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.
A group [of] political activists and journalists has launched a legal challenge to stop an American law they say allows the US military to arrest civilians anywhere in the world and detain them without trial as accused supporters of terrorism. The seven figures, who include ex-New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, professor Noam Chomsky and Icelandic politician and WikiLeaks campaigner Birgitta Jonsdottir, testified to a Manhattan judge that the law – dubbed the NDAA or Homeland Battlefield Bill – would cripple free speech around the world. They said that various provisions written into the National Defense Authorization Bill, which was signed by President Barack Obama at the end of 2011, effectively broadened the definition of "supporter of terrorism" to include peaceful activists, authors, academics and even journalists interviewing members of radical groups. Controversy centres on the loose definition of key words in the bill, in particular who might be "associated forces" of the law's named terrorist groups al-Qaida and the Taliban and what "substantial support" to those groups might get defined as. Whereas White House officials have denied the wording extends any sort of blanket coverage to civilians, rather than active enemy combatants, or actions involved in free speech, some civil rights experts have said the lack of precise definition leaves it open to massive potential abuse.
Note: For discussion of the extreme crackdown by police, based on "anti-terrorism" legislation, against Occupy movement protestors, click here.
One of Japan's crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and hardly any water to cool its fuel, according to an internal examination that reinforces doubts about the plant's stability. The data collected showed the damage from the disaster is so severe, the plant operator will have to develop special equipment and technology to tolerate the harsh environment and decommission the plant, a process expected to last decades. The No. 2 reactor is the only one plant workers have been able to closely examine so far. Tuesday's examination with an industrial endoscope detected radiation levels up to 10 times the fatal dose inside the chamber. The other two reactors that had meltdowns could be in even worse shape. Three Dai-ichi reactors had meltdowns, but the No. 2 reactor is the only one that has been examined because radiation levels inside the reactor building are relatively low and its container is designed with a convenient slot to send in the endoscope. The exact conditions of the other two reactors, where hydrogen explosions damaged their buildings, are still unknown. Simulations have indicated that more fuel inside No. 1 has breached the core than the other two, but radiation at No. 3 remains the highest. The high radiation levels inside the No. 2 reactor's chamber mean it's inaccessible to the workers. Fukushima's accident has instilled public distrust and concerns about nuclear safety, making it difficult for the government to start up reactors even after regular safety checks. All but one of Japan's 54 reactors are now offline, with the last one scheduled to stop in early May.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on Fukushima and other cases of corruption in the nuclear power industry, click here.
A single treatment to cure all cancers? Scientists may be one step closer. In a recent study, scientists reported that they successfully tested an antibody treatment that shrank human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver and prostate tumors transplanted into mice. The antibody blocks a protein called CD47, which normally sits on the cell surface and issues a “don’t eat me” signal that prevents the body’s immune system from attacking it. About a decade ago, scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine, led by professor of pathology Irving Weissman, discovered that using an antibody to block CD47 cured some cases of leukemia and lymphoma in mice by allowing macrophages to seek and destroy the cancerous cells. In the new study, Weissman’s Stanford team showed that the CD47-blocking antibodies may also work against a number of other cancers. The researchers found that CD47 existed on nearly every cell, which suggests that the protein may be common to all cancers. Cancer cells expressed about three times more CD47 than healthy cells. “If the tumor was highly aggressive, the antibody also blocked metastasis. It’s becoming very clear that, in order for a cancer to survive in the body, it has to find some way to evade the cells of the innate immune system,” said Weissman in a statement. The antibody treatment didn’t work in all cases. Some mice injected with breast cancer cells from a human patient showed no changes after treatment. Yet in five mice with breast cancer, the antibody treatment cured them, with no signs of recurrence four months after treatment.
Note: With millions around the world dying of cancer every year, why aren't the most promising treatments being fast tracked? Why did it take 10 years form Weissman to reach this stage? Why isn't the very promising treatment of DCA, which is both cheap and incredibly promising, being given many millions to move rapidly forward? To read major media articles describing other potential cures not being adequately funded, click here. To understand why some treatments are suppressed, click here.
Two entrepreneurs are hoping to take gardening back to a time when an abundance of plant diversity was the norm. Matthew Hoffman and Astrid Lindo grow, source and sell seeds of rare and heirloom edibles. "What's amazing is 100 years ago, everybody saved their own seed," Lindo said. By 1983, the 408 varieties of peas cultivated on American farms some 80 years earlier had dwindled to 25. Sweet corn saw a drop from 307 to 12 varieties. Hoffman undertook intensive training in New Mexico at the first-ever seed school taught by Bill McDorman, one of the veterans of the contemporary North American seed-saving movement. His enthusiasm was infectious; within a few months, Lindo decided to ... immerse herself in the fledgling business. The couple talked with experienced seed growers and farmers, researched catalogs, and scanned gardening forums and blogs online. And then they dug in and began growing their own seed. McDorman, director of Native Seeds/Search, a Tucson organization focused on conserving the genetic diversity of crops ... is effusive in his praise of the couple. "These young kids are way smarter than we were," he remarked. "Matthew and Astrid are indicative of what's coming, a whole new wave." The couple have ... a lively Twitter feed, a blog and a Facebook page as well as a YouTube channel with instructional videos on seed-saving techniques. The company also donates seeds to school garden programs, urban garden programs and correctional facilities.
Note: Learn more at www.livingseedcompany.com. Read the blog at this link and check them out on twitter:@LivingSeedCo; Facebook: www.facebook.com/LivingSeedCompany; and YouTube: bit.ly/wR0P3B
Question: A group proposing a change in monetary policy based on the writings of Stephen Zarlenga (monetary.org) [argues] that the government should print the money, not the Fed or any other private body. H.R. 2990 proposed by Dennis Kucinich is based on these ideas. Are they reasonable to you? Paul Solman: As the Treasury borrows more and more money by issuing bonds and selling them to all comers, it commits itself, "with the full faith and credit" of the United States, to pay back its creditors in full. That means it will either raise taxes in the future or -- and this is the relevant point -- get the Fed to create more money by purchasing bonds on the open market. This is called "monetizing the debt." There's a legitimate case that the Fed has too much power, is insufficiently beholden to the people in what's supposed to be a democracy, since no one on the Fed is chosen by popular election and private bankers are heavily represented on its board. This has long been the argument of financial journalist William Greider, author of a major book on the Fed, "The Secrets of the Temple." Greider: "The idea of giving the Federal Reserve still greater power [is] dangerous. First of all it rewards failure. But secondly, it puts them in the position as arbiter of who shall fail and who shall succeed. It asks to be able to choose what are the 30 or 40 or 50 banks and industrial firms that it regards as systemic risks for the society and ... it will protect those from failure. The government stands behind them and the rest of us are on our own."
Note: If you look at the top of any U.S. currency bill, you will see the words "Federal Reserve Note." Thus, though U.S. dollars are printed by the Treasury, they are issued and controlled by the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned, though subject to minimal federal oversight. To see just how much control the Federal Reserve has over the issuance of U.S. currency, see their webpage at this link. For lots more on hidden manipulations of the Federal Reserve, click here.
A mountain looming over a French commune with a population of just 200 is being touted as a modern Noah's Ark when doomsday arrives – supposedly less than nine months from now. A rapidly increasing stream of New Age believers – or esoterics, as locals call them – have descended in their camper van-loads on the usually picturesque and tranquil Pyrenean village of Bugarach. They believe that when apocalypse strikes on 21 December this year, the aliens waiting in their spacecraft inside Pic de Bugarach will save all the humans near by and beam them off to the next age. For decades, there has been a belief that Pic de Bugarach, which, at 1,230 metres, is the highest in the Corbičres mountain range, possesses an eery power. Often called the "upside-down mountain" – geologists think that it exploded after its formation and the top landed the wrong way up. Since the 1960s, it has attracted New Agers, who insist that it emits special magnetic waves. Further, rumours persist that the country's late president François Mitterrand was transported by helicopter on to the peak, while the Nazis, and, later, Israel's Mossad, performed mysterious digs there. A grizzled man wearing a white linen smock, who calls himself Jean, set up a yurt in the forest a couple of years ago to prepare for the earth's demise. "The apocalypse we believe in is the end of a certain world and the beginning of another," he offers. "A new spiritual world. The year 2012 is the end of a cycle of suffering. Bugarach is one of the major chakras of the earth, a place devoted to welcoming the energies of tomorrow."
Note: If you are waiting for any particular date or any particular person or group to be saved, you are still waiting. The time is now, and we are the ones we've been waiting for!
We have finally reached the point in our financial history where even bankers hate bankers. Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas issued its 2011 annual report with a 34-page essay, "Why We Must End Too Big To Fail—Now." The report [dubs the nation's largest banks] "a clear and present danger to the U.S. economy." It begins with a letter from regional Fed president Richard Fisher. "More than half of banking industry assets are on the books of just five institutions," he complains. "They were a primary culprit in magnifying the financial crisis, and their presence continues to play an important role in prolonging our economic malaise." This is a member of the Federal Reserve itself — an institution that bears responsibility for our banking system devolving into an untenable oligarchy that buys off politicians, captures regulators and eats up our money. This is a member of the establishment saying Too-Big-To-Fail, or TBTF, must die. "The term TBTF disguised the fact that commercial banks holding roughly one-third of the assets in the banking system did essentially fail, surviving only with extraordinary government assistance," the essay reads. Their executives paid themselves fortunes to execute failed mergers and acquisitions and accumulate unimaginable piles of toxic debts. We saved them to save the financial system. But now we must break them up so they don't put us in this ridiculous situation again.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the criminal practices of the biggest banks and financial firms and the collusion of government agencies, see our "Banking Bailout" newsarticles.
More than a decade before former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with more than 50 counts of child sex abuse, a psychologist warned university police that his actions fit that of a “likely pedophile’s pattern.” The finding by State College, Pa., psychologist Dr. Alycia A. Chambers, the therapist for one of Sandusky’s alleged victims, was contained in the internal Penn State files of a 1998 police investigation of the former coach. Chambers’ detailed report is potentially significant because it was the first clear warning about the former Penn State coach’s actions – nearly four years before a then-graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, reported to the late Coach Joe Paterno and other top school officials that he had found Sandusky in the Penn State showers one evening with [a] young boy, engaged in what he viewed as sexual contact. In her interview with NBC News, Chambers described her anguish when she was contacted by police last year and learned that authorities were again investigating Sandusky for allegedly molesting multiple other boys, 13 years after she first raised her concerns. “I was horrified to know that there were so many other innocent boys who had their hearts and minds confused, their bodies violated,” said Chambers. “It’s unspeakable.”
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.
A relatively new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you. All relationships change the brain — but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self. Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can’t show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn’t matter whose body is whose. Wordlessly, relying on the heart’s semaphores, the mother says all an infant needs to hear, communicating through eyes, face and voice. Thanks to advances in neuroimaging, we now have evidence that a baby’s first attachments imprint its brain. The patterns of a lifetime’s behaviors, thoughts, self-regard and choice of sweethearts all begin in this crucible. As a wealth of imaging studies highlight, the neural alchemy continues throughout life as we mature and forge friendships, dabble in affairs, succumb to romantic love, choose a soul mate. Loving relationships alter the brain the most significantly.
As diplomats and journalists dissect every word spoken by top Israeli, Iranian and American officials for signs of a potential Israeli military strike on Irans nuclear program, an online campaign to prevent just that has gained steam in Israel. The Israel Loves Iran campaign [was launched last week by] Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry and his wife, Michal Tamir. For there to be a war between us, we must first be afraid of one another, we must hate, Edry says. Im not afraid of you. I dont hate you. I dont even know you. No Iranian ever did me harm. The site and its accompanying Facebook page are filled with photos of Israelis from all walks of life and the Iranians, We Love You slogan, with the subheader: We will never bomb you. On Friday evening, the page had almost 28,000 likes, and the campaign has raised more than $16,000 to print posters and keep the movement grow[ing]. Organizers say responses from Iranians around the world have poured in. Unfortunately, the stupid politicians in both countries are trying to separate these two rich cultures! wrote one responder. One of the more popular posts ricocheting around Facebook is of a man and woman kissing, with him holding up his Israeli passport as she flaunts her Iranian passport. Persian girls are sexy and adorable, the boyfriend wrote. Our cultures and backgrounds have never got in the way. We actually share the same ideals. According to a recent poll, [only] 19 percent of Israelis support a unilateral strike on Iran. Participant Talia Gorodess [commented], the more people join this campaign, the more, I hope, my government will think twice before doing anything foolish.
Note: To see the inspiring website of this campaign, click here. For the facebook page, click here. For a highly inspiring two-minute video of the campaign, click here. For the beautiful response from Iranians, click here. This is how we transform our world! To understand how the politicians and military leaders manage to manipulate us into war after war, read what a highly decorated general had to say at this link.
The Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. [has] signed new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center. The guidelines will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire databases and “data mining them.” They also set off civil-liberties concerns among privacy advocates who invoked the “Total Information Awareness” program. That program, proposed early in the George W. Bush administration and partially shut down by Congress after an outcry, proposed fusing vast archives of electronic records — like travel records, credit card transactions, phone calls and more. “We’re all in the dark, and for all we know it could be a rerun of Total Information Awareness, which would have allowed the government to make a computerized database of everything on everybody,” said Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, who criticized the administration for not making the draft guidelines public for scrutiny ahead of time.
Note: For excellent and insightful analyses of the disturbing growth of government surveillance and secrecy described in this NYT report, click here and here and here and here.
Photographs of a plaque thanking [a drug cartel] kingpin for building [a] new modernist church with a 20-metre high metal cross ... caused a scandal when they were published in a national newspaper in October 2010. The scandal has faded but the plaque remains – an uncomfortable reminder of the influence of the drugs culture in the Mexican Catholic church. Narco-church relations are nothing new. In 1993 the leaders of the Tijuana cartel held a secret meeting with the papal nuncio in Mexico City as part of an effort to distance themselves from a chaotic shootout that had killed a cardinal. The meeting was brokered by a Tijuana priest who had received bountiful donations over the years. Pope Benedict [expressed] concern about such relations at the start of his papacy. But while the bishops have since periodically stressed that drug money can never be purified ... they have done little else. While the pope is expected to talk about the violence battering Mexico during his three-day visit ... observers believe he is unlikely to make more than a passing reference to corrosion of the church itself. In the meantime one cartel has sought to take propagandistic advantage of the visit. Banners signed by the Knights Templar cartel hung up around Guanajauto on Sunday welcomed the pope and promised to refrain from "acts of war" during his visit. That same cartel was suspected to be responsible for the appearance of 10 severed heads outside a slaughterhouse in another state on the same day.
Dangerous new strains of whooping cough bacteria are evading Australia's vaccine against the disease and entrenching a four-year epidemic that could spread overseas, Sydney scientists have found. Microbiologists from the University of [New South Wales] have found [that] variants of the pertussis bacteria with a particular genetic signature have increased to 86 per cent of all samples taken from infected people after a continuing disease epidemic began in 2008. Although the strains were present in Australia as early as 2000, they accounted for only 31 per cent of all samples collected between 2000 and 2007 – suggesting they have flourished alongside the current vaccine against the potentially fatal respiratory infection. The strains have "swept across Australia during the epidemic period" according to Ruiting Lan, from the school of biotechnology and biomolecular sciences. More than 13,000 whooping cough cases were diagnosed in 2011 – an all-time high. An acellular vaccine – introduced in Australia in 1997 after concerns about side-effects from the previous whole cell version – appeared to have promoted the spread of these variants, Dr Lan said, which overseas authorities had linked to "higher virulence on the basis of hospitalisation and case mortality data". He warned that other countries using similar vaccines should be alert for shifts in genetic features detected in the whooping cough bug.
Note: For more on major problems with many vaccines, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Advances in neuroscience are closer than ever to becoming a reality, but scientists are warning the military - along with their peers - that with great power comes great responsibility. A future of brain-controlled tanks, automated attack drones and mind-reading interrogation techniques may arrive sooner than later, but advances in neuroscience that will usher in a new era of combat come with tough ethical implications for both the military and scientists responsible for the technology, according to one of the country's leading bioethicists. "Nobody knows where that technology is going" ... says Jonathan Moreno, author of Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century. "The goals of national security and the goals of science may conflict." Moreno says there is a fine line between using neuroscience devices to allow an injured person to regain baseline functions and enhancing someone's body to perform better than their natural body ever could. The Brookings Institution's Peter Singer writes in his book, Wired for War ... that "the Pentagon's real-world record with things like the aboveground testing of atomic bombs, Agent Orange, and Gulf War syndrome certainly doesn't inspire the greatest confidence." The staggering possibilities are further along than many think. There is already development on automated drones that are programmed to make their own decisions about who to kill. Other ideas that are closer-than-you-think to becoming a military reality: Tanks controlled from half a world away, memory erasures that could prevent PTSD, and "brain fingerprinting" that could be used to extract secrets from enemies. Should soldiers have the right to refuse "experimental" brain implants?
Note: For key major media articles revealing the disturbing power of these exotic weapons, click here. For an abundance of powerful, reliable information on mind control, see our information center at this link. For highly revealing major media articles on secret government mind control programs, click here.
Dr. Arnold S. Relman [is] 88; Dr. Marcia Angell, 72. But their voices are as strong as ever. Colleagues for decades, late-life romantic partners, the pair has occasionally, wistfully, been called American medicine’s royal couple. In fact, controversy and some considerably less complimentary labels have dogged them as well. From 1977 to 2000, one or both of them filled top editorial slots at The New England Journal of Medicine as it grew into perhaps the most influential medical publication in the world, with a voice echoing to Wall Street, Washington and beyond. Many of the urgent questions in the accelerating turmoil surrounding health care today were first articulated during their tenure. Or, as Dr. Relman summarized one recent afternoon ..., Dr. Angell nodding in agreement by his side: “I told you so.” Their joint crusade ... is against for-profit medicine, especially its ancillary profit centers of commercial insurance and drug manufacture — in Dr. Relman’s words, “the people who are making a zillion bucks out of the commercial exploitation of medicine.” Some have dismissed the pair as medical Don Quixotes, comically deluded figures tilting at benign features of the landscape. Others consider them first responders in what has become a battle for the soul of American medicine.
Note: For a powerful summary of Dr. Marcia Angell's critique of corruption in the medical industry, click here.
JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican bank's account with an Italian branch of the U.S. banking giant because of concerns about a lack of transparency at the Holy See's financial institution, Italian newspapers reported. The move is a blow to the Vatican's drive to have its bank included in Europe's "white list" of states that comply with international standards against tax fraud and money-laundering. The bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), enacted major reforms last year in an attempt to get Europe's seal of approval and put behind it scandals that have included accusations of money laundering and fraud. The IOR, founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII, handles financial activities for the Vatican, for orders of priests and nuns, and for other Roman Catholic religious institutions. The IOR was entangled in the collapse 30 years ago of Banco Ambrosiano, with its lurid allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, mafiosi and the mysterious death of Ambrosiano chairman Roberto Calvi - "God's banker". The IOR then held a small stake in the Ambrosiano, at the time Italy's largest private bank and investigators alleged that it was partly responsible for the Ambrosiano's fraudulent bankruptcy. Several investigations have failed to determine whether Calvi, who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge near London's financial district, killed himself or was murdered. The IOR denied any role in the Ambrosiano collapse but paid $250 million to creditors in what it called a "goodwill gesture".
Note: The fact that JP Morgan is closing it's Vatican accounts is a major sign of the intense changes happening behind the scenes.
Section 101. Purpose. This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950. Sec. 103. General Functions. Executive departments and agencies ... responsible for plans and programs relating to national defense ... or for resources and services needed to support such plans and programs, shall: ... (c) be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements; ... Sec. 310. Critical Items. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President ... to take appropriate action to ensure that critical components, critical technology items, essential materials, and industrial resources are available from reliable sources when needed to meet defense requirements during peacetime, graduated mobilization, and national emergency. Appropriate action may include restricting contract solicitations to reliable sources, restricting contract solicitations to domestic sources (pursuant to statutory authority), stockpiling critical components, and developing substitutes for critical components or critical technology items. [signed] BARACK OBAMA
Note: For analysis of this executive order issued by President Obama giving legal power to the executive office to take control of all national resources, public or private, in peacetime or in war, click here.
A nuclear reactor on the Southern California coast will remain shut down indefinitely while a team of federal inspectors determines why several relatively new tubes became so frail that tests found they could rupture and release radioactive water, a federal official said [on March 15]. The Unit 3 reactor at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, located about 45 miles north of San Diego, was shut down as a precaution on Jan. 31 after a water leak from another tube in a massive steam generator. Since then, investigators have been looking into excessive wear found on steam generator tubes in the seaside plant and its twin, Unit 2, which has been offline for maintenance and refueling. The two huge steam generators at Unit 2, each containing 9,700 tubes, were replaced in fall 2009, and a year later in Unit 3 as part of a $670 million overhaul. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission dispatched a special, five-member team to Unit 3 ... after pressure tests showed three of the metal-alloy tubes had become so degraded that they could rupture under some circumstances. Such ruptures can require a plant to shut down, if spewing water reaches 150 gallons a day. According to the NRC, the tubes have an important safety role because they represent one of the primary barriers between the radioactive and non-radioactive sides of the plant. If a tube breaks, radioactivity from the system that pumps water through the reactor could escape into the atmosphere.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the dangers of nuclear power, click here.
For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming if the public — or even others in Congress — knew about it. On [March 15], two of those senators — Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado — went further. They said a top-secret intelligence operation that is based on that secret legal theory is not as crucial to national security as executive branch officials have maintained. The Justice Department has argued that disclosing information about its interpretation of the Patriot Act could alert adversaries to how the government collects certain intelligence. It is seeking the dismissal of two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits — by The New York Times and by the American Civil Liberties Union — related to how the Patriot Act has been interpreted. The dispute centers on what the government thinks it is allowed to do under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, under which agents may obtain a secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing them to get access to any “tangible things” — like business records — that are deemed “relevant” to a terrorism or espionage investigation. The interpretation of Section 215 that authorizes this secret surveillance operation is apparently not obvious from a plain text reading of the provision, and was developed through a series of classified rulings by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on surveillance and other government restrictions of basic civil liberties, click here.
Nobody connected with the documentary "Bully," from filmmaker Lee Hirsch to the Weinstein Co.'s Harvey Weinstein, could possibly be surprised by the film's getting an R rating from the MPAA. If even I know that two f-words will almost always get you an automatic R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, then Weinstein, who knows a few things about making movies, certainly knew it, too. Nor is there any question that things could not have worked out better for "Bully" had they planned it - so they probably did plan it. The outrage over the R rating for this documentary, about kids getting bullied in school, is the absolute best publicity that a distributor could hope for. Documentaries are like the literary novel of the movie world - lots of respect but a limited audience. Now this movie has become a cause and will be seen by everybody. "Bully," which exposes the horrible bullying that millions of kids are subjected to and that our schools and institutions tolerate, initially received an R rating on the basis of its "language." Weinstein and one of the kids depicted in the film made a personal appeal to the MPAA board, but the R rating was upheld by a single vote. In a country in which kids are coming home beaten up or demoralized, and in which social media have become the ultimate goon squad to browbeat, intimidate and humiliate the young and delicate among us, the MPAA needs to reverse its decision. But whatever they do, the good news is that they've all but guaranteed that "Bully" will find an audience.
Note: To learn about Challenge Day, the amazing organization which put bullying on the map, click here. A documentary on their transformative work won and Emmy award. You can watch powerful clips of this moving documentary at the link just given.
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.