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 team of salvage divers has discovered an unexplained object resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden. "This thing turned up. My first reaction was to tell the guys that we have a UFO here on the bottom," said Peter Lindberg, the leader of the amateur treasure hunters. Sonar readings show that the mysterious object is about 60 meters across, or, about the size of a jumbo jet. And it's not alone. Nearby on the sea floor is another, smaller object with a similar shape. Even more fascinating, both objects have "drag marks" behind them on the sea floor, stretching back more than 400 feet. It could just be another shipwreck. Or, mud. But Lindberg says the ship theory doesn't really hold up because of the unusually large size of the objects. The Baltic Sea is a literal treasure trove for salvage teams and a "shipwreck laboratory" for researchers. The sea's low salinity levels help preserve objects that sink to the bottom. Said sonar expert Ardreas Olsson, "I'm not sure what you will see when you go down. But I'm excited. It's going to be interesting to see what it is."
Note: Watch a CNN video clip of the find at the link above.
As auto manufacturers imagine a future of self-driving and always-connected cars, they'll need to worry about something else—electronic malfunctions and cyberattacks, according to a report released by the Transportation Research Board. "Automobiles today are literally 'computers on wheels,'" says the report. Current auto software uses more than a million lines of code. In the coming years, onboard computers will become even more important. Like a computer, a car's internal software can be infected with a virus or hacked. Last year, researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego, proved that computers could be hacked with either physical access to the car or wirelessly using technology such as Bluetooth. A hacker could then disable the brakes, stop the engine, or worse. According to the report, "automotive manufacturers have designed their networks without giving sufficient attention to such cybersecurity vulnerabilities because automobiles have not faced adversarial pressures."
Note: A New York Times article goes into more detail. The article doesn't mention the obvious possibility that the FBI, NSA, or other intelligence agencies could hack into any car's computer system and cause an accident. There is even a term, "Boston Brakes," for staged car wrecks, allegedly because the CIA first started experimenting with this in Boston. For an article delving into this, click here. Could this be what happened to courageous reporter Michael Hastings and others? For more on intelligence agency corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
In this town which saw 24 unarmed civilians die in a U.S. raid seven years ago, residents expressed disbelief and sadness that the Marine sergeant who told his troops to "shoot first, ask questions later" reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid jail time. They were outraged both at the American military justice system and at the refusal of Iraq's Shiite-led government to condemn the killings and at least try to bring those responsible to face trial in this country. "We are deeply disappointed by this unfair deal," said Khalid Salman Rasif, an Anbar provincial council member from Haditha. "The U.S. soldier will receive a punishment that is suitable for a traffic violation." The raid took place on Nov. 19, 2005. U.S. military prosecutors worked for more than six years to bring Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich to trial on manslaughter charges that could have sent him away to prison for life. [Then] they offered Wuterich a deal that stopped the proceedings and meant no jail time for the squad leader who ordered his men to "shoot first, ask questions later," resulting in one of the Iraq War's worst attacks on civilians by U.S. troops. The 31-year-old Marine, who was originally accused of unpremeditated murder, pleaded guilty Monday to negligent dereliction of duty for leading the squad that killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians during raids after a roadside bomb exploded, killing a fellow Marine and wounding two others.
Note: For earlier reports from reliable sources on the Haditha and other massacres carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, click here.
California's ban on the sale of pork from "downer" pigs, those that were too feeble to walk before being slaughtered, can't be enforced because a less stringent federal law regulates slaughterhouse inspections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously [on January 23]. State lawmakers enacted the ban in 2008 after a Humane Society video showed immobile cows being kicked, dragged, shocked and rammed with forklifts at a warehouse in San Bernardino County. Advocates said meat from those animals was more likely to be diseased. Federal law forbids the sale of meat from animals suffering from serious diseases, a ban that recent regulations extended to cattle that were unable to walk. But federal law allows meat sales from downer pigs and other nonambulatory animals, like sheep and goats, that pass federal inspection. Court challenges from meat processors and packers prevented the California law from taking effect. A federal appeals court upheld the California statute in 2010, but the Obama administration joined the National Meat Association in a successful Supreme Court appeal. The ruling dismayed the Humane Society of the United States, which has unsuccessfully lobbied Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for nationwide rules like California's. "The meat industry has the USDA and Congress in its tight grips," said the society's president, Wayne Pacelle.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
New research finds that chemicals commonly found in non-stick cookware, microwave popcorn bags and other manufactured goods may make childhood vaccines less effective, perhaps making it easier for certain diseases to spread through the population. A study published [in] the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that exposure to perfluorinated compounds, called PFCs, before and after birth may lower a child's ability to make disease-fighting antibodies for tetanus and diphtheria later in life. Researchers studied nearly 600 children and their mothers from the Faroe Islands, a small nation in the North Atlantic between Iceland and Scotland. The study found that higher levels of PFCs in both mothers and children meant lower numbers of disease-fighting antibodies in the children. Study author Philippe Grandjean said very few chemicals are known to have such an effect on the body's immune system. "The PFCs make the immune system more sluggish, so that it doesn't respond as vigorously against micro-organisms as it should," Grandjean said. "If vaccinations don't work, there may be an increased risk of epidemics." The study authors said the marine diet of Faroese people may have influenced the levels of PFCs in the children in the study, since the chemical is commonly found throughout the environment, even in polar bears that live far from pollution sources. But exposure to the chemicals is also high in the United States. In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the blood of more than 2,000 Americans and found certain types of PFCs in nearly 98 percent of them.
Note: For more on major problems with many vaccines, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
More than half a century ago, author Aldous Huxley titled his book on his experience with hallucinogens The Doors of Perception. Huxley posited that ordinary consciousness represents only a fraction of what the mind can take in. In order to keep us focused on survival, Huxley claimed, the brain must act as a “reducing valve” on the flood of potentially overwhelming sights, sounds and sensations. What remains, Huxley wrote, is a “measly trickle of the kind of consciousness” necessary to “help us to stay alive.” A new study by British researchers supports this theory. It shows for the first time how psilocybin — the drug contained in magic mushrooms — affects the connectivity of the brain. Researchers found that the psychedelic chemical ... does not work by ramping up the brain’s activity as they’d expected. Instead, it reduces it. Under the influence of mushrooms, overall brain activity drops, particularly in certain regions that are densely connected to sensory areas of the brain. When functioning normally, these connective “hubs” appear to help constrain the way we see, hear and experience the world, grounding us in reality. Psilocybin cuts activity in these nodes and severs their connection to other brain areas, allowing the senses to run free. Huxley ... had predicted what turns out to be a key finding of modern neuroscience: many of the human brain’s highest achievements involve preventing actions instead of initiating them, and sifting out useless information rather than collecting and presenting it for conscious consideration.
Note: There are several excellent links in the full article which show promising results of using these plants to improve mental health and more.
“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” [George] Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.” Soros draws on his past to argue that the global economic crisis is as significant, and unpredictable, as the end of Communism. To Soros, the spectacular debunking of the credo of efficient markets — the notion that markets are rational and can regulate themselves to avert disaster — “is comparable to the collapse of Marxism as a political system.” Understanding, he says, is key. “Unrestrained competition can drive people into actions that they would otherwise regret. The tragedy of our current situation is the unintended consequence of imperfect understanding. A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.” Still, Soros believes the West is struggling to cope with the consequences of evil in the financial world just as former Eastern bloc countries struggled with it politically. Is he really saying that the financial whizzes behind our economic meltdown were not just wrong, but evil? “That’s correct.”
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.
When sites like Wikipedia and Reddit banded together for a major blackout January 18th, the impact was felt all the way to Washington D.C. The blackout had lawmakers running from the controversial anti-piracy legislation, SOPA and PIPA, which critics said threatened freedom of speech online. Unfortunately for free-speech advocates, these pieces of legislation are not the only laws which threaten an open internet. Few people have heard of ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but the provisions in the agreement appear quite similar to – and more expansive than – anything we saw in SOPA. Worse, the agreement spans virtually all of the countries in the developed world, including all of the EU, the United States, Switzerland and Japan. Many of these countries have already signed or ratified it, and the cogs are still turning, with the final real fight playing out in the EU parliament. The treaty has been secretly negotiated behind the scenes between governments with little or no public input. The Bush administration started the process, but the Obama administration has aggressively pursued it. Indeed, we signed ACTA in 2011. According to critics, ACTA bypasses the sovereign laws of participating nations, forcing ISP’s across the globe to act as internet police. Worse, it appears to go much further than the internet, cracking down on generic drugs and making food patents even more radical than they are by enforcing a global standard on seed patents that threatens local farmers and food independence across the developed world.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
Rape in the American armed forces is an issue that has quietly been gathering attention over the past decade. The documentary "The Invisible War" [is] a devastating indictment of the government's inaction on the issue. Director Kirby Dick brought a powerful weapon to his film: victim after eloquent victim, Navy, Marine, Coast Guard, Army and Air Force veterans who were assaulted by fellow officers, supervisors or recruits. They tell their stories in courageous detail, and it quickly becomes clear that these are not isolated incidents but a pattern reflective of a widespread rot within America's military institution, one that betrays its essential values. One Marine, Ariana Klay, was raped by a fellow officer in the elite Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. A Navy officer, Trina McDonald, was drugged and raped repeatedly by fellow officers on a remote base in Alaska. Coast Guard recruit Kori Cioca was raped and then assaulted -- smacked so hard in the face that it dislocated her jaw, causing her permanent damage and pain for which the Veterans Administration declines to provide medical coverage. Every woman in the film has had her life shattered by this event -- not necessarily because of the rape, but because of the response by the military establishment. After lodging complaints, the women were met with indifference or targeted retaliation. They have had to leave the military. Some were threatened with violence. Almost none of the alleged perpetrators were brought up on charges or punished in any way.
Note: As this article appears to have disappeared from the Tribune website, you can also find it on the Reuters website at this link. To learn about documented sexual abuse in secret CIA mind control programs, click here. For lots more on sexual abuse scandals from major media sources, click here.
The United States Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane has been circling Earth for more than 10 months, and there's no telling when it might come down. "Because it is an experimental vehicle, they kind of want to see what its limits are," said Brian Weeden, a technical adviser with the Secure World Foundation and a former orbital analyst with the Air Force. The X-37B looks a lot like NASA's now-retired space shuttle, only much smaller. The unmanned vehicle is about 29 feet long by 15 feet wide (8.8 by 4.5 meters), with a payload bay the size of a pickup truck bed. For comparison, two entire X-37Bs could fit inside the payload bay of a space shuttle. Just what the X-37B does for so long while circling our planet remains a mystery, because the space plane's payloads and missions are classified. Partly as a result of the secrecy, some concern has been raised — particularly by Russia and China — that the X-37B might be a space weapon of some sort. But the Air Force has repeatedly denied that charge, claiming that the vehicle's chief task is testing out new technologies for future satellites. The spacecraft is flying repeatedly over the stretch of Earth from 43 degrees north latitude to 43 degrees south latitude. The space plane may be observing the Middle East and Afghanistan with some brand-new spy gear, perhaps instruments optimized to observe in wavelengths beyond the visible-light spectrum.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
The 2012 campaign will be dominated by wealthy corporations, unions and individuals who can anonymously spend as much as they want in favor of a candidate - thanks to how the Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case two years ago today. The decision gave birth to a new type of political action committee, the super PAC. Analysts [say the ruling] is enabling wealthy interests to be able to shape the political system like never before. The millions of dollars spent fueling this winter's bloodbath of attack ads in the Republican presidential primary is probably just a sneak preview of a stream of ham-fisted political advertising expected this year - all the way down to congressional races. Through organizations with names like Winning Our Future, wealthy interests can furtively fund the type of nasty TV ads that torpedoed then-surging Newt Gingrich before the Iowa caucuses and later carpet-bombed South Carolinians with commercials calling Mitt Romney a job-killing "corporate raider" when he led the Bain Capital private equity firm. At the same time, presidential aspirants can claim that they had nothing to do with the attacks because the presidential campaigns can't legally communicate with the super PACs doing the dirty work. Still, the super PACs in favor of Gingrich and Romney are run by the candidates' former top associates, political pros familiar with their thinking and strategy.
Note: For lots more from reliable, verifiable sources on the serious flaws in the US electoral process, click here.
The corporate barbarians are through the gate of American democracy. Not satisfied with their all-pervasive influence on our culture, economy and legislative processes, they want more. They want it all. Two years ago, the United States supreme court betrayed our Constitution. In its now infamous decision in the Citizens United case, five justices declared that corporations must be treated as if they are actual people under the Constitution when it comes to spending money to influence our elections, allowing them for the first time to draw on the corporate checkbook – in any amount and at any time – to run ads explicitly for or against specific candidates. What's next … a corporate right to vote? When the supreme court says ... that corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, our democracy is in grave danger. Corporations are not people with constitutional rights equal to flesh-and-blood human beings. Corporations are subject to regulation by the people.
Note: For key reports on the overpowering influence of corporate money on the US political system, click here and here.
A federal judge on [January 19] blocked Vermont from forcing the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor to shut down when its license expires in March, saying that the state is trying to regulate nuclear safety, which only the federal government can do. The judge [said] in his ruling that ... state lawmakers and witnesses made clear that their effort to close the plant was "grounded in radiological safety concerns" - the province of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The commission has already granted Vermont Yankee a 20-year license extension. The ruling is almost certain to be appealed by the state and an array of private groups that want the plant shut down because of leaks of radioactive tritium and other issues. Since Entergy bought Vermont Yankee 10 years ago, public opinion has turned sharply against the plant. After several plants around the country suffered leaks of radioactive water into the soil, state officials asked Vermont Yankee executives in 2009 whether their plant might be susceptible to that problem. The executives said that Vermont Yankee had no underground pipes carrying radioactive material. But it did - and the pipes leaked. The State Senate voted 26 to 4 in 2010 not to authorize the needed certificate.
Note: How convenient for the nuclear power industry that federal judges can block state legislation to shut down dangerous nuclear power plants. For more on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
The first genetically engineered animal may be about to enter the food supply. This is also the moment for consumers to demand to know what's in their food. Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, believes that genetically engineered fish should not be allowed into the food supply unless it is proved safe for humans and the environment. At the very least, it should be labeled. One of the most critical issues before the [Food and Drug Administration] is the potential for genetically engineered fish to cause consumers to experience increased allergic responses. Unfortunately, the FDA allowed AquaBounty Technologies, the company developing the genetically engineered salmon, to declare that there was no increase in allergy-causing potential in their AquAdvantage salmon, based on data from just six engineered fish - even when the data suggested the genetic engineering process itself did increase the allergy-causing potential. Public opinion clearly and consistently supports mandatory labeling. Our polling found that 95 percent of the public wants labeling of genetically engineered animals, while other polls found that only 35 percent of the public said that they would be willing to eat seafood that has been genetically engineered. Consumers sent nearly 400,000 comments to the FDA demanding the agency reject genetically engineered salmon, or at least require that it be labeled.
Note: For an excellent overview of the threats to health from genetically-modified foods, click here.
In an unprecedented display of Internet force, thousands of websites went dark or censored themselves [on January 18] to protest twin antipiracy measures pending in Congress. The blackout represented a culmination of months of intensifying outcry over the bills, echoed and amplified by social media, blogs and tech publications, that drew more and more popular sites into the official day of protest, including Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Wired, Reddit, Boing Boing, Reporters Without Borders, Pressthink, Greenpeace and McSweeney's. Their actions and the frenzy of media coverage in the buildup raised mainstream awareness of what, until recent days, had been a wonky set of proposals only lightly covered outside tech circles. Congressional phone lines were reportedly flooded Wednesday in what could begin the final unraveling of the already troubled measures. The stated goal of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), is to confront the sale and distribution of pirated movies, drugs, music and consumer goods by rogue overseas sites. But in doing so, critics say the bills threaten crucial legal protections that foster online innovation [and undermine] due process and free speech. Some observers said the day of protest may come to represent a fundamental shift in the legislative landscape, a flexing of a newfound and untraditional source of political power in the Internet sector.
Note: For lots more on government and corporate threats to civil liberties, click here.
Johnson & Johnson will pay more than $1 billion to the U.S. and most states to resolve a civil investigation into marketing of the antipsychotic Risperdal. Negotiations over a possible criminal plea are still under way. The U.S. government has been investigating Risperdal sales practices since 2004, including allegations the company marketed the drug for unapproved uses. J&J, the world’s largest health products company ... disclosed in August that it reached an agreement to settle a misdemeanor criminal charge related to Risperdal marketing. The company is discussing paying about $400 million more to settle that portion of the investigation. Risperdal, once J&J’s best-selling drug, generated worldwide sales of $24.2 billion from 2003 to 2010, reaching $4.5 billion in 2007. After that, J&J lost patent protection and sales declined. The settlement represents ... about 5.6 percent of the drug’s cumulative sales since 2003. The Food and Drug Administration approved Risperdal in 1993 for psychotic disorders including schizophrenia. That market is limited, and J&J’s Janssen unit sought to sell Risperdal for bipolar disorder, dementia, mood and anxiety disorders and other unapproved uses.
Note: For highly-illuminating reports from reliable sources on the corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
The U.S. Army [will have] destroyed about 90 percent of its aging chemical weapons after it wraps up work this week in Utah, where it has kept its largest stockpile — a witches' brew of toxins, blister and blood agents that accumulated through the Cold War. The Army's Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah's west desert burned its last hard weapons in a 1,500-degree furnace on Wednesday. The depot ... at its peak held some 13,600 tons of chemical agents, making it the world's largest. The U.S. is part of an international treaty to rid the world of chemical weapons, a campaign taking place with spotty success around the globe. The goal was supposed to be accomplished by April 29 but will take years longer. The U.S. has acknowledged it will take as long as 2021 to finish destroying the final 10 percent of its chemical weapons. Russia is farther behind in its effort, having destroyed only about 48 percent of a large cache of chemical weapons. Chemical weapons were introduced into warfare during World War I, killing 90,000 troops on battlefields, according to the Organisation of for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
[Video transcript] Narrator: While the world is drastically dependent on fossil fuel, researchers at NASA Langley Research Center are working on another way of producing energy-efficient nuclear power. Senior Resarch Scientist Dr Zawodny: This other form of nuclear power releases energy by adding neutrons. Eventually [the nuclei] gain a sufficient number of neutrons that they spontaneously decay into something of the same mass but a different element. It has the demonstrated ability to produce excess amounts of energy, cleanly, without hazardous ionizing radiation, without producing nasty waste. Narrator: This clean form of energy is ... able to support everything from transportation systems to infrastructure. Dr. Zawodny: The easiest implementation of this would be for the home. It would be ... dual use. It would [produce] heat; and you’d derive electricity from it to run your electronics, power the house, power the building, power the light industry. And then the waste heat would be used for environmental control [i.e. heating, air conditioning, etc.] and warm water.” Narrator: NASA’s method for enhancement of surface plasmon polaritons to initiate and sustain LENR in Metal Hydride Systems, a clean nuclear energy for your power-operated technology.
Note: LENR stands for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, aka cold fusion. So NASA is now acknowledging cold fusion is real! And their research provides major hope for the future. To see Dr. Zawodny's patent for this revolutionary technology, click here. For more on NASA's involvement in this, click here. For lots more reliable information on the suppression of cold fusion/LENR by the media and the scientific mainstream, click here. For more inspiring news on amazing new energy inventions, click here.
BASF, the German chemical giant, is to pull out of genetically modified [GM] plant development in Europe and relocate it to the US, where political and consumer resistance to GM crops is not so entrenched. The headquarters of BASF Plant Science will move from Limburgerhof in south-west Germany to Raleigh, North Carolina, and two smaller sites in Germany and Sweden will close. The company will transfer some GM crop development to the US but stop work on crops targeted at the European market – four varieties of potato and one of wheat. The decision ... signals the end of GM crop development for European farmers. Bayer, BASF’s German competitor, is working on GM cotton and rice in Ghent, Belgium – but not for European markets. “This is another nail in the coffin for genetically modified foods in Europe,” said Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth. BASF battled for some 13 years before the European Union approved in 2010 cultivation of its Amflora potato, which was intended to provide high-quality starch for industrial customers. However, German test sites had to be put under constant guard and activists still succeeded in destroying potato fields.
Note: The European public is well aware of the serious threats of GM food, yet the U.S. public, thanks to a controlled media, knows very little about this. For an excellent overview of the threats to health from genetically-modified foods, click here. For key articles from major media sources on these risks, click here.
In 2006 ... the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the World Health Organization in Geneva warned of the imminent onset of an avian flu "pandemic" of lethal proportions. The pandemic never occurred. After reviewing studies of Tamiflu during the avian flu scare, Dr. Tom Jefferson ... had concluded in a 2006 report that the drug was effective. "But," said the article, "several years later, another physician challenged that conclusion because 8 of 10 studies in a meta-analysis — a review of studies — that Jefferson relied on had never been published." That prompted Jefferson to seek the raw data. "He was stymied when several authors and the manufacturer gave one excuse after another for why it couldn't supply the actual data. Jefferson's concern turned to outrage when two employees of a communications company … [revealed] they had been paid to ghostwrite some of the Tamiflu studies [and] had been given explicit instructions to ensure that a key message was embedded in the articles: Flu is a threat, and Tamiflu is the answer. "After reanalyzing the raw data finally made available (they still don't have it all), Jefferson and his colleagues published their review [in December 2009], saying that once the unpublished studies were excluded, there was no proof that Tamiflu reduced serious flu complications like pneumonia or death." In short, it appears the pharmaceutical companies had been as cunning in conning the public on matters of health as Wall Street had been on matters of wealth.
Note: For powerful media reports suggesting that both the Avian Flu and Swine Flu were incredibly manipulated to promote fear and boost pharmaceutical sales, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on pharmaceutical corruption, 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.