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.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghanistan’s president and boss of the strategically important Kandahar province, has been on the CIA payroll for over a decade, Bob Woodward writes in his new book, Obama’s Wars. By the fall of 2008, Woodward says, “Ahmed Wali Karzai had been on the CIA payroll for years, beginning before 9/11. He had belonged to the CIA's small network of paid agents and informants inside Afghanistan. In addition, the CIA paid him money through his half-brother, the president.” Hamid Karzai was plucked from obscurity and installed as president after U.S.-backed Afghan forces chased the Taliban from power following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. There have been many accounts of his brother’s relationship with the CIA over the years, leaving the impression that he is a CIA “agent,” i.e., a controlled asset of the spy agency. But Woodward’s account of the CIA’s relationship with Karzai, who has also been accused repeatedly -- but not charged with -- protecting the illicit opium trade, is more nuanced. “He was not in any sense a controlled agent who always responded to U.S. and CIA requests and pressure,” Woodward writes. “He was his own man, playing all sides against the others -- the United States, the drug dealers, the Taliban and even his brother if necessary.”
Note: What this article fails to mention is that President Karzai was also an employee of the major oil company Unocal, as reported in this Chicago Tribune article.
Johnson & Johnson CEO William Weldon delivered both a mea culpa and clear admission to [the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform] that his company let the public down through numerous recent drug recalls. He also admitted that the company secretly bought up defective drugs without informing regulators and consumers of its actions. The committee has been investigating circumstances that have led to more than half a dozen recalls this year of non-prescription cold and pain drugs such as Tylenol, Benadryl and Motrin made by Johnson & Johnson's McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit. Weldon's [pledge] to never let this happen again was met with some skepticism. [Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-NY)] said [the] testimony indicates some very serious problems in "the way Johnson & Johnson viewed its responsibility to the public and its day-to-day relationship with the FDA." There is often a thin line between "working cooperatively" and having a "cozy relationship," he said. "The documents we have seen in this case indicate this line may have been crossed early and often."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them. That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial equipment. Not surprisingly, the Israelis are not saying whether Stuxnet has any connection to the secretive cyberwar unit it has built inside Israel’s intelligence service. Nor is the Obama administration, which while talking about cyberdefenses has also rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. The difficulty experts have had in figuring out the origin of Stuxnet points to both the appeal and the danger of computer attacks in a new age of cyberwar. For intelligence agencies they are an almost irresistible weapon, free of fingerprints. Israel has poured huge resources into Unit 8200, its secretive cyberwar operation, and the United States has built its capacity inside the National Security Agency and inside the military, which just opened a Cyber Command.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on the ever-expanding "global war on terror," click here.
News that the US is buying custom-made vans packed with something called backscatter X-ray capacity has riled privacy advocates and sparked internet worries about "feds radiating Americans." American Science & Engineering, a Billerica, Mass.-company, tells Forbes it [has] sold more than 500 ZBVs, or Z Backscatter Vans, to US and foreign governments. The Department of Defense has bought the most for war zone use, but US law enforcement has also deployed the vans to [use] inside the US, according to Joe Reiss, a company spokesman. On [September 28], a counterterror operation snarled truck traffic on I-20 near Atlanta, where Department of Homeland Security teams used mobile X-ray technology to check the contents of truck trailers. Authorities said the inspections weren't prompted by any specific threat. Backscatter X-ray is already part of an ongoing national debate about its use in so-called full body scanners being deployed in many US airports. [Critics] worry that radiating Americans without their knowledge is evidence of gradually eroding constitutional protections in the post-9/11 age. "This is another way in which the government is capturing information they may lose control over. I just have some real problems with the idea of even beginning a campaign of rolling surveillance of American citizens, which is what this essentially is said [Vermont-based privacy expert Frederick Lane, author of American Privacy.]
Note: For further reports from reliable sources on the militarization of US police forces, click here.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ... is being heavily criticised in Africa and the US for getting into bed not just with notorious GM company Monsanto, but also with agribusiness commodity giant Cargill. Trouble began when a US financial website published the foundation's annual investment portfolio, which showed it had bought 500,000 Monsanto shares worth around $23m. Seattle-based Agra Watch - a project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice - was outraged. "Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well being of small farmers around the world… [This] casts serious doubt on the foundation's heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa," it [said]. South Africa-based watchdog the African Centre for Biosafety then found that the foundation was teaming up with Cargill in a $10m project to "develop the soya value chain" in Mozambique and elsewhere. Who knows what this corporate-speak really means, but in all probability it heralds the big time introduction of GM soya in southern Africa. The fact is that Cargill is a faceless agri-giant that controls most of the world's food commodities and Monsanto has been blundering around poor Asian countries for a decade giving itself and the US a lousy name for corporate bullying. Does the foundation actually share their corporate vision of farming and intend to work with them more in future?
Note: To read how WantToKnow.info manager Fred Burks was blacklisted by Monsanto for reporting on its blatant disregard of the dangers of genetically modified foods, click here.
When Chief Albert Luthuli made a call for the international community to support a boycott of apartheid South Africa in 1958, the response was a widespread and dedicated movement that played a significant role in ending apartheid. One significant move was the resolution taken by 150 Irish academics not to accept academic posts or appointments in apartheid South Africa. Almost four decades later, the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions is gaining ground again in South Africa, this time against Israeli apartheid. Earlier this month, more than 100 academics across South Africa, from over 13 universities, pledged their support to a University of Johannesburg initiative for ending collaboration with the Israeli occupation. The campaign has since grown to include up to 200 supporters. The nationwide academic petition calling for the termination of an agreement between the University of Johannesburg and the Israeli Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has attracted widespread attention. With the recent endorsement of some of the leading voices in South Africa ... the statement confirms the strength of the boycott call in South Africa. Israeli universities are not being targeted for boycott because of their ethnic or religious identity, but because of their complicity in the Israeli system of apartheid. As the academics who have supported the call clearly articulate in their statement, Ben-Gurion University maintains material links to the military occupation.
Armed with declassified documents and vivid details, a group of former Air Force officers gathered Monday to go public with an assertion they have kept mostly under wraps for decades: that UFOs visited the bases they were stationed at and caused nuclear weapon system to temporarily malfunction. The group, convened by UFO researcher Robert Hastings, came to the National Press Club in Washington to discuss their individual experiences and to urge a government that tried to ignore and silence them when they came forward years ago to finally come clean. Hastings said he believes that visitors from outer space are fixating on nuclear weapons because they want to send a message: Disarm before the world destroys itself. Hastings said he has heard of a UFO incident occurring at Malmstrom as recently as 2007. The declassified documents Hastings presented at Monday's news conference include decades-old government memos detailing reports of sightings of objects in the skies above Alabama, Montana, New Mexico and North Dakota. He has talked to 120 former or retired U.S. military about the presence of UFOs at nuclear weapons sites across the United States and around the globe as early as 1945, when the world entered the nuclear age with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For some of the officers who came forward Monday, going public wasn't easy. Bruce Fenstermacher, a missile combat crew commander at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., was "laughed at" by superiors when he reported a UFO sighting at a launch site that one of his sergeants had passed on to him, he said. He decided to keep his head low after that. "I was very careful about who I told what," he said. "I was concerned. I don't want to be considered a kook. But I think it's more important to come out and tell our story."
Note: To watch 18-minutes of this most fascinating testimony on the CNN website, click here. For a treasure trove of reliable, verifiable information on the UFO cover-up, see our resource-filled UFO Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/ufoinformation.
Whatever the mysterious lights in the sky were, they seemed to have an interest in our nukes. One of the more out-of-the-ordinary press conferences held in Washington this week consisted of former Air Force personnel testifying to the existence of UFOs and their ability to neutralize American and Russian nuclear missiles. UFO researcher Robert Hastings of Albuquerque, N.M., who organized the National Press Club briefing, said more than 120 former service members had told him they'd seen unidentified flying objects near nuclear weapon storage and testing grounds. Robert Jamison, a retired USAF nuclear missile targeting officer, told of several occasions having to go out and "re-start" missiles that had been deactivated, after UFOs were sighted nearby. [In a] December 1980 incident near two Royal Air Force Bases in Suffolk, England ... several U.S. Air Force personnel reported seeing a strange metallic object hovering. Retired USAF Col. Charles Halt said that in December 1980, when he was deputy base commander at RAF Bentwaters, strange lights in the forest were investigated by three patrolmen. They reported approaching a triangular craft, "approximately three meters on a side, dark metallic in appearance with strange markings." Halt found indentations in the ground, broken branches, and low-level background radiation. He and his team also witnessed various lights moving silently in the sky, of one which was "shedding something like molten metal." Several of the ex-servicemembers speaking Monday said when they'd brought their concern of such appearances to superiors, they'd been told it was "top secret" or that it "didn't happen." Hastings suggested the presence of such phenomena meant that aliens were monitoring our weapons, and perhaps warning us - "a sign to Washington and Moscow that we are playing with fire."
Note: To watch 18-minutes of this most fascinating testimony on the CNN website, click here. For lots more reliable information on the famous RAF Bentwaters incident, click here. For what may be the best UFO documentary ever made, watch Out of the Blue, available for free viewing at this link.
Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone. Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages. James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design. “They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”
Note: For an analysis of this new government move to spy on US citizens, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on disturbing government threats to privacy and civil liberties, click here and here.
For some Americans, milk has become a test of their freedom. And they're not paranoid kooks either; the government really is out to get them, authorizing seizures of bottles and jugs of unpasteurized milk and, in one recent case, a full-on, agents-brandishing-guns raid. Currently, under federal law, it's illegal to sell consumers unpasteurized milk that has been transported across state lines. Raw milk cannot be sold at all in 10 states. In 30 states, it can be sold only by certain farms under certain conditions. And in the remaining states, retail sales are allowed but are greatly hindered by technicalities. An underground railroad has emerged to get milk from cows to consumers without any high-tech processing in between. Now comes the proposed Food Safety Modernization Act, federal legislation that would improve the FDA's ability to trace [illness] outbreaks and give the agency — which can already fine companies that knowingly sell contaminated foods — the power to order recalls. Supporters say they know the milk may contain pathogens; the most ardent say they welcome the bugs, many of which have peacefully resided in our guts for thousands of years. All agree that they should be able to drink raw milk if they want to.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.
The Pentagon has burned 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's memoir Operation Dark Heart, his book about going undercover in Afghanistan. A Department of Defense official tells Fox News that the department purchased copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security. The U.S. Army originally cleared the book for release. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency attempted to block the book about the tipping point in Afghanistan and a controversial pre-9/11 data mining project called "Able Danger." In a letter obtained by Fox News, the DIA says national security could be breached if Operation Dark Heart is published in its current form. The agency also attempted to block key portions of the book that claim "Able Danger" successfully identified hijacker Mohammed Atta as a threat to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Note: Able Danger was the program which identified Mohamed Atta and three other alleged 9/11 hijackers as a potential terror threat before 9/11. To read major media reports on the intense controversy around this program (which is likely why the book is being burned), click here.
The Obama administration on Saturday invoked the state secrets privilege which would kill a lawsuit on behalf of U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged terrorist said to be targeted for death or capture under a U.S. government program. In its court papers, the Justice Department said that the issues in the case are for the executive branch of government to decide rather than the courts. The department also said the case entails information that is protected by the military and state secrets privilege. "The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy," the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement. "In matters of life and death, no executive should have a blank check." Al-Awlaki's father, through the CCR and the ACLU, filed the case in federal court in Washington. The lawsuit filed on the cleric's behalf seeks to have a court declare that the Constitution and international law bar the government from carrying out targeted killings; seeks to block the targeted killing of al-Awlaki; and seeks to force the U.S. government to disclose the standards for determining whether U.S. citizens can be targeted for death.
Note: For an analysis of the Obama administration's assertion of the right to assassinate US citizens, click here. For many reports from reliable sources on state secrets, click here.
The US Central Intelligence Agency is running and paying for a secret 3,000-strong army of Afghan paramilitaries whose main aim is assassinating Taliban and al-Qa'ida operatives not just in Afghanistan but across the border in neighbouring Pakistan's tribal areas. Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother in the southern province of Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly revealed. [Bob] Woodward's [new] book, Obama's Wars, describes these forces as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qa'ida and Afghan Taliban havens there. The secret army is split into "Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams", and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of many Pakistani Taliban fighters who have crossed the border into Afghanistan to fight Nato and Afghan government forces there. There are ever-increasing numbers of "kill-or-capture" missions undertaken by US Special Forces against Afghan Taliban and foreign fighters, who hope to drive rank-and-file Taliban towards the Afghan government's peace process by eliminating their leaders.
Note: For commentary on this report of the CIA's army of assassins, click here. For key reports on the realities of the "global war on terror," click here.
A report released in Geneva by three United Nations-appointed human rights experts said [on September 22] that Israeli forces violated international law when they raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May, killing nine activists. The United Nations Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission concluded that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza was unlawful because of the humanitarian crisis there, and that the military raid on the flotilla was brutal and disproportionate. The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded by saying the Human Rights Council had a “biased, politicized and extremist approach.” The Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza, praised the report and called for those involved in the raid to be tried. Israel refused to cooperate with the panel, but is working with a separate United Nations group that is examining the incident.
Italian authorities froze nearly Ł20 million belonging to the Vatican’s bank on [September 21] in an unprecedented investigation into alleged money-laundering by the Holy See. It was the first time that such action has been taken against the bank, which is formally known as the IOR or Institute for Religious Works. Prosecutors placed the bank’s director-general and its chairman under investigation in connection with two allegedly suspicious transactions which may have breached Italy’s anti-money laundering laws. Investigators have spent more than a year scrutinising millions of euros of Vatican bank transactions to see if they violated regulations. The Vatican bank’s chairman, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi ... was placed under investigation. He is not being investigated for laundering money but for omitting to disclose key information. The Vatican expressed “the utmost confidence” in the bank’s senior executives, including Mr Gotti Tedeschi. A member of the conservative religious movement Opus Dei, he has spoken out on the need for more morality in financing. Mr Gotti Tedeschi is a close adviser to Italy’s finance minister, Giulio Tremonti. The IOR manages the Vatican’s finances as well as the accounts of Catholic organisations and religious orders.
Note: This unprecedented case shows that big things are happening behind the scenes. There is much more here than catches the eye.
The Food and Drug Administration has wrapped up three days of hearings and public comment on the effort by AquaBounty Technologies, a Massachusetts company, to sell salmon genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as normal salmon. But the meetings ended without an FDA decision on whether the company can move ahead with sales. USA TODAY's Elizabeth Weise [answers questions about the issue]: Q: What are the issues? A: There are really two: Are these fish safe to eat, and are they safe for the environment? FDA staff, in a report released earlier this month, found the genetically engineered (or GE) salmon to be as safe to eat as normal salmon. But several members of the agency's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee felt that the tests for food safety could have included more data and encouraged the agency to request more from the company. Q: What's the environmental issue? A: Some scientists and environmental groups worry that if these fast-growing salmon escaped into the ocean, they might out-compete native salmon populations for both food and mates. As almost all wild Atlantic salmon are endangered, anything that could harm them is of concern.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here. For a highly-informative overview of the threats posesd to health and the environment by genetically modified foods, click here.
A Berkshire family say they are devastated at being forced to leave their pet dog in France after his pet passport microchip failed. Matt Roberts and his family returned to Arborfield, near Reading, without their dog Indy because the technology had stopped working. Indy has undergone surgery costing Ł1,000 to remove the chip. It could take up to six months for him to be issued with a new pet passport. Mr Roberts had just finished a two week holiday in the south of France with his wife Dorota and six-month-old daughter Harriet when he tried to return to the UK via Dunkirk. However, when the dogs tried to re-enter the country the scanners could not read Indy's microchip. The family had spent spent Ł400 on pet passports for his two Shih Tzu dogs, Indy and Buzz. Indy will remain in kennels in France unless the manufacturer can confirm that the chip they have removed from him matches the documentation on the pet passport. However, vets have said that the chip has corrupted and will be difficult to read. Mr Roberts may have to apply for a new pet passport for Indy or put the dog into quarantine. He said he was reluctant to do this, and was already spending Ł15 a night to keep his dog in kennels. A Defra spokesman said: "Around 100 pets a year have a failed or missing microchip on arrival to the UK. "In the majority of cases the microchip number can be removed and identified or read by the manufacturer, and the pet eventually allowed to enter."
Note: Another media article shows the same thing happened to a second couple. Explore an excellent website on the risks and dangers of microchipping your pets.
Public health experts have called for an independent body to monitor drug safety after it emerged that young children were more likely to end up in hospital because of side effects from a flu vaccine than they were from the disease itself. More than 1000 adverse responses in children under five were reported ... by June this year, including nearly 100 instances of febrile convulsions, a seizure which in a small number of cases has been associated with long-term adverse health outcomes. The side effects were linked to one of the three seasonal flu vaccines, Fluvax and Fluvax junior, from the drug company CSL, but the [Therapeutic Goods Administration] maintained despite that, that "the overall risk-benefit balance of both products remains positive". Research published yesterday in the journal Eurosurveillance showed Fluvax might have caused two to three hospital admissions due to seizure for every admission from flu it prevented. The chief executive of the Public Health Association of Australia, Michael Moore, said further examination of risks was needed, at arm's length from the TGA. The government should consider creating an independent centre. "There is a concern … that the TGA is the body that approves vaccines and is also the body that determines what the risks and benefits are when concerns are raised," he said.
Note: For lots more from reliable souces on the dangers of many types of vaccines, click here.
As the Food and Drug Administration considers whether to approve genetically modified salmon, one thing seems certain: Shoppers staring at fillets in the seafood department will find it tough to pick out the conventional fish from the one created with genes from another species. Despite a growing public demand for more information about how food is produced, that won't happen with the salmon because of idiosyncracies embedded in federal regulations. The FDA says it cannot require a label on the genetically modified food once it determines that the altered fish is not "materially" different from other salmon - something agency scientists have said is true. Perhaps more surprising, conventional food makers say the FDA has made it difficult for them to boast that their products do not contain genetically modified ingredients. The decision carries great weight because, while genetically modified agriculture has been permitted for years and engineered crops are widely used in processed foods, this would be the first modified animal allowed for human consumption in the United States. The AquAdvantage salmon has been given a gene from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish, and a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon. Consumer advocates say they worry about labeling for genetically engineered beef, pork and other fish, which are lining up behind the salmon for federal approval.
Note: For an excellent overview of the dangers of genetically modified foods, click here.
The National Security Agency, headquarters for the government’s eavesdroppers and code breakers, has been located at Fort Meade, Md., for half a century. Its nickname, the Fort, has been familiar for decades to neighbors and government workers alike. Yet that nickname is one of hundreds of supposed secrets Pentagon reviewers blacked out in the new, censored edition of an intelligence officer’s Afghan war memoir. The Defense Department is buying and destroying the entire uncensored first printing of Operation Dark Heart, by Anthony Shaffer, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, in the name of protecting national security. Another supposed secret removed from the second printing: the location of the Central Intelligence Agency’s training facility — Camp Peary, Va., a fact discoverable from Wikipedia. And the name and abbreviation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, routinely mentioned in news articles. And the fact that Sigint means “signals intelligence.” Not only did the Pentagon black out Colonel Shaffer’s cover name in Afghanistan, Chris Stryker, it deleted the source of his pseudonym: the name of John Wayne’s character in the 1949 movie “The Sands of Iwo Jima.” The redactions offer a rare glimpse behind the bureaucratic veil that cloaks information the government considers too important for public airing.
Note: Interesting that this NY Times article fails to even mention the "Able Danger" program which Shaffer publicly revealed had identified some of the hijackers before 9/11. For powerful information suggesting government foreknowledge of 9/11 through this program, click here. Yet a Fox News article available here gives all the details. For lots more from major media sources on government secrecy, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.