’s time for us to reclaim the Internet for its users. Take action now and sign the Declaration of Internet Freedom.

NEW!!! Stop Media Consolidation! Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is trying to change the agency’s ownership rules to pave the way for Murdoch to get exactly what he wants. Worse, Genachowski and Murdoch are keeping this all very hush-hush, hoping you won't notice.3 These changes wouldn’t just benefit Murdoch. If the FCC proposal passes, one company could own the major daily newspaper, two TV stations and up to eight radio stations in your town. And that one company could be your Internet provider, too. What is the FCC thinking?!? We can still stop the agency from taking this perilous step — but we have less than a month to do it. By taking action, you’re joining a movement of millions who are working to stop big media from getting even bigger. Please take action today. Click HERE to view our infographic and send a message to the FCC! More info at Another FCC Cave-In: Julius Genachowski’s Media Consolidation Christmas Gift to Murdoch at StopTheCap.com! And Sign Senator Bernie Sanders petition to the FCC Protect Media Diversity: Stop Media Consolidation!

CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE American Majority Rejects Washington Austerity Consensus – And We Demand Media Coverage by Roger Hickey, President, Campaign for America's Future: No more silent majority. The Campaign for America’s Future is joining with the Center for Economic and Policy Research (whose Co-Director, Dean Baker blogs regularly about economic bias in the media) and with FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) to monitor the media’s coverage and representation of the American Majority views as they go into covering the big deficit fight. But we want to enlist YOU too. Send us accounts of unbalanced coverage in the national media and in your local newspapers and television. Call up reporters, editors, assignment people and tell them when they are under-representing the views of the American Majority. We should have at least half the experts, pundits, quotes and real people represented in their coverage. In a debate as important as the one we are going into, we can’t allow the media to ignore the American Majority. Much more at www.ourfuture.org

MOVE TO AMEND! www.movetoamend.org SIGN HERE NOW! And check out more actions on the Move to Amend Calendar for more! Also visit Rep Alan Grayson's site www.savedemocracy.net GET INVOLVED! And Alan Grayson is BACK in the 113th Congress! Help out at CongressmanWithGuts.com

REPRESENT.US IT’S TIME TO GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS SO THE GOVERNMENT CAN REPRESENT US. Represent.Us is a fresh campaign to pass the American Anti-Corruption Act: a law that would overhaul campaign finance, impose strict lobbying and conflict of interest laws, and end secret political money. We are mobilizing millions of Americans — conservatives and progressives, young and old, every issue group fighting K Street, online and offline — to join this campaign. Represent.Us is not just building a movement to pass the Act. The campaign will use hard-hitting accountability tactics to unseat politicians who fail to endorse the Act. If passed, the Act will completely reshape American politics and policy-making and give people a voice. See this Guest Blog at Greenpeace by Executive Director Josh Silver The $6 Billion Auction: Finally, A Plan to Get Money Out of Politics for more information!

SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT See CourageToResist.org and Bradley Manning Support Network UPDATE! From the Bradley Manning Support Network Audio recording of Bradley Manning’s statement leaked AND Update 3/11/13: Contra Bill Keller, Bradley Manning’s motives consistent from chat logs through plea statement

DONATE YOUR OLD CELL PHONES TO T.J. MARTELL FOUNDATION Help save lives. Donate your old & used iPhone, Blackberries, Droid and other phones to help the T.J. Martell Foundations fund life-saving cancer & AIDS research. For more information, go to www.tjmartellfoundation.org CELLULAR PHONE TASK FORCE EDUCATION, ADVOCACY, SUPPORT at CellPhoneTaskForce.org The Cellular Phone Task Force is dedicated to halting the expansion of wireless technology because it cannot be made safe. We provide: education to the public concerning electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog); advocacy for an electromagnetically cleaner environment; support for individuals disabled by radiation from wireless technology and other sources.

B R I C K T E E V E E

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The essential guide for watching government propaganda!

THEY report. YOU throw bricks.© Get your Foam Bricks at ThrowThings.com HERE!

IRAQ: 4,486 US Military Dead as of April 21, 2012

AFGHANISTAN: 2,191 US Military Dead as of March 22, 2013

The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises

Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read

  • This Week (ABC) Host George Stephanopoulos
    • with "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran
    • ROUNDTABLE: Jim Messina and Karl Rove; "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran, who covers the Supreme Court for ABC News; Democratic strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile; and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.
    • FOREIGN POLICY ROUNDTABLE: ABC News global affairs anchor Christiane Amanpour; Atlantic national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg; former Romney campaign senior adviser Dan Senor, co-founder of the Foreign Policy Initiative.; and Time Magazine assistant managing editor Rana Foroohar.
    • SPOTLIGHT: Director Alexandra Pelosi and former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey discuss their new HBO film "Fall to Grace" about McGreevey's life and work since his controversial exit from office.

  • Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
    • Representative Mike Rodgers, Chairman of the House Intelligence Communittee
    • Super Bowl champion, Baltimore Ravens Linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo
    • ROUNDTABLE: New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, CBS News' Clarissa Ward and Time Magazine's Bobby Ghosh

  • 60 Minutes (CBS)
    • Crackdown in Russia - Female punk protest band Pussy Riot piqued the ire of Russian authorities after they staged an anti-Putin rally in Moscow's largest cathedral. The subsequent viral video of the stunt and stiff prison sentences for some of its members made the band a cause celebre. Lesley Stahl reports. Shachar Bar-On and Alexandra Poolos are the producers.
    • Blindsided - Brian Banks may yet play in the NFL. But he knows it's a longshot after spending five years in prison on a rape charge for which he was later exonerated. James Brown reports. Peter Radovich and Gareth Hughes are the producers
    • The Nile Crocodile - Anderson Cooper finds out that underwater, the man-eating Nile crocodile can look graceful, even beautiful, as he swims with the dangerous predators and the wildlife filmmakers studying them. Michael Gavshon and Paul Bellinger are the producers

  • Meet the Press (NBC) Host David Gregory
    Microsoft, NBC News Dissolve MSNBC.com Joint Venture NBC is buying Microsoft's 50 percent interest in the MSNBC website for an undisclosed amount. MSNBC.com will be rebranded as NBCNews.com, and readers who logged into MSNBC.com late Sunday were automatically redirected to NBCNews.com. Microsoft is preparing to launch its own news service this fall. Although he declined to provide many details about the operation general manager of MSN.com Bob Visse said the news staff will be about the same size as the roughly 100 people who created original content for the MSNBC.com. "There is no question that we are going to have more flexibility to make our own decisions," said Vivian Schiller, NBC News' chief digital officer. "This is really an amicable breakup. We think competition will make us better." Okay then.
    • New York City’s Independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg
    • Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre
    • NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel
    • ROUNDTABLE:Chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition Ralph Reed; Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen; Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne; and the New York Times’ David Brooks.

  • State of the Union With Candy Crowley (CNN) At 9 AM ET, Candy talks to the power players: politicians, business leaders and international newsmakers who will make Monday morning's headlines. At NOON ET, Candy wraps it all up with fresh interviews and the best of the earlier hours.
    • Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki
    • Colorado governor John Hickenlooper (D-CO)
    • ROUNDTABLE: California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Austin Nimocks from Alliance Defending Freedom, Republican Strategist Ana Navarro and CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein

  • HEAD ON RADIO with Bob Kincaid
    HEAD ON
    Headon Radio with Bob Kincaid 6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific, 2300 GMT. Duration: 3 hrs. To be part of Conversation Radio on Head-on Radio, call toll-free (877) 443-2366, or use our Liberal community line at 304-658-3333. Email bob [at] headonradio [dot] com during the show!
    • FRIDAY ON THE FRONT PORCH!!!!! Pull up a chair and a cold one! Listen NOW HERE!! Keep Bob on the air HERE ya hear? Amen to the White Rose Society! Donate to Head On HERE! And join Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net!

  • YOUR GREEN NEWS REPORT
    desi-n-bradLeaveItToBeaver
    The Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen: 6 minutes of green news, politics, analysis & snarky comment! BOOKMARK greennews.bradblog.com NOW!
    'Green News Report' - March 21, 2013 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: L.A. to be 100% coal-free; TN conservatives slam mountaintop removal coal mining - by China; NV coal company faked air pollution reports; Green jobs are the fastest growing job sector in the nation; PLUS: Leave it to beavers - 'hero' beaver dam halts oil spill ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
    • IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): State Dept. hid ties to Keystone XL pipeline company; Toyota Unveils New I-Road; NOAA: ‘Robust’ independent evidence confirms thermometer measurements; Climate Science Denier Leads House Science Subcommittee; Pope Francis calls for defending environment; Report: Security risks of climate change; Enviro groups criticize Obama's DOE nominee energy industry ties; Polar bear habitat shrinks even more... PLUS: How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 ... and much, MUCH more! ...
    • BRADCAST UPDATE! Horrific: Birth Defects, Cancer Rates Tied to U.S. Use of Depleted Uranium in Iraq The BRAD BLOG's Desi Doyen discusses that and much more while guest hosting last night's 'The Young Turks'...
    • BRADBLOG UPDATE! $20 PER BALLOT CHARGED FOR 'RECOUNT' IN CA Mayoral candidate charged $2,000/hour for optical-scan 'recount' of 500 paper ballots in CA county, as arbitrary pricing continues to 'chill' citizen oversight in the Golden State...

  • The Peter B. Collins Show PODCAST!
    pbc show
    Listen at PeterBCollins.com!
    The Peter B. Collins Show covers American news and politics from the Left Coast. Veteran talk radio personality Peter B. Collins, based in San Francisco, delivers fresh interviews, commentary and analysis on a range of important topics, with views and voices you don’t often find in the corporate media.
    Holiday Break and Website Changes
      To my valued listeners: We are making some changes to the website and our terms, effective in January. We will continue to offer free podcasts–my new daily news and commentary. Our in-depth interviews will be available for $1 per episode, or to subscribers who pay $5 per month or more. Loyal listeners who simply can’t afford it should send an email to peter@peterbcollins.com, as we will be offering a limited number of scholarships to our friends who are hurting during these tough times. More information will be posted as we complete the revisions. I’m grateful to each of you for listening and supporting this work, and hope that the new model will enable us to keep it going well into the future. All the best, -pbc
    • Peter B Collins, Truthout | Op-Ed An Insider's View of the Progressive Talk Radio Devolution
    • PBC Standard Podcast March 20, 2013 Harper’s Thomas Frank Lays Down Some Markers; Journalist Jess Bravin Takes a Close Look at Gitmo’s Military Commissions
    • PBC Standard Podcast March 22, 2013 Progressive Activist and Author Norman Solomon: Using Grassroots Organizing to Challenge Obama and Democrats on War and Entitlements
    • PBC News & Comment March 20, 2013PBC News & Comment Special: Iraq, 10 Years After Bush’s Biggest Blunder
    • PBC News & Comment March 21, 2013 PBC News & Comment: No Frankenfish at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s

  • Ring of Fire Radio
    rofheader
    Find us at http://ringoffireradio.com and http://goleft.tv/ hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder
    Ring of Fire Radio - GoLeft TV - Robert F. Kennedy, Mike Papantonio, Sam Seder - Politics, Commentary, and News.
    This Weekend on Ring of Fire Radio! Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern.
    • David Bender will be sitting in with Sam while Pap and Bobby are out this week, and he’ll be talking with legendary musician David Crosby.
    • Author and journalist Steven Brill will tell us why American healthcare spending is out of control.
    • Congressman Bruce Braley will give us the latest on the sequester, as well as his Senate run.
    • Investigative journalist Tracy Weber from Pro Publica will be here to tell us how drug companies are hiring doctors to pitch their products.
    • VIDEO! THE HISTORY OF CORPORATE CORRUPTION & FRAUD with Robert Kennedy Jr & Mike Papantonio “Call us if you have a personal story about Fraud on Taxpayers or False Claims for Payment made by Corportations at 1-866-389-FIRE (3473) or contact us by email at info@ringoffireradio.com if you have evidence of fraud that robbed taxpayer dollars. If our government is paying too much due to fraud by a corporation, Ring of Fire wants to do a story on it.”
    • VIDEO! Papantonio: America Being Fracked To Hell and Back (VIDEO) Mike Papantonio and David Bender talk about the disastrous consequences of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), and why Republicans are so hell-bent on making sure every square inch of available land is squeezed for its natural resources.
    • VIDEO! Papantonio: Ten Years Of Lies, Fraud, and Death In Iraq (VIDEO) It's been ten years since the Bush Administration, with the help of the traditional, mainstream media lied us into a war with Iraq, and Mike Papantonio talks with progressive radio host David Bender about the lies, fraud, and deaths that have marked the last decade of our involvement in Iraq.
    • NEW! This Week on Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV! Sundays at NOON!
    • U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told us recently that some banks are just too big to prosecute. Investigative journalist Brad Friedman will be here to tell us why Holder is dead wrong.
    • President Obama looks like he might be willing to cut vital social safety net programs as part of a “grand bargain” with the GOP. We’ll talk about that with progressive radio host Richard Fowler.
    • Drug companies got a huge boost from the Obama administration this past week, and we’ll discuss why the administration believes that drug companies should be immune from lawsuits over their dangerous products. Attorneys Howard Nations and Mike Burg will weigh on in that.
    • And violent acts from Tea Party groups are reaching new highs in America – we’ll hear what Heidi Beirich from the Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about the rise in right wing hate.
    Ring of Fire’s Weekly Rewind Stay up to date with the Ring of Fire Weekly Rewind. Here are the most popular stories from the past week. • Join our blog at www.ringoffireradio.com. You can now SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST by clicking on the "Podcast" tab at the top of the Ring of Fire blog. Please help support progressive radio by signing up! Ring of Fire Radio Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder: Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts 8-11 et Sunday evenings on Chicago's Progressive Talk WCPT AM & FM and 4 pm et on Sirius/XM 167 featuring The PAP Attack! "We’ll bring you the stories that the mainstream media didn’t feel like reporting this week."

  • Majority Report with Sam Seder Streaming LIVE weekdays 12 NOON et @ Majority.fm!

    • MONDAY 3/18/13 Matt Taibbi: JP Morgan Chase's Crime Spree
    • TUESDAY 3/19/13 The Invasion of Iraq Ten Years Later & Becky Bond Credo Activism
    • WEDNESDAY 3/20/13 John Judis: On The Eve of Destruction: Opposing The Iraq War From The Beginning
    • THURSDAY 3/21/13 Tor Ekeland: "Hackers" The New Communists? With Matt & Michael
    • FRIDAY 3/22/13 Casual Friday: Cliff Schecter & Film Guy Matthew Weiss With Matt & Michael
    • MORE Podcast Interviews at majorityfm.libsyn.com!


  • KEISER REPORT Podcasts and more @ MaxKeiser.com!
    maxheaderhiyall
    "HI Y'ALL! Tell the people! Tell the people!"
    WHO IS MAX KEISER? Max Keiser is a financial expert, Prediction Markets analyst, inventor and filmmaker. He is the creator of the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) the first Prediction Market. Max Keiser co-hosts "The Truth About Markets" on ResonanceFM 104.4 in London. He also produces and presents documentary films covering markets and finance for Al Jazeera’s "People & Power" series. Max Keiser started his career on Wall Street in 1983. He is the creator of KarmaBanque a site that enables activists to challenge corporate power.
    • VISIT PirateMyFilm.com!!! Crowd Funding for Pirates!
    • MaxKeiserTV on YouTube! MaxKeiserTV
    STACY SUMMARY: For once and for all, here are our real Facebook pages, the other ones are fake. But if you feel like chatting to the fake ones, by all means, go ahead.
    JP Morgan Cleared Of Conspiracy “To Drive Down Silver Prices”s by Mark OByrne - JP Morgan Chase & Co won their case of a nationwide investors’ lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to drive down silver prices. U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson in Manhattan said the investors, who bought and sold COMEX silver futures and options contracts, failed to show that JPMorgan manipulated prices, by creating long short positions that were not in synch with market events at the time period. The judge acknowledged that the firm could influence prices, but said that it was not proven that the bank “intended to cause artificial prices to exist” and acted accordingly.......
    UBS, BofA, and JPMorgan Pocketed $474 Million As Detroit Descended Into Financial Chaos by maxkeiser - READ LIBOR Rigging & Complex Derivitives By UBS Contributed To Detroit’s Demise(mfi-miami.com)
    The Battle of Cyprus: The Long-planned Deposit Confiscation Scheme by Ellen Brown - The deposit confiscation scheme has long been in the making. US depositors could be next . . . .Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.
    Matt Taibbi Live Blogging From JPM Hearings… by Wolf Richter - Internet companies know practically everything about their users. And servers never forget. Advertisers, ID thieves, insurance companies, and others are trying to get their hands on this data. Each in their own way. But “law enforcement” around the world can simply bully its way to it. Now Microsoft confessed: even your data and conversations on its encrypted services that you thought were secure aren’t. At least not from governments around the world. READ Microsoft Confesses (testosteronepit.com)
    Bitcoin: the fastest growing currency in the world by maxkeiser - READ Bitcoin: the fastest growing currency in the world (guardian.co.uk)
    • KEISER REPORT [KR420] Keiser Report: JP Morgan Out Of Control We discuss Jamie Dimon punching above his weight as a tapeworm and bragging in court documents that he, essentially, had two former Treasury Secretaries on his payroll. They also discuss investors missing out on the ‘rally’ for fear of ‘Too Big to Jail’ tapeworm-banksters being bailed out at their expense. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to author, Josh Rosner, about his explosive new piece, “JP Morgan Chase: Out of Control.” They discuss the London Whale as a sign of systemic rot and sticking the taxpayer with JP Morgan’s bad Washington Mutual debts.
    •KEISER REPORT [KR421] Keiser Report: We’re All Going On a Bank Holiday! We discuss the big picture of bank holidays and wealth confiscation in order to pay off the $100 trillion error account banksters basically admitted to having at Davos in 2011. We also present the Max Keiser Chiefs warning in 2005 about the $250 trillion in derivatives backed by a $40 trillion economy getting ready to blow up the world economy as evidenced by collapse of Refco. Eight years later, the debts are bigger and wealth confiscation schemes are bolder. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to Reggie Middleton of BoomBustBlog.com about Cyprus, the rules that have been revealed and his upcoming special investigation on certain European banks he’s discovered have been committing fraud.
    • KEISER REPORT [KR422] Keiser Report: Constitution Fine Print We discuss central bankers injecting meth into their eyeballs and Freddie Mac then pushing the meth labs onto unsuspecting investors and homebuyers through sales of foreclosures. They also discuss the bold print of the Constitution that should trump the small print of the so-called sacroscant contracts of collateralised debt obligations and other bogus derivatives. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to Marc Hochstein of AmericanBanker.com about whether or not bitcoin is a ponzi scheme and about the issue of privacy in banking and financial transactions.
    • ON THE EDGE On the Edge with Greg Hunter An interview with Greg Hunter of USA Watchdog.
    • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-1272] The Truth About Interest Rate Apartheid and Wealth Confiscation Stacy Summary: Max and I discuss the latest in the Cyprus confiscation scheme in which the name of the ever changing ‘deposit levy’ game is to get the mark about to be robbed confused enough that they don’t know they’ve been mugged. And that the confiscation scheme is a perfect demonstration of interest rate apartheid in which bondholders who were being paid an interest rate for their risk of holding the bond are bailed out whilst savers who were being paid nothing lose out. We look at the way that ‘it’s just Russian money’ is used to get the population to abide by the breaking of the principle that depositors should be more secure than bondholders. Finally, we suggest a modern remake of Midnight Express in which the Billy Hayes character is trapped in a capricious and malicious US justice and penal system for 30 years plus for the crime of downloading academic journals. Download show HERE (mp3)
    • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS Truth about Markets NYC – 03/15/13: Max and Stacy continue taking the banksters and financial terrorists to task in this entertaining installment. Thanks Gary Null and the Progressive Radio Network for having us on… Download show HERE (mp3) • Donate to ResonanceFM here!

  • The Scott Horton Radio Show
    scotthorton
    Scott Horton is host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles and KUCR 88.3 in Riverside, and the Scott Horton Show on No Agenda Radio. (You can listen live Monday through Friday, excluding Thursday, from 12-2 PM Eastern HERE.) Plenty of archives too!
    • Scott Horton Radio Show 3/19/13 Dahr Jamail: Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone, discusses life in Iraq today – 10 years after the US invasion in 2003; the 1 million displaced Iraqis and the greatly increased cancer and birth defect rates; Prime Minister al-Maliki’s adoption of US counterinsurgency tactics, including rape, execution and torture; al-Malilki’s fears that Syrian rebels will target Iraq next and revitalize the Sunni resistance; and the problems with an independent Kurdistan.
    • Scott Horton Radio Show 3/20/13 Daniel Ellsberg: Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, discusses Bradley Manning’s motivation for leaking US embassy cables and the Iraqi and Afghan War logs; the end of accountability for government crimes; why the NY Times’ Bill Keller is dead wrong on Manning; the US mainstream media’s terrible coverage of WikiLeaks stories; Obama’s criminal failure to investigate and prosecute Bush administration war crimes; and why the “aiding the enemy” charge against Manning is especially egregious (and also applies to court-historian Bob Woodward).
    • Listen to more interviews at The Scott Horton Show!
    SCOTT HORTON July 5, 2012: Scott says goodbye to Antiwar.com. Scott Horton is the former host of Antiwar Radio. Visit his blog Stress. Due to budget cuts Scott lost his gig at AntiWarRadio.com! Whoa! See ScottHortonShow.com for archives! Send emails to Scott at scotthorton.org to help Scott keep his podcast going!
    • Older interviews at Antiwar Radio!


  • fauxnews
    • Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)
    • Nicolle Wallace, Former G.W. Bush White House Communications Director & gay marriage rights proponent
    • Gary Bauer, President of American Values, who opposes same sex marriage.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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