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Revealing News For a Better World

News Articles
Excerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media


Below are key excerpts of little-known, yet highly revealing news articles from the media. Links are provided to the full news articles for verification. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore these articles listed by order of the date of the news article or by the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves, we can build a brighter future.

Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.


Group aids reporting that exposes secrecy
2012-12-17, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Group-aids-reporting-that-exposes-secr...

A group of journalists, activists and celebrities has formed the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit that will crowdsource funding for journalism that exposes secrecy and corruption in government and corporations. The impetus for the group dates to 2010, when whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks released thousands of pages of cables sent to and from U.S. State Department officials. Soon after, at the urging of the federal government, companies such as Bank of America, PayPal and Visa blocked donations to WikiLeaks, strangling the organization's finances. Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder Daniel Ellsberg - who released the infamous 1971 Pentagon Papers - said the foundation's goal is to give organizations like WikiLeaks financial independence. "We don't think that what the public needs to know should be determined by the executive branch of the government," Ellsberg says. "We hope that it will be impossible for the government to bring pressure to bear to close down important journalistic institutions. That's a threat to all of journalism." Not only will the organization function as a financial lifeline to WikiLeaks, it will bring publicity to other organizations investigating government activities. The group has started by providing tools to fund four groups: WikiLeaks, government transparency advocates MuckRock News, military investigators the National Security Archive, and general investigative journalism outfit the UpTake. Supporters can go to its website (www.pressfreedomfoundation.org) and donate - anonymously - to any of the organizations.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government secrecy, click here.


Izhar Gafni invents a cardboard bicycle that may revolutionize transportation
2012-12-07, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2012/1207/Izhar-Gafni-inve...

Izhar Gafni smiles and shakes his head in wonder when asked about the whirlwind of events that have taken place since news of his revolutionary cardboard bicycle first made international headlines a few weeks ago. As an amateur cycling enthusiast, Gafni was inspired to create a bicycle using common cardboard following a visit four years ago to a local cycling store, he says. "We were all chatting in the store, and somehow started discussing how someone had built a canoe out of cardboard," he recalls. "It was this canoe that was sitting in the back of my head when it suddenly struck me: Why not make a bicycle out of cardboard, too?" Even though friends and experts warned him that it could not be done, Gafni refused to give up, growing ever more determined to take on what appeared to be an impossible challenge. "There is really no knowledge of how to work with cardboard except for using it to make packages," he explains, describing how he started to explore the material, which is essentially made from wood pulp, folding it in a variety of ways like origami and adding a mixture of glue and varnish to get it to the strength he desired. "It is still a work in progress, and we are still looking at how to create a design that can be mass-produced," says Gafni, who ... hopes to sell the bicycle to markets in Africa in the near future. "There is no doubt that cheap bikes at $20 a pop could really transform the lives of people living in poor countries who need to walk ... to get to a clinic for medical treatment or find work," says Karin Kloosterman, founder and editor of the Middle East's premier environmental news website, Green Prophet.

Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.


'Shadow Banking' Still Thrives, System Hits $67 Trillion
2012-11-18, CNBC/Reuters
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49877573

The system of so-called "shadow banking" ... grew to a new high of $67 trillion globally last year, a top regulatory group said, calling for tighter control of the sector. A report by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) [states] that shadow banking is set to thrive, beyond the reach of a regulatory net tightening around traditional banks and banking activities. The FSB, a task force from the world's top 20 economies, also called for greater regulatory control of shadow banking. The study by the FSB said shadow banking around the world more than doubled to $62 trillion in the five years to 2007 before the crisis struck. But the size of the total system had grown to $67 trillion in 2011 — more than the total economic output of all the countries in the study. The multitrillion-dollar activities of hedge funds and private equity companies are often cited as examples of shadow banking. But the term also covers investment funds, money market funds and even cash-rich firms that lend government bonds to banks, which in turn use them as security when taking credit from the European Central Bank. The United States had the largest shadow banking system, said the FSB, with assets of $23 trillion in 2011, followed by the euro area — with $22 trillion — and the United Kingdom — at $9 trillion.

Note: That's $10,000 for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Do you think the bankers are somehow manipulating the system? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.


State seeks answers in gas price spikes
2012-11-15, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/State-seeks-answers-in-gas-price-spike...

October's record-setting jump in gasoline prices cost Californians $320 million, and yet state officials lack some of the basic information needed to ensure that refineries aren't playing games with the fuel market. That was the testimony [on November 15] at a hearing that explored the causes of the price spike, which saw the state's average price for a gallon of regular reach $4.67. The hearing could lead to legislation. With its own specialized gasoline blends made by just a handful of refineries, California has long been prone to price spikes. But four of the most severe on record happened in 2012. The October price spike began after an electrical outage suddenly shut down an ExxonMobil refinery in Los Angeles County. Fuel supplies in California had already been strained by the Aug. 6 fire at Chevron Corp.'s Richmond refinery, as well as the closure of a crude-oil pipeline in the Central Valley. Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley, noted that the state's reliance on just a few refining companies gives those businesses significant power over the market, even if they don't conspire to raise prices. No pipelines connect California to refineries in the Midwest or on the Gulf Coast, leading many analysts to label the state an "energy island." "Unfortunately, we've created a situation in the California market where because we're an island and because it's pretty concentrated, we actually do have companies that are in a pretty strong position to raise prices by putting less (gas) on the market. There is no law against them doing that," [Borenstein said].

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.


Full Speed Ahead for Food Movement, Despite GMO-Labeling Loss
2012-11-08, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/full-speed-ahead-food-movement-despit...

Although a ballot initiative to label foods containing genetically modified organisms failed in California, the organizers behind the measure say their movement is better organized and larger than ever before. Supporters of California’s Proposition 37 are not giving up the fight after Tuesday’s rejection. In fact, they’re saying that the organizing around the initiative helped forge a diffuse group of individuals interested in healthy food into a powerful, organized movement. “The Organic Consumers Association is a million strong," said Ronnie Cummins, the founder and director of that group said. "We have 5 million people on our email list and we’re looking forward to continuing this battle.” While the initiative won urban coastal counties such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, it lost in the state’s central valleys. “We just didn't have the funds to compete on the air” in those regions, said Stacy Malkan, media director at California Right to Know. “Many of those voters were getting their news from TV and we couldn't compete with them.” Companies like Monsanto, DuPont, and Pepsi poured nearly $50 million dollars into opposing the measure—about seven times what its supporters were able to raise—and spent most of the money on television and radio ads. Throughout the campaign, the truthfulness of advertisements opposing the measure came into question. At one point, the No on 37 campaign ran an ad that identified Henry I. Miller, an opponent of the measure, as a professor at Stanford University. The campaign was forced to pull the ad after Stanford announced that Dr. Miller was not a professor there.

Note: Though polls have shown 90% of Americans want their food labeled if it contains GMOs, huge spending by big industry managed to defeat this California proposition by a narrow margin. Sometimes money does have a hugely disproportionate role in politics. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on elections corruption, click here.


22 Personalities: A Ritual Abuse Survival Story
2012-10-26, abc4.com (Salt Lake City's ABC affiliate)
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/story/22-Personalities-A-Ritual-Abuse-Su...

It's something out of a nightmare - satanic rituals and human sacrifices, but this nightmare is real for Jenny Hill. It's a secret that's been burning inside her since she was a little girl. Jenny Hill explained, "Naked, tied to a cross, when you're young. I was six years old and I qualified." Jenny's story of satanic ritual abuse is documented in Judy Byington's new book Twenty Two Faces. Byington explained, "She had been sexually abused and ritually abused as a very young child so she had these multiple personalities that anytime she got into a stressful situation they would take over her mind and body." Jenny’s first alter personality was born at the age of 4. That's when Jenny says her father, a devout Mormon, began doing the unthinkable. It was just a couple of years later when the satanic ritual abuse began and that created more personalities to help her deal with the sexual abuse and torture. Byington explained, "She knows she's being abused but she can't feel the abuse because these alters are holding the pain." Jenny didn't remember the abuse; all she knew is that she would lose time until one day she woke up in a Utah psychiatric hospital confused. Dr. Weston Whatcott treated her. Whatcott says he witnessed several of Jenny's alter personalities. "Entirely different voice,” explained Whatcott. “I mean voice changes, accents, body language, totally changed." He also noticed those personalities come out in her writings. Much like her childhood diaries, her adult journals allowed the personalities to speak out and reveal what really happened to little Jenny.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.


Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol in massive boost in fight against energy crisis
2012-10-19, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pioneering-scientist...

A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as to help curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour. The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral. "We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol," said Peter Harrison, the company's chief executive. "There's nobody else doing it in this country or indeed overseas as far as we know. It looks and smells like petrol but it's a much cleaner and clearer product than petrol derived from fossil oil," Mr Harrison told The Independent. Being able to capture carbon dioxide from the air, and effectively remove the principal industrial greenhouse gas resulting from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, has been the holy grail of the emerging green economy. Using the extracted carbon dioxide to make petrol that can be stored, transported and used as fuel for existing engines takes the idea one step further.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on new energy technologies, click here.


A Startling Gap Between Us And Them In 'Plutocrats'
2012-10-15, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162799512/a-startling-gap-between-us-and-them-i...

Journalist Chrystia Freeland has spent years reporting on the people who've reached the pinnacle of the business world. For her new book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, she traveled the world, interviewing the multimillionaires — and billionaires — who make up the world's elite super-rich. Those at the very top, Freeland says, have told her that American workers are the most overpaid in the world, and that they need to be more productive if they want to have better lives. "It is a sense of, you know, 'I deserve this,' " she says. "I do think that there is both a very powerful sense of entitlement and a kind of bubble of wealth which makes it hard for the people at the very top to understand the travails of the middle class." How are the super-rich ... different from the super-rich of the past — say, 1955? Well, there are many more of them, and they're a lot richer than they used to be. "One of the things which is really astonishing is how much bigger the gap is than it was before," she says. "In the 1950s, America was relatively egalitarian, much more so than compared to now." CEOs earn exponentially more now, compared with their workers, than they did 60 years ago. Freeland says she's worried about what she calls an inevitable human temptation — that people who've benefited from a mobile society, like America, will get to the top and then rig the rules to benefit themselves." You don't do this in a kind of chortling, smoking your cigar, conspiratorial thinking way," she says. "You do it by persuading yourself that what is in your own personal self-interest is in the interests of everybody else.

Note: For a fascinating excerpt from this book, click here. For revealing major media articles showing the stark gap between the uber-rich and the rest of us, click here.


The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent
2012-10-14, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-...

In the early 14th century, Venice was one of the richest cities in Europe. By 1500, Venice’s population was smaller than it had been in 1330. In the 17th and 18th centuries, as the rest of Europe grew, the city continued to shrink. The story of Venice’s rise and fall is told by the scholars Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, as an illustration of their thesis that what separates successful states from failed ones is whether their governing institutions are inclusive or extractive. Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness. The history of the United States can be read as one such virtuous circle. But as the story of Venice shows, virtuous circles can be broken. Elites that have prospered from inclusive systems can be tempted to pull up the ladder they climbed to the top. Eventually, their societies become extractive and their economies languish. That ... is the danger America faces today, as the 1 percent pulls away from everyone else and pursues an economic, political and social agenda that will increase that gap even further — ultimately destroying the open system that made America rich and allowed its 1 percent to thrive in the first place.

Note: The author of this article, Chrystia Freeland, wrote the book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, from which this essay is adapted. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on income inequality, click here.


Networks, AP cancel exit polls in 19 states
2012-10-04, Washington Post blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/10/04/networks-ap-cancel-...

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year’s election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning. The decision by the National Election Pool — a joint venture of the major television networks and The Associated Press — is sure to cause some pain to election watchers across the country. Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won’t be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come. Here is a list of the states that will be excluded from coverage: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Note: How sad that the one poll considered to be the most reliable is being cancelled in 19 states. This opens the door wide to elections manipulation. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the flawed electoral system in the US, click here.


Billionaire Koch brothers try to buy state’s court
2012-09-29, Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/29/3025110/billionaire-koch-brothers-try.html

The new stealth campaign against three Florida Supreme Court justices is being backed by those meddling right-wing billionaires from Wichita, Charles and David Koch. Last week they uncorked the first of a series of commercials from their political action committee, Americans for Prosperity. The targets are Justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince. They were three of the five-vote majority that in 2010 knocked down a half-baked amendment slapped together by state lawmakers seeking to nullify the federal Affordable Health Care Act. The Florida Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions in finding that the proposed amendment contained “misleading and ambiguous language,” the hallmark of practically everything produced by this Legislature. On the November ballot, Lewis, Pariente and Quince are up for merit retention, meaning voters can choose to retain them or not. This simple system was put in place to keep the state’s high court above the sleaze of political races. The mission of the Kochs, hiding as always behind their super PAC, is to get the three justices dumped at the polls so that Gov. Rick Scott can appoint replacements. The last thing these guys want is fair judges who know the law; they want partisan judges who’ll obediently support their political agenda. It’s worse than just trying to buy an election. It’s trying to hijack Florida’s justice system at the highest levels.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the control of elections by corporations and rich individuals, click here.


HSAs force health providers to compete
2012-09-29, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/HSAs-force-health-providers-to-compete-...

A growing number of patients are paying directly most, or all, of their medical bills these days. One problem they face: Finding out what health care services really cost before they make the decision to buy. Even though it accounts for one-sixth of the U.S. economy, health care is difficult to shop for in all but a small percentage of health care purchases. For the most part, no one ever sees a real price for health care services - not doctors, not patients, not employers, not employees. The reason patients never see the prices is because third-party payers (insurance companies, employers and government) negotiate with providers - leaving patients with a small co-pay under traditional insurance. And without real prices, there is no basis for third-party payers or anyone to negotiate the lowest possible prices. Recently, however, more and more employers are encouraging their employees to shop for health care the way they shop for groceries. To encourage that activity, employers are allowing their employees to manage more of their own health care dollars by means of a health savings account. The idea behind an HSA is a simple one: Instead of giving all of your health dollars to an insurance company or the government, you put some of those dollars into an account that you own and control. This reduces wasteful health care spending because individuals ... spending their own money often get the lowest prices, and they also can decide whether they really want to buy those services. A recent Rand Corp. study found that patients with HSA plans reduced medical spending by about 30 percent, without adversely affecting their health.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.


Study linking GM maize to cancer must be taken seriously by regulators
2012-09-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/28/study-gm-maize-cancer

For seven years [Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, professor of molecular biology at Caen university in France] and his team have questioned the safety standards applied to varieties of GM maize and tried to re-analyse industry-funded studies presented to governments. Last week, Seralini brought the whole scientific and corporate establishment crashing down on his head. In a peer-reviewed US journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology, he reported the results of a ₏3.2m study. Fed a diet of Monsanto's Roundup-tolerant GM maize NK603 for two years, or exposed to Roundup over the same period, rats developed higher levels of cancers and died earlier than controls. But barely had the paper surfaced than it was attracting heavyweight academic criticism. Commentators variously claimed the study to be "biased", "poorly performed", "bogus", "fraudulent", "sub-standard", "sloppy agenda-based science", "inadequate" and "unsatisfactory". Séralini and his scientists were labelled "crafty activists" and "anti-science". It was a triumph for the scientific and corporate establishment which has used similar tactics to crush other scientists like Arpad Pusztai of the Rowett Institute in Scotland, who was sacked after his research suggested GM potatoes damaged the stomach lining and immune system of rats, and David Quist and Ignacio Chapela, who studied the flow of genes from illegally planted GM maize to Mexican wild maize.

Note: For a powerful summary of the risks to health from GMO foods including the story of the above-mentioned Arpad Pusztai, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on GMOs, click here. For a powerful 13-minute video revealing the disturbing results of the first long-term scientific study on GMOs showing how they greatly increased cancer incidence in rats, click here.


How lawmakers and lobbyists keep a lock on the private prison business
2012-09-27, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/27/lawmakers-lobbyists-keep-...

America's three largest private prison companies ... spent in the region of $45m over the past 10 years in lobbying state and federal governments. During the same period, these companies saw their profits soar as they scored more government contracts. [Also] during the same period, various pieces of legislation got passed ensuring that immigrant detention, in particular, would remain a lucrative growth market. Thanks to mandatory sentencing laws and the "war on drugs", the prison population has exploded over the past 30 years – to the point where it has become an untenable burden on state budgets. The private prison business [is] reliant on state and federal governments to provide them with their customer base: that is, bodies to fill their cells. The companies maintain that their lobbying efforts have nothing to do with this expansion and insist that it is their policy to "expressly prohibit their lobbyists from working to pass or oppose immigration legislation", such as the Arizona immigration bill SB1070, which provides for the mandatory detention of immigrants who cannot produce papers on request. [Then] where are the private prison firms spending those millions of lobbying dollars? A report compiled by the Justice Policy Institute issued in 2011 and using data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics found that between 2003 and 2010, the [Corrections Corporation of America] contributed a total of $1,552,350 to state election campaigns. Approximately half was to candidates, more than a third was to party committees and around one tenth was spent on ballot measures.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in the prison/industrial complex, click here.


Court blocks S.F. warning on cell phones
2012-09-10, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Court-blocks-S-F-warning-on-cell-phones...

A federal appeals court blocked San Francisco on [September 10] from requiring cell phone dealers to tell customers the products may expose them to dangerous levels of radiation, saying the city can't force retailers to pass along messages they dispute. The ordinance, the first of its kind in the nation, had been scheduled to take effect last October, but has remained on hold during an industry challenge. It would require retailers to give each cell phone buyer a fact sheet saying the World Health Organization had classified the phones' radio-frequency emissions as a "possible carcinogen." The sheet also shows human silhouettes absorbing radiation and suggests protective measures, like wearing headsets, making shorter calls and limiting use by children. Stores would have to put similar messages on large wall posters and on stickers attached to display ads. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government can require businesses to display factual, undisputed information about their products. The city's lawyers and policymakers will review the ruling before deciding their next steps.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.


Why I had no choice but to spurn Tony Blair
2012-09-01, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/02/desmond-tutu-tony-blair-iraq

The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history. The then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to [invade, and] have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us. The cost ... has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded. On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague. I did not deem it appropriate to have this discussion at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg last week. As the date drew nearer, I felt an increasingly profound sense of discomfort about attending a summit on "leadership" with Mr Blair. My appeal to Mr Blair is not to talk about leadership, but to demonstrate it.

Note: This article was written by South African religious and human rights leader Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of Cape Town. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the lies told to launch the US/UK wars of aggression in the Middle East, click here.


Former marine held involuntarily over Facebook posts now plans to sue FBI
2012-08-29, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/29/former-marine-facebook-sue-fbi

A former US marine who was taken from his home and involuntarily detained for psychiatric evaluation for posting controversial song lyrics and conspiracy theories on Facebook is to file a civil lawsuit against the FBI and police. Speaking for the first time since his release, after a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to detain him, Brandon Raub said his experience was frightening and that it sent a "extremely alarming" message to Americans. Raub, 26, a former combat engineer who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was taken forcibly from his home in Chesterfield County, Virginia, by two FBI agents and police on 16 August. He was not charged with any crime. He was handcuffed and detained in a psychiatric hospital for seven days before a judge ruled on 23 August that there was not sufficient evidence to keep him there. In an interview ... Raub said: "It made me scared for my country. The idea that a man can be snatched off his property without being read his rights I think should be extremely alarming to all Americans." He said that Americans needed to educate themselves about government intrusions into the lives of citizens, and he urged people to do so. Raub's mother, Cathleen Thomas, told reporters that her son ... is "concerned about all the wars we've experienced" and believes the US government was complicit in the September 11 terrorist attacks. One of his Facebook posts, she said, pictured the gaping hole in the Pentagon and asked "where's the plane?

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on civil liberties, click here.


SEC whistle-blower program starts paying off for agency, tipsters
2012-08-22, Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/22/business/la-fi-sec-whistleblower-2012...

For the last year, whistle-blowers deep inside corporate America have been dishing dirt on their employers under a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission program that could give them a cut of multimillion-dollar penalties won by financial regulators. A new bounty program has been an intelligence boon to the securities industry regulator, which has struggled to redeem itself after failing to stop Bernard Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme and rein in Wall Street before the 2008 financial crisis. Motivated by cash and the chance to rat out wrongdoers, tipsters are dropping more than names. Whistle-blowers and their attorneys are turning over boxes of documents, copies of emails and even audio recordings of alleged fraud or illegal overseas bribery. "We are getting very, very high-quality information from whistle-blowers," said Sean McKessy, director of the SEC's whistle-blower office. In the program's first year, 2,870 tips — or about eight a day — rolled in as of Aug. 12. And on Tuesday, one of them finally led to the agency's first payout: $50,000 to an informant who alerted regulators to an investment fraud. They declined to specify the case, careful to avoid identifying the whistle-blower. Some say shielding identities could pose a challenge for publicizing the program, but the anonymity probably will yield more information. The flood of new information doesn't necessarily mean the SEC will be more effective. In the case of Madoff, one whistle-blower repeatedly sounded the alarm years before the scheme blew up — to no avail.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion between government and the big banks, click here.


Lawyers From Suits Against Big Tobacco Target Food Makers
2012-08-19, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/lawyers-of-big-tobacco-lawsuits-ta...

Don Barrett, a Mississippi lawyer, took in hundreds of millions of dollars a decade ago after suing Big Tobacco and winning record settlements from R. J. Reynolds, Philip Morris and other cigarette makers. So did Walter Umphrey, Dewitt M. Lovelace and Stuart and Carol Nelkin. More than a dozen lawyers who took on the tobacco companies have filed 25 cases against industry players like ConAgra Foods, PepsiCo, Heinz, General Mills and Chobani. The suits, filed over the last four months, assert that food makers are misleading consumers and violating federal regulations by wrongly labeling products and ingredients. "[Mislabeling of a product is] a crime - and that makes it a crime to sell it," said Mr. Barrett. "That means these products should be taken off the shelves." Mr. Barrett said his group could seek damages amounting to four years of sales of mislabeled products - which could total many billions of dollars. In recent weeks, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has sued General Mills and McNeil Nutritionals over their claims on Nature Valley and Splenda Essentials products, and warned Welch's it would sue unless the company changed the wording on its juice and fruit snacks. The Federal Trade Commission won settlements from companies like Dannon and Pom Wonderful for claims about their products' health benefits. And PepsiCo and Coca-Cola face lawsuits over claims that their orange juice products are "100% natural."

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.


Pope's butler, layman face trial for allegedly stealing documents from Benedict's apartment
2012-08-13, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57492046/popes-butler-layman-face-trial-f...

A Vatican judge on [August 13] ordered the pope's butler and a fellow lay employee to stand trial for the alleged pilfering of documents from Pope Benedict XVI's private apartment, in an embarrassing scandal that exposed power struggles and purported corruption at the Holy See's highest levels. The indictment accused Paolo Gabriele, a butler arrested at the Vatican in May, of grand theft - a charge that could bring up to six years in jail, although the pope could pardon his once-trusted aide after any conviction. The Holy See has been on a defensive footing since documents alleging corruption and exposing power struggles began appearing in the Italian media in January. In May, the book Sua Santita (His Holiness) - by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi - was published containing dozens of documents from the pope's desk, including letters written to him. When the leaks broke [Gabriele] was quickly identified as the source. The indictment quoted Gabriele as telling investigators that he was "motivated by my deep faith and by the desire that in the church light is shed on everything."

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on institutional secrecy, click here.


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