Four Horsemen is a bare-bones documentary about how we can restart the world’s economy. 23 international thinkers, government advisers and Wall Street money-men break their silence and explain their ideas on how to establish a moral and just society. This film takes a new look at the current economic climate without bashing bankers or taking sides. It just tells it like it is.
Enron – The Smartest Guys in the Building, is a documentary which retells the incredible story of Enron which in just 15 years grew to become the 7th largest company in America with over 21,000 staff Worldwide. This success turned out to be an elaborate scam. Watch the incredible story with eyewitness accounts, recordings and court footage as a huge part of corporate America comes crumbling down.
If humans were going to visit another planet in our solar system, the first possible planet would be Mars. Its deserts are similar to earth’s, with dunes and mountains full of iron oxides. Though its atmostphere isn’t friendly to humans, it does have potential similarities to earth, like the possibility of underground oceans and ancient bacteria life-forms. With it being the closest planet to earth, Mars has caught our attention as the first planet we could explore.
It is home to the most powerful person in the world, it is a center of global military power and it is one of the most heavily protected fortresses ever built, but behind the classic columns and lush green lawns are secrets, secrets so outrageous, so controversial, so dangerous that they must be kept hidden from the public. There are those that believe in the existence of a book, a book that contains the most highly guarded secrets of the United States of America, a book who’s very existence is known to only a select few but if such a book exists what would it contain? Secret histories, secret plans, secret lies?
Dangerously Rich: Billionaire Super Security
Protesters, Pirates, even Kidnappers are targeting today's super rich. Some say these threats are intensifying and as a result billionaires from around the world are fortifying their personal security with sophisticated, cutting edge and so called head of state level protection. From high security on the high seas to when the bad guys come, the tools and technologies to take down any intruder at any cost. While their jet setting or on the move an entire industry is on call ready to sell the super rich, super security and even some good old fashioned muscle.
Defeating the Hackers
Exploring the murky and fast-paced world of the hackers out to steal money and identities and wreak havoc with people’s online lives, and the scientists who are joining forces to help defeat them.
Searching for Exile: Truth or Myth
For centuries, Jews have lamented the destruction of their holy city Jerusalem and their temple by the Romans, which they believed was the beginning of their long 2000 years of exile. Exile is not only a religious Jewish belief but for millions of Jewish and non Jewish alike it is a historical fact. But what has been considered as fact for centuries is now being challenged by archeaological evidence unearth across Israel. Here in the ancient town of Sepphoris just 70 miles from Jerusalem evidence points not to a people driven into exile but on the contrary to a population that not only survived but flourished. So why has exile been seen as a reality for thousands of years? and if it did not take place exactly as told, then what accounts for the millions of Jews who over the centuries have settled around the world? and perhaps the inevitable question, what happened to the inhabitance (sic) of places like Sepphoris who were never exiled.
The Mafia's Secret Bunkers
There is a new front line in the war against organized crime. In southern Italy’s rugged highlands a previously unknown criminal group know as the ‘Ndrangheta meet, it’s bosses are some of Europe’s biggest cocaine traffickers. The police are fighting back forcing mafiosi underground into bizarre sophisticated bunkers. From here they run their criminal empires protected by a wall of silence. “They dug up the entire street to bury their bunkers and no body breathed a word”. This is the story of a little known mafia who’s secret inner workings are only now coming to light.
These are some of the stories that Werner Herzog portrayed in this It Can Waitdocumentary dedicated to horrors and victims of texting and driving.
Evolution Vs. God
Evolution Vs. God is a documentary trying to challenge the theory of evolution. Evangelical leader Ray Comfort, known as the bananaman, interviews evolution proponents (mostly students) from different universities in the United States and tries to expose the so called “unscientific nature” of evolution which he refers to as a “blind faith”, not science. The film tries to show intelligent design as a competing theory and suggests that the academe continues to bully intelligent design as an option. The film also aims to get some evidence for Macroevolution.
DEFCON: The Documentary DEFCON is the world’s largest hacking conference, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2012 it was held for the 20th time. The conference has strict no-filming policies, but for DEFCON 20, a documentary crew was allowed full access to the event. The film follows the four days of the conference, the events and people (attendees and staff), and covers history and philosophy behind DEFCON’s success and unique experience.
Turnstile Turnstile is focused on women involved in the criminal justice system and drug policy reform. The 36 minute film offers an exploration of three women’s experiences with addiction and incarceration, and interviews with other women that have been working for decades on criminal justice reform.
BioBricks: Building Blocks of Life In the race to decode the human genome, scientists have long developed the tools that allow them to read and influence the building blocks of life. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute are able to decode the genome of Neanderthals and compare it with the human genome. Synthetic biology is no longer just practiced in university laboratories anymore. The next step could be for scientists to bring extinct species back to life – maybe even Neanderthals. Things that aren’t ethically defensible today could become normal in the future.
Modern Spies From James Bond to Jason Bourne, the fictional world of spying is a world of danger and deception, glamour and lies. But how does the myth compare with the reality?
Nazi Concentration Camps The Nazi Concentration Camps documentary was filmed in 1945 and entered as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials of Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and 22 other Nazi officials in the aftermath of World War II. It revealed a stark, horrifying image of the atrocities of the Holocaust and ensured than no one would ever doubt the meaning of the charge, “crimes against humanity.”
BI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF's Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did "not condone the use of violence" at occupy protests.
Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings, there have been widespread calls for Congress to pass gun control laws - and it should. But there has been less talk about another important tool that could be used to reduce gun violence: lawsuits against the gun industry. Some of these suits can succeed despite the PLCAA - as the Daniel Williams case shows - and we need more of them to be filed. But if Congress wants to get serious about gun violence, it should repeal the PLCAA.
U.S. Government Redistributes Wealth… to the Rich For about thirty years now, the federal government has been implementing policies that take tax dollars from middle class Americans and give them to the rich, supposedly as a way to spur economic growth. Although Americans actually want greater economic equality, the net effect has been to redistribute wealth to the rich and create the most unequal developed society on earth. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33436.htm
American Pro-Israel Groups Warm Up to Kerry as Top Diplomat The bond Kerry has forged with the Jewish community because of his roots and because of his interest in the Middle East has helped smooth over rough patches when he has criticized Israel. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33433.htm
On a snap visit to Kabul a few days ago, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declined to clarify what is in store for Afghanistan after NATO’s announced pullout in 2014. The American-led forces arrived in Afghanistan 11 years ago on a United Nations mission to combat terrorism. In a recent interview with Afghan television, Russian Ambassador Andrei Avetisyan said this mission is far from accomplished, as is the task of equipping Afghanistan with modern armed forces.
The Pentagon has informed Congress of its plans to sell four Global Hawk high-altitude spy drones to South Korea. Under the deal Seoul’s surveillance capabilities would be greatly improved, even though the US DoD itself wanted to retire the aircraft.
Abraham Foxman, head of Israel-Jewish lobby group ADL has called Minister Louis Farrakhan (born 1933), head of the Nation of Islam (NOI), an antisemite for later’s criticism of Steven Spielberg’s latest movie ‘Lincoln‘ for ignoring the fact that Jewish elites funded both sides during the American Civil War, played a major role in African slave trade but also hated president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Rabbi Isaac M. Wise in his eulogy had said: “The lamented Abraham Lincoln believed himself to be bone from our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed himself to be a descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence“.
Generation Y professionals entering the workforce are finding careers that once were gateways to high pay and upwardly mobile lives turning into detours and dead ends. Average incomes for individuals ages 25 to 34 have fallen 8 percent, double the adult population’s total drop, since the recession began in December 2007. Their unemployment rate remains stuck one-half to 1 percentage point above the national figure.
US history is littered with repressive laws. Constitutional protections and civil liberties have been targeted. The 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts restricted First Amendment freedoms. So did the 1917 Espionage Act, 1919 anti-communist Palmer raids, 1934 Special Committee on Un-American Activities, its House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) successor, FBI COINTELPRO crackdowns, 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 2001 USA Patriot Act, and other post-9/11 measures.
Is Our Economy Being Artificially Maintained and Propped Up? If So, How and Why?
Out of one side of the establishment's mouth we hear excitement about "green shoots," and out of the other side comes breathless warnings of fiscal cliffs and the urgent need forunlimited bailouts by the Fed in the form of ongoing "quantitative easing," which consists of the Federal Reserve Bank creating $85 billion a month out of thin air, and using it to buy two things: 1) huge amounts of government bonds from the US Treasury Department, and 2) huge amounts of near-worthless mortgage-backed securities from private banks (i.e. banksters). What this amounts to is a kind of ongoing bailout and gift, which, at its core, is an ongoing transfer of wealth to rich banksters and other Wall Streeters, from the rest of us.
No Glory, No Spoils, No Closure - The Double Whammy of Rip-off Wars
Today's easy riddle: what will cost more, last longer, and accomplish less than our troop-heavy, anachronistic, perpetual overseas occupations? Nothing, nada, rien -- certainly not annual deficits, Bush tax cuts, or formal defense budgets. Put aside human suffering and unbelievable dislocation: we've all shouldered a four trillion dollar price tag on two failed wars, plus the double whammy that both Iraq and Afghanistan remain unstable havens for mayhem. Is any fiscal cliff that might happen worse than two indeterminate rat holes that have happened?
A conservative friend of mine was astonished to learn that a couple with two children in his town would need an income of $52,000 per year to live there. "I'm a CPA and I've had partners who didn't make $57,000 some years," he said.
God Particle or Hype Particle? What the Higgs Boson Means to You
Laws of War Violated During Gaza-Israel Fighting: Report
Occupy Homes, one year on and growing daily
On December 6, the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Homes movement, Meusa and Wheeler were only two among thousands of people who gathered for coordinated direct actions focused on the human right to housing. Building on a year filled with eviction blockades, house takeovers, bank protest and singing auction blockades, the anniversary of Occupy Homes demonstrated that the groups were still committed to risking arrest to keep people sheltered. Yet, even more significantly, the day’s events demonstrated a crystallization of the movement’s central message: that decent and dignified housing should be a human right in the United States.
Zero Dark Thirty: Why the Film's Makers Should Be Defended And What Deeper bin Laden Controversy Has Been Stirred
To those critics of Zero Dark Thirty who claim the film misleads the public on the role that waterboarding and other torture played in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, I suggest they look forward to the making of some other film that represents their ideals rather than make Zero Dark Thirty their scapegoat for the many conflicting and misinformed statements issued by American policy makers concerning the use of torture (I will not here legitimize the misleading euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques") during the War on Terror.
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Juan Cole; public intellectual, prominent blogger, essayist and professor of history. (photo: Informed Comment) Palestinians Report Attacks on Journalists
he USG Open Source Center translates articles from the Arabic on the Israeli attack on newspapers and journalists in the Gaza Strip.
Death toll mounts from Israeli air strikes in Gaza
Israeli warplanes and naval gunboats intensified their attacks on Palestinian homes and institutions throughout the Gaza Strip over the weekend, bringing the death toll in the five days of aggression against the densely populated area to more than 75.
New York Times acknowledges conspiracy of silence over “fiscal cliff”
In an article published Thursday, the New York Times starts off with an extraordinary admission—that during the elections the Democrats and Republicans colluded to cover-up planned cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs that they were both planning to make after the elections.
Feminist voices in Islam: promise and potential
Religion is back in public space, and the thesis that modernization means the privatization of religion has been seriously questioned. Some religious and feminist dogmas need re-examination. What do ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ or ‘feminist’ mean in today’s contexts?
We are forbidden to say this: Gaza is a Concentration Camp
If one wanted to be momentarily charitable about people's absolute refusal to recognize the obvious, one might argue that a land area of approximately 140 square miles, containing a population of roughly 1.7 million people, could not possibly be a concentration camp. But size and the number of prisoners are not the distinguishing characteristics of a concentration camp. The most essential characteristic of a concentration camp is what is permitted, and what is not. Only one question matters: Under what conditions are the people within its borders permitted to live? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33077.htm
5 Ways America Enables Israel's Atrocities
From green-lighting military operations in Gaza to giving unstinting diplomatic support at the United Nations, the U.S. government is wholly complicit in Israel's latest assault on Gaza.
100 Men, Women and Children Killed in Gaza as Obama Declares Full American Support for Israel
Sunday marked the deadliest day for Palestinians in Gaza, as Israel's heavy bombardment of the coastal strip killed yet more civilians. By Monday, the death toll had risen to over 100 people in Gaza--58 of them civilians.
Dissecting IDF Propaganda: The Numbers Behind The Rocket Attacks
To begin, Israeli spokespeople frequently remind the world that a million Israeli citizens are within range of Gaza rockets, twelve thousand of which have been fired into Israel in the last twelve years, inflicting thousands of injuries and several dead. http://www.countercurrents.org/nguyen191112.htm
Gaza Running Out Of Food, Water, Medical Supplies
Day 6 of Israel’s Gaza aggression has witnessed further escalation of Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza with number of deaths mounting, hospitals facing shortage of basic supplies and increased suffering of the Gaza residents. In all, 1,350 targets in Gaza have been struck by Israel since the aggression began. http://www.countercurrents.org/cc191112.htm
Journalistic Cliches: 'Surgical Air Strikes', 'Rooting Out Terror', and 'Cyber-Terrorism' Cannot Conceal Reality Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. Here we go again. Israel is going to “root out Palestinian terror” – which it has been claiming to do, unsuccessfully, for 64 years – while Hamas, the latest in “Palestine’s” morbid militias, announces that Israel has “opened the gates of hell” by murdering its military leader, Ahmed al-Jabari. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33087.htm
Puppet State America The United States government and its subject peoples think of the US as “the world’s only superpower.” But how is a country a superpower when its entire government and a majority of the subjects, especially those members of evangelical churches, grovel at the feet of the Israeli Prime Minister? How is a country a superpower when it lacks the power to determine its own foreign policy in the Middle East? Such a country is not a superpower. It is a puppet state. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33093.htm
War Criminal Defends War Criminals "No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Says Man Who Regularly Bombs Pakistan and Yemen http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33090.htm Dreaming of Justice: Obama Threatens Israel
Clearly emboldened by his recent electoral victory, Barack Obama has embarked on a radical and historic change of direction regarding America’s relationship with Israel. During a state visit to Thailand this weekend, the president called on Israel to halt what he called a ‘gratuitous and murderous assault’ on the Gaza Strip. Obama dismissed Israel’s claims that it was acting in self-defence, and accused Israel of having deliberately provoked the latest confrontation, and engaging in the ‘collective punishment’ of a ‘defenceless’ civilian population.
Elites Will Make Gazans of Us All Gaza is a window on our coming dystopia. The growing divide between the world’s elite and its miserable masses of humanity is maintained through spiraling violence. Many impoverished regions of the world, which have fallen off the economic cliff, are beginning to resemble Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in the planet’s largest internment camp. These sacrifice zones, filled with seas of pitifully poor people trapped in squalid slums or mud-walled villages, are increasingly hemmed in by electronic fences, monitored by surveillance cameras and drones and surrounded by border guards or military units that shoot to kill. These nightmarish dystopias extend from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan to China. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33086.htm
Hostess To Pay $1.75 Million In Executive Bonuses After Blaming Unions For Bankruptcy
Hostess Brands, the maker of sweet snacks like Twinkies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, will ask a bankruptcy judge today to approve a plan that will allow it to pay $1.75 million in bonuses to 19 of its executives. Hostess’ decision to file for bankruptcy came amid disputes with its union workers, who threatened a strike that Hostess said imperiled the company’s finances. The unions are now protesting Hostess’ request for the bonuses, though they are unlikely to prevail, CNN Money reports
Damn Right, George Bush Should Face Criminal Proceedings
ne thing brings together these four men - Hassan bin Attash, Sami el-Hajj, Muhammed Khan Tumani and Murat Kurnaz: they are all survivors of the systematic torture program the Bush administration authorized and carried out in locations including Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, and numerous prisons and CIA "black sites" around the world. Between them, they have been beaten, hung from walls or ceilings, deprived of sleep, food and water, and subjected to freezing temperatures and other forms of torture and abuse while held in US custody.
