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.
The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 testified Monday he spent almost four weeks trying to warn U.S. officials about the radical Islamic student pilot but "criminal negligence" by superiors in Washington thwarted a chance to stop the 9/11 attacks. Samit told MacMahon he couldn't persuade FBI headquarters or the Justice Department to take his fears seriously. Samit's complaints echoed those raised in 2002 by Coleen Rowley, the bureau's agent-lawyer in the Minneapolis office. Rowley went public with her frustrations, was named a Time magazine person of the year for whistleblowing. Samit revealed far more than Rowley of the details of the investigation. For each nugget of information, MacMahon asked Samit if Washington officials called to assess the implications. Time after time, Samit said no.
The IRS is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns. If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers will be able to sell information from individual returns - or even entire returns - to marketers and data brokers. The change is raising alarm among consumer and privacy-rights advocates. It was included in a set of proposed rules that the Treasury Department and the IRS published...where the official notice labeled them "not a significant regulatory action." The proposed rules...would require a tax preparer to obtain written consent before selling tax information. Critics call the changes a dangerous breach in personal and financial privacy. They say the requirement for signed consent would prove meaningless for many taxpayers, especially those hurriedly reviewing stacks of documents before a filing deadline.The IRS first announced the proposal in a news release the day before the official notice was published, headlined: "IRS Issues Proposed Regulations to Safeguard Taxpayer Information."
[AJ] remembers every day and almost every detail of her life. James McGaugh is one of the world's leading experts on how the human memory system works. But these days, he admits he's stumped. McGaugh's journey through an intellectual purgatory began six years ago when a woman now known only as AJ wrote him a letter detailing her astonishing ability to remember with remarkable clarity even trivial events that happened decades ago. Give her any date...and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date. Like any good scientist, McGaugh was initially skeptical. But not anymore. "This is real," he says. "In order to explain a phenomenon you have to first understand the phenomenon," McGaugh says. "We're at the beginning."
Note: The human mind and spirit are much more powerful than many scientists might imagine.
At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money...was to be used in a "transparent manner"...for "purposes benefiting the people of Iraq". For the past few months we have been working on a Guardian Films investigation into what happened to that money. A great deal of it has been wasted, stolen or frittered away. Over the first 14 months of the occupation, 363 tonnes of new $100 bills were shipped in - $12bn, in cash. "Iraq was awash in cash - in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money," says Frank Willis, a former senior official with the governing Coalition Provisional Authority. "We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west crazy atmosphere". The environment created by the coalition positively encouraged corruption. "American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone," says Alan Grayson, a Florida-based attorney who represents whistleblowers now trying to expose the corruption. One CPA official was given nearly $7m and told to spend it in seven days.
Note: I highly recommend this entire article to understand some of what happens in war. For lots more on war-related corruption written by a highly decorated US general, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/warisaracket
From 1994 to 2003, medical research funded by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies steadily increased and now surpasses research funded by government or public sources, according to a review of the most frequently cited studies. In the new study, reported in the March 17th online issue of the British Medical Journal, the sponsorship of 289 articles...was determined. Overall, 60% of articles had government or public funding and 36% were funded by industry. However, this masks the dramatic rise in industry funding that occurred over time: in 1994, roughly 30% of articles were funded by industry compared with over 50% in 2001. Moreover, 65 of the 77 most cited randomized controlled trials involved industry funding. "Medical research should reflect public needs more closely and the efforts of all of those involved should be better coordinated," the authors emphasize.
It's easier to rig an electronic voting machine than a Las Vegas slot machine, says University of Pennsylvania visiting professor Steve Freeman. That's because Vegas slots are better monitored and regulated than America's voting machines, Freeman writes in a book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, that argues, among other things, that President Bush may owe his 2004 win to an unfair vote count. Software: Slot Machine: State of Nevada has access to all software. Illegal to use software that is not on file. Voting Machine: Software is a trade secret. Spot Checking: Slot Machine: State gaming inspectors show up unannounced at casinos to compare computer chips with those on file. If there is a discrepancy, the machine is shut down and investigated. Voting Machine: No checks are required. Election officials have no chip to compare with the one found in the machine. Background Security: Slot Machine: Manufacturers subjected to background checks. Employees are investigated for criminal records. Voting Machine: Citizens have no way of knowing, for example, whether programmers have been convicted of fraud. Equipment Certification: Slot Machine: By a public agency at arm's length from manufacturers. Public questions invited. Voting Machine: By for-profit companies chosen and paid by the manufacturers. No public information on how the testing is done.
Note: For many revealing major media reports on the corruptibility of electronic voting systems, click here.
The Pentagon is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to test weapons in space, marking the biggest step toward creating a space battlefield since President Reagan's long-defunct "star wars" project. The Defense Department's budget proposal...includes money for a variety of tests on offensive and defensive weapons. Arms-control specialists fear the tests will push the military closer to basing weapons in space than during Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s -- without a public debate of the potential consequences. The descriptions included in the budget request mark only what is publicly known about the military's space warfare plans. Specialists believe the classified portion of the $439 billion budget, blacked out for national security reasons, almost certainly includes other space-related programs. Under President Bush, the White House has emphasized what's known as "space dominance" -- the notion that the United States must command space to defend the nation, but the budget request marks a transition from laboratory theory to reality. The Bush administration has sought to keep the military's options open despite international opposition to weapons in space.
I went to hear Jeff Faux talk recently about his new book "The Global Class War," an account of how the corporate elite has been selling out American workers. I don't entirely buy his argument. Faux is founder of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank...which I think is best described as "gloomy." There is no economic news that the EPI can't find a way to spin negatively. That said, the work the group does is always meticulous and usually thought-provoking. The same can be said of Faux's book. His main point is that there now exists a global "party of Davos" (the Swiss ski resort where politicians, businesspeople, journalists, and scholars gather every January for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum), whose members have more in common with each other than with the peoples of their home countries. I can testify that there is truth to this. I am a member of the junior auxiliary of the party of Davos. Faux's point is not that people like me are sinister and evil -- there's no Trilateral Commission/Council on Foreign Relations/Bilderberg Group conspiracy nonsense in his book -- just that the interests of corporate America aren't necessarily the same as America's interests. My chief solace is that Faux doesn't seem to have an obviously better alternative. Or maybe that shouldn't be a solace -- because Faux is right that a global economic system designed entirely by corporations, without any democratic input to speak of, isn't what anybody really wants.
Note: This is a heartening article from one who rubs elbows with the power elite. If you don't know about the secret gatherings of the global elite, the BBC and other articles available here are essential reading.
British businesses have profited by at least Ł1.1bn since coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein three years ago. The company roll-call of post-war profiteers includes some of the best known names in Britain's boardrooms. The evidence of massive investments and the promise of more multimillion-pound profits to come was discovered in a joint investigation by Corporate Watch, an independent watchdog, and The Independent. The findings show how much is [at] stake if Britain were to withdraw military protection from Iraq. British company involvement at the top of Iraq's new political and economic structures means Iraq will be forced to rely on British business for many years to come. A total of 61 British companies are identified as benefiting from at least Ł1.1bn of contracts and investment in the new Iraq. But that figure is just the tip of the iceberg. It could be as much as five times higher, because many companies prefer to keep their relationship secret. The waters are further muddied by the Government's refusal to release the names of companies it has helped to win contracts in Iraq. The report acknowledges that British business still lags behind the huge profits paid to American companies. In five years, the Ł1.1bn of contracts identified in the report will be dwarfed by what Britain and the US hope to reap from investments. Highly lucrative oil contracts have yet to be handed out.
Note: For more powerful information on war-profiteering revealed by a highly decorated U.S. general see http://www.WantToKnow.info/warisaracket
The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (Ł2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease. More than 60 countries have so far ordered large stocks of the antiviral medication - the only oral medicine believed to be effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease - to try to protect their people. The United Nations estimates that a pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide. The drug was developed by a Californian biotech company, Gilead Sciences. Mr Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join the Bush administration, but retained a huge shareholding. The 2005 report showed that, in all, he owned shares worth up to $95.9m, from which he got an income of up to $13m. The firm made a loss in 2003, the year before concern about bird flu started. Then revenues from Tamiflu almost quadrupled, to $44.6m, helping put the company well into the black. Sales almost quadrupled again, to $161.6m last year.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. With both the avian flu and swine flu, top drug companies raked in billions of dollars from sales of medications and vaccines, most of which went unused and have now expired. For many more strange coincidences and facts around the avian and swine flu scares, take a look at our summary of eye-opening news articles available here.
It was about 10 seconds long and showed gondoliers rowing in the canals of Venice, Italy, while a Latin-sounding man's voice said: "Your heart is where your treasure is, and you must find your treasure in order to make sense of everything." And then more words appeared on the screen: "Everyday grace: MTV." In late January, MTV, the arbiter of all things hip, quietly launched a campaign of 24 of these little films. They call the campaign "Spiritual Windows." "We wanted to create little, short moments, almost breaths of peace, for the channel," Kevin Mackall, the...senior vice president of on-air promos for MTV explained. "There's a genuine appetite for spirituality these days." According to a little-known poll...53 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds said "religion" was "extremely important" or "very important" to their daily lives. Only 14 percent said religion wasn't important to them at all. One spot, with the tag line "Consume mindfully," shows a Tibetan nun hauling two plastic garbage bags to the curb in front of her Buddhist temple. Then there's "Everyone," with a Chinese dragon dancing...accompanied by a voice-over that says, "We need other human beings to be human." And one of the longer spots...shows the sun setting over a pyramid in Egypt as the Brazilian magical realist author Paulo Coelho's voice announces, "The desert will give you an understanding of the world. How do I immerse myself in the desert? Listen to your heart." Mackall...insists the "Spiritual Windows" are no gimmick. "It really, truly is answering a call from our audience," he said. "Hopefully it's a first step into some other content like this."
A worldwide economic boom has yielded a record number of dollar billionaires in the past year, according to Forbes. Their number rose by 15%. Microsoft's Bill Gates tops the list for the 12th year running, with a net worth of $50bn (Ł29bn). The combined net worth of the 793 is $2.6 trillion and US billionaires account for just under half the amount. The figures were conservative estimates for different reasons. While New York has the highest number of resident billionaires with 40, Moscow is second with 25, and London comes third with 23. Steve Forbes, Forbes' chief executive and editor-in-chief, attributed the global rise in the number of billionaires to an economic boom.
Note: Yet a recent New York Times article shows that the income of 90% of citizens is basically stagnant or even decreasing. See http://www.WantToKnow.info/060306newsarticles#1
Dubai Ports World, the firm at the center of the controversy, announced today that it would give up its bid to manage U.S. ports, agreeing to transfer the contracts to a “U.S. entity." Yet while one Dubai company may be giving up on U.S. ports, another one shows no signs of...giving up a contract with the Navy to provide shore services for vessels in the Middle East. The firm, Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS)...was sold to a Dubai government investment vehicle for $285 million. Why is a Dubai shipping services company doing business with the Pentagon when handing over U.S. port operations to the emirate would supposedly compromise national security? ISS “will be responsible for providing all the logistics requirements of U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships in ports throughout the [Middle East] region.” The release also notes that ISS may be asked to provide services for U.S. military training exercises and “contingency operations inland.” ISS’s partner for those services? None other than KBR, the division of Halliburton -- Vice President Dick Cheney’s old firm -- that has won billions of dollars in contracts for the Iraq war and reconstruction. Ironically, Halliburton's name has come up as a possible candidate to be the "U.S. entity" to take over the U.S. ports management from Dubai Ports World.
The details of what happened to the four hijacked jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001, have been known for years, but when a prosecutor read a simple minute-by-minute account of the attacks, the jury deciding the fate of confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui hung on every word. In a similar vein, the missed opportunities of the FBI and other agencies to prevent Sept. 11 have been known for years, but when FBI agents are forced to admit them on cross-examination, they seem fresh to the jury. FBI agents have been forced to admit under cross-examination that the FBI knew years before Sept. 11 that al-Qaida had plans to use planes as missiles to destroy prominent buildings. They also had to acknowledge numerous missed opportunities in the months before Sept. 11 to catch two of the hijackers with terror links known to the government, even though the pair frequently used their own names in this country to rent cars, purchase plane tickets and even, once, to file a police report after getting mugged.
Note: What all of the media articles on this important case fail to mention is the laptop computer of Moussaoui was confiscated weeks before 9/11, yet FBI headquarters systematically undermined requests by Minneapolis FBI agents to search the computer. See http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up10pg#moussaouilaptop. And a full two weeks before 9/11 an FBI Minnesota supervisor said he was trying keep Moussaoui from “taking control of a plane and fly it into the WTC," yet his investigation was repeatedly blocked by top officials. See http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up10pg#moussaoui
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) has embraced a legislative proposal to abandon the state's touch-screen voting machines for the coming election, in which he is a candidate, and to lease others that provide a paper record to verify results. Ehrlich's endorsement is the latest turn in the debate over Maryland's electronic voting machines that were used in nearly every polling place in the 2004 election. The state has committed $90 million to the system, which critics say is vulnerable to tampering. Last month, Ehrlich -- who championed the Diebold machines in 2003 -- express[ed] concern about reliability questions raised in California and Florida about those machines. A review of California's voting systems found more than a dozen vulnerabilities that security analysts said could be fixed. More than two dozen states now have some requirement for vote verification.
Note: These vulnerabilities were discovered after the machines were used widely in previous elections. Before those elections, voting machine manufacturers and elections officials insisted there were no such vulnerabilities. For lots more cover-ups around elections, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation
A much-shrouded idea could give portable power a real charge, for a change -- and change, well, everything. Imagine the day when cellphones charge up in seconds, laptop batteries never degrade, and electric cars have the same power, driving range and purchase price as their gas-powered cousins. Such a battery -- a superbattery -- doesn't exist today, but a tiny company out of Austin, Texas, is getting remarkably close, and the possibilities have caught the attention of the U.S. army, the former vice-chairman of Dell Computer, and one of the most respected venture capital firms in North America. Among EEStor's claims is that its "electrical energy storage unit" could pack nearly 10 times the energy punch of a lead-acid battery of similar weight and, under mass production, would cost half as much. It also says its technology more than doubles the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in most portable computer and mobile gadgets today, but could be produced at one-eighth the cost. The company...is weeks away from seeking independent verification of the product's performance. Adding more intrigue to the story is the fact that Colin Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state, joined Kleiner Perkins last summer as a strategic partner.
Ministers are trying to scrap an international agreement banning the world's most controversial genetic modification of crops, grimly nicknamed "terminator technology", a move which threatens to increase hunger in the Third World. The Government is to push for terminator crops to be considered for approval on a "case-by-case basis" at two meetings this month; its position closely mirrors the stance of the United States and other GM [genetically modified organisms]-promoting countries. Terminator technology...would stop hundreds of millions of poor farmers from saving seeds from their crops for resowing for the following harvest, forcing them to buy new ones from biotech companies every year. The technique is officially known as genetic use restriction technology (Gurt), making crops produce sterile seeds. It could be applied to any crop, including maize and rice, widely grown in developing countries. The UK working group on terminator technology...says: "It could destroy traditional farming methods, damage farmers' livelihoods and threaten food security, particularly in developing countries." [Former UK Minister of Environment Michael] Meacher said: "For the first time in the history of the world, farmers would be stopped from using their own seeds."
Note: For more on this alarming development: http://www.WantToKnow.info/deception10pg
Two operatives at the center of the Able Danger controversy have sued the Defense Department for denying them contact with their lawyers during closed congressional hearings. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and J.D. Smith were among a dozen intelligence officers and contractors who worked on the clandestine program set up long before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to track al-Qaida. They are accusing the Pentagon...of violating their First Amendment rights by blocking their access to legal counsel during the closed sessions. "Able Danger identified the Sept. 11, 2001, attack leader Mohamed Atta, and three of the 9/11 plot's 19 hijackers, as possible members of an al-Qaida cell linked to the 1993 World Trade Center attack or its participants," the suit said. Shaffer, a Bronze Star recipient who fought undercover in Afghanistan, caused a stir in August when he stepped forward to say that he and other Able Danger operatives had identified Atta as long as 21 months before the Sept. 11 attacks. That claim - later supported by the Able Danger team's leader, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott - contradicted a central finding of the commission Congress had set up to probe the Sept. 11 attacks, which concluded that none of the hijackers had been known to U.S. authorities before the assault.
Note: Though the major media once gave Able Danger good coverage, only the Sacramento Bee has mentioned that the team's leader is one of the individuals who stepped forward. For lots more on the vitally important Able Danger program, click here.
Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into "stealth spies" capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported. They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says. It says the aim is "to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails". The research is being funded by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It aims to build on latest developments in brain implant technology which has already seen scientists controlling the movements of fish, rats and monkeys. Such devices are already being used by scientists at Boston University to "steer" a spiny dogfish in a fish tank. The next step for the Pentagon scientists will be the release of blue sharks with similar devices into the ocean off the coast of Florida. Remote-controlled sharks...have advantages that robotic underwater surveillance vehicles just cannot match: they are silent, and they power themselves.
Note: This article fails to mention that electronic implants we used over 40 years ago to control the behavior of bulls, as reported on the front page of the New York Times on May 17, 1965. To see the Times article, go to http://www.WantToKnow.info/delgadobullnytimes.pdf. For lots more reliable information on government mind control programs: http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol
HIV tests detect footprints, never the animal itself. These footprints, antibodies ... were limited to two in 1984 ... but over the years expanded to include many proteins previously not associated with HIV. A majority of HIV-positive tests, when retested, come back indeterminate or negative. In many cases, different results emerge from the same blood tested in different labs. There are currently at least eleven different criteria for how many and what proteins at which band density signal positive. The most stringent criteria (four bands) are upheld in Australia and France; the least stringent (two bands), in Africa, where an HIV test is not even required as part of an AIDS diagnosis. Africa ... has become ground zero of the AIDS epidemic. The clinical definition of AIDS in Africa, however, is stunningly broad and generic, and was seemingly designed to be little other than a signal for funding. The Bangui definition of AIDS ... requires neither a positive HIV test nor a low T-cell count, as in the West, but only the presence of chronic diarrhea, fever, significant weight loss, and asthenia. These happen to be the symptoms of chronic malnutrition, malaria, parasitic infections, and other common African illnesses. The statistical picture of AIDS in Africa, consequently, is a communal projection based on very rough estimates ... extrapolated across the continent using computer models and highly questionable assumptions. More than 2,300 people, mostly scientists and doctors, including Nobelists in chemistry and medicine, have signed the petition of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, which calls for a more independent and skeptical approach to the question of AIDS causality.
Note: If you want to be educated about the details of how rampant corruption has become in the medical research industry, read this well researched article. For a concise description of unbridled corruption in the health care industry by one of the most respected doctors in the world, click here.
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.