ABC: Wall street lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs and media executives often used corporate credit cards to pay for $2,000 an hour prostitutes, according to the madam who ran one of New York's biggest and most expensive escort services until it was busted [in 2008].
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Wall Street Madam: CEOs, Bankers Used Corporate Credit Cards for Sex
Harvey Wasserman: Atomic Rate Rigging and the New China Syndrome
Small wonder the death knell of new U.S. nukes may be upon us.
Two reactors proposed for Florida will now, say its would-be builders, cost $24 billion or more... up from their original maximum guess of $4 billion each... far beyond comparable renewables and efficiency.
Two Georgia nukes still wanting tax-funded loan guarantees have been caught pouring faulty concrete and using non-design rebar steel.
Currently licensed reactors from California to Vermont, from Texas to Ohio to Florida are leaking radiation, shut for faulty steam generator tubes, closed for failed repairs running over $1 billion and being fought tooth and nail by local downwinders who are tired of rate rigging and want them shut forever.
But the fate of the Earth may ultimately rest on which China emerges after Fukushima: the green one pushing solar, or the dictatorship pushing nukes that threaten us all.
Listening Post - Feature: Greece's media crisis
The media will be covering the first Greek elections since the beginning of the financial crisis, and Listening Post's Marcela Pizarro looks at how the economic collapse has hit the Greek media itself.
Does Occupy signal the death of contemporary art?
When Read and his collaborators shone the famous 99% logo onto the Verizon building, as protesters occupied Brooklyn Bridge in November 2011, one art critic called it "the most emblematic artwork" of the year, "the artistic gesture that stood for its rebel aspirations and its thwarted dreams".
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Nude Art Controversy Raises the Question: Is it Art, Or is It Naked Therapy?
Earlier this month the Brooklyn-based artist Sarah White was suddenly removed from the roster of participants in this weekend's West Chelsea Artists Open Studios (WCAOS) after submitting an image pertaining to her planned performance at the Hotel Americano. The performance would have melded components of her artistic work and her actual therapeutic profession, so-called "Naked Therapy" — a hybrid practice that incorporates elements of relationship and sex therapy, often via live video chat. "I was removed from WCAOS after submitting my feature art piece," White explained to ARTINFO today, "by the director [Scotto Mycklebust] who stated in an email that my piece was an 'ad' and not art and that I am a 'commercial entity' and 'not an artist.'" Undaunted, she has decided to press ahead with an abridged performance and public discussion at the hotel on Sunday, the final evening of the open studios event.
"I decided to hold my one-night event to protest the censorship," White said, "to show my work and let people decide if it's art or not, if I am an artist and/or a commercial entity, and to hold an open public discussion forum on the issues of ads vs. art, commercial entities vs. artists, and the professional segregation of women who use the performative body provocatively."
'We Are Preparing For Massive Civil War' Says DHS Informant
In a riveting interview on TruNews Radio, Wednesday, private investigator Doug Hagmann said high-level, reliable sources told him the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing for "massive civil war" in America.
"We have problems . . . The federal government is preparing for civil uprising," he added, "so every time you hear about troop movements, every time you hear about movements of military equipment, the militarization of the police, the buying of the ammunition, all of this is . . . they (DHS) are preparing for a massive uprising."
Hagmann goes on to say that his sources tell him the concerns of the DHS stem from a collapse of the U.S. dollar and the hyperinflation a collapse in the value of the world's primary reserve currency implies to a nation of 311 million Americans, who, for the significant portion of the population, is armed.
Uprisings in Greece is, indeed, a problem, but an uprising of armed Americans becomes a matter of serious national security, a point addressed in a recent report by the Pentagon and highlighted as a vulnerability and threat to the U.S. during war-game exercises at the Department of Defense last year, according to one of the DoD's war-game participants, Jim Rickards, author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis.
Through his sources, Hagmann confirmed Rickards' ongoing thesis of a fear of a U.S. dollar collapse at the hands of the Chinese (U.S. treasury bond holders of approximately $1 trillion) and, possibly, the Russians (threatening to launch a gold-backed ruble as an attractive alternative to the U.S. dollar) in retaliation for aggressive U.S. foreign policy initiatives against China's and Russia's strategic allies Iran and Syria.
"The one source that we have I've known since 1979," Hagmann continued. "He started out as a patrol officer and currently he is now working for a federal agency under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security; he's in a position to know what policies are being initiated, what policies are being planned at this point, and he's telling us right now—look, what you're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg.
We are preparing, we, meaning the government, we are preparing for a massive civil war in this country."
"There's no hyperbole here," he added, echoing Trends Research Institute's Founder Gerald Celente's forecast of last year. Celente expects a collapse of the U.S. dollar and riots in America some time this year.
Since Celente's 'Civil War' prediction of last year, executive orders NDAA and National Defense Resources Preparedness were signed into law by President Obama, which are both politically damaging actions taken by a sitting president.
And most recently, requests made by the DHS for the procurement of 450 million rounds of hollow-point ammunition only fuels speculation of an upcoming tragic event expected on American soil.
These major events, as shocking to the American people as they are, have taken place during an election year.
Escalating preparatory activities by the executive branch and DHS throughout the last decade—from the Patriot Act, to countless executive orders drafted to suspend (or strip) American civil liberties "are just the beginning" of the nightmare to come, Hagmann said.
He added, "It's going to get so much worse toward the election, and I'm not even sure we're going to have an election in this country. It's going to be that bad, and this, as well, is coming from my sources. But one source in particular said, 'look, you don't understand how bad it is.'
This stuff is real; these people, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they are ready to fight the American people."
TruNews' Wiles asked Hagmann: who does the DHS expect to fight, in particular? Another North versus South, the Yankees against the Confederates?
Hagmann stated the situation is far worse than a struggle between any two factions within the U.S.; it's an anticipated nationwide emergency event centered on the nation's currency.
"What they [DHS] are expecting, and again, this is according to my sources, what they're expecting is the un-sustainability of the American dollar," Hagmann said.
"And we know for a fact that we can no longer service our debt. There's going to be a period of hyperinflation . . . the dollar will be worthless . . . The economic collapse will be so severe, people won't be ready for this."
http://theintelhub.com/2012/05/05/we-are-preparing-for-massive-civil-war-says...
Third eviction at Puerta del Sol - Madrid
Following the massive 12M demonstration in Madrid, some people choose to stay in Puerta del Sol despite a midnight dispersal order. At 3:45 in the morning, police evict the square leading to several arrests.
Slideshow
More images from AP.
Slideshow
More images from AP.
Our Revolution is Global: Solidarity With Occupy Russia
Protesters in Moscow are occupying Chistye Prudy square under a statue of Kazakh poet Abai. #OccupyAbai is demanding free and fair elections after the third fraudulent election of President Vladimir Putin. On Sunday, the eve of Putin’s inauguration, tens of thousands of people occupied streets in Chinatown and elsewhere in Moscow. In scenes reminiscent of Bahrain or Oakland, police brutally attacked the peaceful demonstrations with batons. Hundreds were arrested, but thousands persisted - taking the streets during the day, and occupying squares at night. Although police have banned tents, the occupiers have adopted mobile tactics using sleeping bags and generators to disperse and re-occupy when evicted by police. Social media covering the protests has been targeted and heavily repressed; last weekend, two of the largest global livestreaming websites (Ustream and Bambuser) went offline due to DDoS attacks on opposition livestreamers in Moscow.
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The Great Pleiadian Eclipse Alignment - May 20, 2012
On May 20, 2012, for the first time in 26,000 years, the Sun and Moon, and the constellation responsible for our spiritual evolution and ascension, the mystic Pleiades, will align in a spectacular, full Annular Solar Eclipse and a rare solar eclipse alignment will happen between the Earth, the Sun and, our central Sun, Alcyone in the Pleiades Constellation.
An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun, causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring), blocking most of the Sun's light. An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region thousands of kilometres wide.
The annular phase will be visible from the Chinese coast, northern Taiwan, the south of Japan, and the western part of the United States and Canada. Guangzhou, Taipei, Tokyo and Albuquerque will be on the central path. Its maximum will occur in the North Pacific, south of the Aleutian islands for 5 min and 46.3 s, and finish in the western United States.
It will be the first central eclipse of the 21st century in the continental USA, and also the first annular eclipse there since the solar eclipse of May 10, 1994 which was also the previous eclipse of this series Solar Saros 128.
Jacques Lacan Speaks; Zizek Provides Free Cliffs Notes
The footage above is from an extremely rare – and unexpectedly entertaining – video of the philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), giving a lecture at The Catholic University of Louvain in 1972. The film is notable for a couple of reasons:
1. In France, Lacan’s rock star status owed much to his popular public seminars. The charismatic iconoclast had been giving free public lectures for decades, and those lectures were usually packed with students, colleagues, skeptics, young radicals … and fans. The video gives you an idea of what the fuss was all about. Even at 70, Lacan still owns the room, and he has the presence of a stage actor, complete with dramatic pauses, ironic self-reflection, and pitch-perfect storms of emotion (see minute 15:07)
2. At minute 21:37, a politically inspired heckler tries to ambush him. It’s a moment right out of a comedy show, if the comedy show were chic and grainy and edited by Jean-Luc Goddard. Note the grace with which Lacan neutralizes the poor guy, lights his cigar and then concludes the lecture, even though the fallout from their encounter is still stuck in his hair.
Marley (2012) - Trailer | Bob Marley Documentary
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See also: Who Killed Bob Marley - Strange Universe Documentary
Bhutan calls for a mindful revolution at the United Nations
Calling for nothing less than nonviolent resistance against the failed global economic system, the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan, sandwiched between India and China, took to the world stage last month by leading a “High Level Meeting on Happiness and Well-Being.” Its recommendation: Replace the Bretton Woods economic paradigm, imposed on the world by the United States in the wake of World War II, with an entirely new and inherently more just system.
The prime minister of Bhutan, Jigme Thinley, called on the people of the world to demand a change. Scholars, Nobel laureates, political actors, U.N. officials and staff, and spiritual and civil society leaders, many from the Global South, affirmed that the current system serves neither the human community nor other creatures on the planet.
How To Survive A Robot Uprising (aka Robopocalypse)
Forget the zombie apocalypse--the real threat is an imminent Robopocalypse, a robot uprising! We at Epipheo care about your survival. That's why we interviewed Daniel H. Wilson to find out exactly how to survive a robot uprising. Daniel is the world's foremost authority on the subject and NY Times bestselling author of the book, "Robopocalypse."
Find out more about Epipheo here: http://www.epipheostudios.com/
Learn more about Daniel H. Wilson and the Robopocalypse here: http://www.danielhwilson.com/
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