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Obama Gives Shell Final Approval to Drill in Arctic Despite Protests & Pledge to Cut Emissions
Obama Gives Shell Final Approval to Drill in Arctic Despite Protest...
Democracy Now!
http://democracynow.org - The Obama administration has granted Royal Dutch Shell final approval to resume drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean for the first time since 2012 despite widespread protests from environmental groups. Shell first obtained drilling permits in the Arctic during the George W. Bush administration, but drilling stopped in 2012 after a series of mishaps. The Interior Department’s decision comes just weeks after a protest in Portland, Oregon, temporarily blocked an Arctic-bound rig of Shell’s from leaving the city after a group of activists from Greenpeace dangled off a bridge, blocking the ship’s movement while kayaktivists took to the water below. A coalition of environmental groups have pushed the Obama administration to say no to Arctic drilling, citing the dangers of a possible oil spill in the pristine region and the impact new oil extraction would have on the climate. 

"A State of Emergency": At Least 17 Transgender Women Have Been Murdered This Year
Democracy Now!
http://democracynow.org - The murder of Tamara Dominguez on Saturday in Kansas City, Missouri, marked at least the 17th murder of a transgender woman so far this year. Dominguez was repeatedly run over in a church parking lot. Her death follows the recent murders of a number of African-American transgender women, including Elisha Walker, found in a "crude grave" in North Carolina; Shade Schuler, whose decomposed body was found in a Dallas field; Amber Monroe, shot and killed in a Detroit park; and Kandis Capri, fatally shot last Tuesday night in Phoenix, Arizona. "This is a state of emergency for the transgender community," Chase Strangio says. "We are living in a moment where we should be incredibly concerned about all of the mechanisms of violence against our community."

Espn First Take, Tuesday 18th August 2015

Espn First Take, Tuesday 18th August 2015
Max - ESPN First Take
Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith react to CC Sabathia's altercation in Toronto, Brandon Marshall's defense of Geno Smith and fans' lawsuit against Manny Pacquiao.

1:18 Your reaction to RGIII saying he’s the best quarterback in the NFL ?
14:50 Where is the Tom Brady case going ?
26:25 Are you surprised that Michael Jordan is still making more money then Lebron James ?
38:46 North Western's application rejected the unionization
48:00 Do the fans have a case against Manny Pacquiao ?
59:23 Should coaches stay out of political issues ?
1:11:04 Your take on Brandon Marshall's defense of Geno Smith ?
1:18:05 Reaction to CC Sabathia's altercation in Toronto ? 

Bitcoin: Great Libertarian Hope or Co-opted By Wall Street?
Bitcoin: Great Libertarian Hope or Co-opted By Wall Street?
ReasonTV
"People were telling the libertarians to shut up," says New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper, "but they were the only ones willing to put their money on the line and keep Bitcoin alive."

Popper's new book, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money, tells the story of how the "cryptocurrency" went from an idea sketched out by an anonymous programmer in a nine-page whitepaper in the summer of 2008 to a global phenomenon with multi-million-dollar investments staked on its potential.

Some believe Bitcoin will be as transformative as the Internet itself while others—including many governments and traditional investors and analysts—see it as a threat or scam that should be shutdown or heavily regulated.

Reason TV's Nick Gillespie sat down with Popper to talk about rise of Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology, which advocates say has virtually unlimited application.

Meet the Whistleblower Who Exposed the Secret Room AT&T Used to Help the NSA Spy on the Internet
Meet the Whistleblower Who Exposed the Secret Room AT&T Used to Hel...
Democracy Now!
http://democracynow.org - As documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden expose how AT&T aided the NSA’s vast spying operations, we speak to former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who worked at the company for 22 years. In 2006, he blew the whistle on AT&T’s cooperation with the National Security Agency by leaking internal documents that revealed the company had set up a secret room in its San Francisco office to give the NSA access to its fiber-optic Internet cables.

Snowden Documents Reveal AT&T’s "Extreme Willingness to Help" NSA Domestic Spy Program
Snowden Documents Reveal AT&T’s "Extreme Willingness to Help" NSA D...
Democracy Now!
http://democracynow.org - Documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have exposed how extensively the NSA relied on telecommunications giant AT&T for its vast spying operations. Records described by The New York Times and ProPublica laud AT&T’s "extreme willingness to help" the NSA’s spying efforts. According to the piece, the company supplied access to billions of emails flowing across its domestic networks and technical aid in carrying out a secret order allowing the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the headquarters of the United Nations — an AT&T customer. In 2013, the NSA’s top-secret budget for its partnership with AT&T was reportedly more than twice that of the next largest such program.

Your Band Sucks: Jon Fine on How the Indie Cultural Revolution Changed America
Your Band Sucks: Jon Fine on How the Indie Cultural Revolution Chan...
ReasonTV
"We're now in distribution abundance," says Jon Fine, "so if you're telling me that Amazon is bad for culture, like seriously, fuck you."

Fine is the executive editor of Inc. and the author of the acclaimed new memoir, Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock's Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Here), a rollicking tour of his days in the alternative music scene of the late 1980s and '90s.

"Somewhere in the latter half of the eighties, it became much easier for weird bands to do band things: play shows, make records, go on tour. The hows and whys that had been so elusive just a few years earlier were now shared through surprisingly effective samizdat and word-of-mouth networks," writes Fine, a member of "resolutely non-famous bands" such as Bitch Magnet and Coptic Light. 

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