Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Tony Blair has been cashing in on his contacts from the Iraq conflict and his role as Middle East peace envoy for a private business venture expected to earn him more than Ł5m a year. The former prime minister has sold his political and economic expertise to two countries, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, via his fledgling private consultancy. He also represents the investment bank JP Morgan in the region. Blair has been ... amassing a fortune from the American lecture circuit. By offering himself to the Arab states as a statesman for hire, he could comfortably double his annual earnings. His consultancy, the London-based Tony Blair Associates (TBA), emulates the New York partnership Kissinger Associates, which was founded by Henry Kissinger, the former national security adviser to President Nixon. Peter Brierley, 59, of Batley, West Yorkshire, whose 28-year-old son Shaun was killed near the Kuwait-Iraq border in 2003 and who refused to shake Blair’s hand at a memorial service this month, said: “This beggars belief. It’s absolutely scandalous that he’s now trying to make money from his contacts in the region. It’s money from the blood and lives of the soldiers who died in Iraq.” His fees for talks, along with contracts with JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services, are estimated to put his earnings — excluding [a big] book deal — well in excess of Ł5m a year.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
Congress began the work of reforming our troubled financial system last week, and a bill aimed at regulating derivatives passed the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday. Derivatives — contracts that theoretically protect buyers from unforeseen financial calamities but more often are used to fuel raw speculation — were ... at the heart of the banking crisis. Credit default swaps ... propelled the American International Group off the cliff. Those swaps also linked millions of trading partners, creating a web in which one default threatened to produce a chain of corporate and economic failures worldwide. And derivatives aren’t going away. So reforming the $42 trillion market for credit swaps is crucial if taxpayers are to be protected from future rescues of institutions deemed not only too big but also too interconnected to fail. The best aspect of the House bill is that it requires many swaps to be traded on exchanges just like stocks, subjecting them for the first time to the light of day. But elsewhere in the bill, ... exceptions to this exchange-trading rule undermine its regulatory power. Big banks dealing in swaps don’t want exchange trading, where pricing and the identities of participants would be more publicly transparent. Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor and an expert in derivatives, criticized the House bill. “The plain language of the legislation can only be read as a Christmas tree of decorative gifts to the banking industry,” he said. “And this is being done when people acknowledge the unregulated O.T.C. derivatives market was a principal reason for the meltdown.”
Note: For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Even as the economy continues to struggle, much of Wall Street is minting money — and looking forward again to hefty bonuses. Many Americans wonder how this can possibly be. How can some banks be prospering so soon after a financial collapse, even as legions of people worry about losing their jobs and their homes? It may come as a surprise that one of the most powerful forces driving the resurgence on Wall Street is not the banks but Washington. Many of the steps that policy makers took last year to stabilize the financial system — reducing interest rates to near zero, bolstering big banks with taxpayer money, guaranteeing billions of dollars of financial institutions’ debts — helped set the stage for this new era of Wall Street wealth. Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather than in the ho-hum business of lending people money. They also are profiting by taking risks that weaker rivals are unable or unwilling to shoulder — a benefit of less competition after the failure of some investment firms last year. So even as big banks fight efforts in Congress to subject their industry to greater regulation — and to impose some restrictions on executive pay — Wall Street has Washington to thank in part for its latest bonanza. “All of this is facilitated by the Federal Reserve and the government,” said Gary Richardson, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. “But we have just shown them that they can have the most frightening things happen to them, and we will throw trillions of dollars to protect them. I have big concerns about that.”
Note: For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be [alleged] assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The files in question, some released under direction of the court and hundreds more that are still secret, involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations — but never told the committee of his earlier role. That concealment has fueled suspicion that Mr. Joannides’s real assignment was to limit what the House committee could learn about C.I.A. activities. The agency’s deception was first reported in 2001 by Jefferson Morley, who has doggedly pursued the files ever since. Mr. Morley, 51, [is] a former Washington Post reporter and the author of a 2008 biography of a former C.I.A. station chief in Mexico. After losing an appeals court decision in Mr. Morley’s lawsuit, the C.I.A. released material last year confirming Mr. Joannides’s deep involvement with the anti-Castro Cubans who confronted Oswald. But the agency is withholding 295 specific documents from the 1960s and ’70s, while refusing to confirm or deny the existence of many others. The deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The C.I.A. hid its schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in C.I.A. support during 1963. In the years since Oswald was named as the assassin, speculation about who might have been behind him has never ended.
Note: For WantToKnow.info team member Peter Dale Scott's analysis of the extraordinary significance of this New York Times article, click here. For two revealing clips suggesting the official explanation of the JFK assassination was manipulated, click here (for a five-minute clip from the History Channel) and here (for a highly revealing documentary from a CBS affiliate).
The Obama administration [has said] that the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before and the largest shortfall relative to the size of the economy since 1945. The shortfall for the fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30, translates to 10 percent of the economy, according to a joint statement from the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag. For the 2008 fiscal year, the deficit of $459 billion was 3.2 percent of the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product. At 10 percent of the gross domestic product, the 2009 deficit is the highest since the end of World War II, when it was 21.5 percent. The overall national debt, which is the accumulation of annual deficits, is nearly $12 trillion, and projected deficits for the next decade will add an estimated $9 trillion more. Administration officials say two-thirds of that is due to Bush administration policies.
Note: The current debt of $12 trillion equals $40,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. Most of the increased deficit is due to the government bailout of the biggest Wall Street banks and investment houses. For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Health care legislation before Congress takes only modest steps to address a problem that is more deadly than inadequate medical insurance - medical error. Studies show that preventable medical errors - ranging from poor sanitation to mistakes during surgery - kill four times as many people as the lack of medical insurance. In August, a Hearst investigation, "Dead by Mistake," concluded that as many as 200,000 people die each year from medical errors and infections in the United States and that many measures to alleviate the problem have not been adopted 10 years after a landmark federal study, "To Err Is Human." A new Hearst analysis shows that the health care reform bills under consideration by Congress also do not include key recommendations, outlined in the study, that the health care industry has lobbied against ever since. Experts agree that the proposed legislation does not address key aspects of the problem. "We are not seeing a lot about safety, which is interesting, because the nation is acknowledging the 10-year anniversary of 'To Err is Human' and there is a lot of frustration that we have not made more progress," said Jim Conway, senior vice president at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a Boston nonprofit that has been pushing hospitals toward safer care. Two major recommendations of the federal study are mandatory reporting of medical errors and, based on those reports, systemic changes to prevent future mistakes. None of the bills include mandatory reporting.
Note: For a powerful summary of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
France's highest court has ruled that US agrochemical giant Monsanto had not told the truth about the safety of its best-selling weed-killer, Roundup. The court confirmed an earlier judgment that Monsanto had falsely advertised its herbicide as "biodegradable" and claimed it "left the soil clean". The company was fined 15,000 euros (Ł13,800; $22,400). Roundup is the world's best-selling herbicide. Monsanto also sells crops genetically-engineered to be tolerant to Roundup. French environmental groups had brought the case in 2001 on the basis that glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classed as "dangerous for the environment" by the European Union. Earlier this month, Monsanto reported a fourth quarter loss of $233m (Ł147m), driven mostly by a drop in sales of its Roundup brand.
Note: For an article on the dangers of Monsanto's RoundUp, click here.
Despite concerted government-led and lender-supported efforts to prevent foreclosures, the number of filings hit a record high in the third quarter. 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter -- whether a default notice, auction notice or bank repossession. That means one in every 136 U.S. homes were in foreclosure, which is a 5% increase from the second quarter and a 23% jump over the third quarter of 2008. Most disturbing is that all foreclosures -- not just repossessions -- are rampant despite efforts to corral them. There are no firm statistics for it, but many industry watchers claim the percentage of REOs [properties possessed by the mortgage company after an unsuccessful foreclosure auction] caused by borrowers voluntarily walking away from their homes is skyrocketing. The foreclosure crisis may not diminish anytime soon.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the impacts of the financial crash, click here.
Americans are still debating whether to roll up their sleeves for a swine flu shot, but companies have already figured it out: vaccines are good for business. Drug companies have sold $1.5 billion worth of swine flu shots, in addition to the $1 billion for seasonal flu they booked earlier this year. These inoculations are part of a much wider and rapidly growing $20 billion global vaccine market. "The vaccine market is booming," says Bruce Carlson, spokesperson at market research firm Kalorama, which publishes an annual survey of the vaccine industry. "It's an enormous growth area for pharmaceuticals at a time when other areas are not doing so well," he says. As always with pandemic flus, taxpayers are footing the $1.5 billion check for the 250 million swine flu vaccines that the government has ordered so far and will be distributing free to doctors, pharmacies and schools. In addition, Congress has set aside more than $10 billion this year to research flu viruses, monitor H1N1's progress and educate the public about prevention. Drugmakers pocket most of the revenues from flu sales. But some say it's not just drugmakers who stand to benefit. Doctors collect copayments for special office visits to inject shots, and there have been assertions that these doctors actually profit handsomely from these vaccinations. Pharmacies also charge co-payments or full price of about $25 to those without insurance.
Note: For a revealing article questioning the efficacy of vaccines, click here. And for a powerful CBS '60 Minutes' news clip clearly showing how the profit motive in vaccines endangers public health, click here.
On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst. In order for the bet to pay, Bear would have to fall harder and faster than any Wall Street brokerage in history. The very next day, March 12th, Bear went into free fall. By the end of the week, the firm had lost virtually all of its cash and was clinging to promises of state aid; by the weekend, it was being knocked to its knees by the Fed and the Treasury, and forced at the barrel of a shotgun to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase (which had been given $29 billion in public money...) at the humiliating price of … $2 a share. Whoever bought those options on March 11th woke up on the morning of March 17th having made 159 times his money, or roughly $270 million. Six months after Bear was eaten by predators, virtually the same scenario repeated itself in the case of Lehman Brothers — another top-five investment bank that in September 2008 was vaporized in an obvious case of market manipulation. From there, the financial crisis was on. When Bear and Lehman made their final leap off the cliff of history, both undeniably got a push ... in the form of a flat-out counterfeiting scheme called naked short-selling.
Note: Why isn't this being reported in the major media and aggressively investigated? For many reports from reliable sources on the corruption at the core of the Wall Street collapse and bailout, click here.
Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year -- a record high that shows compensation is rebounding despite regulatory scrutiny of Wall Street's pay culture. [Executives] at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did the peak year of 2007, according to an analysis of securities filings for the first half of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end by The Wall Street Journal. Total compensation and benefits at the publicly traded firms analyzed by the Journal are on track to increase 20% from last year's $117 billion -- and to top 2007's $130 billion payout. This year, employees at the companies will earn an estimated $143,400 on average, up almost $2,000 from 2007 levels. The growth in compensation reflects Wall Street firms' rapid return to precrisis revenue levels. Even as the economy is sluggish and unemployment approaches 10%, these firms have been boosted by a stronger stock market, thawing credit market, a resurgence in deal making and the continuing effects of various government aid programs. So far, regulators and lawmakers have focused on making sure pay practices discourage excessive risk-taking, leaving to companies the question of how much is too much.
Note: For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones. The work is the first to make use of the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as spin ice. Writing in Nature journal, a team showed that monopoles gather to form a "magnetic current" like electricity. The phenomenon, dubbed "magnetricity", could be used in magnetic storage or in computing. Magnetic monopoles were first predicted to exist over a century ago, as a perfect analogue to electric charges. In September this year, two research groups independently reported the existence of monopoles - "particles" which carry an overall magnetic charge. But they exist only in the spin ice crystals. These crystals are made up of pyramids of charged atoms, or ions, arranged in such a way that when cooled to exceptionally low temperatures, the materials show tiny, discrete packets of magnetic charge. Now one of those teams has gone on to show that these "quasi-particles" of magnetic charge can move together, forming a magnetic current just like the electric current formed by moving electrons. The team ... showed that when the spin ice was placed in a magnetic field, the monopoles piled up on one side - just like electrons would pile up when placed in an electric field.
UK border police used anti-terrorist legislation to prevent a British climate change activist from crossing over into mainland Europe where he planned to take part in events surrounding the forthcoming United Nations summit in Denmark. Chris Kitchen, a 31-year-old office worker, said he feared his treatment by police could mark the start of a clampdown on protesters, hundreds of whom are planning to travel to Copenhagen for the climate change talks in December. [He had hoped] to take part in discussions organised by a network of protest groups coming together under the banner Climate Justice Action. He said he was prevented from crossing the border ... when the coach he was travelling on stopped at the Folkestone terminal of the Channel tunnel. Kitchen said police officers boarded the coach and, after checking all passengers' passports, took him and another climate activist to be interviewed under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, a clause which enables border officials to stop and search individuals to determine if they are connected to terrorism. The passports were not initially scanned, Kitchen said, suggesting the officials knew his name and had planned to remove him from the coach before they boarded. During his interview, he was asked questions about his family, work and past political activity. The police also asked him what he intended to do in Copenhagen. When Kitchen said that anti-terrorist legislation does not apply to environmental activists, he said the officer replied that terrorism "could mean a lot of things". Police are understood to be monitoring protesters on a number of databases, some of which highlight individuals when they pass through secure areas, such as ports.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on increasing government erosion of civil liberties, click here.
It's always interesting to look behind the curtain at the state Capitol and marvel at the California Legislature's ingenuity at spending our money or avoiding accountability. It's just too bad this creative brilliance could not be applied to addressing fiscal crises or solving the state's water problems. The latest little outrage came in the scrutiny of the Legislature's 77 select committees by Chronicle staff writers Wyatt Buchanan and Matthew Yi. What they found was that 32 of these committees have paid staffers, with a combined payroll of $4.3 million. It may not be a lot of money in the context of a state that keeps encountering deficits in the tens of billions, but it does seem to represent a bit of clever accounting. To put it in plain terms: It's a way for elected officials to pad their staffs. For example, state Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, has six people working for him who are paid through three select committees. Total number of hearings those committees have held this year: zero. Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairs two select committees ... with four paid staff members. Total number of hearings this year: zero. Californians who are not so immersed in the culture of the Legislature might wonder why it needs 77 select committees in addition to the standing committees that are assigned to cover areas such as transportation, energy and myriad other issues. At least 19 of the 32 with paid staff have not met at all this year.
Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades. Policy makers boosted foreign currency holdings by $413 billion last quarter, the most since at least 2003, to $7.3 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nations reporting currency breakdowns put 63 percent of the new cash into euros and yen in April, May and June. That’s the highest percentage in any quarter with more than an $80 billion increase. World leaders are acting on threats to dump the dollar while the Obama administration shows a willingness to tolerate a weaker currency in an effort to boost exports and the economy as long as it doesn’t drive away the nation’s creditors. The diversification signals that the currency won’t rebound anytime soon after losing 10.3 percent on a trade-weighted basis the past six months, the biggest drop since 1991. “Global central banks are getting more serious about diversification, whereas in the past they used to just talk about it,” said Steven Englander, a former Federal Reserve researcher who is now the chief U.S. currency strategist at Barclays in New York. “It looks like they are really backing away from the dollar.” The dollar’s 37 percent share of new reserves fell from about a 63 percent average since 1999. America’s currency has been under siege as the Treasury sells a record amount of debt to finance a budget deficit that totaled $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009 ended Sept. 30.
Note: For insightful analyses of the US financial crisis, click here.
The Casimir effect governs interactions of matter with the energy that is present in a vacuum. Success in harnessing this force could someday help researchers develop low-friction ballistics and even levitating objects that defy gravity. For now, the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a two-year, $10-million project encouraging scientists to work on ways to manipulate this quirk of quantum electrodynamics. Vacuums generally are thought to be voids, but Hendrik Casimir believed these pockets of nothing do indeed contain fluctuations of electromagnetic waves. He suggested [that] as the boundaries of a region of vacuum move, the variation in vacuum energy (also called zero-point energy) leads to the Casimir effect. Recent research done at Harvard University, Vrije University Amsterdam and elsewhere has proved Casimir correct — and given some experimental underpinning to DARPA's request for research proposals.
Note: Debunkers of the new energy movement have long claimed that zero point energy is a theoretical construct which cannot have practical applications. This article shows that attitudes are now shifting. For lots more reliable information on what's still hidden from the public on the new energy front, click here.
While many economists [have long assumed] that collective action [doesn't] work, several decades ago the Indiana University ... political scientist [Elinor Ostrom] began to study when and why it did work. [Now,] her efforts [have] won her the 2009 Nobel economics prize. "What Ostrom showed was that a lot of ordinary ... people who'd never read about free rider problems basically developed institutional arrangements," says Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Groups of fishermen figured out how to limit their catch, while farmers collaborated on irrigation problems. "Sure there's a free-rider problem, but people turn around and find ways to solve it," Folbre says. Ostrom ... looked at other institutional successes, studying group-run fisheries, pastures, woods and lakes, to conclude that "outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories." She "challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized," the Nobel committee said. Why did other economists miss this part of the picture? "Economists didn't pay attention to ethnography," Folbre says--that is, they didn't observe actual people at work. "Why go out in the field when you have a nice theory?"
Note: Elinor Ostrom was also the first woman to win the Nobel in economics, as described in this CNN article.
Advances in technology for extracting [natural] gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, said proven natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years' supply – and rising fast. "There has been a revolution in the gas fields of North America. Reserve estimates are rising sharply as technology unlocks unconventional resources," he said. The breakthrough has been to combine 3-D seismic imaging with new technologies to free "tight gas" by smashing rocks, known as hydro-fracturing or "fracking" in the trade. The US is leading the charge. Texas A&M University said US methods could increase global gas reserves by nine times to 16,000 TCF (trillion cubic feet). Shale gas is undoubtedly messy. Millions of gallons of water mixed with sand, hydrochloric acid and toxic chemicals are blasted at rocks. This is supposed to happen below the water basins but accidents have been common. Pennsylvania's [environmental authorities] have shut down a Cabot Oil & Gas operation after 8,000 gallons of chemicals spilled into a stream. The claims of BP ... are so extraordinary that we may need to rewrite the geo-strategy textbooks for the next half century.
Note: For more on the risks associated with fracking, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on new energy developments, click here.
Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world. Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas. A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years. But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials. It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological basis. One of them is Monument Six. Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet [is] unique in that [it contains] the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation. However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible. Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico's National Autonomous University ... notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.
Note: The highest counter in the Mayan calendar is the alautun, which is an interval of 63 million years. Those who state the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 have not researched the Mayan system carefully. 2012 may be the equivalent of the year 10,000 in the Mayan calendar, which is significant, yet it may end up being but another Y2K. For more, click here.
Professor Noam Chomsky may be among America's most enduring anti-war activists. But the leftist intellectual's anthology of post-9/11 commentary is taboo at Guantánamo's prison camp library, which offers books and videos on Harry Potter, World Cup soccer and Islam. U.S. military censors recently rejected a Pentagon lawyer's donation of an Arabic-language copy of the political activist and linguistic professor's 2007 anthology Interventions for the library. Chomsky, 80, who has been voicing disgust with U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War, reacted with irritation and derision. "This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes," he told The Miami Herald by e-mail after learning of the decision. "Of some incidental interest, perhaps, is the nature of the book they banned. It consists of op-eds written for The New York Times syndicate and distributed by them. The subversive rot must run very deep." Prison camp officials would not say specifically why the book was rejected. A rejection slip accompanying the Chomsky book did not explain the reason but listed categories of restricted literature to include those espousing "Anti-American, Anti-Semitic, Anti-Western" ideology, literature on "military topics." Prison camp staff would not say how many donated books have been refused.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.