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Media Articles
Excerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media


Below are key excerpts of highly revealing media articles from the major media. Links are provided to the full articles on their media websites. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These media articles are listed in reverse date order. You can also explore the articles listed by order of importance or by date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can build a brighter future.

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.


Gold Climbs to Seven-Month High as Economy May Worsen
2009-02-17, Bloomberg News
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=acerPa4tlqXg

Gold rose to its highest [price] in almost seven months in London as investors bought the precious metal to preserve their wealth on speculation the global economy will deteriorate. Bullion has climbed 33 percent since October as governments lowered interest rates and spent trillions of dollars to combat the recession. “The very big uncertainties in the stock market and economy are driving investors into gold and precious metals,” said Peter Fertig, owner of Quantitative Commodity Research Ltd. in Hainburg, Germany. Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as $25.40, or 2.7 percent, to $967.15 an ounce, the highest since July 22. April futures gained $22.10, or 2.4 percent, to $964.40. Some investors are buying precious metals on speculation government stimulus packages [and bank bailouts] will spur inflation, Fertig said. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week pledged as much as $2 trillion in financing for programs aimed at spurring new lending. The Treasury will likely borrow a record $2.5 trillion this fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “Investors have been aggressively adding physical gold to their portfolios as concerns about counterparty risk” increase, ETF Securities wrote in a report. Investors are hedging “against the risk of currency depreciation and longer term inflation risks as government debt projections balloon.” “Gold has become, for all intents, the world’s second reserve currency,” Dennis Gartman, an economist and the editor of the ... Gartman Letter, said.

Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of government bailouts of banks worldwide, click here.


A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff
2009-02-16, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-fraud-bigger-than-madoff-1...

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn ... in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme. "I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003. Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq. In the expanded inquiry by federal agencies, the evidence of a ... US businessman called Dale C Stoffel who was murdered after leaving the US base at Taiji north of Baghdad in 2004 is being re-examined. Before he was killed, Mr Stoffel, an arms dealer and contractor, was granted limited immunity from prosecution after he had provided information that a network of bribery – linking companies and US officials awarding contracts – existed within the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad. He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers.

Note: To read a former Marine Corps general's exposure of the high-level criminality and profiteering that is the real purpose behind war, click here. For many powerful revelations from reliable sources of government corruption, click here.


Obama administration defending Bush secrets
2009-02-16, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29225492/

Despite President Barack Obama's vow to open government more than ever, the Justice Department is defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists. "The signs in the last few days are not ... encouraging," said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed several lawsuits seeking the Bush administration's legal rationales for warrantless domestic wiretapping and for its treatment of terrorism detainees. The documents sought in these lawsuits "are in many cases the documents that the public most needs to see," Jaffer said. "It makes no sense to say that these documents are somehow exempt from President Obama's directives." Groups that advocate open government, civil liberties and privacy were overjoyed that Obama on his first day in office reversed the FOIA policy imposed by Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft. Obama pledged "an unprecedented level of openness in government" and ordered new FOIA guidelines written with a "presumption in favor of disclosure." But Justice's actions in courts since then have cast doubt on how far the new administration will go. "This is not change," said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero. "President Obama's Justice Department has disappointingly reneged" on his promise to end "abuse of state secrets."

Note: For lots more on state secrecy from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.


Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates
2009-02-15, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/14/AR20090214017...

The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists [have] said. "We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," [said] Christopher Field, founding director of the ... Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. The higher emissions are largely the result of the increased burning of coal in developing countries, he said. Unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere as the result of "feedback loops" that are speeding up natural processes. Prominent among these ... is a cycle in which higher temperatures are beginning to melt the arctic permafrost, which could release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. The permafrost holds 1 trillion tons of carbon, and as much as 10 percent of that could be released this century, Field said. Along with carbon dioxide melting permafrost releases methane, which is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. "It's a vicious cycle of feedback where warming causes the release of carbon from permafrost, which causes more warming, which causes more release from permafrost," Field said.

Note: For many key reports from major media sources on the global warming crisis, click here.


Stimulus Plan Places New Limits on Wall St. Bonuses
2009-02-14, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/business/economy/14pay.html?partner=rss&emc...

Buried deep inside the ... economic stimulus bill ... is some bitter medicine for companies that have received financial bailout funds. Over staunch objections from the Obama administration, Senate Democrats inserted a provision that would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at financial institutions that are much tougher than those proposed 10 days ago by the Treasury Department. The provisions would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the five most-senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive money under TARP. The restriction with the most bite would bar top executives from receiving bonuses that exceed one-third of their annual pay. The provision, written by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., highlighted the growing wrath ... over the lavish compensation that top Wall Street firms and big banks awarded to senior executives at the same time that many of the companies, teetering on the brink of insolvency, received taxpayer-paid bailouts. "The decisions of certain Wall Street executives to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers have seriously undermined public confidence," Dodd said Friday. "These tough new rules will help ensure that taxpayer dollars no longer effectively subsidize lavish Wall Street bonuses." Top economic advisers to President Obama adamantly opposed the pay restrictions, according to congressional officials.

Note: For powerfully revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.


Former Gitmo guard recalls abuse, climate of fear
2009-02-14, Washington Post/Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/14/AR20090214007...

Army Pvt. Brandon Neely was scared when he took Guantanamo's first shackled detainees off a bus. Told to expect vicious terrorists, he grabbed a trembling, elderly detainee and ground his face into the cement -- the first of a range of humiliations he says he participated in and witnessed as the prison was opening for business. Neely has now come forward in this final year of the detention center's existence, saying he wants to publicly air his feelings of guilt and shame about how some soldiers behaved as the military scrambled to handle the first alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members arriving at the isolated U.S. Navy base. His account, one of the first by a former guard describing abuses at Guantanamo, describes a chaotic time when soldiers lacked clear rules for dealing with detainees who were denied many basic comforts. He says the circumstances changed quickly once monitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived. As Neely put it in an interview with The Associated Press this week, "The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong." Neely, a ... Texan who served for a year in Iraq after his six months at Guantanamo, received an honorable discharge last year ... and now works as a law enforcement officer in the Houston area. He is also president of the local chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. An urge to tell his story led him to the University of California at Davis' Guantanamo Testimonials Project, an effort to document accounts of prisoner abuse.

Note: For lots more on the realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.


9/11 widow among victims of crash near Buffalo
2009-02-13, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29176877/

One of the victims of Continental Flight 3407, Beverly Eckert, was a Sept. 11 widow who put her never-ending grief to good use to make the country safer. Just last week, Eckert was at the White House with Barack Obama, part of a meeting the president had with relatives of those killed in the 2001 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole to discuss how the new administration would handle terror suspects. Obama, addressing business leaders on Friday, referred to her "passionate commitment" to the 9/11 families. "She was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead," the president said during remarks about the crash at the East Room event. "She was such an important part of all of our work," said Mary Fetchet, another 9/11 family activist.

Note: Mrs. Eckert rejected the $1.8 million payment for 9/11 survivors, as she would have forfeited the right to sue the government for its role in the event. ABC News quotes her on how she had "chosen to go to court rather than accept a payoff from the 9/11 victims compensation fund. I want to know why two 110-story skyscrapers collapsed in less than two hours and why escape and rescue options were so limited. I am suing because unlike ... congressional hearings and the 9/11 commission, my lawsuit requires all testimony be given under oath and fully uses powers to compel evidence." For why Mrs. Eckert and hundreds of other highly respected politicians and professors are calling for a new investigation on 9/11, click here.


Global economic crisis called biggest U.S. security threat
2009-02-13, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-security-threat13-2009fe...

The nation's new intelligence chief [has warned] that the global economic crisis is the most serious security peril facing the United States, threatening to topple governments [and] trigger waves of refugees. The economic collapse "already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries," said Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence, in [testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee]. Blair's focus on the economic meltdown represents a sharp contrast from the testimony of his predecessors in recent years, who devoted most of their attention in the annual threat assessment hearing to the issues of terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Time is probably our greatest threat," Blair said. "The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests." He said that one-quarter of the world's nations had already experienced low-level instability attributed to the economic downturn, including shifts in power. He cited anti-government demonstrations in Europe and Russia, and he warned that much of Latin America and the former Soviet satellite states lacked sufficient cash to cope with the spreading crisis. "Countries will not be able to export their way out of this one because of the global nature" of the crisis, Blair said. U.S. intelligence analysts fear there could be a backlash against American efforts to promote free markets because the crisis was triggered by the United States. "We're generally held to be responsible," Blair said.

Note: For the complete text of Blair's testimony, click here. For an excellent analysis, click here. For more on the realities behind the economic crisis, click here.


Canadian police restrict stun gun use, saying the guns are potentially lethal
2009-02-12, Los Angeles Times/Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-na-canada-stun-gun-...

Canada's federal police will no longer use stun guns against suspects who are merely resisting arrest or refusing to cooperate — saying the guns can cause death. "Tasers hurt like hell," Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner William Elliot said Thursday of his reaction to being shot with a stun gun as a test. The guns incapacitate people with a 50,000-volt jolt of electricity. "The RCMP's revised policy underscores that there are risks associated with the deployment of the device and emphasizes that those risks include the risk of death, particularly for agitated individuals," Elliot told members of Parliament's public safety committee. At least 20 Canadians have died after being zapped by stun guns. Federal police officers have used the guns more than 5,000 times in the last seven years. An analysis of incidents by The Canadian Press between 2002 and 2005 found that three in four suspects zapped by the RCMP were unarmed. Elliot said stun gun use must now be justified as a necessary and reasonable use of force. Officers had previously been told that stun guns are a good way to control suspects in a state of so-called "excited delirium," or in an agitated or delirious state. Elliot said the term will no longer appear in police manuals. "(Police officers) are highly trained, but they're not medical experts and we don't think it's fair or reasonable to have policy based on a medical condition or diagnosis," Elliot said.

Note: For much more on the dangers of so-called "non-lethal weapons", click here.


Bush Sought 'Way' To Invade Iraq?
2009-02-11, CBS News 60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml

[Former Treasury Secretary Paul] O'Neill - who is known for speaking his mind - talks for the first time about his two years inside the Bush administration. His story is the centerpiece of a new book being published this week about the way the Bush White House is run. Entitled The Price of Loyalty, the book by [Ron Suskind,] former Wall Street Journal reporter, draws on interviews with high-level officials who gave the author their personal accounts of meetings with the president, their notes and documents. But the main source of the book was Paul O'Neill. What happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11. "From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime," says Suskind. "Day one, these things were laid and sealed." As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" says O'Neill.

Note: Most wars in the 20th Century were started by false-flag operations; could 9/11 have been yet another one, on a scale large enough to launch a "global" and "endless" war? For an overview, click here.


Cancer Miracles
2009-02-11, Forbes magazine
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0302/074_cancer_miracles.html

Spontaneous tumor regressions are among the rarest and most mysterious events in medicine, with only several hundred cases in the literature that can be considered well documented. Regressions have most often been reported in melanoma and in kidney cancer. But the phenomenon may, in fact, be an everyday one, taking place beyond doctors' eyes. A recent study suggests that as many as 1 in 3 breast tumors may vanish on their own before being detected by a doctor. Why do some patients get lucky? Scientists are finding tantalizing evidence that the immune system, the body's defense against disease-causing microbes, kicks in to play a critical role in combating cancer. The evidence includes the fact that some unexplained remissions have occurred after infections, which may propel the immune system into high gear--possibly attacking the cancer tumor as well as the infection. The role of the immune system in controlling cancer has been hotly debated for decades--and indeed many scientists remain unconvinced. But Jedd D. Wolchok, an oncologist at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, thinks there is a connection. A spontaneous remission, he says, is "either divine intervention or the immune system." While few researchers directly study such cases--they are far too rare--they provide hints of what the immune system might be able to do if we could harness it.

Note: The number of these cancer miracles are likely far more than suggested in this article. The problem is that most doctors ignore or consider them insignificant. For a most fascinating example of this, click here. For many exciting reports from major media sources describing potentially promising new cancer treatments, click here.


Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash
2009-02-11, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29142654

For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre [PA] operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench. In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. “I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre. Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward. The high court ... is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned. Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

Note: For many insights into government corruption from reliable sources, click here.


Under Obama, same stance on rendition suit
2009-02-10, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/BAGS15QB5B.DTL

President Obama's Justice Department signaled in a San Francisco courtroom Monday that the change in administrations has not changed the government's position on secrecy and the rights of foreign prisoners - and that lawsuits by alleged victims of CIA kidnappings and torture must be dismissed on national security grounds. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ... is considering a suit accusing a San Jose company, Jeppesen Dataplan, of arranging so-called extraordinary rendition flights for the CIA. Although Obama has issued orders banning torture and closing secret CIA prisons, his administration has sent mixed signals on extraordinary rendition and the legitimacy of court challenges. Obama's nominee for CIA director, Leon Panetta, said last week that he approved of rendition for foreign prosecution or brief CIA detention. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents five men suing Jeppesen for allegedly flying them to foreign torture chambers, said this case is the new administration's chance to live up to its promises. ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told the court that the supposedly ultra-secret rendition program is widely known. He noted that Sweden recently awarded $450,000 in damages to one of the plaintiffs, Ahmed Agiza, for helping the CIA transport him to Egypt, where he is still being held and allegedly has been tortured. "The notion that you have to close your eyes and ears to what the whole world knows is absurd," Wizner said.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the disturbing trend toward ever-greater restrictions on civil liberties and due process, click here.


US using British atomic weapons factory for its nuclear programme
2009-02-09, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/09/us-uk-atomic-weapons-nuclear-power

The US military has been using Britain's atomic weapons factory to carry out research into its own nuclear warhead programme. US defence officials said that "very valuable" warhead research has taken place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire as part of an ongoing and secretive deal between the British and American governments. Campaign groups warned any such deal was in breach of international law. Kate Hudson, of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said: "Any work preparing the way for new warheads cuts right across the UK's commitment to disarm, which it signed up to in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That this work may be contributing to both future US and British warheads is nothing short of scandalous." The extent of US involvement at Aldermaston came to light in an interview with John Harvey, policy and planning director at the US National Nuclear Security Administration. Harvey said: "There are some capabilities that the UK has that we don't have and that we borrow... that I believe we have been able to exploit [and] that's been very valuable to us." In the same interview, Harvey admitted that the US and UK had struck a new deal over the level of cooperation, including work on ... a new generation of nuclear warhead known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).


The Death of 'Rational Man'
2009-02-08, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR20090206027...

What allowed some people to see the financial crash coming while so many others missed its gathering force? I put that question recently to Nouriel Roubini, who has come to be known as "Dr. Doom" because of his insistent warnings starting in 2006 that we were heading into a global firestorm. Roubini gave two kinds of answers. The first involves standard number-crunching of the sort that economists routinely do -- and that Roubini just did better and sooner. It's his second answer that's more interesting, because it goes to the heart of what we should take away from this crisis: Roubini decided to discard the assumption of market rationality that underlies most economics and to embrace the psychological insights of what's known as "behavioral economics." Everyone else had those same numbers. Why did Roubini act? The answer is that he decided to trust his gut, which told him there was trouble ahead, rather than Wall Street's "wisdom of the crowd," which -- as reflected in stock prices -- said everything was rosy. He concluded that the markets were not pricing in the degree of risk that was actually present in housing. "The rational man theory of economics has not worked," Roubini said last month at a session of the World Economic Forum at Davos. That's why he and other prominent economists are paying more attention to behavioral economics, which starts from the premise that economic decisions, like other aspects of human behavior, are influenced by irrational psychological factors.

Note: To visit Nouriel Roubini's highly informative blog, click here. For lots more on the financial crisis and bailout, click here.


Obama's NSC Will Get New Power
2009-02-08, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/07/AR20090207020...

President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues. The result will be a "dramatically different" NSC from that of the Bush administration or any of its predecessors since the forum was established after World War II ... according to national security adviser James L. Jones, who described the changes in an interview. Jones, a retired Marine general, made it clear that he will run the process and be the primary conduit of national security advice to Obama. The new structure ... will expand the NSC's reach far beyond the range of traditional foreign policy issues. New NSC directorates will deal with such department-spanning 21st-century issues as cybersecurity, energy, climate change, nation-building and infrastructure. Many of the functions of the Homeland Security Council, established as a separate White House entity by President Bush after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, may be subsumed into the expanded NSC, although it is still undetermined whether elements of the HSC will remain as a separate body within the White House. Over the next 50 days, John O. Brennan, a CIA veteran who serves as presidential adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security and is Jones's deputy, will review options for the homeland council, including its responsibility for preparing for and responding to natural and terrorism-related domestic disasters.


Reporter's notebook: TED 2009
2009-02-07, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/07/BULG15OVGP.DTL

Some ... favorite gee-whiz moments from this year's TED conference: -- UC Berkeley biologist Robert Full blew everyone's mind by outlining his efforts to create the perfect robotic "distributed foot." He studies the feet and legs of geckos and cockroaches and transfers their design to robots, enabling them to scale walls. One such machine, the Spinybot, can climb glass walls. -- P.W. Singer, an academic who studies war, terrified the crowd with a detailed look at modern, robotic warfare. Something I didn't know: You can sit in a room in New Mexico and pilot armed drone airplanes in Iraq and kill people. Then you go home and have dinner with your kids. Somewhere, Aldous Huxley weeps. -- Stanford's Catherine Mohr displayed the robotic surgical arm she's working on that could change medicine. Among the amazing possibilities are surgeons in the United States performing advanced surgeries in remote parts of the world. These are just a handful of the amazing innovations and disclosures made at TED this year. In the coming weeks and months, videos of all of these talks will be made available to the public at www.ted.com. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is a 25-year-old annual conference attended by many of the world's leading scientists, academics and business leaders. The agenda consists of a series of talks, during which big thinkers discuss big ideas.

Note: For powerful information on bizarre "non-lethal" weapons developed by the military, click here. For an enlightening NPR interview on artificial war, click here. And for one of the most powerful TED presentations ever, see neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's description of her experience having a stroke, available here.


US Treasury overpaid $78 bln under TARP-watchdog
2009-02-06, CNN News/Reuters
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/reuters/MTFH29185_2009-02-06_01-...

The U.S. Treasury looks to have overpaid financial institutions to the tune of $78 billion in carrying out capital injections last year, the head of a congressional oversight panel for the government's $700 billion bailout program told lawmakers. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, said her group estimated the Treasury paid $254 billion in 2008 in return for stocks and warrants worth about $176 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Warren said the Treasury, under then-Secretary Henry Paulson, misled the public about how it would price them. "Treasury simply did not do what it said it was doing ... They described the program one way, and they priced it another," Warren said at a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee. She added that Paulson "was not entirely candid" in describing TARP's bank capital injection program. Neil Barofsky, another watchdog for the TARP program, told the Senate committee his office is turning to criminal investigations. "That's going to be a large focus of my office," he said. Warren told the banking committee that after three months on the job, her panel is still not getting enough answers from Treasury. She described the bailout as "an opaque process at best." Barofsky raised concerns about potential fraud in one of several programs funded by bailout money -- the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility (TALF).

Note: Was the overpayment by Treasury to Wall Street banks for nearly-worthless assets they created a mistake? Or was it the real, hidden purpose of TARP to pay the banks more for the assets than they are worth? For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.


Warning over 'surveillance state'
2009-02-06, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7872425.stm

Electronic surveillance and collection of personal data are "pervasive" in British society and threaten to undermine democracy, peers [in the House of Lords] have warned. CCTV cameras and the DNA database were two examples of threats to privacy, the Lords constitution committee said. It called for compensation for people subject to illegal surveillance. Civil liberties campaigners have warned about the risks of a "surveillance society" in which the state acquires ever-greater powers to track people's movements and retain personal data. In its report, the Lords constitution committee said growth in surveillance by both the state and the private sector risked threatening people's right to privacy, which it said was "an essential pre-requisite to the exercise of individual freedom". People were often unaware of the scale of personal information held and exchanged by public bodies, it said. "There can be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about us being recorded and pored over by the state," committee chairman and Tory peer Lord Goodlad said. "The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing tradition of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy," Lord Goodlad added. Human rights campaigners Liberty welcomed the report.

Note: For key reports from major media sources on growing threats to privacy from governments and corporations, click here.


Man Asks Entire Town for Forgiveness for Racism
2009-02-06, ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6813984

Nearly half a century ago, in a very different America, Elwin Wilson and John Lewis met under a veil of violence and race-inspired hate. Wilson, a young, white, Southern man, attacked Lewis, a freedom rider for Martin Luther King, in the "white" waiting room of a South Carolina bus station. The men had not seen each other again until Tuesday when, with "Good Morning America's" help, Wilson approached Lewis again -- this time offering an apology and a chance to relieve a burden he'd carried for more than four decades. "I'm so sorry about what happened back then," Wilson said breathlessly. "It's OK. I forgive you," Lewis responded before a long-awaited hug. For Lewis, who in the intervening years became a U.S. representative from Georgia, the apology was an unexpected symbol of the change in time and hearts. "I never thought this would happen," he told "GMA." "It says something about the power of love, of grace, the power of the people being able to say, 'I'm sorry,' and move on. And I deeply appreciate it. It's very meaningful for me." The change, one Wilson said was a long time coming, was sparked by Barack Obama's presidential victory. "I like Barack Obama," he said. "I didn't vote for him, but I'm glad he's there, and I've prayed for him."


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.

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