News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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If you've ever been in a did-that-really-just-happen scenario, you might have wished you had a recorder running -- particularly when it comes to run-ins with the law. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey just released an app that allows Android phone users to record and store their interactions with police to "hold police accountable." The app, cleverly called "Police Tape," also includes legal information about citizens' rights during encounters with law enforcement. What sets this apart from being just a video camera with a send button is that you can also record in "stealth mode." The app disappears from the screen once the recording starts, "to prevent any attempt by police to squelch the recording," according to the ACLU of New Jersey site. Users can send the recording to the organization through the app for backup storage and analysis. Though there is no federal law preventing recording police in public, some states have different statutes covering such activity. Earlier, the New York American Civil Liberties Union released its Stop and Frisk Watch application. The New York ACLU promotes that app as a way for bystanders and designated event observers to record incidents. That's probably a better idea than whipping out your phone when a cop asks for your license, particularly if you are in an emotionally charged or intense setting. That's probably not going to be received well.
Note: Other states now have this app, which you can read about at this link and this one.
The U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane finally returned to Earth Saturday (June 16), wrapping up a mysterious mission that lasted more than year in orbit. The unmanned X-37B spacecraft, also known as Orbital Test Vehicle-2 (OTV-2), glided back to Earth on autopilot, touching down at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5:48 a.m. PDT. The landing brought to an end the X-37B program's second-ever spaceflight, a mission that lasted more than 15 months with objectives that remain shrouded in secrecy. The X-37B stayed in orbit for 469 days this time, more than doubling the 225 days its sister ship, OTV-1, spent in space last year on the program's maiden flight. Officials at Vandenberg said the spacecraft conducted "on-orbit experiments" during its mission. The space plane was designed to stay aloft for 270 days, but the Air Force kept it flying well beyond that milestone. Exactly what the spacecraft, which is built by Boeing's Phantom Works division, was doing up there for so long is a secret. The details of the X-37B's mission ... are classified, as is its payload. This secrecy has led to some speculation, especially online and abroad, that the X-37B could be a space weapon of some sort — perhaps a sophisticated satellite-killer. Some experts also suspect that the vehicle may be an orbital spy platform.
Note: For lots more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
The National Archives is refusing to release 1,171 classified CIA documents related to the assassination [of President John F. Kennedy] in time for the [50th] anniversary as it had promised. In 2010, deputy archivist Michael Kurtz announced that the secret records would be declassified by November 22, 2013. But the National Archives has since [retracted] that promise in a letter to Jim Lesar of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, who requested the release. [This] frustrates Lesar, whose nonprofit is devoted to collecting and disseminating information about political assassinations. "In 1992, Congress unanimously passed legislation that was designed to get all of the JFK assassination-related records released," he said. "There was supposed to be only a very few records whose release could be postponed for periods of time including up until the year 2017, but basically everything was supposed to be released well before then." Of course, the CIA and National Archives won't say exactly what is contained in the documents, not even the number of pages. "The National Archives does not have a page count, but it appears that there are at least several thousand pages that are still being withheld, and they appear to be on some very important subjects." The CIA and National Archives' intransigence certainly doesn't help deflate the bubble of speculation about what really happened at the Grassy Knoll. It's been 49 years. Most of the people involved are dead. What's to hide, unless the government is shown in an embarrassing or criminal light?
Note: See our excellent information center filled with reliable verifiable information on the John Kennedy assassination at this link. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the John Kennedy assassination, click here.
Rep. Darrell Issa [contends] that the Department of Justice in Washington and perhaps the Obama White House were aware of the flawed tactics in the ATF’s Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation in Arizona that allowed more than 2,000 firearms to “walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. A month before the operation was stopped, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Terry was killed in a December 2010 shootout and two Fast and Furious weapons were discovered at the crime scene between the Mexican border and Tucson. Scores of more weapons have been found at violent crimes in Mexico. Issa contends [that] wiretap documents, signed by top Justice officials in support of Fast and Furious, are proof that administration officials knew the tactics were flawed and should have stopped the operation long before the agent and others were killed. “The tactics of Fast and Furious were known,” he said. “They were known and are contained in these wiretaps.” Issa said he obtained the materials from “a furious group of whistle-blowers” who are angry with the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. for not providing more material to Issa’s investigation into Fast and Furious. The whistle-blowers, he told Holder at the hearing, “are tired of your stonewalling.”
Note: For a seven-minute CNBC video with more revealing information on this, click here. For more on Fast and Furious, click here.
Four eyewitnesses on the hotel staff told me Willard Mitt Romney was here at Bilderberg 2012. Romney's office initially refused to confirm or deny his attendance as Bilderberg is "not public". His people later said it wasn't him. So, was he being crowned, or singing for his supper? Will Mitt Romney follow in the august footsteps of Clinton, Cameron and Blair to have attended Bilderberg and then shortly become leader? Did Romney have to get down on one knee in front of David Rockefeller? This sounds flippant, but it's a serious question: has Bilderberg switched allegiance? The Washington Post saw Bill Gates come in. And I've got three eyewitnesses from inside who confirmed he was here. You won't see the names Mitt Romney or Bill Gates on the officially released Final List of Participants because, well, the list is a nonsense. It's nothing like a complete list of people who attend Bilderberg. It's a smokescreen, a bit of spin. To those gathered outside, at least, it looks increasingly like, at this year's Bilderberg, the war of regime change got signed off. In the airport lobby, on the way home from Bilderberg, I looked up at a TV monitor to see Bilderberg attendee and CFR board member Fouad Ajami talking about how Syria is about to become another Libya. That sound you can hear? It's all those juicy defence contracts being scratched out around Chantilly. Fuel the jets and open the champagne, boys. We're going in.
Note: For a special Guardian webpage listing all articles related to the Bilderberg Group, click here. For incredibly revealing major media articles on the Bilderberg Group and other powerful secret societies, click here.
The Kuala Lumpur Tribunal's indictment of President George W. Bush and his deputies for war crimes sets a new precedent. The [tribunal] ruled in the second week of May that George W. Bush, former President of the United States, and six members of his administration were guilty of war crimes. The tribunal, after recording eyewitness accounts of torture victims in a trial that lasted five days, pronounced that Bush, his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five senior officials who had sought to provide legal cover for the [invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq] were guilty of “war crimes”. The American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in the death of more than a million people.. Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, observed that [only] leaders from countries that opposed the interests of the West were held accountable to international criminal law. He pointed out that the ICC's Special Court on Sierra Leone had been financed by the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Companies from these countries have big interests in the diamond trade. With Taylor now out of the scene, Western companies are back in the lucrative diamond trade. Falk ... observed that the U.S., more than any other country in the world, “holds itself self-righteously aloof from accountability on the main ground that any judicial process might be tainted by political motivations”. The U.S. has signed with over 100 countries agreements that prohibit the handing over of any U.S. citizen to the ICC.
Note: For an insightful analysis of the cooptation of the ICC by imperial powers, click here.
Fourteen months after the accident [at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant], a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic. The public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe ... as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region. The jury-rigged cooling system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April. Had the outages continued, they would have left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating. “The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns. “Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.” The worst-case situations for Reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or for fission to restart if the metal panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad because the pool, unlike reactors, lacks containment vessels to hold in radioactive materials.
Note: For extensive coverage from reliable sources on corruption in the nuclear power industry, click here.
Demonstrators in Montreal have continued to defy an emergency law passed by the provincial government in Quebec to restrict protests by students against planned tuition fee hikes. On Wednesday, more than 500 Montrealers were arrested – more than during the entire October 1970 crisis when martial law was declared in the city in response to actions by Quebec nationalists. The total number of those arrested in the current protests has now exceeded 2,500. The protest ... was declared illegal before it began, because organizers had not provided police with an itinerary, as required by a controversial new emergency law. Helicopters and riot police are an increasingly common sight on the streets of Montreal as a province-wide student strike passed the 100-day mark, but popular support only seems to be growing as the government attempts to clamp down on the strike. Small red squares, the symbol of the strike historically worn by Montreal students supporting free tuition, are everywhere in the city – cloth pinned to people's lapels and daubed onto signs and walls. Families and older residents are increasingly common sights at protests as well, demonstrating against Bill 78, which places restrictions on protests of more than 50 people. The bill imposes fines of $125,000 a day on student unions that defy its provisions, and student leaders shown to support unplanned protests can be fined up to a maximum of $5,000.
Note: For lots more on this important, yet underreported news, do a search on "Montreal protests."
This week science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon argues that everyone should be given a barcode at birth. “If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached - a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals. It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is. Having such a unique barcode would have many advantages. In war soldiers could easily differentiate legitimate targets in a population from non combatants. This could prevent mistakes in identity, mistakes that result in the deaths of innocent bystanders. Weapons systems would record the code of the use, identifying how fired which shot and leading to more accountability in the field. Anonymity would be impossible as would mistaken identity making it easier to place responsibility accurately, not only in war but also in non-combat situations far from the war.”
Note: For a powerful essay showing that the plan to microchip the masses has been part of the global elite's agenda for control for a long time, click here.
France's attempt to ban the planting of a Monsanto strain of genetically modified maize was rejected by the EU's food safety body. In response to scientific evidence submitted by France [EFSA] backing its bid to ban the GM maize, the European Food Safety Authority ruled that "there is no specific scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment" to support a ban. In 2008, France banned the the strain MON 810 following public protests against the GM maize, but this was overturned by a French court in 2011. However, in March the French government reinstated the ban, with the then agricultural minister Bruno Le Maire saying the move was "to protect the environment". The Monsanto-owned strain, marketed as YieldGard by the US company, is an insect-resistant strain of maize that was introduced in 1997. The ruling follows a renewed focus on GM food in the UK, with researchers making a plea to anti-GM activists not to rip up a test site of GM wheat.
Note: The risks of genetically-modified foods are well established, including many deaths of lab animals fed GM diets; click here to read an excellent summary. For more on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
A duo of developers from Brooklyn, New York, have built a sleeping mask designed to allow people to have lucid dreams that they can control. While it may look like a standard sleeping mask, Remee has been billed as a special REM (Rapid Eye Movement) enhancing device that is supposed to help steer the sleeper into lucid dreaming by making the brain aware that it is dreaming. The goal of the product is to allow people to have the dreams of their choice, from driving a race car to flying to having lunch with Abraham Lincoln. The inside of the sleeping mask features a series of six red LED lights that are too faint to wake the sleeper up, but visible enough for the brain to register them. The lights can be programed to produce a sequence designed by the user. Sleep stages are divided into two main categories: non-REM and REM. People go back and forth between these stages throughout the night, with REM stages, where most dreaming occurs, lasting the longest towards morning. Remee apparently notices these longer REM stages and ‘enters’ the dream via the flashing lights. The device will wait for four to five hours for the sleeper to get into the heavy REM stages before the red lights turn on. The idea is simple: you are playing a perfect round of golf in a dream, and you see a pattern of red lights flashing in the distance. Because the pattern is in a particular sequence, it would signal to you that you are dreaming. Once you realize you are in a dream, you can then decide what happens next, whether it be a quick trip to Antarctica or time travel.
Note: For more on this most intriguing invention, see the inventors' website at this link.
A 58-year-old woman paralyzed by a stroke was all smiles after sipping her cinnamon latte with the help of a mind-controlled robotic arm. Cathy Hutchinson is one of two tetraplegic patients able to reach and grasp with a robotic limb linked to [a] tiny sensor in her brain, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. The device, called BrainGate, bypasses the nerve circuits broken by the brainstem stroke and replaces them with wires that run outside Hutchinson's body. The implanted sensor is about the size of a baby aspirin. "You can go from the brain ... directly to a device like a computer or a robotic arm," said BrainGate developer John Donoghue, director of the Institute for Brain Science at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "This can help restore independence to a person who was completely reliant on other people for every activity, whether it's brushing their teeth, eating their dinner or taking a drink." Hutchinson, who has been unable to move or speak for 15 years, had the 96-channel sensor implanted in her brain's motor cortex in 2005. Since then, the BrainGate team has been fine-tuning the system to give her back some of the control she lost. With its hair-like electrodes, the BrainGate sensor taps into the flurry of brain activity, recording electrical signals that can be translated into movement commands. "It's like learning a language," Donoghue said of the translation process, a series of mathematical calculations that copy the brain's processing ability.
Note: Remember that the world of classified and secret research is generally at least 10 years in advance of whatever is available to the public. The above link contains videos of this event. Another very good video on this new breakthrough is available at this link. For a video of a new device which will likely soon replace wheelchairs and empower paraplegics, click here. And for an inspiring five-minute video of a disabled vet who learned to walk on his own again because someone believed in him, click here.
An environmental activist who disrupted an oil and gas auction for land near Utah's national parks did so in protest, bringing attention to parcels that shouldn't have been for sale, his lawyers argued Thursday. Tim DeChristopher's conviction in the case should be overturned because his move was a form of civil disobedience intended to protect the environment from an auction he believed to be illegal, Ron Yengich said in federal appeals court. Yengich said that many of the 113 parcels up for sale were suspended from future bidding by the federal government because of attention drawn by DeChristopher's actions. DeChristopher is asking the court to overturn his conviction. He is now serving two years in a federal prison in California after a conviction last summer in Salt Lake City. DeChristopher contended during trial that the Bush administration rushed the auction without properly reviewing the parcels. Many of the parcels up for auction were later suspended soon after by President Barack Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in 2009. His lawyers say he was singled out for prosecution because of his honesty, and that the government never took action against bidders at other auctions who failed to pay or bounced checks for their parcels. DeChristopher is considered a folk hero in the environmental community for sabotaging the auction. He says he plans to continue a life of social activism after prison.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on government corruption, click here.
Ari Hallmark could be one of the most remarkable 7-year-olds you will ever meet. Somewhere between gymnastics and finishing up the first grade, she’s managed to become an author. What adds to Ari’s remarkable story is the subject of her book, titled To Heaven, After the Storm. On April 27th of last year, Ari, along with her mom and dad, Shane and Jennifer Hallmark, her grandparents, Phillip and Ann Hallmark and her two cousins, Jayden and Julie, sought shelter in a bathroom to ride out an EF-4 tornado that came through the Ruth community of Marshall County. Her book talks about it all. Only she and her cousin Julie survived. However, Ari says for a while, she joined her family members in Heaven. She describes in vivid detail seeing her father Shane, who had been bald all of her life, with hair. She writes that, “my daddy did not have his glasses.” She says an angel came to her and told her it was time to go back. She says she then remembers waking up in a field near the house. The proceeds from Ari’s book will help a ministry for other children dealing with death. Her therapist suggested the idea. “She’s was like, ‘Hey, let’s make a book. And do it to help other kids’,” Ari says.
Note: For more on the beautiful story of how this seven-year old girl foresaw her family's death in a tornado and went through an inspiring near-death experience, click here. For many other most inspiring stories of near-death experiences, click here.
Endurance athletes sometimes say they're "addicted" to exercise. In fact, scientists have shown that rhythmic, continuous exercise — aerobic exercise — can in fact produce narcoticlike chemicals in the body. Now researchers suggest that those chemicals may have helped turn humans, as well as other animals, into long-distance runners. The man behind the research is University of Arizona anthropologist David Raichlen, a runner himself. He thinks humans are "Wired to run, meaning that our brains ... have been sort of rewired ... to encourage these running and high aerobic-activity behaviors." Many anthropologists think early humans learned to run long distances to chase down and exhaust prey, like antelopes. Meat is one payoff for runners. But Raichlen thinks there may have been another reward: a runner's high. He designed an experiment to test this idea. When people exercise aerobically, their bodies can actually make drugs — cannabinoids, the same kind of chemicals in marijuana. Raichlen wondered if other distance-running animals also produced those drugs. If so, maybe runner's high is not some peculiar thing with humans. So he put dogs — also distance runners — on a treadmill. Also ferrets, but ferrets are not long-distance runners. The dogs produced the drug, but the ferrets did not. Says Raichlen: "It suggests some level of aerobic exercise was encouraged by natural selection, and it may be fairly deep in our evolutionary roots."
Kellogg is facing anger on social-media sites because of complaints that its popular Kashi brand of cold cereals doesn't live up to the company's "natural" billing on ads and boxes. The controversy went viral a week ago after a Rhode Island grocer tacked a note to one of his store shelves, telling customers he wouldn't sell the cereal because he found out the brand used genetically engineered, non-organic ingredients. Photos of the note began popping up on Facebook pages and food blogs as some consumers claimed Kellogg was misrepresenting its cereal. The soy in Kashi cereals comes from soybeans that have had a gene inserted to protect the soybeans from the herbicide Roundup, which kills weeds. Kashi has done nothing wrong, says David DeSouza, Kashi general manager. "The FDA has chosen not to regulate the term 'natural,' " he says. The company defines natural as "food that's minimally processed, made with no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives or sweeteners." Kellogg is not misleading people, says Barbara Haumann of the Organic Trade Association in Brattleboro, Vt. Consumers "are totally confused" and don't understand that the only way to get organic food is to buy organic, she says.
Note: For a succinct summary of the dangers posed by genetically-modified foods, click here.
A published report says Apple Inc. uses subsidiaries in Ireland, the Netherlands and other low-tax nations as part of a strategy that enables the technology giant to cut its global tax bill by billions of dollars every year. The New York Times on [April 29] outlined legal methods used by Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple to avoid paying billions of dollars in federal and state taxes. One approach highlighted in the report: Even though the company is based in California, Apple has set up a small office in Reno, Nev. to collect and invest its profits. The corporate tax rate in Nevada is zero. In California, it's 8.84 percent. While many major corporations try to reduce their tax bills, technology companies like Apple, Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have more options to do so. That's because some of their revenue comes from digital products or royalties on patents, which makes it easier for them to move profits to tax-friendly states or countries. Apple has legally allocated about 70 percent of its profits overseas, where tax rates are often much lower than in the U.S., according to company filings. The Times cites a study by former Treasury Department economist Martin A. Sullivan that estimates Apple's federal tax bill would have been $2.4 billion higher last year without such tactics.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Protesters enraged about the country's economic miasma disrupted Wells Fargo's annual summit [on April 24], as shareholders celebrated the bank's record profit and awarded its chief executive a pay package of nearly $20 million. Hundreds of activists - including union members, Occupy activists and people whose homes have been foreclosed - surrounded the Merchants Exchange Building in downtown San Francisco, where about 250 shareholders gathered on the 15th floor to hear details of the bank's 28 percent profit increase last year. Fifteen protesters, allowed into the meeting because they own stock in Wells Fargo, shouted over CEO John Stumpf as he presented a PowerPoint slide show about the bank's $15.9 billion profit last year. Police escorted out the protesters, who were cited for disrupting the meeting and released. It was the bank's involvement in foreclosures ... that brought hundreds of protesters to the meeting. Some came from as far away as Minnesota. They filled the air with lively chants, led by people using loudspeakers set up on a flatbed truck alongside an 8-foot-high, inflated rat smoking a cigar. A protester-built, 10-foot-high mockup of Wells Fargo's signature stagecoach stood in the street, covered with slogans denouncing the bank.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on Occupy and other protests against the criminal profiteering of banks and other financial corporations, click here.
Cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana were allowed to pass security checkpoints at LAX in a bribery scheme that led to the arrests of two former and two current Transportation Security Administration employees, according to authorities. The screeners were accused of allowing large amounts of cocaine and other drugs to pass through X-ray machines at security checkpoints in exchange for payments of up to $2,400, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The indictment cites five incidents in which the employees allowed suitcases filled with drugs to pass X-ray machines at security checkpoints. The scheme occurred over a six-month period last year, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. One drug courier is already in custody in connection with the case, according to authorities. Another courier suspect is expected to surrender Thursday. If convicted, all four [TSA] employees face a minimum of 10 years in federal prison.
Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
The 18th century Swedish scientist, traveller, statesman, and religious philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg is one of the most fascinating and least understood figures in Western history. If people know of Swedenborg at all, it is usually because of his connection with the poet William Blake, who was a follower of Swedenborg. Or they may know of Swedenborg because of his remarkable psychic powers. Yet Blake was only one of the many thinkers, artists, and writers influenced by Swedenborg. A full list would include, among others: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Baudelaire, August Strindberg, Honoré Balzac, Arnold Schoenberg and Jorge Luis Borges. And his psychic abilities extended far beyond clairvoyance, into interplanetary travel and visits to heaven and hell, where he conversed with angels and devils and other strange beings. He developed the notion of "correspondences," the idea that the things of the physical world have a direct link with the spiritual one. Through Baudelaire, Swedenborg's "correspondences" would lead to Symbolism, arguably the most important cultural movement of the 19th century. Swedenborg's accounts of heaven, hell and what he called the "spirit world" spell out in homely detail the parallels between life on earth and in these other places. These higher worlds are no abstraction, and readers of Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell and Conjugial Love ... encounter a very robust reality. Some of Swedenborg's reports on the social conditions of heaven -- where, among other things, angels engage in continuous and mutually satisfying lovemaking -- make it seem infinitely more vital than life here and now.
Note: The author of this essay, Gary Lachman, has written a book on Swedenborg, Swedenborg: an Introduction to his Life and Ideas. This webpage contains a wealth of excellent resources on this most fascinating man who inspired Carl Jung, Helen Keller, and Ralph Waldo Emerson among many others.
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