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'The Ocean is broken' We'll have much more on the State of the World's Oceans but first we go to Bloomberg's Patricia Hurtado for BofA’s Countrywide Found Liable for Defrauding Fannie Mae Bank of America Corp.’s Countrywide unit was found liable by a jury for selling Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC) thousands of defective loans in the first mortgage-fraud case brought by the U.S. government to go to trial. A federal jury in Manhattan yesterday also found former Countrywide Financial Corp. executive Rebecca Mairone liable for defrauding the U.S. Mairone was the only individual named as a defendant in the government’s lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who presided over the trial, told lawyers he’ll determine the amount of any civil penalty at a later date. Assistant U.S. Attorney Pierre Armand asked the judge to impose a penalty of as much as $848 million, representing the gross losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Armand said alternatively, Rakoff could fine Countrywide about $131 million, the estimated net losses to the two entities. ........... Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office brought the case, said Countrywide’s program “treated quality control and underwriting as a joke.” “In a rush to feed at the trough of easy mortgage money on the eve of the financial crisis, Bank of America purchased Countrywide, thinking it had gobbled up a cash cow,” Bharara said in a statement. “That profit, however, was built on fraud, as the jury unanimously found.” Prosecutors in Bharara’s Civil Fraud unit alleged that a division of Countrywide in August 2007 initiated a loan program called “High Speed Swim Lane,” or HSSL, that ran until 2008. “The jury’s decision concerned a single Countrywide program that lasted several months and ended before Bank of America’s acquisition of the company,” Lawrence Grayson, a spokesman for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank, said in an e-mailed statement. “We will evaluate our options for appeal.” Marc Mukasey, a lawyer for Mairone, said he would appeal. ........ Prosecutors said some Countrywide supervisors promised loan specialists trips to casinos as incentives for reducing errors. Sullivan said the incentive program rewards were often no more than a $50 gift certificate to the Outback Steakhouse. In internal Countrywide e-mails shown to the jury, supervisors urged loan specialists to increase the speed and volume of their work. They also held contests that promised rewards and “casino” nights with poker games. In another e-mail, dated Dec. 20, 2007, one of Boland’s colleagues questioned a decision under HSSL to eliminate a review of loans by underwriters and shift the focus from ensuring quality loans to speed. ....... The case, brought under the Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 or FIRREA, has been used by Bharara’s office at least six times. The office has used the statute and another law to obtain almost $500 million in mortgage fraud recoveries. ...... Of course as the GOP boosts drive to kill Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac they totally ignore how Fannie and Freddie were SWINDLED! On the other hand plenty of DINOs go along Republicans, Democrats agree Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should go --- but what's next? from the Washington Examiner in July. The corporate wing of the DNC is strong as ever. BTW $131 million is pocket change to BofA, the "cost of doing bizness", eh? And they've plenty of "cash on hand" to appeal donchaknow. Speaking of pocket change we go to Yves Smith and Naked Capitalism The Ridiculous “Jamie Dimon as Victim” Meme on the Pending JP Morgan Mortgage Settlement Nothing like having a credulous, leak-dependent media to carry your messages. There’s been a remarkable hue and cry about the pending JP Morgan settlement, as if the amount is somehow too high. As we’ve discussed repeatedly, the director of financial stability for the Bank of England, Andrew Haldane, already ascertained that a mere 1/20th of low-end estimate of what the banks ought to pay for all the damage they did would wipe our their market capitalization. So even if you think JP Morgan is only half as culpable as other banks (a point we will debunk in a post tomorrow) it would only be half as dead. In other words, Dimon and all his crew should thank their lucky stars that they got off so well and didn’t have their banks turned into utilities. But that moment passed, so now we are haggling over price with ingrates. The overwhelming cost of the settlement is representation and warranty liability. There are well established parameters for that. Once the settlement is final and terms are disclosed, we should have a clearer idea of what JPM paid relative to the dollar value of loans at issue. But the idea that JP Morgan would pay more than the prevailing rate is spurious. There would be every incentive for the bank to fight in court otherwise. As a New York Times story by Peter Eavis and Ben Protess points out:

The largest sum, more than $6 billion, will serve as compensation for investors like pension funds that suffered losses from mortgage securities sold by JPMorgan, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, people briefed on the settlement talks said.

And remember, JP Morgan is likely to try to stick the FDIC for the WaMu loans, and the estimates are that that could be as much as $3.5 billion. And then we have the $4 billion in borrower relief, which as we stressed is junk credits with little economic value:

Another $4 billion will take the form of relief for struggling homeowners in cities like Detroit. The payout will serve as penance for the bank’s general mortgage practices, and does not stem from any particular mortgage securities or institution, according to one of the people briefed on the talks.

I would bet “general mortgage practices” = predatory servicing. ........ As our resident mortgage maven, MBS Guy, said in an e-mail:

In reality, JPM and Dimon are getting a pretty darn good deal from the government. I suspect when the settlement is actually disclosed, it will turn out that JPM’s payout for rep breach violations/FHFA stuff are actually lower than for other banks and lower than that BofA $8.5 bilion settlement. That’s another big reason for the full court press on “poor Jamie” stories – to mask the fact that JPM is getting a bargain.

I’m fully expecting this take to be accurate. Stay tuned. Yeah DICK "Banks Frankly Own The Place" DURBIN may have been right, ya think? Yes the same Senator Durbin to Reintroduce Bill to Restrict Supplements by Dr. Mercola via HealthImpactNews.com Make no mistake, there is a well orchestrated campaign underway to take away your rights and access to vitamins and supplements. You have likely witnessed the recent flurry of articles from doctors with scary headlines like “Don’t Take Your Vitamins” written by Paul Offit. Senator Dick Durbin has taken a leading role as well. Senator Durbin was also a sponsor for the SOPA / PIPA act, which would give the government even more power to censor and control the internet. You would think it would be impossible at this point to have MORE control, considering the recent leaks regarding the NSA. There is no satiating the hunger for more power in our federal government. Politicians will scare you about sugary beverages loaded with caffeine as examples of the dangerous and ‘unregulated’ supplement industry. ...... Senator Durbin has been on a mission that appears, at least superficially, to stem from concern over “your health.” However, when scrutinized more closely, Durbin’s proposed legislation would have precisely the opposite effect. If Senator Durbin is genuinely concerned about “your health,” then his focus should be on making drugs and vaccines safer, which are the real danger — not dietary supplements. .......... Durbin first introduced the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act (S 1310) in 2011, a bill that threatens the supplement industry by granting FDA more power to regulate supplements as if they were drugs, potentially putting supplement companies out of business. In fact, under this bill, supplement regulation would be even more stringent than for pharmaceutical drugs! The bill specifies the following: .... Read on! Apparently Dick Durbin is wholly owned by Big Pharma, nevermind the TooBigToFailBanks! What a sleeze. And he's from Illinois home of Obomber and Exelon "the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” And it was not just because it delivers power to Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago." And DURBIN wants to shut down the very substances that make our lives possible though incredible government regulation they openly REFUSE to regulate on nuclear and biotech. See this Huge GMO News by Ocean Roberts at CommonDreams.org It hasn't been a good week for Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry. Just three days ago, Mexico banned genetically engineered corn. Citing the risk of imminent harm to the environment, a Mexican judge ruled that, effective immediately, no genetically engineered corn can be planted in the country. This means that companies like Monsanto will no longer be allowed to plant or sell their corn within the country's borders. ........... At the same time, the County Council for the island of Kauai passed a law that mandates farms to disclose pesticide use and the presence of genetically modified crops. The bill also requires a 500-foot buffer zone near medical facilities, schools and homes -- among other locations. And the big island of Hawaii County Council gave preliminary approval to a bill that prohibits open air cultivation, propagation, development or testing of genetically engineered crops or plants. The bill, which still needs further confirmation to become law, would also prohibit biotech companies from operating on the Big Island. But perhaps the biggest bombshell of all is now unfolding in Washington state. The mail-in ballot state's voters are already weighing in on Initiative 522, which would mandate the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Knowing full well that 93 percent of the American public supports GMO labeling, and that if one state passes it, many others are likely to follow, entrenched agribusiness interests are pulling out all the stops to try to squelch yet another state labeling effort. ....... But in the 20 years since GMO crops first came on the market, studies have found that they have led to higher pesticide use, and no meaningful improvement in flavor, nutrition, yield or water requirements. Instead, what they've created are plants that are engineered to withstand massive dosing of toxic herbicides, and plants that function as living pesticide factories. Monsanto's Bt. corn, for example, is actually registered with the EPA as a pesticide. ........ And if you want to lend a hand to getting out the vote in the state of Washington, you can sign up to volunteer here. If you think GMOs are good for you and yer family (you vegitarians that eat tofu see What Are The Safest Non-GMO Soy Products? (Are There Any?)) CLICK ALL THOSE LINKS. We disgress......

From the BTV Desert Bureau our intriped jen grabs Matt Taibbi at The Rolling Stone Nobody Should Shed a Tear for JP Morgan Chase ..........Look, there's no denying that this is a lot of money. It's the biggest settlement in the history of government settlements, and it's just one company to boot. But this has been in the works for a long time, and it's been in the works for a reason. This whole thing, lest anyone forget, has its genesis in a couple of state Attorneys General (including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Delaware's Beau Biden) not wanting to sign off on any deal with the banks that didn't also address the root causes of the crisis, in particular the mass fraud surrounding the sale and production of subprime mortgage securities. Those holdouts essentially forced the federal government's hand, leading Barack Obama to create a federal working group on residential mortgage-backed securities (widely seen as the AGs' price for okaying the $25 billion robosigning deal), headed up by Schneiderman, whose investigation of Chase and its affiliates led to the deal that's about to be struck. Minus all of that, minus those state holdouts in those foreclosure negotiations, this settlement probably would never even take place: The federal government seemed more than willing previously to settle with the banks without even addressing the root-cause issues that are at the heart of this new Chase deal. So let's not forget that – that even this $13 billion settlement, which is actually a $9 billion settlement (see below), came very close to never happening. But now it is happening, and the business press is going nuts about how unfair it all is. In fact, this deal is actually quite a gift to Chase. It sounds like a lot of money, but there are myriad deceptions behind the sensational headline. First of all, the settlement, as the folks at Better Markets have pointed out, may wipe out between $100 billion and $200 billion in potential liability – meaning that the bank might just have settled "for ten cents or so on the dollar." The Federal Housing Finance Agency alone was suing Chase and its affiliates for $33 billion. The trustee in the ongoing Bernie Madoff Ponzi scandal was suing Chase for upwards of $19 billion. .................... These banks created huge masses of mortgage securities they knew to be highly risky and/or fraudulent. At Bear, one deal manager jokingly nicknamed one pool of mortgages, SACO-2006-08, the "SACK OF SHIT" deal. In another case, Bear's securitization company, EMC, obtained a pool of mortgages from a sketchy mortgage originator called AHM, and found out that as much as 60 percent of the batch was delinquent. Yet they continued to buy these mortgages and throw them into the great hamburger-machine, turning them into securities that would in turn be bought by everyone from pension funds to Fannie and Freddie. And then they pushed sales even harder, relying upon the influx of new buyers of these securities to keep the value of the old securities stable. This is exactly what Bernie Madoff did, it's what Charles Ponzi did, and it's what Allen Stanford
did – using cash from new investors to pay off the old investors. The supermarket-bank version of this game was just more elaborate, involved more moving parts and threatened indescribably greater damage ................ So now we, and they, are talking about the Chase scandal. This is Madoff all over again, only on a much huger scale. Ten years from now, bet on it, the Wall Street Journal will be denouncing everyone from Eric Holder to Lanny Breuer to the SEC and DOJ officials in the Bush administration for failing to protect investors from predatory companies like Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual and their parent, JP Morgan Chase. Right now, however, these papers are still stuck in the denial phase, which is to be expected, I suppose. But it doesn't mean we have to take these ridiculous editorials about Chase's victimhood seriously. ...... Go to RollingStone.com and read all of Taibbi for full effect - and click his links too to get up-to-speed if you haven't been paying attention these last economic disasters five years all orchestrated by the TBTF banks their bitch Da Fed, probably the biggest graft scheme in the History of The World:

• "The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependant on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class." — Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863
  
• "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

Writing from the end-of-hypocrisy dept Mike Maznick at TechDirt.com explains The Real 'Danger' Of Snowden And Manning: The US Can't Get Away With Its Powerful Hypocrisy Anymore We were among those who noted that the recent stories about the NSA spying on politicians in Brazil, France, Mexico, Germany and elsewhere seemed more like political theater than anything else. After all, spying on foreign politicians, even allies, is what countries do. So the supposed "outrage" seemed somewhat silly. It really felt like the kind of thing that politicians felt they had to do following the revelations, because everyone expected them to do so. Any actual outrage was likely tempered by the fact that their own intelligence agencies basically were trying to do the same damn thing to everyone else (and some of them have probably succeeded). However, Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore have an astoundingly good article for Foreign Affairs called The End of Hypocrisy which makes a point so obvious, so clear and so almost certainly right that almost everyone has ignored it until now. Much of the article is technically behind a paywall, but hopefully the link above gets you past it (Farrell seems to be handing out links that go through the paywall on Twitter like candy on Halloween, so if you still can't get in, just ask). The basic premise is this: the leaks from the likes of Ed Snowden and Chelsea Manning are hardly earth shattering in terms of what they reveal. As plenty of people have noted, most of what they've released has been widely suspected, if not known by many. While the specifics really do matter for those aiming to get a handle on what the US (and others) are doing, and to stop the really egregious behavior, the idea that any of these revelations really harmed active intelligence gathering appears to be little more than smoke and mirrors. As the article notes, even with all the rhetoric about "harm" caused by these leaks, officials have "often struggled to explain exactly why these leaks pose such an enormous threat." What Farrell and Finnemore note, instead, is that the really powerful and devastating impact of these leaks is not directly on the intelligence community, but rather on the US's use of hypocrisy as a policy tool. Again, many will point out, it is no secret that the US can and often is horribly hypocritical in the policies it demands of others, compared to the policies it enforces on itself. Plenty of people (including, at times, us) have called out those hypocrisies. Instead, what the article notes, is that for quite some time, the US has actually been able to effectively use this hypocrisy as a policy tool to great effect. In short: many of the US government's global policies really only hung together so long as everyone pretended the US wasn't hypocritical. And that's worked for decades. ................ The real threat then to all of this activity is that that form of political hypocrisy is no longer possible, because (1) the public in other countries won't accept it any more leading to (2) politicians having to point out the hypocrisy and (inevitably) (3) other global powers taking advantage of that now public hypocrisy to further their own interests. ........... And, when the entire premise of your foreign policy framework is built on this shell game of hypocrisy, that can be a really serious problem. Not for any of the reasons those fretting about Snowden's leaks tell you, of course, but if the US can't base its foreign policy decisions on its own hypocrisy, it might have to start acting honestly, and that's not how things have worked in decades. The article details how this system of US hypocrisy, with every other country turning a blind eye, worked in part because the incentives worked perfectly. ................ Furthermore, it points out, the fact that the US has been able to get away with this for so long has just perpetuated the issue. US politicians probably don't feel like they're being hypocritical, as discussed above, but part of it is pure complacency. They've gotten away with it so many times in so many ways for so many years, that it's become the way things are done. And these leaks may undermine all of that. So, now what? Seems Farrell and Finnemore are on to something very important! Read on! Malloy chatter soryang posts "Here's the link, definitely worth listening to this particular podcast" Alternative Visions – What’s Happening to the $1.2 Trillion “Sequester Cuts”? – 10/23/13 Good item! More soryang: one of the reps was going on about this "god told me to" crap on Eds show. it isn't just unwanted interlopers, this is the way the teabaggers talk. they have a message from god, social darwinism and its related memes, racism and zenophobia. BINGO! Here's one you should bookmark Subject: Catholic Church Abuse Scandals and in a related matter Republican-Linked Religious Right Leader Calls For "Military Takeover" In an interview with former Reagan Administration lawyer Michael "Mikey" Weinstein -- who formed the civil rights watchdog organization the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) after discovering a pattern of coercive evangelizing at his former alma mater, the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs -- Weinstein told me his organization estimated that between 28% and 34% of officers and NCOs in the United States military were adherents to a supremacist form of Christianity known as dominionism who might back or at least be sympathetic to evangelist Joyner's call for a coup. "It is a terrible mistake to dismiss Joyner as merely fringe. The opposite is true", explained Weinstein, who emphasized that there are dozens of dominionist evangelical para-church organizations engaging in what MRFF views as predatory evangelizing in the military. "Complacency is complicity," warned Weinstein, who called Rick Joyner's call for a military takeover a "red line" and also a "wretched" form of "sedition". "We are most concerned about a fusion between dominionist Christianity and the military's weapons of mass destruction", warned Weinstein, who says his client base, members of the military who turn to MRFF for protection against coercive evangelizing, is approaching 35,000. Most of those MRFF clients, according to Weinstein, are Christians who are targeted for holding the wrong doctrine and theology..... and also read Giaus Publius at AmericaBlog The billionaires’ takeover of the GOP. These folks mean bizness. And like any criminal enterprise they have the means, methods and motive to do it and they work non-stop at it. Amanda Marcotte at Salon exposes How shameless Christian con artists took over the GOP ................ Obviously, the right has always had a charlatan side, with plenty of self-appointed leaders viewing the faithful as marks to bilk for cash instead of giving people the services promised. Faith healers and other religious conmen have preyed on fundamentalist Christian audiences for over a century now. As historian Rick Perlstein wrote in the Baffler, conservative media has long subsisted on selling snake oil to their followers and running mail order schemes to defraud conservative readers while making the leaders wealthy. But, by and large, Republicans of the past did consider it a duty to actually work for the people who elected them. That relationship has fundamentally changed. Like megachurch pastors who praise Jesus and pass the collection plate but can’t remember their parishioners’ names, the modern Republican sees the voters as rubes he can hoodwink into sending him to D.C. while not doing any actual work for them. Yes. AND At AlterNet David Sirota points out 4 Things You Need to Know About the Plot to Sell Off Your Pensions to Wall Street. The Guardian's Angelique Chrisafis in Paris and Sam Jones break more Snowden leaks: France summons US envoy over NSA surveillance claims The French government summoned the US ambassador in Paris on Monday to demand an urgent explanation over claims that the National Security Agency had engaged in widespread phone and internet surveillance of French citizens. The French daily Le Monde published details from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden suggesting the US agency had been intercepting French phone traffic on what it termed "a massive scale". Le Monde said more than 70m French phone calls had been recorded in one 30-day period late last year. Techniques included the automatic recording of conversations from certain numbers, and sweeping up text messages based on keywords. The paper warned that the interceptions were likely to have targeted not just those with suspected terrorist links but also people in business, politics and the French administration. The French prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said he was shocked and demanded the US provide "clear answers, justifying the reasons these practices were used and above all creating the conditions of transparency so these practices can be put to an end". Asked if France should be directly voicing its concerns to Barack Obama, Ayrault said it was up to the French president, François Hollande, to take any action, but "clearly there must be measures and they will be taken". The White House responded by saying that the US "gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations". ..... At Der Speigel Jacob Appelbaum, Holger Stark, Marcel Rosenbach and Jörg Schindler report Berlin Complains: Did US Tap Chancellor Merkel's Mobile Phone? German Chancellor Angela Merkel phoned United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday to discuss suspicions that she may have been targeted by US intelligence agencies for years, SPIEGEL has learned. The chancellor asked for a thorough explanation of serious indications that US intelligence agencies had declared her private mobile phone to be a target in their operations. Merkel made it clear that, should these indications turn out to be true, she "unequivocally disapproves" of such methods and finds them "totally unacceptable," her spokesman Steffen Seibert said. "This would be a grave breach of trust," he added. "Such practices must immediately be put to a stop." The unusually strong reaction from the Chancellery was prompted by SPIEGEL research. After the information was examined by the country's foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), and the Federal Office for Information Security, Berlin seems to have found their suspicions plausible enough to confront the US government. During her conversation with Obama, Merkel expressed her expectation that "US authorities would provide an explanation about the possible extent of such surveillance practices, and thus answer questions that the German government already posed months ago," Seibert said. "As a close ally of the United States of America, the German government expects a clear contractual agreement on the activities of the agencies and their cooperation," he added. In response to the allegations, a spokeswoman for the US National Security Council told SPIEGEL: "The President assured the Chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel." The spokeswoman did not wish to specify whether this statement applied to the past. And from The Guardian's Paul Owen NSA files – Germany summons US ambassador over Merkel phone – live we find these items

• European leaders are under pressure to respond to the controversy over mass digital surveillance after the European parliament moved to toughen data privacy rules and curb data transfers to the US, and following outrage in France at the scale of the intrusion. The draft supported by MEPs on Monday forms the basis for further negotiation with the 28 EU governments and the European commission, meaning it is likely to be altered substantially before coming into force. The aim is to have the new regime agreed by next spring and in force by 2016, but that looks unlikely. The 28 governments are still trying to reach a common negotiating position.
  
• As reported here yesterday, Tory MP Julian Smith said the Guardian had broken the law and should be prosecuted. Rowena Mason has the full story here.
  
• Here is a trailer for an upcoming documentary on the NSA Files produced by the Guardian.
  
• And here Julian Borger points out that Obama's conversation with Merkel was the third time in a week he had found himself trying to placate the leaders of closely allied nations who have discovered the extent of NSA surveillance in their countries.

The Index on Censorship has this Free speech groups, celebrities and citizens demand EU ends mass surveillance Nearly 40 free speech groups from across the world are calling on the European Union to take a stand against mass surveillance by the US and other governments. The groups have joined a petition organised by Index on Censorship, which has already been signed by over 3,000 people. Celebrities, artists, activists and politicians who have supported the petition include writer and actor Stephen Fry, activists Bianca Jagger and Peter Tatchell, writer AL Kennedy, artist Anish Kapoor, blogger Cory Doctorow and Icelandic politician Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir. ....... Chief Executive of Index on Censorship Kirsty Hughes said: ‘A few of Europe’s leaders have voiced their concerns about the NSA’s activities but none have acted. We are demanding all EU leaders condemn mass surveillance and commit to joint action stop it. People from around the world are signing this petition because mass surveillance invades their privacy and threatens their right to free speech.’ As well as calling for Europe’s leaders to put on the record their opposition to mass surveillance, the petition demands that mass surveillance is on the agenda at the next European Council Summit in October. The petition is at: http://chn.ge/1c2L7Ty and is being promoted on social media with the hashtag #dontspyonme. WAIT! THERE'S MORE! NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts writes James Ball at The Guardian The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The confidential memo reveals that the NSA encourages senior officials in its "customer" departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems. The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately "tasked" for monitoring by the NSA. .................. The NSA memo obtained by the Guardian suggests that such surveillance was not isolated, as the agency routinely monitors the phone numbers of world leaders – and even asks for the assistance of other US officials to do so. The memo, dated October 2006 and which was issued to staff in the agency's Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID), was titled "Customers Can Help SID Obtain Targetable Phone Numbers". It begins by setting out an example of how US officials who mixed with world leaders and politicians could help agency surveillance. ........ WOW! Reporting for PressFreedomFoundation.org Jason Leopold has this EXCLUSIVE: Clapper Memo Reveals Rationale Behind NSA Review Group Secrecy ........... The NSA review group (formally known as the Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies) would essentially operate as an advisory committee. Obama said the panel would ponder how it could “maintain the trust of the people” and “how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used …” By acting as an advisory committee the panel of so-called “independent” experts would have been subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), a law enacted in 1972 “to ensure that advice by the various advisory committees formed over the years is objective and accessible to the public.” But Director of National Intelligence James Clapper apparently had no intention of allowing the much maligned review group to conduct its work in a transparent manner. In an unclassified memo “for the record” I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Clapper exempted the review panel from provisions of FACA because of national security concerns. ........... "No one can look at this group and say it's completely independent," Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute and vice president at the New America Foundation, told the AP the review group’s closed meetings "leave the public out of the loop." ....... Placing the review group under the purview of ODNI may have been a calculated move and an attempt to maintain a level of secrecy surrounding the panel’s work, specifically, an effort to bypass provisions under FACA. ........ MORE! Change.org has this petition Arrest and Try James Clapper for Lying to Congress and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has this item Fire and Prosecute James Clapper – For Lying to and Spying on the American People Perjury is a serious offense. Neither Clapper nor any other high government official is above the law. The U.S. Constitution requires removal of any civil officer guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” such as perjury. Clapper’s crime was more than mere perjury. His crime is an abuse of office, a public corruption, an offense against society and democracy. At Salon.com Lindsay Abrams finds “It felt as if the ocean itself was dead”: One sailor’s heartbreaking voyage From Newcastle In just 10 years, almost everything's been destroyed - The Newcastle Herald, of Australia, has a tragic, lyrical piece that follows a single route through the sea — from Melbourne to Osaka to San Francisco — through a sailor’s reminiscences of the way things have changed. It’s called, simply and heartbreakingly, “The Ocean Is Broken.” Just 10 years ago, yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen told the Herald, “all he’d had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.” On his most recent trip, said Macfadyen, there were no fish to be found:

“We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening. “I’ve done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I’m used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen.”

More horrifying, even, was what he did see, en route from Japan to California:

“In a lot of places we couldn’t start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That’s an unheard of situation, out in the ocean. …”On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn’t just on the surface, it’s all the way down. And it’s all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.

Hearing just how bad things have gotten from someone who’s witnessed it on such a personal level drives home the reality of the oceans’ decline in a way that numbers and reports aren’t always able to. For anyone who isn’t aware of just how “broken” the seas are — and it seems impossible that anyone truly could be — the piece is a must-read. We urge everyone to read this story The Ocean Is Broken. Donovan Hohn wrote a Harper's Cover Story in the January 2007 issue entitled Moby Duck that details the travels of plastic kids' bath toys that were lost overboard in the Pacific .....We know that twelve of the colorful containers stacked above deck snapped loose from their moorings and tumbled overboard. We can safely assume that the subsequent splash was terrific, like the splash a train would make were you to drive it off a seaside cliff. We know that each container measured forty feet long and eight feet wide and may have weighed as much as 58,000 pounds, depending on the cargo, and that at least one of them—perhaps when it careened into another container, perhaps when it struck the ship’s stays, perhaps as it descended to high-pressure depths—burst open. We know that when it left port, this ill-fated container had contained 7,200 little packages; that, as the water gushed in and the steel box sank, all or most of these packages came floating to the surface; that every package comprised a plastic shell and a cardboard back; that every shell housed four hollow plastic animals—a red beaver, a blue turtle, a green frog, and a yellow duck—each about three inches long; and that printed on the cardboard in multicolored lettering were the following words: floatees. the first years. from 6 months. expert developed ? parent preferred. 100% dishwasher safe. ....... In subsequent weeks beachcombers on other islands found more of the toys, and new ones kept washing ashore. Laurie Lee of South Baranof Island filled an unused skiff with the horde she’d scavenged. Signe Wilson filled a hot tub. Betsy Knudson had so many to spare she started giving them to her dog. It appeared that even the sea otters of Sitka Sound were collecting them: one toy had been plucked from an otter’s nest. On a single beachcombing excursion with friends, Mary Stensvold, a botanist with the U.S. Forest Service who normally spends her days hunting rare varieties of liverwort, gathered forty of the animals. Word of the invasion spread. Dozens of correspondents answered the Sentinel’s ad. Toys had been found as far north as Kayak Island, as far south as Coronation Island, a range of tide line extending for hundreds of miles. Where had they come from? Eben Punderson was pretty sure he knew. Very long (21 pages) and we urge you to read all of it or download the pdf HERE. Hohn wrote a book about this too Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them . And Beachcombers Alert had this item Beachcombing Science from Bath Toy ...... What became of the thousands of toys beachcombers never reported? Some, the surf buried and others spun out of the Gyre. According to OSCURS, the currents transported a number through Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean, where the pack ice conveyed them onward over the North Pole into the North Atlantic Ocean. Bethe Hagens observed a duck in Maine (July 2003); and Sonali Naik observed a frog in Scotland (August 2003). These drifts agree with a score of historic transarctic drifters, including bottles, barrels, and plastic drift cards. .... Read the wiki on the Great Pacific garbage patch The patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.[2] Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography, since it consists primarily of suspended particulates in the upper water column. Since plastics break down to even smaller polymers, concentrations of submerged particles are not visible from space, nor do they appear as a continuous debris field. Instead, the patch is defined as an area in which the mass of plastic debris in the upper water column is significantly higher than average. And after the tsunami that crippled the Fukushima nuclear plants the LA Times reported in June 2012 Great Pacific Garbage Patch a bigger worry than tsunami debris Debris from the Japanese tsunami is starting to wash ashore on the U.S. West Coast in a big way. Beachcombers from Northern California to Alaska are finding fishing floats, soccer balls and ships that have drifted thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean after being dragged to sea by the March 2011 tsunami -- even a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was traced back to a tsunami survivor. Authorities this week confirmed the largest arrival yet: A 66-foot dock that floated onto a beach near Newport, Ore. Still, marine scientists say a far bigger problem is the untold amount of everyday garbage swirling in a vast, slow-moving vortex known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That's the popular name for the vast concentration of debris -- most of it confetti-sized flecks of discarded plastic -- circling endlessly about 1,000 miles off the California coast. A study released last month found a 100-fold increase in plastic debris in the garbage patch over the past 40 years. "I'm more concerned about our constant input of trash than I am about these one-time disasters," lead author Miriam Goldstein, a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times. "We can’t prevent terrible events like the tsunami, but dumping plastic into the ocean is something we can control and don’t do very well," Goldstein said. She and other researchers found the upsurge in plastic debris in the middle of the ocean is so dramatic that seafaring insects known as "sea skaters" or "water striders" now use it as a surface to lay eggs, where before they might have used natural pieces of flotsam like feathers, shells and pumice. That is not to say debris from the tsunami is considered harmless. ....... And in Japan just last week Japan Hit By 7.3-Magnitude Earthquake Off Fukushima Prefecture Coast, Tsunami Advisory Issued (HuffPoAOL) TOKYO (AP) — An earthquake of magnitude 7.3 struck early Saturday off Japan's east coast, the U.S. Geological Survey said, triggering small tsunamis but causing no apparent damage. ....... The quake hit at 2:10 a.m. Tokyo time (1710 GMT) about 290 kilometers (170 miles) off Fukushima, and it was felt in Tokyo, some 300 miles (480 kilometers) away. ....... Mizuno said the operator of the troubled Fukushima plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said no damage or abnormalities have been found. Japan's meteorological agency issued a 1-meter (3-foot) tsunami advisory for a long stretch of Japan's northeastern coast, and put the quake's magnitude at 7.1. The U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not post warnings for the rest of the Pacific. ......... A string of mishaps this year at the Fukushima plant has raised international concerns about the operator's ability to tackle the continuing crisis. Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shinichi Tanaka has scheduled a Monday meeting with Tokyo Electric's president to seek solutions to what he says appear to be fundamental problems. Mishaps? Fundamental problems? Also at HuffPoAOL More Than 100,000 Call For World Community To Take Charge Of Crippled Fukushima Nuclear Plant. Then Michael Snyder at WakingTimes.com explains 28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima The map below comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center. It shows that radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the country are elevated. As you will notice, this is particularly true along the west coast of the United States. Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean. That means that the total amount of radioactive material released from Fukushima is constantly increasing, and it is steadily building up in our food chain. Ultimately, all of this nuclear radiation will outlive all of us by a very wide margin. They are saying that it could take up to 40 years to clean up the Fukushima disaster, and meanwhile countless innocent people will develop cancer and other health problems as a result of exposure to high levels of nuclear radiation. We are talking about a nuclear disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and it is constantly getting worse. The following are 28 signs that the west coast of North America is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima… YIKES! Get more nuke news at Harvey Wasermann's NukeFree.org. The Gulf of Mexico is of course severely damaged from BP (Beach Polluter) and their negligence in the Macondo well explosion that leaked crude oil for months in 2010. Dahr Jamail posts this at RT.com Gulf ecosystem in crisis after BP spill New Orleans, US - Hundreds of kilograms of oily debris on beaches, declining seafood catches, and other troubling signs point towards an ecosystem in crisis in the wake of BP's 2010 oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. "It's disturbing what we're seeing," Louisiana Oyster Task Force member Brad Robin told Al Jazeera. "We don't have any more baby crabs, which is a bad sign. We're seeing things we've never seen before." Robin, a commercial oyster fisherman who is also a member of the Louisiana Government Advisory Board, said that of the sea ground where he has harvested oysters in the past, only 30 percent of it is productive now. "We're seeing crabs with holes in their shells, other seafood deformities. The state of Louisiana oyster season opened on October 15, and we can't find any production out there yet. There is no life out there." According to Robin, entire sectors of the Louisiana oyster harvest areas are "dead or mostly dead". "I got 10 boats in my fleet and only two of them are operating, because I don't have the production to run the rest. We're nowhere near back to whole, and I can't tell you when or if it'll come back." State of Louisiana statistics confirm that overall seafood catch numbers since the spill have declined. Robin is not the only member of the Gulf's seafood industry to report bleak news. Kathy Birren and her husband own Hernando Beach Seafood, a wholesale seafood business, in Florida. Shrimp with tumours continue to be found along the impact zone, from Louisiana to Florida [Dean Blanchard photo] "I've seen a lot of change since the spill," Birren told Al Jazeera. "Our stone crab harvest has dropped off and not come back; the numbers are way lower. Typically you'll see some good crabbing somewhere along the west coast of Florida, but this last year we've had problems everywhere." Birren said the problems are not just with the crabs. "We've also had our grouper fishing down since the spill," she added. "We've seen fish with tar balls in their stomachs from as far down as the Florida Keys. We had a grouper with tar balls in its stomach last month. Overall, everything is down." According to Birren, many fishermen in her area are giving up. ......... On a more sombre note, Dr Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer and a marine biologist, believes it will likely take the Gulf decades to recover from the BP disaster. "The impacts of the Ixtoc 1 blowout in the Bay of Campeche in 1979 are still being felt," said Cake, referring to a large oil spill near the Mexican coast, "and there are bays there where the oysters have still not returned. My prediction is we will be dealing with the impacts of this spill for several decades to come and it will outlive me." According to Cake, blue crab and shrimp catches have fallen in Mississippi and Alabama since the spill, and he also expressed worries about ongoing dolphin die-offs. But his primary concern is the slow recovery of the region's oyster population. "Mississippi recently opened their season, and their oyster fisherman are restricted to 12 sacks of oysters a day. But they can't even reach six," Cake said. "Thirty sacks would be a normal day for oysters - that was the previous limit - but that is restricted now because the stocks just aren't there." Cake's conclusion is grim. "Here in the estuarine areas, where we have the oysters, I think it'll be a decade or two before we see any recovery." ........... The second phase of the ongoing federal trial against BP investigates whether the company's actions to halt the flow of oil during the blowout were adequate, and aims to determine how much oil was released. "BP is mounting an aggressive legal and public relations campaign to shield itself from liability and minimise the amount of oil spilled in the Gulf, as well as the ongoing impacts from the disaster," said Jonathan Henderson, an organiser for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group. Even Louisiana's Republican Governor Bobby Jindal agrees. Jindal recently said, "Three and a half years later, BP is spending more money - I want you to hear this - they are spending more money on television commercials than they have on actually restoring the natural resources they impacted." As far away from the blowout site as Florida, researchers continue to find oil in both Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay. In Louisiana, according to the LA Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), more than 200 miles of shoreline have "some degree of oiling", including 14 miles that are moderately or heavily oiled. From March through August of this year, over three million pounds of oiled material have been collected in Louisiana, more than double the amount over the same time period last year. In addition, the CPRA reports that "investigations into the chemical composition of MC252 [BP's Macondo well] oil samples demonstrate that submerged oil is NOT substantially weathered or depleted of most PAH's [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons]," and "disputes…findings relied on by the USCG [US Coast Guard] that Deepwater Horizon oil is non-toxic". The agency also expresses concerns that "submerged oil may continue to pose long term risk to nearshore ecosystems". .......... Ongoing studies continue to reveal toxins from BP's spill in water, soil, and seafood samples. ...... So in summary as Ivan Macfadyen said "The Ocean Is Broken". Enjoy that shrimp cocktail (from Korea or Vietnam or The Gulf) or that tuna salad sammich or yer sushi in California, eh? Of course here on land it's not much better. Back in July a Train derails in Canada, sets town on fire and was destroyed .... after a train carrying crude oil derailed, sparking several explosions and forcing the evacuation of up to 1,000 people. Remember? Now another Train carrying oil, liquid petroleum gas derails in Alberta Nia Williams and Solarina Ho (Reuters) - A train carrying crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas derailed west of Edmonton, Alberta, on Saturday, causing an explosion and fire but no injuries, Canadian National Railway said on Saturday. One rail car carrying liquefied petroleum gas on the westbound train exploded and three others also caught fire. Emergency crews battled the flames and worked to prevent the burning cars from triggering more explosions, a municipal authority spokesman said. Residents were evacuated from Gainford, Alberta, 85 km (53 miles) from the provincial capital Edmonton, after the accident, which highlighted concerns in Canada about moving oil by rail. The community, part of the municipality of Parkland County, has a population of just over 100 people. "We have cars on fire right now and there was an explosion earlier this morning. The major priority right now for our guys out in the field is containing these fires," said Parkland County spokesman Carson Mills. It is the third Canadian National Railway derailment in recent weeks and is likely to fan opposition to the crude-by-rail boom taking place in Canada as the country's oil producers seek alternatives to congested pipelines. ......... Nine of the derailed cars were carrying liquefied petroleum gas and four carried crude. The crude oil cars were intact and kept away from the fires with no indications of any leaks. ......... CRUDE-BY-RAIL CONCERNS Canada's Transportation Safety Board said it has sent a team of investigators to the site. The derailment near Gainford comes days after a CN train carrying anhydrous ammonia derailed in Sexsmith, Alberta, earlier this week. A CN freight train derailed near the town of Landis, in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan, on September 25, sending 17 cars off the track, one of which leaked lube oil. On Thursday, the Canadian government imposed new regulations requiring tests to be conducted on crude oil before transporting or importing it into Canada. In the Lac-Megantic crash, inspectors determined that the oil the train carried was more explosive than labeled. Canadian Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said the new measure, to enhance the safety of dangerous goods, would require "any person who imports or transports crude oil to conduct classification tests on crude oil."........ Critics say the rush to use rail to transport crude and sidestep pipeline bottlenecks means that safety is being overlooked, raising the risk of more derailments. "This is becoming the new normal as we have movements of crude-by-rail skyrocketing at a time when the safety standards have not kept up," said Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaign coordinator at Greenpeace. "We have train cars which were never designed for dealing with these kind of hazardous and explosive products," he said. It was not immediately clear what type of rail cars were involved in the latest incident, but past concern has centered on the older DOT111 tanker cars such as the ones involved in the Lac-Megantic crash, which lack twin hulls or extra strengthening. We need some serious "hooga" from the Happiest People in the World that is Hygge (wiki). If you haven't yet seen this watch Thom Hartmann's "Last Hours" Film Raises Issue of Global-Warming-Induced Extinction; Watch the video We could be facing the earth's SIXTH near extinction event. So how's that for a Happy Halloween 2013?

BRICK TEEVEE ALERTS!_©

Democracy Now's Iraq interactive timeline

Headlines Monday, Oct 21, 2013

• Luis Gutierrez, (D-Illinois). "Still Dreaming": Immigrant Rights Champion Rep. Luis Gutiérrez on Life of Activism & Politics As pressure grows for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform now that the government shutdown is over, we spend the hour with one of the leading—people leading that fight, Democratic Representative Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois. He’s been working to improve immigration policies since he won his congressional seat in the early 1990s. Most recently, he helped author a bipartisan proposal for reform in the House.
  

Headlines Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013

• Hawa Bah, mother of Mohamed Bah, who was shot dead by New York City police & Randolph McLaughlin, longtime civil rights attorney who represents the Bah and Cruz families Deadly 911 Calls: NYPD Kills African Immigrant Student Inside Home After Mother Calls for Ambulance AND Deadly 911 Calls Pt. 2: Police Kill Bipolar Puerto Rican Artist After Concerned Wife Calls for Help
  McLaughlin, Mayo Bartlett, longtime civil rights attorney & Sam Cochran, retired police officer who served as the coordinator of the Memphis Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Team Memphis Model: Police Pioneer Use of Crisis Intervention Teams to Deal with Mentally Sick
  

Headlines Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013

• Mustafa Qadri, Pakistan researcher at Amnesty International "How Do You Justify Killing a Grandmother?" Amnesty Says U.S. Drone Strikes May Be War Crimes
  
• Chris Kirkham, business reporter at The Huffington Post, author of a two-part investigative series, "Prisoners of Profit." "Prisoners of Profit": Despite Widespread Abuse, Private Juvenile Jail Firm Expands Empire
  
• Marsha Levick, co-founder and chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center, based in Philadelphia "Cash for Kids": Firms Behind Juvenile Prison Bribes Reach $2.5 Million Settlement in Civil Suit
  

Headlines Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013

• René González, former Cuban intelligence agent and freed member of the Cuban Five. Exclusive: René González, Lone Cuban 5 Member Freed from U.S. Prison, Speaks Out from Havana
  
• René González & Ricardo Alarcon, former foreign minister of Cuba and past president of the Cuban National Assembly. Ex-Cuban Foreign Minister on Threats by Militant Exiles & Why Obama Should "Free the 5"
  

Headlines Friday, Oct. 25, 2013

• Ben Emmerson, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism As U.S. Faces New Scrutiny on Drones, U.N. Report Finds Hundreds of Civilian Deaths in Pakistan AND U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Calls for Release of Info on Bush-Era Kidnappings, Torture
  
• Brandon Bryant, a former sensor operator for the U.S. Air Force Predator program A Drone Warrior’s Torment: Ex-Air Force Pilot Brandon Bryant on His Trauma from Remote Killing
  
• Clay Johnson, CEO at Department of Better Technology Diagnosing the Online Health Exchange Debacle: "Proprietary" Software Needs a Dose of Open Source
  

GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders
»»» FEATURED SHOW Jill Stein: A Party for the People How we converge our movements and make them unstoppable - "is not by going for the fringe reforms here, but by really fixing the problem," Green Party leader Jill Stein tells GRITtv. "We don’t have a choice. We really are up against a wall.” more.....

BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!_©
»»» NASCAR on ESPN NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Talladega Superspeedway pres. by 5-Hour Energy
»»» MLB WORLD SERIES on FOX GAME 4 Sunday @ St. Louis 8 pm et; GAME 5 @ St. Louis Monday 8 pm et; IF NECESSARY: Game 6 Wednesday @ Boston 8 pm et & Game 7 Thursday @ Boston 8 pm et
»»» SUNDAY FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA on NBC Packers @ Vikings 8:30 pm et
»»» MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL on ESPN Seahwaks @ Rams 8:30 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 and check out his latest effort DontAttackSyria.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 From the Bradley Manning Support Network Announcing the Private Manning Support Network! August 26, 2013, By attorney David Coombs and the Private Manning Support Network (formerly the Bradley Manning Support Network). Additional clarification on PVT Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning's request regarding her gender and name. With your continued support, our network will continue its advocacy efforts in support our heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower through this new phase of her life. ....... UPDATE! Pvt. Manning's lawyer David Coombs answers frequently asked questions October 22, 2013. By David Coombs. Private Chelsea Manning's lawyer answers questions about the heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower and her prison conditions. ..... AND Update 10/23/13: Noam Chomsky & Chase Madar address Manning's case at MIT, while retired general defends "Collateral Murder" Watch Noam Chomsky and Chase Madar address the Manning case as part of the MIT Starr Forum. Democracy Now sheds light on the kind of military attitude which allows "Collateral Murder" to happen. And an LGBT activist argues all progressives need to focus more on governmental transparency. .....

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. WATCH THIS MOVIE at Top Documentary Films Resonance: Beings of Frequency Now we live an an ocean of electromagnetic radiation. It’s all around us now, invisible, but we know it’s there. Every time you lift up your mobile phone you know it’s there. It is very hard to turn the clock back, in fact it is impossible, but we need to be aware of the adverse health effects so that we can have the choice of taking precautions against the exposures. How we could have possibly thought that putting microwaves to our brain was safe. We just don’t fully understand what we’re doing. "Resonance: Beings of Frequency" is the first documentary to investigate the actual mechanisms by which mobile phone technology can cause cancer. The film takes a deeper look at how humanity is reacting to the most profound environmental change the planet has ever seen. Read more HERE!!

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: 2,289 US Military Dead as of Oct. 25, 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
  • former Vice President Dick Cheney
  • Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wy
  • Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V.
  • ROUNDTABLE: ABC News contributor Donna Brazile, co-host of CNN’s Crossfire S.E. Cupp, former Vermont governor and founder of Democracy for America Howard Dean, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol
  • Sunday Spotlight: Joshua Debois discusses his new book “The President’s Devotional” about his daily prayers sent to President Obama during his time as head of the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
  

  
  

• Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
  • Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the Oversight & Government Reform Committee
  • Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D- N.H., who has led the Democratic effort in support of an enrollment period extension
  • Phil Shenon, former investigative reporter for the New York Times to preview his latest book "A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy assassination."
  

  
  

• 60 Minutes (CBS)
  • Benghazi - Lara Logan hears the first eyewitness account from a Westerner who was on the ground in Benghazi during the deadly al Qaeda attack on the U.S. consulate.
  • The Deputy Director - An interview with former Deputy Director of the CIA Mike Morell opens a rare window into the inside affairs of the U.S. intelligence agency during a trying time in U.S. history. John Miller reports. Ira Rosen and Gabrielle Schonder 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.
  • Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) and
  • Gov. Steve Beshear (D-KY).
  • NBC’s Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell
  • former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Peter King (R-NY)
  • ROUNDTABLE: 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum; former Michigan Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm; President of the Center for American Progress Neera Tanden; and Republican strategist Alex Castellanos.
  

  
  

• 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 and at noon ET.
  • House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI)
  • Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a Health Policy Adviser to the Obama Administration from 2009-2011
  • Congressman John Fleming, a Republican and one-time Louisiana Family Doctor of the Year.
  • ROUNDTABLE: CNN Political Commentators Ross Douthat and Cornell Belcher will join A.B. Stoddard from The Hill
  

  
  

• 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 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 FRONT PORCH THURSDAY!! Bob and The H.O.R.N. celebrate their 8th Birthday!! Pull up a cold one! Listen NOW HERE - Thursday, October 24th, 2013 (mp3)! Amen to the White Rose Society! Bob's show archives at the White Rose HERE! Keep Bob on the air! 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' - October 24, 2013 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Arizona electric company's secret plot to kill solar industry; Hawaiian island rejects being a testing ground for GMOs and pesticides; Washington State fighting GMOs, too; Another U.S. city breaks up with coal; PLUS: Warning: fossil fuels may not be a good investment ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
  • IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): NYC hurricane expert: "Sandy wasn't the Big One"; Top 10 Food Facts on World Food Day; Australia: Thousands evacuate as conditions worsen; Exposure to DDT may be passed down through subsequent generations; Invasion of the False Widow Spider media stories!; Tea Party Republicans back water infrastructure bill; Monsanto insists Roundup is 'safe' after cancers spike in Argentina; ND pipeline spill raises questions on oversight, inspections; Canada: Spike in carcinogens downwind of petrochemical plants; FDA asks for help as pet deaths spike ... PLUS: Why we don't care about saving our grandchildren from climate change ... and much, MUCH more! ...
  • 'Green News Report' - October 22, 2013 IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: China choking on toxic air; Air pollution causing lung cancer everywhere; Anti-fracking protests spread across Europe...and turn violent in Canada, while France holds the line; PLUS: Some good news: US carbon emissions falling for the 5th year in a row ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! What 'Fiscal Conservatism'? The GOP Shutdown Scam The great Republican hoax - that they give a damn about government spending and/or waste - is revealed again...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! DIEBOLD INDICTED AGAIN: Prosecutor Cites 'Worldwide Pattern of Criminal Conduct' Ohio-based ATM and voting machine company in trouble yet again. This time on criminal counts of bribery, falsification of documents...
  • BRADBLOG UPDATE! European Scientists Cite Flaws in GMO Tests Claim safety, nutrition value of genetically modified foods unknown thanks to poor methodology used in most studies...
  

  
  

• 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 Oct. 24, 2013 Bulletin: Alabama Blogger Roger Shuler Arrested for “Contempt” of Kangaroo Court Breaking: Roger Shuler arrested for “contempt” of kangaroo court in Alabama, following illegal court order violating First Amendement, prior restraint……
  • PBC News & Comment Oct. 25, 2013 PBC News & Comment: More Info On Shuler’s Arrest, New 7.3 Quake Near Fukushima More details on arrest and jailing of journalist Roger Shuler in Alabama, first news of major new earthquake near Fukushima….
  • PBC Standard Podcast Oct. 23, 2013 John Nichols and Bob McChesney, Co-authors of “Dollarocracy”, Talk Big Money Corruption, Media Profiteering and the Decline of Journalism
  • PBC Standard Podcast Oct. 25, 2013 Update on Roger Shuler’s Bogus Imprisonment With Commentary from Andrew Kreig of the Justice Integrity Project
  

  
  

• 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! Oct. 25, 2013 Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern.
  • former Florida Governor Charlie Crist will tell us how the Republican Party became a movement of dangerous extremists.
  • Media Matters Senior Fellow Ari Rabin-Havt will discuss his new book “The Benghazi Hoax.”
  • Investigative journalist David Dayen will talk about the proposed fraud settlement between JP Morgan and the Department of Justice.
  • Attorney Justin Martin will tell us how the poor are disproportionately affected by corporate America.
  • Paul Waldman from The American Prospect will talk to us about the battle over immigration reform.
  • And BillMoyers.com senior digital producer Joshua Holland will explain why the Healthcare.gov website is plagued with so many problems.
  • NEW! This Week on Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV! Oct 26, 2013 Sundays at NOON!
  »» Robert Borosage will discuss the new Democratic insurgents who are changing policy from the grassroots level.
  »» Progressive radio and TV host Thom Hartmann will talk about the traditional media’s failures that helped keep the government shutdown.
  »» Linda Lipsen, the CEO of the AAJ, talks about the 14th annual Institute for Legal Reform’s tort reform conference that took place this week, and how the group is planning to strip consumers of their legal rights.
  »» Attorney Howard Nations talks about the successes that are already being seen as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
  »» Attorneys Niall McCarthy and Mike Burg talk about the Obama administration’s decision to allow defense contractors greater leniency in arms dealings.
  »» Economist Richard Wolff in New York City will tell us why the Tea Party is fighting social programs, and how it underscores their complete lack of knowledge about economics and capitalism.
  • 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.”
  • Julian Assange Rails Against Biopic “The Fifth Estate” Next Friday, the Dreamworks produced biopic of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is set to release in theaters. “The Fifth Estate” is based on the early days and creation of Wikileaks, however, Assange has spoken out against the film and also sent a letter to the film’s lead actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Assange. In the letter, Assange decries the film and says that he does “not believe it is going to be positive for me or the people I care about. . . It is based on a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organisation.” MORE!
  • VIDEO! Papantonio: Is BP Using Online Trolls To Harass Oil Spill Victims? (VIDEO) BP has employed a host of dirty tricks in order to avoid liability for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. But recently, those tactics have reached new lows. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio talks with a whistleblower who has uncovered evidence of BP’s newest tricks to harass the victims along the Gulf Coast.
  • VIDEO! Papantonio: Leave the GOP While You Can (VIDEO) John Boehner has his hands tied by Tea Party extremists who are willing to burn down our economy, and our federal government for their selfish goals. The entire GOP is being held captive by a small group of extremists, and they have turned the party into one of the least popular in modern history. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio talks about this with Charlie Crist, the former governor of Florida.
  • Papantonio: Sweatshop Capitalism Comes To America (VIDEO) by Gary Bentley - For the first time in world history, the 10 highest paid CEOs in the US all received more than $100 million a year in direct compensation, and two of them took home billion dollar paychecks. Understand, all that is after Americans went through all that public drama and soul-searching where they were holding public media events and shareholder meetings asking that those ridiculous rhetorical questions, like, is the system broken? Should management really be making 600 to 800 dollars for every one dollar an hour that a worker makes? As double digit increases every year for top management takes place, double digit decreases in compensation benefits for America’s workers continue....... MORE!
  • 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 110/21/13 The Myth of a GOP Civil War & The Truth of Dems Budget Fight
  • TUESDAY 10/22/13 Max Blumenthal: Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
  • WEDNESDAY 10/23/13 Jim Bruce: Money For Nothing: The Fed Documentary
  • THURSDAY 10/24/13 Peter Frase: Delusions of the Tech Bro Intelligentsia
  • FRIDAY 10/25 Casual Friday: Cliff Schecter & Andy Kindler
  • 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 (guardian.co.uk)
  • Guy on Amtrak eavesdrops on Michael Hayden and live tweets about it by Stacy Herbert - Stacy Summary: Hysterical. Michael Hayden was on the Amtrak which just arrived in DC; he was apparently speaking ‘off the record’ to many journalists and bashing the Obama admin. Passenger nearby live tweeted conversation, until Hayden’s people called him to tell him about it. READ This dude just eavesdropped on former NSA director Michael Hayden. And he’s tweeting about it. (WaPo)
  • SHOW APPEARANCE! Max Keiser on #HIGNFY Novermber, 1st by MaxKeiser - Next wk on #HIGNFY Kirsty Young hosts with US political pundit @maxkeiser & comedian @mrTonyLaw joining panellists Paul & Ian @HatTrickProd — PR Matters UK (@PRMattersUK) October 25, 2013
  • VIDEO! GCHQuestions: Snowden files reveal spy agency’s efforts to escape leg by MaxKeiser
  • KEISER REPORT [KR513] Keiser Report: Bandits, Bankers & Brokers We discuss the bandits, banksters and brokers who will have taken all that we have got. No dollar, euro, yen or drachma will be left behind. And inflation, deflation and confiscation will take every last nickel and dime. They also discuss Americans turning their bodies into cash machines as they start selling off various organs to make ends meet. In the second half, Max interviews economist and professor, Constantin Gurdgiev, about Bail-Ins, Bail-outs and Troikas. They also discuss ‘second-rate’ Britain and a de-Americanizing rest of the world.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR514] Keiser Report: Debtocholics Anonymous We discuss George Osborne in China from where he dissed the jumper class while refusing to come up with more than a 5 day plan for UK command and control economic and monetary policies favoring the bankster class. In the second half, Max interviews Dan Collins of TheChinaMoneyReport.com about calls in China for a de-Americanization and a rapidly rising pot of savings.
  • KEISER REPORT [KR515] Keiser Report: Silent but Violent Emissions WE discuss the impossibility of tapering a ponzi scheme, Alan Greenspan’s return to the hot airwaves and why QE has failed. In the second half, Max interviews Trond Andresen, a lecturer in control systems at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, about a digital crisis currency or bitcoin as a solution to a man-made disaster like Greece.
  • THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-1292] The Truth About the Price of Semen Stacy Summary: The Truth About Markets episode 1292, airing on 19 October 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 Progress Report: All right, yall, welcome back to the show to the inaugural Scott Horton Show progress report! It’s been an eventful year since the show and I (amicably) parted ways with Antiwar.com, so I thought I would highlight just a few of the show’s important milestones, as well as preview some of the exciting projects to look for in the near future. ........ The show on Pacifica KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., still called Antiwar Radio, has now moved to join their Sunday morning public affairs line up, and remains the largest source of listeners, with 15,000-20,000 people tuning in weekly. The future: Liberty Express Radio is growing and bringing me along for the ride. The great Charles Goyette hooked me up with Alan Butler and the Liberty Express earlier this year, and what has been the daily replay there from 3-5 eastern time has become my best listened-to show. And now they’re adding my friend Tom Woods to the lineup from 2-3 PM. That does it. I’m making the switch! Starting Monday, October 14, the live show is moving to 3-5 PM Eastern time on LibertyExpressRadio.com, as well as NoAgenda and my own stream.......
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 10/24/13 Andrew Bacevich: Andrew Bacevich, author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, discusses the New York Times’ perceived “threat” of isolationism while the US is always and everywhere intervening in conflicts abroad.
  • Scott Horton Radio Show 10/24/13 Philip Giraldi: Philip Giraldi, executive director of the Council for the National Interest, discusses the Anti-Defamation League’s inclusion of CNI in their top-10 anti-Israel group list; Benjamin Netanyahu’s blatant attempts to break up a US-Iran peace deal; and the US-Saudi rift on Syrian policy.
  • Visit his blog Stress. 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
  • Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA)
  • House Democratic Caucus Chair, Rep Xavier Becerra (D-CA)
  • Vice-Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
  
  
  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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