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More Surveillance We begin with a story the LameStreamMedia will not cover. We go to NOLA DEFENDER's Stephen Babcock for Gulf Natural Gas Well Stops Leaking The burning, blown out natural gas rig off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico is no longer leaky, according to the feds. On Thursday morning, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said the gas well has "bridged over," meaning that sand and sediment flowed into the well and stanched the flow. The Hercules 265 rig, which caught fire Tuesday night, continues to burn, but only a "small flame" remains, according to the Bureau. The rig is being fed by residual natural gas that was left over on pipes and other drilling machinery at the top of the well. The fire burned through the derrick and drill floor on the rig to collapse on Wednesday, causing them to collapse. The well suffered a blowout Tuesday as Walter Oil and Gas was readying a sidetrack well at the site, which is located 55 south of Grand Isle. Forty four workers were evacuated from the rig, and no one was injured. The rig is in 154 ft. of water. The Coast Guard reported a light sheen that was "dissipating quickly" was still visible on Wednesday afternoon. The cause of the blowout has yet to be determined. As with the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster of 2010, talk about the cause is already centering on the blowout preventer. All drilling rigs are required to be equipped with the device, which activates to cut off the flow of oil or natural gas to prevent the type of failure that occurred. Any blowout would likely mean that device failed in some fashion.
In a related energy matter Charles Pierce at Esquire explains how How The Keystone Pipeline Would Raise Gas Prices One of the major arguments proposed for building our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the death-funnel through the spine of the country that will bring the dirtiest fossil fuel in the history of man all the way down to Texas, and thence to the world, is that it, somehow, will magically lower gas prices in this country and also somehow magically make the people who run oil companies less of the greedy, grasping vulture bastards that we have come to know them to be. Uh, maybe not so much. The true goal of multinational oil companies and Canadian politicians backing the pipeline is to reach export outlets outside the U.S. for tar sands oil and refined fuels, which would drive up the oil's price. And that's always been the Canadian in the woodpile right there. We have to risk, among other things, a slice of the Oglalla Aquifer so a company from the Great White North can sell its ghastly slop to the Chinese. And we have to risk that because the Canadians will be damned if they're going to risk it. Political leaders in the Canadian province of British Columbia have officially opposed plans for a major new tar sands oil pipeline from Alberta through their province to the Pacific Coast. Two other similar proposals may meet the same fate, and are certainly years in the future. This Canadian opposition increases the motivation of tar sands investors and developers and to get Keystone XL built as sure access to overseas markets. 'Twas always thus, by the way. Canadian energy companies look at the United States the way our companies look at, oh, Nigeria or somewhere. Huh? Whodathunk? We urge you to see Josh Fox's new film GASLAND Part Two and TAKE ACTION!
As Matt Taibbi outlined last week "Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will fine Chase "close to $1 billion" for manipulating energy prices in Enron-esque fashion in Michigan and California" now comes Goldman Sachs. We go to DSWright at FDL Goldman Sachs Aluminum Scheme Cost American Consumers $5 Billion Past Three Years Wall Street figured out another scam. Instead of creating a doomsday securitizing machine for the mortgage market, they are going old school – manipulating commodity prices for fun and profit. According to the New York Times, Goldman Sachs and other firms have been manipulating the aluminum market by moving the metal between warehouses and delaying the sale of it in order to drive the price up.

Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars. The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again. This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange. ...... Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can’s purchase price can be traced back to the strategy. But multiply that amount by the 90 billion aluminum cans consumed in the United States each year — and add the tons of aluminum used in things like cars, electronics and house siding — and the efforts by Goldman and other financial players has cost American consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years

..... What’s a few billion among friends? It was for a good cause, the cause of literally driving around in circles so consumers could pay more. After Wall Street’s hostile takeover of the American government and economy in the 1980s, the manufacturing base has been shipped off and now money changers rather than producers sit at the top of the national economy. Unfortunately, finance has no social utility, Wall Street’s parasites who create nothing – they live off the buying and selling of others. So now, with finance in control, a once great industrial power is reduced to trying to profit off of driving metal around in circles rather than producing goods with it. Then Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge outlines Goldman Responds To Accusations It Manipulates The Aluminum Market Think Goldman would take accusations that it is, gasp, manipulating the RMBS, HFT, crude commodities market sitting down? Think again. Like every mollusc in self-preservation mode, here is Goldman's just released ink, pardon, press release saying all accusations about it are nothing but sheer rampant confusion. After all - Goldman simply makes markets. Move along. ........ And read through BusinessInsider's Goldman's Blankfein: The Worst Case Scenario 'Absolutely Will Happen' for these tidbits: Investors should always prepare for the most extreme risk scenario because it will happen, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the Australian Institute of Company Directors at a breakfast briefing on Friday. ...... "Most risk management is really just advanced contingency planning and disciplining yourself to realize that, given enough time, very low probability events not only can happen, but they absolutely will happen," said Blankfein. "The definition of infinity is that you wait long enough, everything happens." ...... "Once you think that something is improbable and everybody thinks it, people modify their behavior in a way that makes it more probable," said Blankfein. "Everyone thought it was so improbable that so many people would default on real estate, it actually created a greater probability that it would [happen] because more capital flowed into that sector." WATCH The Big Picture with Dr. Richard Wolff on the G-S commodities bizness Next Episode of Hoarders...Goldman Sachs?
From the Captain Renault "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" files we find at Der Spiegel 'Key Partners': Secret Links Between Germany and the NSA Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly said she knew nothing about American surveillance activities in Germany. But documents seen by SPIEGEL show that German intelligence cooperates closely with the NSA and even uses spy software provided by the US. WHOOPS! And there's this also at Der Spiegel 'Prolific Partner': German Intelligence Used NSA Spy Program Angela Merkel and her ministers claim they first learned about the US government's comprehensive spying programs from press reports. But SPIEGEL has learned that German intelligence services themselves use one of the NSA's most valuable tools. Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, and its domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), used a spying program of the American National Security Agency (NSA). This is evident in secret documents from the US intelligence service that have been seen by SPIEGEL journalists. The documents show that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was equipped with a program called XKeyScore intended to "expand their ability to support NSA as we jointly prosecute CT (counterterrorism) targets." The BND is tasked with instructing the domestic intelligence agency on how to use the program, the documents say. According to an internal NSA presentation from 2008, the program is a productive espionage tool. Starting with the metadata -- or information about which data connections were made and when -- it is able, for instance, to retroactively reveal any terms the target person has typed into a search engine, the documents show. In addition, the system is able to receive a "full take" of all unfiltered data over a period of several days -- including, at least in part, the content of communications. This is relevant from a German perspective, because the documents show that of the up to 500 million data connections from Germany accessed monthly by the NSA, a major part is collected with XKeyScore (for instance, around 180 million in December 2012). The BND and BfV, when contacted by SPIEGEL, would not discuss the espionage tool. The NSA, as well, declined to comment, referring instead to the words of US President Barack Obama during his visit to Berlin and saying there was nothing to add. ...... In Afghanistan, it says elsewhere in the document, the BND had even proved to be the NSA's "most prolific partner" when it came to information gathering. The relationship is also close on a personal level: At the end of April, just a few weeks before the first revelations by former intelligence agency employee Edward Snowden, a 12-member high-level BND delegation was invited to the NSA to meet with various specialists on the subject of "data acquisition." How about that? We're "SHOCKED! SHOCKED!" Angela had no idea!
JULIAN ASSANGE UPDATE: Josh Taylor at ZDNet tells us WikiLeaks Party registered in Australia Whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has been officially registered as a political party in Australia ahead of founder and editor Julian Assange's run for the Senate later this year. The party's registration was put up on the Australian Electoral Commission's website today. ........ Assange will run for the Senate in Victoria, but the party has already said it will field Senate candidates in Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia. In a similar move to legislation already before the parliament from the Greens, the party has pledged to bring before parliament amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, so that all agency requests for telecommunications metadata from ISPs would require a warrant. Should Assange get just over 14 percent of the vote and secure a Senate spot, he would be the second person to be elected to an Australian parliament while living in London, after Earl Grey in 1848. Assange would assume the position from July 1, 2014, but if he has not returned to Australia by that date, it is unclear how he would take on the Senate role, short of him resigning and the party finding a replacement to take the Senate seat.
Glenn Greenwald shakes the Democratic "leadership" tree exposing Democratic establishment unmasked: prime defenders of NSA bulk spying One of the worst myths Democratic partisans love to tell themselves - and everyone else - is that the GOP refuses to support President Obama no matter what he does. Like its close cousin - the massively deceitful inside-DC grievance that the two parties refuse to cooperate on anything - it's hard to overstate how false this Democratic myth is. When it comes to foreign policy, war, assassinations, drones, surveillance, secrecy, and civil liberties, President Obama's most stalwart, enthusiastic defenders are often found among the most radical precincts of the Republican Party. The rabidly pro-war and anti-Muslim GOP former Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, has repeatedly lavished Obama with all sorts of praise and support for his policies in those areas. The Obama White House frequently needs, and receives, large amounts of GOP Congressional support to have its measures enacted or bills its dislikes defeated. The Obama DOJ often prevails before the US Supreme Court solely because the Roberts/Scalia/Thomas faction adopts its view while the Ginsburg/Sotomayor/Breyer faction rejects it (as happened in February when the Court, by a 5-4 ruling, dismissed a lawsuit brought by Amnesty and the ACLU which argued that the NSA's domestic warrantless eavesdropping activities violate the Fourth Amendment; the Roberts/Scalia wing accepted the Obama DOJ's argument that the plaintiffs lack standing to sue because the NSA successfully conceals the identity of which Americans are subjected to the surveillance). ....... The extraordinary events that took place in the House of Representatives yesterday are perhaps the most vivid illustration yet of this dynamic, and it independently reveals several other important trends. ....... Using Orwellian language so extreme as to be darkly hilarious, this was the first line of the White House's statement opposing the amendment: "In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the President has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens" (i.e.: we welcome the debate that has been exclusively enabled by that vile traitor, the same debate we've spent years trying to prevent with rampant abuse of our secrecy powers that has kept even the most basic facts about our spying activities concealed from the American people). The White House then condemned Amash/Conyers this way: "This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process." What a multi-level masterpiece of Orwellian political deceit that sentence is. .......... Even more notable than the Obama White House's defense of the NSA's bulk domestic spying was the behavior of the House Democratic leadership. Not only did they all vote against de-funding the NSA bulk domestic spying program - that includes liberal icon House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who voted to protect the NSA's program - but Pelosi's deputy, Steny Hoyer, whipped against the bill by channeling the warped language and mentality of Dick Cheney. This is the language the Democratic leadership circulated when telling their members to reject Amash/Conyers: "2) Amash/Conyers/Mulvaney/Polis/Massie Amendment – Bars the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the Patriot Act (as codified by Section 501 of FISA) to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who may be in communication with terrorist groups but are not already subject to an investigation under Section 215." Remember when Democrats used to object so earnestly when Dick Cheney would scream "The Terrorists!" every time someone tried to rein in the National Security State just a bit and so modestly protect basic civil liberties? How well they have learned: now, a bill to ban the government from collecting the telephone records of all Americans, while expressly allowing it to collect the records of anyone for whom there is evidence of wrongdoing, is - in the language of the House Democratic Leadership - a bill to Protect The Terrorists. None of this should be surprising. ................ To say that there is a major sea change underway - not just in terms of surveillance policy but broader issues of secrecy, trust in national security institutions, and civil liberties - is to state the obvious. But perhaps the most significant and enduring change will be the erosion of the trite, tired prism of partisan simplicity through which American politics has been understood over the last decade. What one sees in this debate is not Democrat v. Republican or left v. right. One sees authoritarianism v. individualism, fealty to The National Security State v. a belief in the need to constrain and check it, insider Washington loyalty v. outsider independence. That's why the only defenders of the NSA at this point are the decaying establishment leadership of both political parties whose allegiance is to the sprawling permanent power faction in Washington and the private industry that owns and controls it. They're aligned against long-time liberals, the new breed of small government conservatives, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, many of their own members, and increasingly the American people, who have grown tired of, and immune to, the relentless fear-mongering. The sooner the myth of "intractable partisan warfare" is dispelled, the better. ...... Go read the whole article on the disgusting Democrats. THIS JUST IN: Glenn Greenwald To Testify Before Congress About NSA Surveillance Programs Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story on top-secret NSA surveillance programs earlier this summer, will testify before a congressional committee. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who is leading the Wednesday congressional hearing ... has invited critics of the NSA programs to testify ...... Greenwald tweeted on Friday that he would join the hearing remotely. "NSA surveillance critics to testify before Congress: I'll be there via video." Smart cookie that Greenwald! Why dare step into the Hornets' Nest when you can safely video conference in from an "undiscloded location"? More on this at The Guardian NSA surveillance critics to testify before Congress Democratic congressman Alan Grayson, who is leading a bipartisan group of congressman organising the hearing, told the Guardian it would serve to counter the "constant misleading information" from the intelligence community. The hearing, which will take place on Wednesday, comes amid evidence of a growing congressional rebellion NSA data collection methods. ....... "I have been concerned about the fact that we have heard incessantly in recent weeks from General Keith Alexander [director of the NSA] and Mr James Clapper [director of National Intelligence] about their side of the story," he said. "We have barely heard anything in Congress from critics of the program. "We have put together an ad hoc, bipartisan hearing on domestic surveillance in on the Capitol. We plan to have critics of the program come in and give their view – from the left and the right." Tune in to C-SPAN this Wednesday to see if they even carry it! We're sure the testimonies will be gripping and may even help dispell "the myth of intractable partisan warfare".
In a related matter David Kravets at WIRED.com reports Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters. That’s the upshot of a new analysis by MapLight, a Berkeley-based non-profit that performed the inquiry at WIRED’s request. The investigation shows that defense cash was a better predictor of a member’s vote on the Amash amendment than party affiliation. House members who voted to continue the massive phone-call-metadata spy program, on average, raked in 122 percent more money from defense contractors than those who voted to dismantle it. Overall, political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others ponied up $12.97 million in donations for a two-year period ending December 31, 2012, according to the analysis, which MapLight performed with financing data from OpenSecrets. Lawmakers who voted to continue the NSA dragnet-surveillance program averaged $41,635 from the pot, whereas House members who voted to repeal authority averaged $18,765. Of the top 10 money getters, only one House member — Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) — voted to end the program. [chart] “How can we trust legislators to vote in the public interest when they are dependent on industry campaign funding to get elected? Our broken money and politics system forces lawmakers into a conflict of interest between lawmakers’ voters and their donors,” said Daniel G. Newman, MapLight’s president and co-founder........ Click over to see their incredible chart and more details!
As Detroit continues its downward spiral and lawsuits continue to fly BTV correspondent jen caught these tweets.

• Max Keiser @maxkeiser - As Steve Forbes told me personally in Athens when the tear gas was flying: 'Great deals as soon as get rid of the locals.' Same for Detroit.
  
• Max Keiser @maxkeiser - Detroit is a pogrom. And it's just getting started. 100 cities is U.S. are now on the chopping block. All to save a few banker bonuses.

Yeah. Are YOU in one of those "100 cities in the U.S."? We go to Tom Leonard in Flint, Michigan at The Telegraph.co.uk for US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline. The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area. The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint. Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country. Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes. Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis. ....... And at WSWS.org Stefan Steinberg explains how Greece and Detroit—a new stage in the social counterrevolution This week saw a fresh round of mass sackings of public sector workers in Greece. On Monday, 2,000 teachers were suspended from their jobs and 2,500 health workers received notice of their transfer into a “labour mobility” austerity scheme, a short gangplank to unemployment. The target is to push 27,000 into the labour mobility scheme by the end of this year. Most of these workers will join the 15,000 public sector employees already made unemployed or redundant in the first six months of this year. ...... The elimination of guaranteed job security for public sector workers in Europe is part of an international offensive of finance capital against the working class. It comes just as in the United States the city of Detroit has been placed in bankruptcy by financial manager Kevyn Orr, who is moving to slash retiree pensions and sell off the city’s assets. Around the world, the financial elite view every social right won by the working class in bitter struggles as an intolerable obstacle to their profits and wealth. ....... In the cases of both Greece and Detroit, workers are bombarded with propaganda that the country and city are bankrupt and the state can no longer afford to pay a living wage and social benefits. This is a pernicious lie! When it came to bailing out the banks in 2008, Washington and the European capitals could drum up trillions overnight to cover the speculative losses of Wall Street and of the major European banks. Now, stock markets on Wall Street and in Western Europe are soaring, and major banks on both sides of the Atlantic are posting near-record profits. The only way forward for the working class is a renewal of the militant class struggles through which the social rights now under attack were originally won. In the US, entitlement to a living wage, social and health benefits was wrested from the employers in the course of bitter class struggles starting in the 1930s, which were often led by socialist-minded workers. ........... For decades now, the United Auto Workers union has repeated its mantra that concessions to the bosses and trust in the Democratic Party would save Detroit workers from the worst. In Greece, the trade unions have promoted illusions that toothless protest strikes, including numerous one-day national strikes, would encourage the Greek government to see sense and back down on austerity. The working class in the US and Europe must draw their own conclusions and orient their struggles on the basis of an independent, revolutionary perspective. They can place no confidence in the unions, bourgeois “left” parties such as the Democratic Party in the US, or the social democrats of Europe, or pseudo-left outfits such as Greece’s SYRIZA party. SYRIZA argues that, in collaboration with the European Union and the banks, it is possible to reorganize austerity in a less punitive manner. The stage is set for new and explosive class conflicts. Well aware that such frontal attacks on basic social rights are incompatible with democratic rights, the ruling elites are moving towards authoritarian methods of rule. This has been most recently confirmed by documents released by Edward Snowden, revealing that European states have developed their own methods of surveillance comparable to those of the American NSA. The socialist traditions of the past must be revived to prepare workers’ resistance today. There is only one political tendency on the planet which represents this continuity of the struggle for socialist internationalism: the Socialist Equality Parties around the world, and their political voice, the World Socialist Web Site. Go look at this chart by the NYT study discussing upward mobility "The chance a child raised in the bottom fifth rose to the top fifth", perhaps the hinge of the mythical "American Dream" and notice the dark areas. It is more like upward IMMOBILTY. In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters ..... This geography appears to play a major role in making Atlanta one of the metropolitan areas where it is most difficult for lower-income households to rise into the middle class and beyond, according to a new study that other researchers are calling the most detailed portrait yet of income mobility in the United States. The study — based on millions of anonymous earnings records and being released this week by a team of top academic economists — is the first with enough data to compare upward mobility across metropolitan areas. These comparisons provide some of the most powerful evidence so far about the factors that seem to drive people’s chances of rising beyond the station of their birth, including education, family structure and the economic layout of metropolitan areas. Climbing the income ladder occurs less often in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, the data shows, with the odds notably low in Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus. By contrast, some of the highest rates occur in the Northeast, Great Plains and West, including in New York, Boston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Seattle and large swaths of California and Minnesota. “Where you grow up matters,” said Nathaniel Hendren, a Harvard economist and one of the study’s authors. “There is tremendous variation across the U.S. in the extent to which kids can rise out of poverty.” That variation does not stem simply from the fact that some areas have higher average incomes: upward mobility rates, Mr. Hendren added, often differ sharply in areas where average income is similar, like Atlanta and Seattle. The gaps can be stark. ........ Geography mattered much less for well-off children than for middle-class and poor children, according to the results. In an economic echo of Tolstoy’s line about happy families being alike, the chances that affluent children grow up to be affluent are broadly similar across metropolitan areas. ....... The team of researchers initially analyzed an enormous database of earnings records to study tax policy, hypothesizing that different local and state tax breaks might affect intergenerational mobility. What they found surprised them, said Raj Chetty, one of the authors and the most recent winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, which the American Economic Association awards to the country’s best academic economist under the age of 40. The researchers concluded that larger tax credits for the poor and higher taxes on the affluent seemed to improve income mobility only slightly. The economists also found only modest or no correlation between mobility and the number of local colleges and their tuition rates or between mobility and the amount of extreme wealth in a region. But the researchers identified four broad factors that appeared to affect income mobility, including the size and dispersion of the local middle class. All else being equal, upward mobility tended to be higher in metropolitan areas where poor families were more dispersed among mixed-income neighborhoods. .............. In previous studies of mobility, economists have found that a smaller percentage of people escape childhood poverty in the United States than in several other rich countries, including Canada, Australia, France, Germany and Japan. The latest study is consistent with those findings. Whatever the reasons, affluent children often remain so: one of every three 30-year-olds who grew up in the top 1 percent of the income distribution was already making at least $100,000 in family income, according to the new study. Among adults who grew up in the bottom half of the income distribution, only one out of 25 had family income of at least $100,000 by age 30 ....... Bootstraps anyone? The decades-long Corporate War on the Poverty-stricken is in full swing. Add to that the War on Drug Users and the War on Education and NAFTA and CAFTA and the new TAFTA and the TPP and they are THIS CLOSE to their goal of worldwide serfdom via Austerity, what's known as "Sequestration" in the good ole U.S. Here's the latest on the War on Education from Yves Smith Chicago CEO Club, With Rahm and Pritzkers on Board, Pushed for Chicago Bond Downgrade, Whacking Local Investors and Pension-Holders Even more so than most cities, Chicago has had the best government money can buy. In this case, the money is willing to engage in a scorched-earth policy of crushing local investors and wrecking the city budget to achieve its end of taming unions and making Chicago even easier pickings for looting via infrastructure sales. At The Bureau of Investigative Journalism Chris Woods leaks this Exclusive: Leaked Pakistani report confirms high civilian death toll in CIA drone strikes A secret document obtained by the Bureau reveals for the first time the Pakistan government’s internal assessment of dozens of drone strikes, and shows scores of civilian casualties. The United States has consistently claimed only a tiny number of non-combatants have been killed in drone attacks in Pakistan – despite research by the Bureau and others suggesting that over 400 civilians may have died in the nine-year campaign. The internal document shows Pakistani officials too found that CIA drone strikes were killing a significant number of civilians – and have been aware of those deaths for many years. Of 746 people listed as killed in the drone strikes outlined in the document, at least 147 of the dead are clearly stated to be civilian victims, 94 of those are said to be children. The confidential 12-page summary paper, titled Details of Attacks by Nato Forces/Predators in FATA was prepared by government officials in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Based on confidential reports from a network of government agents in the field, it outlines 75 separate CIA drone strikes between 2006 and late 2009 and provides details of casualties in many of the attacks. Five attacks alleged to be carried out by Nato or other unspecified forces are also listed. The numbers recorded are much higher than those provided by the US administration, which continues to insist that no more than 50 to 60 ‘non-combatants’ have been killed by the CIA across the entire nine years of Pakistan bombings. New CIA director John Brennan has described claims to the contrary as ‘intentional misrepresentations‘. The document shows that during the 2006-09 period covered, when Pakistan’s government and military were privately supporting the CIA’s campaign, officials had extensive internal knowledge of high civilian casualties...... HUGE! READ ON! Wonder how the Obomber admin will spin this via their corporate press toadies - or just ignore it: non-coverage by ommission - like Pentagon Pundits: New York Times Reporter David Barstow Wins Pulitzer Prize for Exposing Military’s Pro-War Propaganda Media Campaign the corporopress COMPLETELY IGNORED in 2009. GLITTERATI NEWS: We wish the new ma-n-pa 0.01% British Royalty the best for birthing the third-in-line to be King. Laurie Penny puts the media and public frenzy in perspective in The Babies we don't care about today ..... It is sourly ironic that in a week when the whole nation is mandated to celebrate the birth at lavish state expense of Baby Cambridge, the hard right of the conservative party is set to launch a new attack on “teenage single mothers”. Of all future subjects of our new infant overlord, none are more scapegoated than teenage single mums. They have always been targeted by the more purse-lipped guardians of the nation’s purse strings, in part because they lack the resources to fight back, and in part because we live in a sexist, post-feudal society where contempt for sexually independent women and for poor people is expertly stage-managed.......... We follow up on the passing of Helen Thomas last week with this post by Barbara Lubin and Danny Muller at Middle East Children for Peace The Betrayal of Helen Thomas .....And now that she has died, it has become politically correct to re-embrace her, because now Helen is safe. She will not be asking the uncomfortable questions anymore, questions that made lying politicians squirm, as they stared dumbfounded back at her, always surprised at freedom of the press in action, at a woman who did not know her place. But in Helen’s final years, there was little celebration of her career and her courage, as former friends, coworkers and many in Washington jumped on the bandwagon resolutely condemning her for comments made in a hit piece that took brief comments out of context. Perhaps most appallingly, President Obama took time from spying on one half of the world and bombing the other half to state that her resignation was “the right decision.” In a world where politicians like George Bush, Dick Cheney and Rahm Emmanuel are celebrated for their reputations for expletive laden tirades, can we really pretend that Helen’s comments were so shocking or offensive that they were worthy of forced retirement? Please read all of this. There is no modern-day equivalent of Helen Thomas in the WH press room to ask the difficult and probing questions she was famous for. No, asking questions of the powerful on their turf could get you Gitmo-ized or "disappeared". LASTLY we go to Paul Jay of The Real News Network who did an extensive series of interviews with journalist CHRIS HEDGES. Chris Hedges Answers Questions from Viewers PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to Reality Asserts Itself. We're continuing our series of interviews with Chris Hedges. And if you haven't watched the other parts, you really should. But we're going to in this segment do viewer questions. As we told our members, they could ask questions and people could vote on the questions, and we're going to ask the top four or five top-voted questions. And here we go...... WATCH All interviews here: Reality Asserts Itself - Chris Hedges for all SEVEN segments! WOW! Do take the time to see these, all with transcripts - way too much to snip here. Good Items! BTV FLOOD UPDATE: We're just about done cleaning up the crap last week's flood left us and thousands of other NE Ohio homeowners. We found this on "Cleveland's Own FOX8" Water Woes: More Help on Way for Lake County Residents LAKE COUNTY, Ohio– Lake County commissioners and administrators are seeking a “Declaration of Emergency” after severe storms dumped several inches of rain on the county over the weekend, causing extensive flooding. “We’ve been in touch with local officials, state representatives, the commissioners and we’re all hands on deck trying to pursue any avenues that might help,” said Jason Boyd, county administrator. The widespread flooding and damage could be seen even days after the storms in cities like Eastlake, Wickliffe, Willowick and Mentor. They are hoping to obtain federal and state relief funds from both FEMA and OEMA. Mr. Boyd isn’t prepared to say exactly how many homes were impacted, but did say “a significant number” of homes were damaged by the floodwaters and also sewage. “The predominant issue is the flooded basements, storm sewer backups, some sanitary backups; but we’re still in the vetting process of that. It’s obviously a very emotional topic and we completely understand,” said Mr. Boyd. Some homeowners say their properties have flooded multiple times in recent years and they believe it is an issue with the sewer system. Mr. Boyd said that is one of many possibilities they are investigating. However, right now they are focused on getting financial aid for flood victims and helping people clean up their homes...... Notice how they fail to mention how storm sewer water got into our sanitary sewer system? And how this polluted water causes potential killer MOLD? We go to our BTV resident real estate insurance expert for this observation:

Every few years there is some new pet "hazard" that bored underutilized attorneys like to latch on to...to create a rash of lawsuits and clean up, class action hopefully. We follow it closely on real estate because our licenses are affected and because with each new litigious trend...there is a slew of new laws and contracts for us to get signed up front waiving liabilities "in the event of...". Years ago it was asbestos. Then it switched to Mold, big time. There were so many mold lawsuits that we now have dozens of repetitive mold disclosures to be signed, even in leases.. So what does this have to do with anything? Lots. It's all about insurance. Each time there are tons of successful lawsuits claiming hazards and health impact, even if they're difficult to prove.....there are new insurance rules drawn up to reflect what will and will not be covered. Every time. So after the rash of so many millions won by homeowners in mold lawsuits-- all the insur companies got together and decided to penalize all homeowners with water entry. For life. That's right. They adopted an unprecedented new risk category about water entry / mold potential. Sure you can make the claim, as everyone does... but major caveat emptor there. There is a thing called CLUE report that tracks any claims you've made over the past 5 yrs and that report travels with the homeowner (not a tenanat btw). In other words, even if you sell the house that had water/ flooding ...the risk assessment increase goes WITH YOU to the NEXT house, even if it's all dry as a bone for the life of the property. You are now considered a higher risk client to them. Meaning you are more likely to have flooding, even if you move to the Sinai desert. Meaning you can be charged higher rates due to being higher risk. See, they are all terrified of mold claims. They lost millions from them and now need to make sure they get it back and lose no more. So the best procedure unless it's something truly catastrophic you cannot repair on your own...is to keep quiet about it. The other side of the coin is the house itself also becomes marked as a potential mold hazard. Mold and remediation of it are not an exacting science. In fact some specialists claim its a lot of guesswork when it comes to determining how much is in the walls and how dangerous that variety is. So if you ever go to sell, it's a big disclosure you MUST make to the buyer regardless if you've cleared it all up. And that new buyer then faces the same insurance issue of higher rates because the house is now a heightened risk property.

We are treading lightly IN RE Insurance Guy and Da Feds. Looks like our new U.S. Rep David Joyce (R-OH14) couldn't be bothered, seeing as our little corner of CD 14 is mostly BLUE. But we felt compelled to navigate his crappy government-sponsored website to send this message:

Say! Hi Dave! Did you know we got hit pretty hard by the rainfall storm Saturday 20 July 2013? Yeah. Northwest End of District 14. You should see it! Treelawns lined with furniture, mattresses, carpets and rugs and garbage bags and boxes and more, all ruined by massive sewer back-up flooding. Have you contacted FEMA or any other federal agencies to see about helping us? Have you talked to any city mayors in the area? Or county officials? It's really bad down here especially north of OH Route 2. And also too there are a lot of "contractors" riding around soliciting clean-up work claiming they can "remidiate" the oncoming mold health hazard that will no doubt infest thousands of homes that were flooded. How can any citizen believe the veracity of these strangers' claims? Is anyone checking out these companies? Could they be ripping off homeowners, especially the elderly who were affected? How would we know? I hope you can find time to visit our corner of District 14 and see for yourself the damage this storm caused. Maybe champion some federal assistance so we can get back on our feet. And it would be a good idea to convene a meeting of those city mayors and Lake County government officials to see how we go forward to alleviate affected homeowners' issues now and how we can work together to prevent this type of damage from happening in the future. And we need a process to check out these contractors to make sure they are not preying on uninformed citizens, especially our elderly. Thank you for your time and I look forward to meeting you in the Wickliffe/Willowick area soon.

Not one peep from Congressman Joyce. Surprised? Be sure to check out EVERYTHING in our BTV Alerts and our regulars including Glenn Greenwald, Robert McChesney and D-Day with Sammy, PBC with more Bradley Manning updates, Green News Report with more on the NatGas blowout in The Gulf and Scott Horton with Our Man in Pipelineistan Pepe Escobar on Syria! It's all good! Click on anything an be instantly smarter! We'll see you next week! BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!_©

Democracy Now's Iraq interactive timeline

Headlines Monday, July 22, 2013

• Obama on the death of Trayvon Martin since the acquittal of George Zimmerman As Protests Continue over Verdict, Obama Says "Trayvon Martin Could Have Been Me 35 Years Ago"
  
• Cornel West Cornel West: Obama’s Response to Trayvon Martin Case Belies Failure to Challenge "New Jim Crow"
  
• Anthony Arnove, the editor, with Howard Zinn, of "Voices of a People’s History of the United States" Censoring Howard Zinn: Former Indiana Gov. Tried to Remove "A People’s History" from State Schools
  

Headlines Tuesday, July 23, 2013

• Mark Binelli, a Detroit native and author of "Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis" Detroit Goes Bankrupt: Will Unelected Manager Pit City’s Needs Against Rights of Pensioners?
  
• Chris Woods, an award-winning reporter working with the drones investigation team at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. First Leaked Pakistani Report on U.S. Drone War Undermines Claims of Low Civilian Toll
  
• Laurie Penny Media Frenzy over British Monarchy’s New Heir Sparks Hopes for World Where "All Babies Matter"
  

Headlines Wednesday, July 24, 2013

• Edward Snowden, NSA leaker interviewed by Glenn Greenwald Edward Snowden Allowed Into Russia Weeks After Outing Himself as the NSA Leaker
  
• Daniel Ellsberg, Mike Gravel & Robert West How the Pentagon Papers Came to be Published By the Beacon Press Told by Daniel Ellsberg & Others In 2007, Amy Goodman moderated an event at the Unitarian Universalist conference in Portland, Oregon, commemorating the publication of the Pentagon Papers and its relevance today. Today, we hear the story from three men at the center of the storm: former Pentagon and RAND Corporation analyst, famed whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times; former Alaskan senator and presidential candidate Mike Gravel, who tells the dramatic story of how he entered the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record and got them to the Beacon Press; finally, Robert West, the former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. We begin with Ellsberg, who Henry Kissinger once described as "the world’s most dangerous man."
  

Headlines Thursday, July 25, 2013

• Jeremy Scahill & Rooj Alwazir, Yemeni-American activist Yemeni Reporter Who Exposed U.S. Drone Strike Freed from Prison After Jailing at Obama’s Request
  
• Richard Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst Richard Wolff: Detroit a "Spectacular Failure" of System that Redistributes Pay from Bottom to Top
  

Headlines Friday, July 26, 2013

• Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Egypt Tensions Escalate as Morsi Detained and Supporters of Army, Brotherhood Hold Rival Protests
  
• Seema Iyer, attorney specializing in constitutional, criminal and civil rights law Juror B29 Says Zimmerman "Got Away with Murder," Intensifying Scrutiny of Prosecution & Florida Laws
  
• Aleta Alston-Toure, founder of the New Jim Crow Movement in Jacksonville, Florida "March for Dignity" Seeks Release of Marissa Alexander & Resignation of Prosecutor Angela Corey
  

GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders
»»» FEATURED SHOW Resisting Commodity, Promoting Democracy Performance art at its most dynamic encourages audience participation and tests the boundaries of our daily social performances and, according to Esther Neff, allows us to explore what it means to be together and create together. more.....

BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!_©
»»» NASCAR on ESPN It's the Brickyard 400 pres. by Golden Corral from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway! Coverage begins at 1 pm et »»» SUNDAY BASEBALL on TBS Red Sox @ Orioles 1:35 pm et
»»» SUNDAY NIGHT BASEBALL on ESPN Cardinals @ Braves 8 pm et
»»» MONDAY NIGHT BASEBALL on ESPN Angels @ Rangers 7 pm et

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 communities. The A.C.H.E. Act Is Re-Introduced In The 113th Congress!

Washington, DC – Today a group of U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers introduced the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act (ACHE Act, H.R. 526) to protect Appalachian families and communities from the nation’s most extreme form of coal mining, mountaintop removal. The Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act’s leading sponsors are Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), joined by original cosponsors Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD), Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA), Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Rep. Janice Schakowksy (D-IL), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and Rep. Jared Polis (DCO).

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 Overview: The Cleveland Model—How the Evergreen Cooperatives are Building Community Wealth 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 Defense closes argument, Bradley was humanist whistle-blower: trial report, day 22 July 26, 2013. By Nathan Fuller. Defense lawyer David Coombs made his closing argument today portraying Bradley Manning as a humanist who valued all human life, and a whistle-blower who felt the American public needed to see what he saw in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan..... AND Update 7/23/13: Obama should pardon Manning, P.J. Crowley condemns prosecution, Manning Pride contingent PLUS Supporters in more than 40 cities take action for Bradley Manning

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

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: 2,255 US Military Dead as of July 26, 2013
The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises
MOCKINGBIRD: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read

• This Week (ABC) Host George Stephanopoulos
  • Crisis management expert Judy Smith on New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner
  • Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
  • Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.
  • Assistant Majority Leader Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
  • ROUNDTABLE: ABC’s George Will; Editor and Publisher of The Nation and WashingtonPost.com columnist Katrina vanden Heuvel; Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan; and former Lead Auto Adviser and Counselor to the Treasury Secretary Steven Rattner, now chair of Willett Advisors.
  • ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap joins George Will to discuss the latest fallout over performance enhancing drugs in baseball.
  

  
  

• Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
  • Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
  • Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO)
  • ROUNDTABLE: Dee Dee Myers of Vanity Fair, David Gergen of Harvard University and Michael Gerson of The Washington Post.
  • MLB Steroid scandal: Bob Nightengale of USA Today and Bill Rhoden of The New York Times
  

  
  

• 60 Minutes (CBS) Summer Reruns
  • American Nuns - One of the pressing problems Pope Francis faces is the disillusionment of American nuns. Many were shocked last year when the group that represents most of them was reprimanded by the Vatican, which said the nuns' liberal ideas were undermining the Church. Bob Simon reports. Tanya Simon and Andrew Metz are the producers.
  • Bill Gates 2.0 - Charlie Rose visits Microsoft founder Bill Gates in his private office, where he show a personal side that's rarely seen and displays a priceless Da Vinci manuscript that inspires the billionaire innovator and humanitarian. Denise Schrier Cetta is the producer.
  

  
  

• 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.
  • Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
  • New York mayoral candidate City Council Speaker Christine Quinn
  • ROUNDTABLE: former top strategist for President Obama, now NBC Senior Political Analyst David Axelrod; Host of CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” Maria Bartiromo; GOP strategist Mike Murphy; and former Democratic Congressman from Tennessee, Harold Ford.
  

  
  

• 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.
  • Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
  • Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein
  • New York Republican Congressman Peter King
  • ROUNDTABLE: Radio Talk Show host Chris Plante and CNN Political Commentators Paul Begala, Cornell Belcher, and Ana Navarro.
  

  
  

• HEAD ON RADIO with Bob Kincaid
  
  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!
  • FRONT PORCH FRIDAY!!!!! Pull up a chair and a cold one! Listen NOW HERE - Friday, July 26th, 2013 (mp3)! Keep Bob on the air HERE ya hear? Amen to the White Rose Society! Bob's show archives at the White Rose HERE! Donate to Head On HERE! And join Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net!
  

  
  

• YOUR GREEN NEWS REPORT With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen!
  
  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' - July 25, 2013 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another offshore drilling blowout in the Gulf; More tar sands oil spills in Alberta; Obama talks climate, clean energy and infrastructure; GOP just makes stuff up; Louisiana agency sues Big Oil over wetlands destruction; Young voters won't vote for climate change deniers; PLUS: Is the melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"? ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
  • IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): Winter is the new summer in Australia; The new climate activists; Palo Alto switches 100% renewable energy; Frackfinder mapping tool needs your help; Obama admin caves to industry on fracking rules; Feds halt mining in designated solar zones; Buffet says coal in permanent decline; WA approves oil train export terminal; Reports on the death of Peak Oil are greatly exaggerated ... PLUS: NASA Video: This is your country in 2100 ... and much, MUCH more! ...
  • 'Green News Report' - July 23, 2013 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Deadly British heat wave; Deadly floods in India; US heat wave cuts power at nuclear plants; Radioactive water leaking from Fukushima; New EPA Administrator, new fights over fracking and emissions; PLUS: What could possibly go wrong?: Russia building floating nuclear power plants ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! Wyden Calls for Reform of 'Secret Surveillance Laws' Liberated by Snowden leaks, Democratic Senator warns: 'If we do not seize this unique moment to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we are all going to live to regret it"...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! VIDEO! Reporters Grill State Dept. Spokesperson on Snowden Actual journalists, actually asking tough questions, and demanding to know why the U.S. is attempting to deny free speech rights to former NSA contractor turned whistleblower...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! VIDEO! 'Swiftboater' Jerome Corsi: Obama 'Stole' 2012 Election Brad gets caught 'on video' calling in to the Thom Hartmann radio program to set the record straight...even as Corsi denies the actual claims made in his own book...
  • THE BRADCAST! KPFK 'BradCast': The Truth About the Peaceful Trayvon Protests in Hollywood If the MSM and LAPD won't tell you, we will...
  • THE BRADCAST! KPFK 'BradCast': Obama's Econ Speech, Wyden's NSA Warning, NC Vote Suppression A very lively show this week, with David Dayen, listener calls, a few rants and more...
  

  
  

• The Peter B. Collins Show PODCAST!
  
  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 News & Comment July 22, 2013 PBC News & Comment: Curious Policy Shift at Gitmo, New Hearings for 71 Prisoners Jason Leopold breaks news from late last Friday: new legal reviews promised for 71 Guantanamo uncharged prisoners held indefinitely…
  • PBC News & Comment July 25, 2013 PBC News & Comment: House Vote on NSA Phone Records Ban Fails ObamaCo colluded with GOP and pulled out all stops to defeat Amash amendment to defund NSA phone record dragnet–progress!
  • PBC News & Comment July 26, 2013 PBC News & Comment: Breaking–2 Algerians to be Freed From Guantanamo White House announces that two Algerian men will be released from Guantanamo, as Pentagon’s invisible detainee point man resigns…
  • PBC Standard Podcast July 23, 2013 Author Chas W. Freeman, Jr., Former Ambassador, Diplomat and Defense Official, Delivers Many Candid Comments
  • PBC Standard Podcast July 26, 2013 Attorney Bruce Afran Updates Appeal Setback on NDAA Detention Law; Reporter Kevin Gozstola Recaps End of Bradley Manning Trial; Gary Chew Reviews “Fruitvale Station”
  

  
  

• Ring of Fire Radio
  
  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! July 26, 2013 Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 7 pm Eastern.
  • Pardiss Kebriaei from the Center for Constitutional Rights will discuss her work representing detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
  • Investigative journalist Rick Outzen will tell us how Wall Street’s lobbyists are weakening consumer protections.
  • Richard Eskow from the Campaign for America’s Future will tell us why Americans have become complacent with corporate greed and political corruption.
  • Best-selling author Cliff Schecter will discuss the recent filibuster fight, and he’ll tell us if Harry Reid has actually grown a spine.
  • George Zornick from The Nation will tell us why the filibuster deal will be tested very soon, and why we shouldn’t trust the GOP to stick to their word.
  • NEW! This Week on Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV! July 27, 2013 Sundays at NOON!
  »» Author and journalist David Neiwert will discuss his new book “And Hell Followed With Her,” about the Minutemen Project that patrols our southern border.
  »» Farron Cousins, executive editor of The Trial Lawyer Magazine, talks about the prescriptions-for-sex scandal of GlaxoSmithKline, and other forms of bribery taking place within Big Pharma’s world.
  »» Attorneys Howard Nations and David Hersh will talk about the Koch’s vast network of media outlets that they use to smear journalists and new ideas.
  »» Richard Eskow, a senior fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future, will tell us about the lack of outrage from American citizens when faced with rampant government corruption.
  »» And attorney James Kauffman will tell us how lobbyists are trying to weaken the rules so that greedy Wall Street bankers can steal your pensions.
  • 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: Detroit Bankruptcy Exhibit A For Bad Republican Policy (VIDEO) Mike Papantonio appears on the Thom Hartmann Program to discuss Detroit’s historic bankruptcy bid.
  • VIDEO! Pap and Seder: Wisconsin Mining Company Hires Armed Guards (VIDEO) Ring of Fire hosts Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder discuss the story of a northern Wisconsin mining company that recently used masked guards brandishing assault rifles to guard their mines from activists.
  • Ring of Fire’s Weekly Rewind July 27, 2013 featuring the top stories from Ring of Fire 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 7-10 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 7/22/13 Steve Clemons: Unemployment Deception & Nancy L. Cohen: War On Women, War On All
  • TUESDAY 7/23/13 Robert McChesney: Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
  • WEDNESDAY 7/24/13 David Dayen: Larry Summers, Economy Killer & Sen Wyden's Surveillance Speech
  • THURSDAY 7/25/13 Glenn Greenwald: The Impact of The NSA Revelations
  • FRIDAY 7/26/13 Casual Friday: Cliff Schecter & John Fugelsang
  • MORE Podcast Interviews at majorityfm.libsyn.com!
  

  
  

• KEISER REPORT Podcasts and more @ MaxKeiser.com!
  
  "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
  • KEISER REPORT ON FACEBOOK 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.
  »» Max Keiser
  »» Keiser Report
  »» Stacey Herbert
  • The Federal Reserve 100th Anniversary Road Show Spectacular! by alexschaefer - Paint Provocateur Alex Schaefer wants to say “Happy Birthday, Federal Reserve!’ You made it to 100 years of conducting the nation’s monetary policy! Since mainstream media didn’t send a card, a painter, a protestor, a filmmaker, a freedom fighter and a mad crew are going on a road trip across the USA to visit all twelve of your branches to help you celebrate! Come rain or monkey shines, they are on a mission to throw the birthday party nightmares are made of. A party to highlight the historic END of the original 100 year charter the Federal Reserve Bank has with the U.S. Government December 23rd, 2013! CLICK HERE FOR THE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN & HELP GET THE SHOW ON THE ROAD! Lots of great donation perks, all original works of art by Alex Schaefer and Cain Motter! This is a great way to collect some art AND help fund this amazing journey and film. It’s a win-win situation! Let’s some history and shake things up around here!
  • Assange: How cryptography is a key weapon in the fight against empire states by maxkeiser - READ What began as a means of retaining individual freedom can now be used by smaller states to fend off the ambitions of larger ones
  • We’ve always been at war with Eastasia by Stacy Herbert - Stacy Summary: But now the US wants to make it a secret. We all know, however, that ‘affiliates’ are those people living above oil reserves. Duh! READ Who Are We at War With? That’s Classified (propublica.org)
  • The Worldwide Surveillance And Privacy War (Which You Already Lost) by Wolf Richter - From tiny app makers to giants like AT&T, they’re all part of Big Data. They chase after billions by collecting, storing, and mining personal data. Data is money. Much more than money, if governments get it. Which led Cullen Hoback, who was making a documentary about privacy and corporate surveillance on the internet, to lament: “The craziest thing is that I didn’t realize I was making a horror film.” READ The Worldwide Surveillance And Privacy War (Which You Already Lost) (testosteronepit.com)
  • Bill Black: Obama and Bush administrations have disgraced the reputation of the United States’ criminal justice system by maxkeiser - A few days ago when news broke that the CIA was meeting the the FSB re: #Snowden, Zerohedge speculated that the whistleblower/American Hero was about to be send to the U.S. HAHAHAHA I said. No way. Moscow knows they have the Babe Ruth of assets and will never let it go. But by talking to the FBI, the FSB did get U.S.’s attorney general Holder to cough up one of the most damaging public utterances ever by an attorney general: “will NOT face the death penalty or torture if he’s returned to the U.S.” In other words, the attorney general condones torturing and killing folks on spec. Equally outraged or, to be more precise, Gobsmacked is Bill Black: Is it Legal Malpractice to Fail to Get Holder to Promise not to Torture your Client?
  • KEISER REPORT [KR474] Keiser Report: Destabilization, Algobots, Counterfeiting We discuss the global counterfeiting schemes that Interpol failed to stop this past week: spoof trading high frequency algobots, brokers trafficking in bogus derivatives backed by delusional collateral, robo-signing mortgage forgerers and fake Libor rate setting bankers. They also look at the interest rate swaps that sank Detroit, Harvard, Jefferson County, Alabama and Greece. In the second half, Max talks to Sandeep Jaitly of FeketeResearch.com, about gold backwardation, Flaming Jamie, a run on the gold markets and the fact that fiat can’t fail in fiat terms but it can in gold. Max also says that if Snowden can press one button and take down the US, then people should ask for delivery of physical gold.
  • KEISER REPORT Keiser Report: Royal Goldman Household We discuss vertically integrated trusts in the commodity markets which need to be busted up ala Teddy Roosevelt. They also examine Goldman Sachs’ low frequency trading in Detroit and the ‘market making’ excuse for the aluminum scandal. In the second half, Max talks to Mitch Feierstein of PlanetPonzi.com about the debt fuelled faux recovery, discount rate desperation, Jon Corzine rolling off the page with $1.6 billion in customer funds and the Brezhnev of Wall Street.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR476] Keiser Report: Jihadist Safe Haven We discuss the ‘capital Taliban’ and the ‘monetary jihadists’ at the Bank of England, aka ‘financial terrorists,’ but not for the reasons Vince Cable claims they are. Stacy suggests that monetary policy could use a burka as it’s walking in a g-string loose at the moment. In the second half, Max talks to Alasdair Macleod of Macleod Finance and Goldmoney about gold backwardation, GOFO and the 1300 tonnes of gold missing from the Bank of England!
  • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-1285] The Truth About Markets – 20 July 2013 Download show HERE (mp3)
  • Donate to ResonanceFM here!

  
  

• The Scott Horton Radio Show
  
  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 7/22/13 Nima Shirazi: Nima Shirazi, an independent researcher and political analyst, discusses the decades of Israeli-American scaremongering about Iran’s nearly-here nuclear weapons; why the neocons and Zionists love Samantha Power; the never-apologize attitude of American exceptionalists; and the requirement of US Ambassador to the UN nominees to lie to the Senate and prostrate before Israel.
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 7/25/13 Pepe Escobar: Globetrotting Asia Times journalist Pepe Escobar discusses the advanced Russian missile defense systems heading to Iran (and possibly Syria); the massive Abu Ghraib prison break; the rumors of Hezbollah fighting in Syria; and how the US’s war on terror makes Al Qaeda grudgingly accepted in the Muslim world.
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 7/26/13 Nathan Fuller: Nathan Fuller of the Bradley Manning Support Network discusses the end of Manning’s trial; the prosecution’s die-hard attempts to depict Manning as a fame-seeking traitor; the defense’s success at poking holes in the “aiding the enemy” and espionage charges; and the criminalization of investigative journalism.
  • 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
  • Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
  • Senator Mike Lee (R-UT)
  

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