News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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A Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off the squad for refusing to chant the name of a basketball player - the same athlete she said had raped her four months earlier - lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal [on May 2]. A federal appeals court ruled in September that the cheerleader was speaking for the school, not herself, and had no right to remain silent when called on to cheer the athlete by name. The Supreme Court denied review of the case. The girl, identified by her initials H.S., was 16 when she said she was raped at a party in her southeast Texas hometown of Silsbee in October 2008. She identified the assailant as Rakheem Bolton, [who] ultimately pleaded guilty in September 2010 to a misdemeanor assault charge. At a February 2009 basketball game in Huntsville, Texas, H.S. joined in leading cheers for the Silsbee team, which included Bolton. But when Bolton went to the foul line to shoot a free throw, H.S. folded her arms and was silent. H.S. said the district superintendent, his assistant and the school principal told her she had to cheer for Bolton or go home. She refused and was dismissed from the squad. H.S., joined by her parents, sued school officials and the district. They claimed the school had punished her for exercising her right of free expression. Federal courts have also ordered H.S. and her parents to reimburse the district more than $45,000 for the costs of defending against a frivolous suit.
Investigations have found that every single supermarket in Britain stocks meat and dairy from animals fed GM [Genetically Modified] soy. Leading brands including Cadbury, Unilever and Dairycrest, also use products from livestock fed GM. In fact the new technology is so widespread that it is likely at least one item of food you eat today will have come from an animal fed GM soy, whether it was the milk on your cereal or the bacon in your sandwich. But what effect is our growing reliance on soy having on the countries supplying Britain with this ‘invisible ingredient’? Paraguay ... in many ways [is] the perfect place to grow unsustainable soy. Ruled by despotic dictators for centuries, the country is famous for being a hot bed of drug smugglers [and] Nazi war criminals. Even now, with a new democratically government in place, corruption is rife and regulations to protect the people are lax to say the least. In the last year the amount of land planted with soy has grown to a record 2.6 million hectares, most of which is GM, leading to claims of deforestation, violent land disputes and the ‘poisoning’ of local communities. Already it is estimated that 90 per cent of the Atlantic Rainforest in Paraguay has been lost to make way for crops, taking with it thousands of unique plants species, hundreds of rare birds and endangered animals like the jaguar. Its not just animals that suffer. Groups of Guarani people claim they have been driven from their land by the soy farmers. ‘Campesinos’, the small farmers who have traditionally worked the land, also claim they have been displaced.
Note: Many are not aware that much of the food they eat, especially soy and corn, comes from geneticaly modified crops which have been shown to pose a major risk to health. For more, click here and here.
Convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan was manipulated by a seductive girl in a mind control plot to shoot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his bullets did not kill the presidential candidate, lawyers for Sirhan said in new legal papers. The documents filed this week in federal court detail extensive interviews with Sirhan during the past three years, some done while he was under hypnosis. The papers point to a mysterious girl in a polka-dot dress as the controller who led Sirhan to fire a gun in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. But the documents suggest a second person shot and killed Kennedy while using Sirhan as a diversion. For the first time, Sirhan said under hypnosis that on a cue from the girl he went into "range mode" believing he was at a firing range and seeing circles with targets in front of his eyes. "I thought that I was at the range more than I was actually shooting at any person, let alone Bobby Kennedy," Sirhan was quoted as saying during interviews with Daniel Brown, a Harvard University professor and expert in trauma memory and hypnosis. He interviewed Sirhan for 60 hours with and without hypnosis, according to the legal brief. The story of the girl has been a lingering theme in accounts of the events just after midnight on June 5, 1968, when Kennedy was gunned down in the hotel pantry after claiming victory in the California Democratic presidential primary.
Note: For many key reports from major media sources on political assassinations in the US, click here.
Files obtained by the website Wikileaks have revealed that the US believed many of those held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent or only low-level operatives. The files, published in US and European newspapers, are assessments of all 780 people ever held at the facility. They show that about 220 were classed as dangerous terrorists, but 150 were innocent Afghans and Pakistanis. The Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) ... give little information on the allegations of harsh treatment and interrogation techniques at the camp. But the files show that US military analysts considered only 220 of those ever detained at Guantanamo to be dangerous extremists. Another 380 detainees were deemed to be low-ranking guerrillas. At least 150 people were revealed to be innocent Afghans or Pakistanis - including drivers, farmers and chefs - rounded up during intelligence gathering operations in the aftermath of 9/11. The detainees were then held for years owing to mistaken identity or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the memos say. In many cases, US commanders concluded there was "no reason recorded for transfer".
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the prison at Guantanamo and other black sites where torture and false allegations are the norm, click here.
When Max Fraser started collecting footage and stories about how Sept. 11, 2001, played out in the Yukon capital of Whitehorse, he set out to make a point-of-view documentary about the terrifying spectre of 2 supposedly hijacked jumbo jets landing in — or on — Whitehorse. What Fraser ended up with is the mysterious tale of how Korean Air Flight 085, bound for New York City, came to land at the then-Whitehorse International Airport at 11:54 a.m. that day, instead of descending at one of the many better-equipped Alaskan runways it passed on its way. And even more mysterious is why 2 Korean planes were transmitting a hijack "squawk" (a satellite code that can be discreetly set by a pilot to alert authorities on the ground of a hostile takeover), even though all was well on board the flights. In response, American and Canadian fighter jets were deployed to accompany those planes to the Whitehorse airport. That inspired the local filmmaker to make the 45-minute documentary titled "Never Happen Here — the Whitehorse 9/11 Story." It premiered [on April 24] at the Dawson City Short Film Festival. "Nowhere else in the world on 9/11 was a community under an evacuation order and nowhere else were emergency authorities told to prepare for a mass casualty incident involving a hijacked airliner," Fraser said. "What we experienced, what we went through, is a story that should be told the world over."
Note: For many unanswered questions about the unexplained happenings on 9/11 raised by highly respected professionals and officials, click here and here.
Our search to understand what makes humans happy (or happier) goes back centuries. New research takes a fresh look at this topic. Jennifer Aaker and Melanie Rudd at Stanford University, and Cassie Mogilner at the University of Pennsylvania, published “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy, Consider Time,” in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2011. They discuss how happiness is ... a consequence of the choices people make. So what can people do to increase their happiness? Their answer is surprisingly simple: spend your time wisely. “People often make career choices based on how much money they envision they can make now or in the future. Surprisingly little thought goes into how they will be using their time — whether they can control their time, who they will spend their time with, and what activities they will spend their time on,” said Aaker. Over the years, there has been relatively little research on the relationship between the resource of time and happiness. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is another resource — money — that has been investigated much more thoroughly as a potential key to happiness. Yet, very little research corroborates the idea that more money leads to more happiness. “We know that people with meaningful social connections are happier than those without them,” said Mogilner. “The more time that individuals spend with their partners, best friends, and close friends, the happier they are.”
The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence. The report warns of the dangers of an "incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality", referring to James Cameron's 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. "It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) … we ensure that ... we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely," warns the report, titled The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems. MoD officials have never before grappled so frankly with the ethics of the use of drones. The report was ordered by Britain's defence chiefs, and coincides with continuing controversy about drones' use in Afghanistan, and growing Pakistani anger at CIA drone attacks against suspected insurgents on the Afghan borders. It states that "the recent extensive use of unmanned aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen may already herald a new era". Referring to descriptions of "killer drones" in Afghanistan, it notes that "feelings are likely to run high as armed systems acquire more autonomy".
Note: For an analysis of the expansion of the sphere of killing by drones to the new Libyan theater of operations in the "endless war" triggered by the false-flag of 9/11, click here.
As millions of procrastinators scramble to meet [the] tax filing deadline, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago, and nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all. The [IRS] tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992. The top income tax rate is 35 percent, so how can people who make so much pay so little in taxes? There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. In all, the tax code is filled with a total of $1.1 trillion in credits, deductions and exemptions, an average of about $8,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent watchdog within the IRS.
Note: For other revealing media articles showing how the rich keep getting richer, usually at the expense of the rest of us, click here.
Japanese officials have been forced to explain why it took them a month to disclose large-scale releases of radioactive material in mid-March at a crippled nuclear-power plant. The government announced [on April 12] that it had raised its rating of the severity of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex to 7, the worst on an international scale, from 5. Japan's new assessment was based largely on computer models showing heavy emissions of radioactive iodine and cesium March 14-16, soon after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami rendered the plant's emergency cooling system inoperative. The nearly monthlong delay in acknowledging the extent of these emissions is a fresh example of confused data and analysis from the Japanese and put authorities on the defensive about whether they have delayed or blocked the release of information to avoid alarming the public. Seiji Shiroya, a commissioner of Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, an independent panel that oversees the country's nuclear industry, ... suggested a public-policy reason for having kept quiet. "Some foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to be little risk," he said. "If we immediately decided to label the situation as Level 7, we could have triggered a panicked reaction." The peak release in emissions of radioactive particles took place after hydrogen explosions at three Fukujima reactors.
Note: For lots more on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
A bizarre spate of television presenters dissolving into on-air gibberish has sparked claims that the U.S. military could be to blame. In four high-profile cases, the latest involving fast-talking Judge Judy, the presenters have started off speaking properly but have then descended into undecipherable nonsense - looking confused and unstable. The frequency of the 'attacks' - and the fact that recorded examples of the mental meltdowns have been popular on websites - has led to conspiracy theorists pointing the finger at shadowy government experiments. A popular theory being circulated online blames the U.S. Military’s supposed research into using microwaves as a mind control weapon. America has never admitted conducting such research but proponents say the effects - produced by microwave signals stimulating the brain with fake images and voices - exactly mimic those displayed in the recent on-air breakdowns. Serene Branson's garbled Grammys report became an internet sensation, while WISCTV's Sarah Carlson suffered a similar meltdown in January. Judith Sheindlin, the fast-talking judge on Judge Judy, was taken to hospital ... after she began speaking a nonsensical string of words during a live recording of her courtroom TV show.
Note: We don't normally use the UK's Daily Mail as a reliable source, but as the video included in this article clearly demonstrate something highly unusual, we've included it here. Another video of this highly strange phemomenon is available here. There is a possibility that some kind of HAARP technologies may be used in doing this. For more, click here. For reliable, verifiable information on secret government mind control programs, see the powerful two-page summary available here.
Igor Gramotkin is ... the manager of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, and has spent more than two decades at the site of the most devastating nuclear accident in history, trying to stop further radiation emissions and cleaning the area. Mr Gramotkin admitted that the destroyed reactor, still full of radioactive waste and nuclear fuel, remains "a threat not only to Ukraine but to the whole world" until it is encased in a vast steel structure that is being built. In the months after the accident, a makeshift "sarcophagus" had been constructed to encase the reactor, but it is now unstable and, despite work to shore it up, experts say a new shelter is desperately needed in case the old one collapses. At more than 100m tall, the shelter will be the largest moveable structure ever built. Those building it still have to be extremely careful. Standing in the area immediately around the plant subjects a person to radiation equivalent to about one old-style chest X-ray per day. The human costs of the Chernobyl accident are ... horrific by any estimate. [Some] studies put the figure in the hundreds of thousands. There are incidences of genetic mutations, children born lacking organs, and dramatically elevated thyroid cancer levels in local children, who drank milk contaminated with radioactive iodine in the years after the accident.
Note: For many reports from major media sources on the government and corporate corruption that allows the nuclear industry to continue, click here and here.
Does Libya set a precedent? If a revolt breaks out again in Iran, and the regime cracks down with brutal force, will the United States support a Libya-style response? Is there an "Obama Doctrine" emerging? It looks like it. It appears that Obama is ready to use U.S. military force anytime, anywhere, for any reason that he — without Congressional approval or UN support — deems legitimate. During the course of the "War on Terror," now a decade old, there has been a constant barrage of efforts to disparage those who called Iraq, or Afghanistan, a "war for oil." It's not bizarre at all to argue that what animates nearly the entirety of American policy toward the region from Algeria to Iran is concern about oil and natural gas. That's been the driving force behind the creation of the Rapid Deployment Force by President Carter, the establishment of Centcom by President Reagan, the invasion of Kuwait by President Bush I and America's arming of Saudi Arabia and the other members of the so-called Gulf Cooperation Council. It's why Obama muses about "maintaining the flow of commerce" by military means. Which brings us to Iran. If the anti-Ahmadinejad forces rise up again, and perhaps take control of a city like Shiraz, or if Iranian oil workers strike and take control of a southern oil city such as Ahwaz, ... the regime would crack down brutally. And then what?
Note: For many reports exposing the real reasons behind the "endless war" policy of the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations, click here.
General Electric marketed the Mark 1 boiling water reactors that were used in Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi plant as cheaper to build than other reactors because they used a smaller and less expensive containment structure. Yet American safety officials have long thought the smaller design more vulnerable to explosion and rupture in emergencies than competing designs. Here's the problem: Profit-making corporations have every incentive to underestimate these probabilities and lowball the likely harms. This is why it's necessary to have such things as government regulators and why regulators need enough resources to enforce the regulations. And it's why recent proposals in Congress to cut the budgets of agencies charged with protecting public safety are so wrong-headed. It's also why regulators have to be independent of the industries they regulate. When there's a revolving door between regulatory agency and industry, officials are reluctant to bite the hands that will feed them. Finally, the tendency of corporations to understate the probabilities of public harms requires that limits be placed on corporate political power. The public cannot not be adequately protected as long as big corporations ... are allowed to bribe legislators with campaign donations and boondoggles.
Note: The author of this opinion, Robert Reich, is a professor at UC Berkeley and former Secretary of Labor.
The chaos at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant — explosions, fires, ruptures — has not shaken the bipartisan support in partisan Washington for the U.S.'s so-called nuclear renaissance. Republicans have dismissed Japan's crisis as a once-in-a-lifetime fluke. President Obama has defended atomic energy as a carbon-free source of power, resisting calls to halt the renaissance and freeze construction of the U.S.'s first new reactors in over three decades. But there is no renaissance. Even before the earthquake-tsunami one-two punch, the endlessly hyped U.S. nuclear revival was stumbling, pummeled by skyrocketing costs, stagnant demand and skittish investors, not to mention the defeat of restrictions on carbon that could have mitigated nuclear energy's economic insanity. Obama has offered unprecedented aid to an industry that already enjoyed cradle-to-grave subsidies, and the antispending GOP has clamored for even more largesse. But Wall Street hates nukes as much as K Street loves them, which is why there's no new reactor construction to freeze. Once hailed as "too cheap to meter," nuclear fission turns out to be an outlandishly expensive method of generating juice for our Xboxes.
Note: For many reports from major media sources on the government and corporate corruption that allows the nuclear industry to continue, click here and here.
The Federal Reserve will disclose details of emergency loans it made to banks in 2008, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an industry appeal that aimed to shield the records from public view. The justices ... left intact a court order that gives the Fed five days to release the records, sought by Bloomberg News' parent company, Bloomberg. The order marks the first time a court has forced the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program, the 98-year-old discount window. "I can't recall that the Fed was ever sued and forced to release information" in its 98-year history, said Allan H. Meltzer, the author of three books on the U.S central bank and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The disclosures, together with details of six bailout programs released by the central bank in December under a congressional mandate, would give taxpayers insight into the Fed's unprecedented $3.5 trillion effort to stem the 2008 financial panic. Under the trial judge's order, the Fed must reveal 231 pages of documents related to borrowers in April and May 2008, along with loan amounts. News Corp.'s Fox News is pressing a bid for 6,186 pages of similar information on loans made from August 2007 to November 2008.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources on the hidden activities of the Fed and the biggest Wall Street and international banks, click here.
Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed. Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world. They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year. The case has already created shock around the world, particularly with the revelations that the men cut "trophies" from the bodies of the people they killed. An investigation by Der Spiegel has unearthed approximately 4,000 photos and videos taken by the men. The US military has strived to keep the pictures out of the public domain. The lengthy Spiegel article that accompanies the photographs contains new details about the sadistic behaviour of the men.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on atrocities and illegal activities by US military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.
Nuclear plants in the United States last year experienced at least 14 "near misses," serious failures in which safety was jeopardized, at least in part, due to lapses in oversight and enforcement by US nuclear safety regulators, says a new report. They occurred with alarming frequency – more than once a month – which is high for a mature industry, said the study of nuclear plant safety performance in 2010 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based nuclear watchdog group. The report, the first in what the UCS expects will become an annual study, details both successes and failures by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which it calls "the cop on the beat." Charged with overseeing America's fleet of 104 nuclear reactors, the NRC made some "outstanding catches," but was also inconsistent in its oversight, seeming at times to nod off when most needed. "The chances of a disaster at a nuclear plant are low," the report states. "But when the NRC tolerates unresolved safety problems – as it did last year at Peach Bottom, Indian Point, and Vermont Yankee – this lax oversight allows that risk to rise. The more owners sweep safety problems under the rug and the longer safety problems remain uncorrected, the higher the risk climbs."
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
An Afghan warlord backed by US special forces faces persistent allegations that he launched a two-year spate of violence involving burglary, rape and murder of civilians, desecration of mosques and mutilation of corpses. Yet, despite repeated warnings about the atrocities Commander Azizullah is alleged to have committed, he has remained on the payroll of the US military as an "Afghan security guard", a select band of mercenaries. Interviews with religious leaders, tribal elders, villagers, contractors and Western and Afghan officials all pointed to a reign of terror in which they believe 31-year-old Azizullah, an ethnic Tajik, targeted Pashtun civilians while fighting the Taliban. The testimony also tallied with several independent reports documenting the allegations against Azizullah. The allegations of persistent abuses are embarrassing for Nato, and not just because of the closeness with an alleged war criminal. They also showcase the biggest drawbacks of militias, which US commander General David Petraeus wants to expand aggressively across Afghanistan. He wants to triple the size of "local defence initiatives" [militias] to 30,000 members nationwide.The consequences are too awful to contemplate: resurgent warlords, deepening ethnic tensions, widespread bloodletting and the erosion of what little authority the government in Kabul has left.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on atrocities and illegal activities by US military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.
For 18 months, operators at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo didn't realize that a system to pump water into one of their reactors during an emergency wasn't working. It had been accidentally disabled by the plant's own engineers, according to a report ... from the Union of Concerned Scientists watchdog group, [which] lists 14 recent "near misses" - instances in which serious problems at a plant required federal regulators to respond. The report criticizes both plant operators and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allowing some known safety issues to fester. The problem at Diablo Canyon ... involved a series of valves that allow water to pour into one of the plant's two reactors during emergencies, keeping the reactor from overheating. A pair of remotely operated valves in the emergency cooling system was taking too long to move from completely closed to completely open. So engineers shortened the distance between those two positions, according to the report. Unfortunately, two other pairs of valves were interlocked with the first. They couldn't open at all until the first pair opened all the way. No one noticed until the valves refused to open during a test in October 2009, 18 months after the engineers made the changes.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government and corporate corruption, click here and here.
Representative Ron Paul, a persistent critic of the Federal Reserve, [has] renewed his uphill fight to abolish the U.S. central bank, warning it is on track to create an inflation that will hit lower-income Americans especially hard. The Texas lawmaker has long championed dismantling the Fed, but at a hearing on [March 17] slammed its $600 billion bond buying program, which he said was creating inflation and undercutting the dollar. This week he introduced legislation abolishing the Fed. Congress considered curbing Fed regulatory powers in legislation passed last year but backed away, ultimately delegating more authority to the central bank to police the financial system. Paul's criticism of the Fed and its bond buying program has struck a chord with Republicans, particularly Tea Party activists. Other GOP lawmakers have introduced a measure that would strip the Fed of its full employment mandate and require it to concentrate exclusively on inflation. Rising energy and commodity prices have stirred inflation worries around the world and criticism that the Fed's vast expansion of bank reserves to buy Treasuries has stoked price rises.
Note: To understand why Rep. Paul is questioning the usefulness of the Fed, see reliable information on Fed manipulations at this link.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key 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.