Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
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A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email". Training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata. Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity. XKeyscore provides the technological capability [to target] US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.
Note: For more on government privacy invasions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Computers and networks inherently produce data, and our constant interactions with them allow corporations to collect an enormous amount of intensely personal data about us as we go about our daily lives. Sometimes we produce this data inadvertently simply by using our phones, credit cards, computers and other devices. Sometimes we give corporations this data directly on Google, Facebook, [or] Apple’s iCloud ... in exchange for whatever free or cheap service we receive from the Internet in return. The NSA is also in the business of spying on everyone, and it has realized it’s far easier to collect all the data from these corporations rather than from us directly. The result is a corporate-government surveillance partnership, one that allows both the government and corporations to get away with things they couldn’t otherwise. There are two types of laws in the U.S., each designed to constrain a different type of power: constitutional law, which places limitations on government, and regulatory law, which constrains corporations. Historically, these two areas have largely remained separate, but today each group has learned how to use the other’s laws to bypass their own restrictions. The government uses corporations to get around its limits, and corporations use the government to get around their limits. This partnership manifests itself in various ways. The government uses corporations to circumvent its prohibitions against eavesdropping domestically on its citizens. Corporations rely on the government to ensure that they have unfettered use of the data they collect.
Note: For more on government and corporate privacy invasions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
French utility EDF, the world's biggest operator of nuclear plants, is pulling out of nuclear energy in the United States, bowing to the realities of a market that has been transformed by cheap shale gas. Several nuclear reactors in the US have been closed or are being shuttered as utilities baulk at the big investments needed to extend their lifetimes now that nuclear power has been so decisively undercut by electricity generated from shale gas. "The spectacular fall of the price of gas in the US, which was unimaginable a few years ago, has made this form of energy ultra competitive vis a vis all other forms of energy," EDF Chief Executive Henri Proglio told a news conference. EDF agreed with its partner Exelon on an exit from their Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG) joint venture, which operates five nuclear plants in the United States with a total capacity of 3.9 gigawatts. "Circumstances for the development of nuclear in the US are not favourable at the moment," Proglio said. International Energy Agency analyst Dennis Volk said CENG's eastern US power plants were located in some of the most competitive power markets in the country, with high price competition, growing wind capacity and cheap gas. "It is simply not easy to invest in nuclear and recover your money there," Volk said. Proglio said EDF would now focus on renewable energy in the United States. EDF employs 860 people in US solar and wind, and since 2010 its generating capacity has doubled to 2.3 gigawatts.
Note: For more on encouraging energy developments, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A British university is delaying the release of an academic paper on how the anti-theft systems of millions of Volkswagen vehicles are at risk of being hacked after the German carmaker took legal action against it. In a statement, the University of Birmingham said it would "defer publication" of the paper — which explains how researchers were able to subvert Volkswagen's security system — after an interim injunction issued by England's High Court. It said it was "disappointed with the judgment which did not uphold the defense of academic freedom and public interest, but respects the decision." The paper ... revealed three ways to bypass a brand of computer chip used by several auto manufacturers to fight vehicle theft. Often referred to as immobilizers, such chips use a secret algorithm to ensure that a car can only be started with the right key, and they've been a mandatory in all new vehicles sold in Britain over the past 15 years. Crucially, the researchers planned to reveal how they were able to reverse-engineer the algorithm — and publish a copy of it in their paper. Volkswagen said that publishing the formula would be "highly damaging" and "facilitate theft of cars," according to a ruling handed down last month by High Court Justice Colin Birss. The judge said that millions of Volkswagen vehicles were issued with the chip, including high-end cars such as Porsches, Audis, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis. The researchers countered that Volkswagen's claim that the paper would be a boon to car thieves was overblown, that they had warned the chip's manufacturer about the vulnerability six months ago, and that a gag order would interfere with their legitimate academic work.
Note: For more on corporate corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Who would cut the tongues and take the reproductive organs from several cows? That’s the mystery police in a small town 90 miles away from Kansas City are dealing with. Robert Hills, Henry County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy, says the first cow was discovered in December of 2011, the second and third this summer. All were female cows and were owned by rancher Lyn Mitchell. “We couldn’t see any signs of trauma, and it doesn’t appear that there was any type of wild animal, such as coyotes, that were involved,” Hills told KMOX. The first cow discovered on Mitchell’s ranch had her tongue and ear removed. The next two discovered on July 9th and 19th of this year had their tongues removed along with their udders, anus, reproductive organs, and ears. A veterinarian wasn’t called to examine the first two cows. But one did examine the third one. Mitchell said the veterinarian told her the cuts to the cow were precise and surgical. Also what seems to be the common denominator of all these incidents is the lack of blood and other bodily fluids surrounding the area and inside the animal. Mitchell told the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) that the third cow’s heart was removed and exposed, but was not taken. She believes that maybe whoever did this was interrupted and she does not rule out the possibility of aliens. “We’re having to look at this from two sides,” says Hills. “Some people believe that there are aliens that are involved in this or the possibility of the occult; going to the other end of the spectrum, we’ve talked to other people that say that just when cows die that’s what happens to their bodies. We’re just not able to determine what the cause of death is at this point,” Hills says.
Note: For more on UFOs, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Ron Finley grew up in South Central Los Angeles, a "food desert" where nutritious eats are chronically unavailable. But when the fashion designer [and] father got tired of driving 45 minutes to buy an organic tomato, he decided to grow his own. In the fall of 2010, he planted a "demonstration garden" on the strip of land between the curb and the sidewalk in front of his house in South Central Los Angeles, a neighborhood where he has lived all his life. He says he was tired of living in the "food prison"—where the lack of access to healthy foods was causing diabetes, obesity, and other health problems. "If you look at the statistics, the drive thrus literally are killing more people than the drive-bys," Finley says. Finley encouraged people to take what they needed from the garden. He shared tomatoes, peppers, melons, eggplant, pumpkins, and more with anyone who passed by his home, often people with few financial resources and little access to vegetables. In May of 2011, however, Finley received a citation from the city, which considered his plants "obstructions." They asked him to pay $400 for a permit or remove the garden. After getting 500 signatures on a petition posted on change.org and gaining the confidence of a city councilman, Finley received a permit for free and eventually provoked the city to relax its laws on curb strip usage. Since then, Finley has created the organization LA Green Grounds, which plants vegetable gardens in South Central yards free of charge and has installed public gardens in curb strips, homeless shelters, abandoned lots, and traffic medians. The all-volunteer organization has installed over 30 gardens.
Note: For an inspiring 10-minute TED talk given by Mr. Finley, click here. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
Recent news out of China raises the question once again of whether any aspect of the pharmaceutical business can be trusted. First, Chinese authorities announced they were investigating GlaxoSmithKline and other pharma companies for bribing doctors, hospitals and government officials to buy and prescribe their drugs. Glaxo is accused of using a Shanghai travel agency to funnel at least $489 million in bribes. Then the New York Times revealed last week the alarming news that an internal Glaxo audit found serious problems with the way research was conducted at the company’s Shanghai research and development center. Last year Glaxo paid $3 billion to resolve civil and criminal allegations of, among other things, marketing widely used prescription drugs for unapproved treatments and using kickbacks to promote sales. Glaxo is a leader in pharma fraud and wrongdoing, with other industry heavyweights close behind. Over the past decade, whistleblowers and government investigations in the US have exposed a never-ending series of problems by numerous pharma companies in all facets of the industry, starting with fraudulent “research” papers used to bolster marketing and continuing through to the manufacture of contaminated and defective products, the marketing of drugs for unapproved and life-threatening uses and the mispricing of prescription drugs. Pharma ... has paid more than $30.2 billion in civil and criminal penalties to the US and state governments and continues to face more allegations of wrongdoing. The industry – despite huge penalties and a long string of public mea culpas – has a fraud habit that is just too profitable to kick. Finding a cure should be a top priority of regulators worldwide.
Note: For more on pharmaceutical industry corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A woman who wore a meat dress was never going to be massively phased by even the most ghoulish piece of performance art. But still, there was an incredible nonchalance about Lady Gaga as she scooped fake blood sauce from a woman's naked body at the 20th annual benefit for the Watermill Center. Gaga arrived with performance artist Marina Abramovic and the center’s director Robert Wilson then mingled with stars like Hugh Jackman and Winona Ryder. The 27-year-old then caused even more of a commotion by bidding $60,000 to buy an Abramovic work, a wall-mounted quartz brick. After the dinner and auction, hosted by Alan Cumming, guests danced with several women wearing nothing but body paint. Gaga, then spotted the woman covered in blood, an onlooker told the NY Post: 'There was a casket with a totally naked woman laying in what looked like a pool of blood. On a table nearby there was a row of little spoons — no one had touched them, because no one knew what they were for. [Wilson] gave two spoons to Gaga and Marina . . . and Gaga dipped the spoon right between the artist’s legs, and took a sip.' She then, 'proceeded to lick the spoon.'
Note: See how this is related to the Pizzagate case in our thoroughly research essay on this topic.
A group of experts advising the nation’s premier cancer research institution has recommended changing the definition of cancer and eliminating the word from some common diagnoses as part of sweeping changes in the nation’s approach to cancer detection and treatment. The recommendations, from a working group of the National Cancer Institute, were published [in] The Journal of the American Medical Association. They say, for instance, that some premalignant conditions, like one that affects the breast called ductal carcinoma in situ, which many doctors agree is not cancer, should be renamed to exclude the word carcinoma so that patients are less frightened and less likely to seek what may be unneeded and potentially harmful treatments that can include the surgical removal of the breast. The group, which includes some of the top scientists in cancer research, also suggested that many lesions detected during breast, prostate, thyroid, lung and other cancer screenings should not be called cancer at all but should instead be reclassified as IDLE conditions, which stands for “indolent lesions of epithelial origin.” The impetus behind the call for change is a growing concern among doctors, scientists and patient advocates that hundreds of thousands of men and women are undergoing needless and sometimes disfiguring and harmful treatments for premalignant and cancerous lesions that are so slow growing they are unlikely to ever cause harm. Once doctors and patients are aware a lesion exists, they typically feel compelled to biopsy, treat and remove it, often at great physical and psychological pain and risk to the patient.
Note: Isn't it interesting that a diagnosis which might not even be accurate can so change a person's life? For more on promising cancer cures which are being suppressed by the medical-industrial complex, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
In May this year, a huge company listed on the London Stock Exchange found itself in the midst of controversy about a prison it runs for the government – Thameside, a newly built jail ... in south-east London. Two months later, the same company was the subject of a high- profile report published by the House Of Commons. Again, the verdict was damning: data had been falsified, national standards had not been met, there was a culture of "lying and cheating", and the service offered to the public was simply "not good enough". Three weeks ago, there came grimmer news. The company ... was one of two contractors that had somehow overcharged the government for its services, possibly by as much as Ł50m; The firm that links these three stories together is Serco. Its range of activities, here and abroad, is truly mind-boggling. As a private firm it's not open to Freedom of Information requests, so looking into the details of what it does is fraught with difficulty. But the basic facts are plain enough. As well as five British prisons and the tags attached to over 8,000 English and Welsh offenders, Serco sees to two immigration removal centres. You'll also see its logo on the Docklands Light Railway and Woolwich ferry. But even this is only a fraction of the story. Serco is responsible for air traffic control in the United Arab Emirates, parking-meter services in Chicago, driving tests in Ontario, and an immigration detention centre on Christmas Island.
Note: Serco is possibly the largest company you've never heard of. Did you know that the Obama administration awarded Serco a $1.25 billion contract to help implement online health insurance exchanges under Obamacare, as reported in this Reuters article? Watch this video to see just how powerful and pervasive they are.
To the startups behind a series of new phone and tablet apps designed to make you smile, happiness is big business. Happier Inc ... launched a phone app in February encouraging users to reflect upon and share pleasant everyday moments. Built around the theory that writing down a nice thought is good for you and that positivity is contagious, the app is about helping consumers take stock of what's good in their life now and to treasure it, says [founder Nataly Kogan]. In the process, she is hoping to prove the technology haters wrong and remedy the negativity on social networks. "On Facebook, we're all bragging," she says. We present the best versions of ourselves and then our friends compare the real versions of their lives to our best versions, and that is depressing." Happier is not alone however. An array of other apps such as Mappiness, Happy Apps and Live Happy have come onto the market in the last couple of years, variously promising to track, share or enact moments of joy. John C Havens, author and founder of non-profit, H(app)athon Project, which uses mobile data to provide recommendations for volunteerism in the local community, suggests digital tools designed to measure contentment redress an imbalance in society where economic data is too often prioritised over social data. "There is real joy in discovery and introspection and reflection, which is something that we lack in modern society where we are so obsessed with productivity," he says. "If you allow yourself on a personal level, that self-reflection, as aided by these technologies, the hope is that you will discover areas of your life you have not been giving credit to."
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
On May 25, 1948, a former United States Army flier entered the American Embassy in Paris, renounced his American citizenship and, as astonished officials looked on, declared himself a citizen of the world. In the decades that followed ... he remained by choice a stateless man — entering, leaving, being regularly expelled from and frequently arrested in a spate of countries, carrying a passport of his own devising, as the international news media chronicled his every move. His rationale was simple, his aim immense: if there were no nation-states, he believed, there would be no wars. Garry Davis, a longtime peace advocate, former Broadway song-and-dance man and self-declared World Citizen No. 1, who is widely regarded as the dean of the One World movement, a quest to erase national boundaries that today has nearly a million adherents worldwide, died ... in Williston, Vt. He was 91. He continued to occupy the singular limbo between citizen and alien that he had cheerfully inhabited for 65 years. Mr. Davis was not the first person to declare himself a world citizen, but he was inarguably the most visible, most vocal and most indefatigable. The One World model has had its share of prominent adherents, among them Albert Schweitzer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Einstein and E. B. White. But where most advocates have been content to write and lecture, Mr. Davis was no armchair theorist: 60 years ago, he established the World Government of World Citizens, a self-proclaimed international governmental body. To date, more than 2.5 million World Government documents have been issued.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
Glenn Greenwald – the reporter who broke the story about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs – claimed that those NSA programs allowed even low-level analysts to search the private emails and phone calls of Americans. “The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases that they’ve collected over the last several years,” Greenwald told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “All an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and [the program] searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered.” Greenwald explained that ... these programs still allow analysts to search through data with little court approval or supervision. Greenwald said "these systems allow analysts to listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents. And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst,” he added. Greenwald said the existence of these analyst search programs are in line with the claims of Edward Snowden, who first leaked details of the NSA’s surveillance programs last month. “It’s an incredibly powerful and invasive tool, exactly of the type that Mr. Snowden described,” Greenwald said. “NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I just said,” Greenwald said.
Note: For more on government privacy invasions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Americans overwhelmingly support labeling foods that have been genetically modified or engineered, according to a New York Times poll conducted this year, with 93 percent of respondents saying that foods containing such ingredients should be identified. Three-quarters of Americans expressed concern about genetically modified organisms in their food, with most of them worried about the effects on people’s health. Thirty-seven percent of those worried about G.M.O.’s said they feared that such foods cause cancer or allergies. Among those with concerns, 26 percent said these foods are not safe to eat, or are toxic, while 13 percent were worried about environmental problems that they fear might be caused by genetic engineering. Nearly half of Americans said they were aware that a large amount of the processed or packaged foods they now buy at the grocery store contains genetically modified ingredients. Overall concern was higher among women than men, perhaps not surprisingly, as more women identify themselves as the principal grocery shopper in the household. Americans were almost equally divided about eating genetically modified vegetables, fruits and grains, with about half saying they would not eat them. They were even less comfortable about eating meat from genetically engineered animals: three-quarters said they would not eat G.M.O. fish, and about two-thirds said they would not eat meat that had been modified.
Note: Explore over 40 scientific studies that have demonstrated the health dangers of GM foods. Despite overwhelming public support for labelling of GMOs, the GM lobby has spent huge amounts of money to keep US states from enacting labelling laws. Sadly, they have largely been successful. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing GMO news articles from reliable major media sources.
A former CIA officer has broken the U.S. silence around the 2003 abduction of a radical Islamist cleric in Italy, charging that the agency inflated the threat the preacher posed and that the United States then allowed Italy to prosecute her and other Americans to shield President George W. Bush and other U.S. officials from responsibility for approving the operation. Confirming for the first time that she worked undercover for the CIA in Milan when the operation took place, Sabrina De Sousa provided new details about the “extraordinary rendition” that led to the only criminal prosecution stemming from the secret Bush administration rendition and detention program launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The cleric, Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr, was snatched from a Milan street by a team of CIA operatives and flown to Egypt, where he was held for the better part of four years without charges and allegedly tortured. An Egyptian court in 2007 ruled that his imprisonment was “unfounded” and ordered him released. Among the allegations made by De Sousa in a series of interviews with McClatchy: – The former CIA station chief in Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, whom she called the mastermind of the operation, exaggerated Nasr's terrorist threat to win approval for the rendition and misled his superiors [to believe] that Italian military intelligence had agreed to the operation. – Senior CIA officials, including then-CIA Director George Tenet, approved the operation even though Nasr wasn’t wanted in Egypt and wasn’t on the U.S. list of top al Qaida terrorists. – Condoleezza Rice, then the White House national security adviser, ... agreed to it and recommended that Bush approve the abduction.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency operations, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Using techniques of exquisite sensitivity and technological finesse, astronomers have spent the past two decades on an astonishing voyage of cosmic discovery. They have found that the universe is full of planets: cold, small, and dark next to their large and glaring suns, these worlds have previously been hidden from us. To spot them represents a challenge that has been compared to looking across thousands of miles to see a firefly buzzing around a brilliant searchlight. They exert a gravitational pull, tugging their parent stars into a gently wobbling motion that we can now detect. We now have firm evidence for thousands of planets, around thousands of stars. We also know something about these worlds, their sizes, their orbits, often their ages. In a handful of cases ... we have even measured the temperature of their upper atmospheres and [determined] their gaseous chemistry, finding substances like sodium, methane and water. No matter how conservative or optimistic we are, the statistics tell us that something like an astonishing one out of every seven stars must harbor a planet similar in size to the Earth, and at roughly the right orbital distance to allow for the possibility of a temperate surface environment. In other words, roughly 15 percent of all suns could, in principle, be hosting a place suitable for life as we know it. Since our galaxy contains at least 200 billion stars, this implies a vast arena for the universe’s ubiquitous carbon chemistry to play in — a process that, as here on Earth, might lead to the complex machinery of life. Indeed, there is a 95-percent confidence — give or take a few percent — that one of these worlds could be within a mere 16 light years of us.
Note: For fascinating testimony from top military and government officials revealing a major cover-up of the existence of UFOs and ETs, click here. For more on the nature of reality, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Oil-field services giant Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence in connection with the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Justice Department announced. Halliburton has been charged with one count of destruction of evidence in U.S. District Court in New Orleans. Under a plea agreement that is subject to court approval, Halliburton agreed “to pay the maximum-available statutory fine, to be subject to three years of probation and to continue its cooperation in the government’s ongoing criminal investigation,” the Justice Department said. The April 2010 explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was the largest offshore oil disaster in U.S. history, killing 11 workers and spewing nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the gulf. The Macondo well was owned by a consortium of energy companies, led by BP. Transocean owned the drilling rig that BP was leasing for the venture. Halliburton was contracted by BP to do the cement work on the well. The plea agreement was the third that the Justice Department has obtained in the criminal investigation of the disaster. Transocean agreed to pay $400 million as part of its criminal plea, and BP, $4 billion. A civil suit against the three companies brought by the Justice Department and others is continuing. The Halliburton plea involves the destruction of results of internal tests the company conducted after the drilling rig sank. The Justice Department said, “In agreeing to plead guilty, Halliburton has accepted criminal responsibility for destroying the aforementioned evidence.”
Note: For more on corporate corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
As the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington approaches ... where Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous "I have a dream" speech, it is important to recall the extent to which King was targeted by the government. The FBI operation against King is one of the most shameful episodes in the long history of our government's persecution of dissenters. In a heavily redacted, classified FBI memo dated 4 January 1956 – just a little more than a month after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger – stated that an agent "had been assigned ... to find out all he could about Reverend Martin L King, colored minister in Montgomery and leader in the bus boycott … to uncover all the derogatory information he could about King." [FBI] director, J Edgar Hoover ... was deploying the vast resources he controlled against any and all perceived critics of the United States. The far-reaching clandestine surveillance, infiltration and disruption operation Hoover ran was dubbed "COINTELPRO", for counterintelligence program. The FBI's COINTELPRO activities ... were thoroughly investigated in 1975 by the Church Committee, [which] reported that the FBI "conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of first amendment rights of speech and association." Among COINTELPRO's perverse activities was an FBI effort to threaten Martin Luther King Jr with exposure of an alleged extramarital affair, including the suggestion, made by the FBI to King, that he avoid embarrassment by killing himself. Deeply concerned about the crackdown on dissent happening under Obama, scholar Cornel West ... wondered if [King] "would not be invited to the very march in his name."
Note: This article fails to mention a key fact. At a 1999 court trial held in Memphis, the family of Rev. King accused elements of the U.S. government of complicity in King's death. After one month of hearings from 70 witnesses, a jury composed of six white and six black jurors took only one hour to find the U.S. government, the state of Tennessee, the city of Memphis, the Memphis police, and several individuals guilty of murdering King. Yet the mainstream media completely boycotted this trial. Thankfully, CBC (Canada's PBS) gave it some coverage. To see a six-minute CBC clip of this highly revealing trial, click here.
When it comes to foreign policy, war, assassinations, drones, surveillance, secrecy, and civil liberties, President Obama's most stalwart, enthusiastic defenders are often found among the most radical precincts of the Republican Party. The extraordinary events that took place in the House of Representatives [on July 24] are perhaps the most vivid illustration yet of this dynamic. The House voted on an amendment sponsored by Justin Amash, the young Michigan lawyer elected in 2010 as a Tea Party candidate, and co-sponsored by John Conyers, the 24-term senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. The amendment was simple. It would de-fund one single NSA program: the agency's bulk collection of the telephone records of all Americans. The amendment yesterday was defeated. A majority of House Democrats supported the Amash/Conyers amendment, while a majority of Republicans voted against it. As the New York Times put it in its account of yesterday's vote: "Conservative Republicans leery of what they see as Obama administration abuses of power teamed up with liberal Democrats long opposed to intrusive intelligence programs. The Obama administration made common cause with the House Republican leadership to try to block it." The fate of the amendment was sealed when the Obama White House ... announced its vehement opposition to it, and then sent NSA officials to the House to scare members that barring the NSA from collecting all phone records of all Americans would "Help The Terrorists."
Note: For more on government privacy invasions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A video made by 11 year-old Yemeni girl Nada Al-Adhal speaking about child marriage has gone viral. After it was translated and posted on YouTube, over seven million have watched Al-Adhal petition against the widespread practice of forced child marriages which led her to flee her family, and which, according to her powerful appeal, leads to the suicides of children all over Yemen. “Go ahead and marry me off. I’ll kill myself, just like that”, she says in a message to her parents. “I’m better off dead”. Twenty years after the Convention on the Rights of the Child passed through the UN, envisioning a future in which all children have the right to be safeguarded against violence, exploitation and abuse, Al-Adhal’s campaign against child marriage is only one example of children around the world speaking out against continuing violations against their human rights. In 2009 Manan Ansari, a young child labour activist from Jharkhand, [India] spoke at the International Labour Conference about his experiences as a child working in the mica mines of the region, and his work to free children from the dangers of the labour and give them access to school education. Last October Pakistani activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Malala Yousafzai made world news when she was shot by the Taliban for championing education for girls. Since her recovery she has been hailed as a hero and an inspiration for her perseverance, telling world leaders in her speech at the United Nations on her 16th birthday; “they thought that the bullet would silence us. But they failed”.
Note: The moving, three-minute video of this brave 11-year-old girl can be viewed at this link.
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.