Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
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.
Daniel Barenboim, a renowned Israeli conductor and Palestinian rights activist, will bring an orchestra of European musicians for a performance in the Gaza Strip on [May 3]. The concert ... would mark a rare solidarity visit from a major international cultural figure to the blockaded Palestinian territory since Hamas' takeover in 2007. The performance comes on the eve of the signing of a reconciliation accord in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah, the other leading Palestinian faction in the West Bank. Mr. Barenboim's visit is likely to enhance the already raised expectations for the end of Gaza's years of isolation. Enlisting musicians from orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, Paris and Milan, Mr. Barenboim has an assembled an outfit dubbed the "Orchestra for Gaza." The group plans to fly from Berlin to Egypt and then cross the border into Gaza for a brief visit that will include a concert at a cultural center outside of Gaza City. Just last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Al Araby said he plans to remove restrictions at the Rafah crossing at the border with Gaza within days, a shift in policy that could lift a several-year-old blockade that has prevented most of the 1.5 million Palestinians from leaving the tiny coastal strip.
Weeks after generating an uproar for the aggressive screening of a six-year-old child in New Orleans, the TSA is again facing criticism for an enhanced pat-down. Former Miss USA Susie Castillo says she was "molested" by a TSA screener at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport after declining to go through a body scanner due to radiation concerns. According to a detailed account from the Dallas Morning News, Castillo wrote "My private area was grazed four times!" on a complaint card after the screening. Castillo immediately shot a tearful video recounting the episode more explicitly and posted it on YouTube. The Boston Herald quotes from the video: "That's why I'm crying, that's why I'm so upset. They're making me choose to either get molested, because that's what I feel like, or go through this machine that's completely unhealthy and dangerous." TSA spokesman Luis Casanova defended the screening procedure. "Everything [the screener] did was according to protocol," Casanova said.
Note: For key articles on increasing reductions of civil liberties by governments, click here.
The White House threatened [on April 28] to exclude The San Francisco Chronicle from pooled coverage of its events in the Bay Area after the paper posted a video of a protest at a San Francisco fundraiser for President Obama last week, Chronicle Editor Ward Bushee said. White House guidelines governing press coverage of such events are too restrictive, Bushee said, and the newspaper was within its rights to film the protest and post the video. Chronicle senior political reporter Carla Marinucci was invited by the White House to cover the Obama fundraiser on April 21. About 200 donors paying $5,000 to $38,500 each attended the event at the St. Regis Hotel in the city, a day after Obama visited Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley touting the proliferation of "new media" breaking the confines of traditional journalism. At the St. Regis event, a group of protesters who paid collectively $76,000 to attend the fundraiser interrupted Obama with a song complaining about the administration's treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier who allegedly leaked U.S. classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.
Note: This is an excellent example of how politicians can control the press. Top reporters are under threat of losing their connections to top officials if they report anything negative about them.
At the age of nine, Felix Finkbeiner hatched a plan to plant a million trees in his native Germany. Now he's a global eco-superhero. Felix, from the unremarkable town of Pöcking, near Munich, is an environmental superstar at the helm of a global network of child activists whose aim is to mitigate climate change by reforesting the planet. His organisation, Plant for the Planet, recently achieved its target of planting one million trees in Germany; now, Felix is spreading his message around the world. Plant for the Planet is up and running in 131 countries, and the British chapter was established last month, with the aim of planting a million trees here over the next few years. Individuals or planting groups can either 'pledge’ to plant a certain number of trees or make a cash donation – €1 buys one tree. The results are logged on the Plant for the Planet website. Plant for the Planet started as a school project four years ago. 'I was supposed to give a presentation on a Monday,’ Felix says, 'so over the weekend I Googled stuff on climate change and came across Wangari Maathai’s campaign.’ Maathai, the daughter of Kenyan farmworkers..., began her own tree-planting campaign, the Green Belt Movement, in 1977 as a method of tackling soil erosion and encouraging local communities, particularly women, to stand up for themselves, not only environmentally but also politically. In 2004, 45 million trees later, she won the Nobel Peace Prize. 'She achieved so much with so little,’ Felix says. 'So I had the idea that we children could also do something.’
Note: For inspiring reports from major media sources, click here.
Via the Clean Energy Act of 2007, the new "go-green" eco-friendly standards are set to thrust mandatory use of CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs) upon American citizens by the year 2013 or 2014. Some reports say the mercury-filled CFLs are harmful to humans. Are CFL bulbs eco-friendly but human hazards? What about the economy of cleaning up the the new bulbs, and the erosion of our American "choices"? Information has circulated that CFLs will be dangerous to humans due to mercury content. It seems to have started with a 2007 claim by a family who was gung-ho to "go green." They installed CFLs in their home but broke one, resulting in various illnesses for a child and a $2,000 clean-up process that could only be done by experts. According to EPA guidelines [in 2007] there were 16 steps to cleaning up a broken, mercury-filled CFL bulb and then cleaning up the cleaning materials used. According to the EPA website today, there are only eight steps. The process appears toned down. The EPA claims that breakage of one bulb is not dangerous to occupants. Clean-up doesn't have to cost $2,000. Energy Star, a division of the EPA, ... acknowledges certain health and environmental hazards, stating "we must be responsible in cleaning up." They offer several sheets of directions, including this: Humans must leave the premises for three hours after removing a broken bulb. Livestrong.com is a leading go-to health and wellness website. Its research about CFLs shows that prolonged exposure to fluorescent lighting causes migraines, eye strain and other eye discomfort.
Note: For a CBS affiliate report confirming these hazards, click 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.
Severe storms and tornadoes moving through the U.S. Southeast dealt a severe blow to the Tennessee Valley Authority [on April 27], causing three nuclear reactors in Alabama to shut and knocking out 11 high-voltage power lines, the utility and regulators said. All three units at TVA's 3,274-megawatt Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama tripped about 5:30 EDT after losing outside power to the plant, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. A TVA spokeswoman said the station's backup power systems, including diesel generators, started and operated as designed. External power was restored quickly to the plant but diesel generators remained running Wednesday evening, she said. The Browns Ferry units are among 23 U.S. reactors that are similar in design to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan where backup generators were swept away in the tsunami that followed the massive earthquake on March 11.
Note: And what might have happened if one of those tornadoes happened to hit a nuclear power plant?
To call what the Hyde family has been through a "parent's worst nightmare" sounds like a horrible cliche. But, it's hard to imagine what else you could call it. Their two-year-old son Cash was diagnosed last year with a stage 4 brain tumor; he nearly died more times than they can count. He was miserable from the chemotherapy coursing through his body until his dad made a controversial decision to give cannabis to his young son. The doctors had no answers, so Mike found his own. It was relief for Cashy in the form of cannabis oil. It's illegal to possess without authorization from a medical professional. It's something doctors wouldn't even discuss. Mike got authorization to give Cashy the oil and, without telling them why, told the doctors to wean Cashy off the anti-nausea cocktail. Inserted through Cashy's feeding tube, a tiny amount of oil replaced all those drugs. The result, Mike said, was almost immediate. Mike Hyde, though, doesn't care about the controversy or the political battle over this drug. He cares that his son survived and is convinced not only did the cannabis help Cashy feel better, it prevented long-term damage to his organs. For Mike, the proof is in his vibrant two-year old boy. "It's very controversial, it's very scary. But, there's nothing more scary than losing your child." A few weeks ago, Cashy was back in Salt Lake City for scans and found out he's cancer-free.
Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell today reported first-quarter profit increases of 69 percent and 30 percent, respectively, from the same period last year. With rising gas and oil prices, analysts expected the five biggest oil companies -- with Exxon as the largest -- to report that they are swimming in revenue. Exxon earned $10.7 billion in the first quarter, up from $6.3 billion. Shell announced profit of $6.3 billion in the first quarter this year, up from $4.8 billion. ConocoPhillips said its first quarter earnings increased 43 percent to $3 billion from $2.1 billion in the same period last year. BP's first quarter earnings dipped this year -- $5.48 billion compared with $5.60 billion during the first quarter a year ago -- including a charge of $384 million related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Valero Energy, based in San Antonio, Texas, and the largest independent U.S. refiner, announced ... a first quarter profit of $98 million "primarily due to higher margins for diesel and jet fuel," compared to a first quarter loss last year of $113 million.
Note: Why are oil companies raising their profit margins to drive gas prices even higher? For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
The Supreme Court gave corporations a major win [on April 27], ruling in a 5-4 decision that companies can block their disgruntled customers from joining together in a class-action lawsuit. The ruling arose from a California lawsuit involving cellphones, but it will have a nationwide impact. In the past, consumers who bought a product or a service had been free to join a class-action lawsuit if they were dissatisfied or felt they had been cheated. By combining these small claims, they could bring a major lawsuit against a corporation. But in [the] decision, the high court said that under the Federal Arbitration Act companies can force these disgruntled customers to arbitrate their complaints individually, not as part of a group. Consumer-rights advocates said this rule would spell the end for small claims involving products or services. Justice Antonin Scalia said companies may require buyers to sign arbitration agreements, and those agreements may preclude class-action claims. But the dissenters said a practical ban on class action would be unfair to cheated consumers. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the California courts had insisted on permitting class-action claims, despite arbitration clauses that forbade them. Otherwise, he said, it would allow a company to "insulate" itself "from liability for its own frauds by deliberately cheating large numbers of consumers out of individually small sums of money."
Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
US government doctors who cared for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deliberately concealed or ignored evidence that their patients were being tortured, the first official study of its kind has found. A detailed review of the medical records and case files of nine Guantanamo inmates has concluded that medical personnel at the US detention centre were complicit in suppressing evidence that would demonstrate systematic torture of the inmates. The review is published in an online scientific journal, PLoS Medicine, and is the first peer-reviewed study analysing the behaviour of the doctors in charge of Guantanamo inmates who were subjected to "enhanced interrogation" techniques that a decade ago had been classed by the US government as torture. [The report] concluded that no doctor could have failed to notice the medical signs and symptoms of the extreme interrogation techniques and unauthorised assaults that other physicians would recognise as torture, such as severe beatings resulting in bone fractures, sexual assaults, mock executions, and simulated drowning by "waterboarding". Many of the prisoners said they were also subjected to unauthorised abuses resulting in severe and prolonged physical and mental pain.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on torture committed by US forces and approved by the highest levels of government, click here.
More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantánamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America's controversial prison camp in Cuba. The US military dossiers ... reveal how ... many prisoners were flown to the Guantánamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment. The 759 Guantánamo files, classified "secret", cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still held there. The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim. The documents also reveal: • US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation. • Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantánamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide. • A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members.
Note: For many key reports on government secrecy from major media sources, 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.
U.S. officials set up a human-intelligence laboratory at Guantánamo that used interrogation and detention practices they largely made up as they went along. The secret summaries, which were obtained via WikiLeaks, help explain why in May 2009 President Obama, after ordering his own review of wartime intelligence, called ... Guantánamo "quite simply a mess." The documents ... show an intelligence operation that was tremendously dependent on informants — both prison-camp snitches repeating what they'd heard from fellow captives, and self-described, at times self-aggrandizing, former al-Qaida insiders turned government witnesses who Pentagon records show have since been released. Intelligence analysts are at odds with each other over which informants to trust, at times drawing inferences from prisoner exercise habits. They ordered DNA tests, tethered Taliban suspects to polygraphs and strung together tidbits in ways that seemed to defy common sense. The documents also show that in the earliest years of the prison camp's operation, the Pentagon permitted Chinese and Russian interrogators into the camps — information from those sessions are included in some captives' assessments — something American defense lawyers working free for the foreign prisoners have alleged and protested for years.
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.
If you had been on the Strand in London on the day that the high court was considering how to proceed with scores of civil actions against the News of the World for its phone-hacking escapades, you would have seen a peculiar sight. About 30 people were gathered on the steps of the court, the palms of their hands painted red, bearing banners that read: "Murdoch's men caught red-handed." On the same day, ... another group of 25 people had gathered. They were leafleting shoppers about the News of the World scandal and calling on the government to delay approval of Rupert Murdoch's bid to takeover BSkyB until a full public inquiry could be held. Both events were the work of one of the most successful of a new breed of internet campaigner, in this case a global activism network called Avaaz, which means voice in Urdu and several other languages. Avaaz, formed in 2007, has more than eight million members in 193 countries and can claim to be the largest online activist community in the world. This year alone it has attracted an extra one million members and it is now wholly self-funding with about $20m (Ł12m) raised so far in online donations. "We have no ideology per se," says director Ricken Patel. "Our mission is to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want. Idealists of the world unite!"
A U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan region killed at least 25 people on [April 22], sending a clear sign that Washington's use of drones against militants along the Afghan border will continue despite rising opposition from Islamabad's top civilian and military leaders. The strike in the village of Spinwam came two days after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, held tense talks with Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani amid a pall of mistrust that has weakened relations between Washington and Islamabad in recent months. Pakistan intensified its criticism of the drone campaign after a March 17 strike killed more than 40 people in the North Waziristan village of Datta Khel. Pakistani military leaders said that missile strike killed civilian tribal elders meeting to discuss a dispute over local mining rights, though the U.S. maintains that the people killed were militants. The Datta Khel strike came a day after the release of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor whose arrest in connection with the shooting deaths of two Pakistanis brought relations between Washington and Islamabad to one of their lowest points in years. Officials in North Waziristan said [the April 22] strike killed 18 suspected militants, though seven of the dead were civilians - three women and four children. Four missiles were fired, two of which struck a guest house with the suspected militants, the officials said. The other two missiles hit another building where the women and children were.
Note: Imagine if another country were flying unmanned flights in the US and killing US citizens who they suspected were terrorists along with innocent civilians as collateral damage. There would be an uproar. Why isn't anyone talking about the legality of a foreign country killing citizens of another country without any judicial process at all, especially when the government of the invaded country opposes the attacks?
The strangest aspect of the United Nations' "no-fly zone" war over Libya is the involvement of the United Nations itself. While Congress' approval was all but an afterthought, the Obama administration devoted intense diplomatic energy to winning the approval of the United Nation's Security Council. No one asked why the U.N. is in the business of approving military actions at all. The United Nations, created to end wars, now prolongs and enlarges them. It is time to take a hard look at the U.N.'s war-ending, peace-making record. After all, the promotion of peace is supposed to be its main duty. The U.N. bureaucracy [has] lost its way. The U.N. has sanctioned two wars against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and now has approved the aerial bombardment of Libya. Whatever the merits of these wars, they are wars. And the U.N. approved them, as opposed to stopping them. It has morphed from a war-ending mission to a war-sanctioning vote. The people who are going to pay for or fight in these U.N. approved wars have no way to hold U.N. representatives accountable and too many of the war-making discussions at the U.N. are held in secret.
Note: For a powerful two-page summary of a top US general's words revealing the major corruption behind almost all wars, click here.
A story that combines UFO cover-ups with the assassination of John F. Kennedy is ... just what author William Lester says he uncovered while conducting research for a new book on Kennedy: a memo written by JFK and addressed to the CIA in which the president requests confidential information about UFOs. In the never-before-seen, top secret memo supposedly written on Nov. 12, 1963, the president ordered the CIA director to organize the agency's intelligence files relating to UFOs, and to debrief him on all "unknowns" by the following February. Ten days later, Kennedy was assassinated. Lester, a paranormal researcher and author of the new book A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier ... said he obtained the memo along with two others from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act. "The government regularly declassifies documents after a certain amount of time goes by, and then you have to file a request for those documents," Lester [said]. "When I was in the process of filing, those letters had just become declassified and released to the public." This happened in 2006 or 2007, Lester said. "At the time, I think other people were getting them too." Some archivists question its authenticity. A research technician at the JFK Library in Boston, who asked not to be named, was unable to find a carbon copy of it in its presidential archive, which holds copies of all of JFK's letters.
Note: Fred made an FOIA request for this document and received response, "the CIA Information Act ... exempts CIA operational files from the search, review, publication, and disclosure requirements of the FOIA." Very interesting. To see the memo and more, click here. For an excellent selection of news article excerpts suggesting a major cover-up of UFOs, click here. For an abundance or resources from reliable sources on UFOs, see our UFO information center available here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.