News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
U.S. intelligence officials are [now claiming] that popular Internet services that enable computer users to adopt cartoon-like personas in three-dimensional online spaces also are creating security vulnerabilities by opening novel ways ... to move money, organize and conduct corporate espionage. Over the last few years, "virtual worlds" such as Second Life and other role-playing games have become home to millions of computer-generated personas known as avatars. By directing their avatars, people can take on alternate personalities, socialize, explore and earn and spend money across uncharted online landscapes. Nascent economies have sprung to life in these 3-D worlds, complete with currency, banks and shopping malls. Corporations and government agencies have opened animated virtual offices, and a growing number of organizations hold meetings where avatars gather and converse in newly minted conference centers. Intelligence officials ... say they're convinced that the qualities that many computer users find so attractive about virtual worlds -- including anonymity, global access and the expanded ability to make financial transfers outside normal channels -- have turned them into seedbeds for transnational threats. The government's growing concern seems likely to make virtual worlds the next battlefield in the struggle over the proper limits on the government's quest to [expand] data collection and analysis and the surveillance of commercial computer systems. Virtual worlds could also become an actual battlefield. The intelligence community has begun contemplating how to use Second Life and other such communities as platforms for cyber weapons.
Abdul Razzaq Hekmati was regarded here as a war hero, famous for ... a daring prison break he organized for three opponents of the Taliban government in 1999. But in 2003, Mr. Hekmati was arrested by American forces in southern Afghanistan when, senior Afghan officials ... contend, he was falsely accused by his enemies of being a Taliban commander himself. For the next five years he was held at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he died of cancer on Dec. 30. The fate of Mr. Hekmati, the first detainee to die of natural causes at Guantánamo ... demonstrates the enduring problems of the tribunals at Guantánamo. Afghan officials, and some Americans, complain that detainees are effectively thwarted from calling witnesses in their defense, and that the Afghan government is never consulted on the detention cases, even when it may be able to help. Mr. Hekmati’s case, officials who knew him said, shows that sometimes the Americans do not seem to know whom they are holding. In a report in February 2006 ... researchers at Seton Hall University School of Law ... concluded that no outside witnesses had ever been called to appear at Guantánamo. Lt. Col. Stephen E. Abraham ... stepped forward last June to criticize the tribunals. In a submission to the Supreme Court, he condemned them for relying on generalized evidence that would have been dismissed by any competent court, and as being devised to rubber-stamp the administration’s assertion that the detainees had been correctly designated “enemy combatants” when they were captured and that they could be held indefinitely.
The Ministry of Defence's announcement that it is to award 3m in compensation to 360 veterans of chemical weapons tests has put the spotlight on the Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. 1916: Building work begins at Porton Down ... to create an experimental base for research into chemical warfare. 1920: Large-scale expansion of the site begins, initially focusing on the effects of mustard gas - experiments in which thousands of volunteers were to participate. 1940: After the outbreak of war, a secret group is set up at Porton Down to investigate biological warfare. 1945: Thousands of military personnel had taken part in trials at Porton Down during World War II. As the war ended, volunteers began participating in nerve-agent trials there - a practice that was to continue until 1989. 1953: Leading Aircraftman Ronald Maddison participates in chemical experiments at Porton Down. Within an hour of being given sarin, he is dead. Military chiefs conduct an inquest in secret. Verdict: misadventure. 1989: Nerve-agent trials at Porton Down cease. 2002: Ministry of Defence (MoD) helpline set up to enable Porton Down veterans to find out more about the trials they were involved in. 2004: Fresh inquest into the 1953 death of Ronald Maddison returns a verdict of unlawful killing. The MoD [only two years later] admits "gross negligence". 2008: The BBC learns of a 3m out-of-court settlement between the MoD and veterans, under which the [360] ex-servicemen will each receive 8,300 and an apology ... without admission of liability.
Note: The military has repeatedly condoned horrendous research on live subjects. For a revealing list of highly unethical experimentation on human over the past 75 years, click here. For a concise summary of the government's secret quest to control the mind and human behavior no matter what the cost, click here.
An investigation into the illicit sale of American nuclear secrets was compromised by a senior official in the State Department, a former FBI employee has claimed. The official is said to have tipped off a foreign contact about a bogus CIA company used to investigate the sale of nuclear secrets. The firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates, was a front for Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent. Her public outing two years later in 2003 by White House officials became a cause célčbre. The claims that a State Department official blew the investigation into a nuclear smuggling ring have been made by Sibel Edmonds, 38, a former Turkish language translator in the FBI’s Washington field office. Plame, then 38, was the ... wife of a former US ambassador, Joe Wilson. She travelled widely for her work, often claiming to be an oil consultant. In fact she was a career CIA agent who was part of a small team investigating the same procurement network that the State Department official is alleged to have aided. Brewster Jennings was one of a number of covert enterprises set up to infiltrate the nuclear ring. [Edmonds said the State Department official] "found out about the arrangement . . . and he contacted one of the foreign targets and said . . . you need to stay away from Brewster Jennings because they are a cover for the government.“ Phillip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, said: “It’s pretty clear Plame was targeting the Turks. If indeed that [State Department] official was working with the Turks to violate US law on nuclear exports, it would have been in his interest to alert them to the fact that this woman’s company was affiliated to the CIA. I don’t know if that’s treason legally but many people would consider it to be.”
Note: To read former CIA agent Philip Giraldi's analysis of Edmonds' claims, in which he identifies the unnamed State Department official as Marc Grossman, click here. And to read an interview with Edmonds on the series of articles about her revelations appearing in the Sunday Times and media censorship elsewhere, click here.
The Nevada Supreme Court's ruling allowing a cable network to exclude Rep. Dennis Kucinich from a Democratic presidential debate was barely a blip on the media radar screen. But in the long term, the court decision might prove to be [very] significant. It constituted the strongest judicial statement yet of news organizations' near-absolute power to control participation in pre-election forums. Kucinich, the Ohio congressman who polls in the low single digits but has a fervent following among his party's anti-war base, [charged] that the cable channel had promised to let him in when he met its standards, then abruptly changed those standards to keep him out. MSNBC said initially that the debate was open to Democrats who placed in the top four in a national poll. It invited Kucinich on Jan. 9 after a Gallup Poll a few days earlier ranked him fourth. But two days later, after New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson dropped out of the race, the channel narrowed its criteria to the top three candidates and withdrew Kucinich's invitation. The day before the debate, a Nevada judge ordered MSNBC to let Kucinich participate, saying the cable operator had entered into a binding contract that it couldn't rescind once the candidate accepted. The state's high court quickly granted review and, an hour before the debate, ruled 7-0 in the cable channel's favor. The bottom line: Debates, the public's sole opportunity to see competing candidates in a neutral setting, are the prerogative of the sponsoring organizations - typically, these days, the news media - which set the criteria and have free rein to alter them.
Note: For a summary of reliable reports on major problems with the electoral process, click here.
[In] 1944, British air force bombers hammered ... the Bavarian Academy of Science. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran. The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran. The wartime destruction made the project "outright impossible," Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s. Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. "He pretended it disappeared," says Angelika Neuwirth, a former pupil and protégée of the late Mr. Spitaler. Ms. Neuwirth, a professor of Arabic studies ... now is overseeing a revival of the research. The Quran is viewed by most Muslims as the unchanging word of God as transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. The text, they believe, didn't evolve or get edited. The earliest manuscripts of the Quran date from around 700 and use a skeletal version of the Arabic script that is difficult to decipher and can be open to divergent readings. Mystery and misfortune bedeviled the Munich archive from the start. The scholar who launched it perished in an odd climbing accident in 1933. An experienced climber ... his body was never given an autopsy; rumors spread of suicide or foul play. His successor died in a 1941 plane crash. Mr. Spitaler, who inherited the Quran collection and then hid it, fared better. He lived to age 93. The photos of the old manuscripts will form the foundation of a computer data base that Ms. Neuwirth's team believes will help tease out the history of Islam's founding text.
"To be blunt, if my wife and I didn't think it was helping him, we wouldn't have continued with it," says Dan Polley. He's talking about Mikey, the Polleys' 2˝-year-old in the next room, who was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia when he was 6 months old. Chemotherapy, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant have been crucial elements of Mikey's treatment. But the "it" his father speaks of is nothing like these aggressive, costly, and heavily researched exemplars of western care -— it is a kind of touch therapy. Gentle and benign, "healing touch" is intended to rebalance the energy field that its practitioners believe surrounds the body and flows through it along defined pathways, affecting health when disrupted. Several times a week, therapist Lynne Morrison spends 20 minutes unblocking and smoothing Mikey's energy field, which energy healers like Morrison say they can feel and correct. The setting for the unorthodox therapy ... would have been startling just five or 10 years ago. Morrison is on the staff of Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, a ... research-oriented emblem of western medicine. It perennially ranks among America's premier hospitals. And Mikey is only one of many children there receiving care that not long ago was called alternative medicine. Now it is more often called CAM, for complementary and alternative medicine, or integrative medicine, to avoid the loaded "alternative." The message the new labels are meant to convey is that the therapies more often go hand in hand with traditional medicine than substitute for it.
Note: For lots of exciting reports on new health research, click here.
The Defense Department's top watchdog has declined to investigate allegations that an American woman working under an Army contract in Iraq was raped by her co-workers. The case of former Halliburton/KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones gained national attention last month. An ABC News investigation revealed how an earlier investigation into Jones' alleged gang-rape in 2005 had not resulted in any prosecution, and that neither Jones nor Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been able to get answers from the Bush administration on the state of her case. In letters to lawmakers, DoD Inspector General Claude Kicklighter said that because the Justice Department still considers the investigation into Jones' case open, there is no need for him to look into the matter. "We're not satisfied with that," a Nelson spokesman said. Jones' lawyers also professed disappointment. Despite deferring to the Justice Department, Kicklighter's office told Nelson it was willing to pursue other questions Nelson raised about Jones' case. Kicklighter agreed to explore "whether and why" a U.S. Army doctor handed to KBR security officials the results of Jones' medical examination, a so-called "rape kit," which would have contained evidence of the crime if it had occurred. In a separate letter, Kicklighter's office said that the State Department had said its security officials had Jones' rape kit in their possession at one point.
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports on government corruption from major media sources, click here.
U.S. drug companies spend almost twice as much on marketing and promoting medications [as] on research and development, a new Canadian study says. "These numbers clearly show how promotion predominates over R&D in the pharmaceutical industry, contrary to the industry's claim," the authors write in this week's peer-reviewed journal Public Library of Science Medicine. Using data from two market research companies, the University of Quebec's Marc-André Gagnon and York University's Joel Lexchin found U.S. drug companies spent $57.5 billion US on promotional activities in 2004 compared with $31.5 billion on research and development. Promotional activities included free samples, visits from drug reps, direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs, meetings with doctors to promote products, e-mail promotions, direct mail and clinical trials designed to promote the prescribing of new drugs rather than to generate scientific data. The authors say their figure of $57.5 billion US is likely an underestimate, citing other avenues for promotion such as ghostwriting of articles in medical journals by drug company employees, or the off-label promotion of drugs. Drug companies have long argued they are driven primarily by research, while critics charge that marketing and profits are their primary concerns. There were extensive U.S. government reviews of the pharmacy business in the 1950s and '60s and again in the 1980s. But there hasn't been a comprehensive study of drug industry profits and spending in more than a decade.
Note: For a powerful overview of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
On the day she died, Benazir Bhutto planned to hand over to visiting U.S. lawmakers a report accusing Pakistan's intelligence services of a plot to rig parliamentary elections, sources close to the slain former Pakistani prime minister told CNN Tuesday. Bhutto was assassinated Thursday, hours before a scheduled meeting with Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-Rhode Island, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania. "Where an opposing candidate is strong in an area, they [supporters of President Pervez Musharraf] have planned to create a conflict at the polling station, even killing people if necessary, to stop polls at least three to four hours," the document says. The report also accused the government of planning to tamper with ballots and voter lists, intimidate opposition candidates and misuse U.S.-made equipment to monitor communications of opponents. One Bhutto source said the document was compiled at her request and said the information came from sources inside the police and intelligence services. Sen. Latif Khosa ... accused the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence of operating a rigging cell from a safe house in the capital, Islamabad. The goal, he said, is to change voting results electronically on election day. "The ISI has set up a mega-computer system where they can hack any computer in Pakistan and connect with the Election Commission," he said. Media outlets in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have run reports alleging that retired Brig. Gen. Ejaz Shah -- formerly an Inter-Services Intelligence officer and now head of the civilian Intelligence Bureau -- is involved in the vote rigging plans. Shah's name also turned up in a letter Bhutto wrote to Musharraf after the first attempt on her life on October 18, when she returned to Pakistan after eight years in exile. In the letter, the media reported, Shah was one of four Pakistani officials Bhutto named as people who wanted her dead.
Note: It is an extremely odd "coincidence" that Benazir Bhutto was planning to meet Senator Arlen Specter later in the day on which she was assassinated in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani military dictatorship. Specter was the inventor of the official "magic bullet" theory of the John F. Kennedy assassination, which purported to explain the physical evidence of several bullets from different directions in the bodies of Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally as having been caused by just one bullet from the rifle of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Business lobbyists ... are racing to secure final approval for a wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules, in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor. Hoping to lock in policies backed by a pro-business administration, poultry farmers are seeking an exemption for the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure. Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off for family needs and medical problems. And electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements. Even as they try to shape pending regulations, business lobbies are also looking beyond President Bush. Corporations and trade associations are recruiting Democratic lobbyists. And lobbyists, expecting battles over taxes and health care in 2009, are pouring money into the campaigns of Democratic candidates for Congress and the White House. At the Transportation Department, trucking companies are trying to get final approval for a rule increasing the maximum number of hours commercial truck drivers can work. And automakers are trying to persuade officials to set new standards for the strength of car roofs — standards far less stringent than what consumer advocates say is needed to protect riders in a rollover. At the Interior Department, coal companies are lobbying for a regulation that would allow them to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. A coalition of environmental groups has condemned the proposed rule, saying it would accelerate “the destruction of mountains, forests and streams throughout Appalachia.” A priority for many employers in 2008 is to secure changes in the rules for family and medical leave.
Note: For many revealing reports on corporate corruption, click here.
A Food and Drug Administration panel ... will review reports of abnormal behavior and other brain effects in more than 1,800 children who had taken the flu medicine Tamiflu since its approval in 1999, including 55 in the USA. Twenty-two of the U.S. reports were considered "serious," with symptoms such as convulsions, delirium or delusions, says Terry Hurley, spokesman for drugmaker Roche Laboratories. None of the U.S. cases resulted in death. But in Japan, Hurley says, five deaths have been reported in children under 16 as a result of neurological or psychiatric problems. "Four were fatal falls, and one was encephalitis in a patient with leukemia," he says. In addition, in people ages 17 to 21, there were two deaths in Japan, one a "fatal accident with abnormal behavior," Hurley says, and the second as a result of encephalopathy, a brain infection. Seven adult deaths attributed to neuropsychiatric problems also have been reported in Japan. The possible association between Tamiflu and neuropsychiatric effects was first reported in Japan, and in March, the Japanese government issued a safety warning restricting the drug's use in adolescents. Japan has been the major market for Tamiflu, accounting for 75% of the 48 million prescriptions written. The drug's Japanese distributor, Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., announced this month that it would cut by half the supply it had been planning to sell this winter, from 12 million to 6 million courses of treatment. In a statement, the company says demand dropped after reports in February that "several teenage patients with influenza who were also taking Tamiflu had fallen from buildings after taking the drug." A year ago Roche added a warning to its package insert label saying "people with the flu, particularly children, may be at an increased risk of self-injury and confusion shortly after taking Tamiflu," and their behavior should be monitored.
Note: For numerous powerful reports on health issues, click here.
Bradblog has been chasing the story about former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' offer to 'tell all.' [Daniel] Ellsberg says: "I'd say what she has is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers. From what [Edmonds] has to tell, it has a major difference from the Pentagon Papers in that it deals directly with criminal activity and may involve impeachable offenses. And I don't necessarily mean the President or the Vice-President, though I wouldn't be surprised if the information reached up that high. But other members of the Executive Branch may be impeached as well. There will be phone calls going out to the media saying 'don't even think of touching [Edmonds' case], you will be prosecuted for violating national security.'" [Edmonds] said: "The media called from Japan and France and Belgium and Germany and Canada and from all over the world. I'm getting contact from all over the world, but not from here." More Ellsberg: "I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to 'How do we deal with Sibel?' The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn't get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to the government and they would be told 'don't touch this, it's communications intelligence.' As long as they hold a united front on this, they don't run the risk of being shamed." [Edmonds:] "I will name the name of major publications who know the story, and have been sitting on it --- almost a year and a half." "How do you know they have the story?," we asked. "I know they have it because people from the FBI have come in and given it to them. They've given them the documents and specific case-numbers on my case."
Note: Though this is not from one of our normal reliable sources, Dan Ellsberg is a highly respected whistleblower who has received an abundance of major media coverage over the years. As the mainstream media are clearly and consciously ignoring this story, we felt it deserved to be posted, even though we don't have a major media source to back it up. For lots more reliable information on this courageous woman, click here.
The college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign events said "voters have the right to know what happened" and she wasn't the only one who was planted. In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said giving anyone specific questions to ask is "dishonest," and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics. Gallo-Chasanoff ... said what happened was simple: She said a senior Clinton staffer asked if she'd like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech the Democratic presidential hopeful gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6. "I sort of thought about it, and I said 'Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates' energy plans?'" Gallo-Chasanoff said Monday night. According to Gallo-Chasanoff, the staffer said, " 'I don't think that's a good idea, because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans.' " He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it. "The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she added. "It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question." Topping that sheet of paper was the following: "As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?" And while she said she would have rather used her own question, Gallo-Chasanoff said she didn't have a problem asking the campaign's because she "likes to be agreeable," adding that since she told the staffer she'd ask their pre-typed question she "didn't want to go back on my word." Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee said ... Clinton had "no idea who she was calling on." Gallo-Chasanoff wasn't so sure. "It seemed like she knew to call on me because there were so many people, and ... I was the only college student in that area," she said. Gallo-Chasanoff said she wasn't the only person given a question.
Note: Click on the link above to watch videos of the student asking the planted question and of the full interview with CNN.
Berkeley [Cal.] is set to become the first city in the nation to help thousands of its residents generate solar power without having to put money up front - attempting to surmount one of the biggest hurdles for people who don't have enough cash to go green. The City Council will vote Nov. 6 on a plan for the city to finance the cost of solar panels for property owners who agree to pay it back with a 20-year assessment on their property. Over two decades, the taxes would be the same or less than what property owners would save on their electric bills, officials say. "This plan could be our most important contribution to fighting global warming," Mayor Tom Bates said. "We've already seen interest from all over the U.S. People really think this plan can go." The idea is sparking interest from city and state leaders who are mindful of California's goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Officials in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica and several state agencies have contacted Berkeley about the details of its plan. "If this works, we'd want to look at this for other cities statewide," said Ken Alex, California deputy attorney general. "We think it's a very creative way to eliminate the barriers to getting solar panels, and it's fantastic that Berkeley's going ahead with this." This is how Berkeley's program would work: A property owner would hire a city-approved solar installer, who would determine the best solar system for the property, depending on energy use. Most residential solar panel systems in the city cost from $15,000 to $20,000. The city would pay the contractor for the system and its installation ... and would add an assessment to the property owner's tax bill to pay for the system. The property owner would save money on monthly Pacific Gas & Electric bill because electricity generated by the solar panels would partly replace electricity delivered by the utility.
Note: For many other innovative ideas to develop cheap, renewable energy sources, click here.
An internal Pentagon review this year found systemic problems ... in the military’s efforts to obtain records from American banks and consumer credit agencies in terrorism and espionage investigations, according to Pentagon documents. The newly disclosed documents, totaling more than 1,000 pages, provide additional confirmation of the military’s expanding use of what are known as national security letters under powers claimed under the Patriot Act. The documents show that the military has issued at least 270 of the letters since 2005, and about 500 in all since 2001. The documents were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by two private advocacy groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The New York Times first disclosed the military’s use of the letters in January, and senior members of Congress and civil liberties groups criticized the practice on grounds that it seemed to conflict with traditional Pentagon rules against domestic law enforcement operations. The documents raise a number of apparent discrepancies between the Defense Department’s internal practices and what officials have said publicly and to Congress about their use of the letters. The documents suggest, for instance, that military officials used the F.B.I. to collect records for what started as purely military investigations. And the documents also leave open the possibility that records could be gathered on nonmilitary personnel in the course of the investigations. Civil liberties advocates said recent controversy over the Department of Defense’s collection of information on antiwar protesters made them suspicious of the assertion that the letters had been used exclusively to focus on military personnel. “We are very skeptical that the D.O.D. is voluntarily limiting its own surveillance power,” said Melissa Goodman, a staff attorney for the A.C.L.U..
Somehow, the [Supreme Court] could not muster the four votes needed to grant review in the case of an innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in a secret overseas prison as part of the Bush administration’s ... anti-terrorism program. The victim, Khaled el-Masri, was denied justice by lower federal courts, which dismissed his civil suit in a reflexive bow to a flimsy government claim that allowing the case to go forward would put national security secrets at risk. Those rulings ... represented a major distortion of the state secrets doctrine, a rule ... that was originally intended to shield specific evidence in a lawsuit filed against the government. It was never designed to dictate dismissal of an entire case before any evidence is produced. The Masri case ... is being actively discussed all over the world. The only place it cannot be discussed, it seems, is in a United States courtroom. In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting Mr. Masri to “extraordinary rendition,” the morally and legally unsupportable United States practice of transporting foreign nationals to be interrogated in other countries known to use torture and lacking basic legal protections. It’s hard to imagine what, at this point, needs to be kept secret, other than the ways in which the administration behaved, ... quite possibly illegally, in the Masri case. The Supreme Court has left an innocent person without any remedy for his wrongful imprisonment and torture. It has ... established [itself] as Supreme Enabler of the Bush administration’s efforts to avoid accountability for its actions. These are not accomplishments to be proud of.
The Knights Templar, the medieval Christian military order accused of heresy and sexual misconduct, will soon be partly rehabilitated when the Vatican publishes trial documents it had closely guarded for 700 years. A reproduction of the minutes of trials against the Templars, "Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars" is a massive work ... with a 5,900 euros ($8,333) price tag. "This is a milestone because it is the first time that these documents are being released by the Vatican," said Professor Barbara Frale, a medievalist at the Vatican's Secret Archives. The parchment, also known as the Chinon Chart, was "misplaced" in the Vatican archives until 2001. The Templars ... were founded in 1119. They amassed enormous wealth and helped finance wars of some European monarchs. Legends of their hidden treasures, secret rituals and power have figured over the years in films and bestsellers such as "The Da Vinci Code." The Knights have also been portrayed as guardians of the legendary Holy Grail. The Templars went into decline after Muslims re-conquered the Holy Land at the end of the 13th century and were accused of heresy by King Philip IV of France, their foremost persecutor. Templars were burned at the stake for heresy by King Philip's agents after they made confessions that most historians believe were given under duress. Philip was heavily indebted to the Templars, who had helped him finance his wars, and getting rid of them was a convenient way of cancelling his debts, some historians say. Rosi Fontana, who has helped the Vatican coordinate the project, said: "The most incredible thing is that 700 years have passed and people are still fascinated by all of this."
Note: The mass arrest of the Knights Templar occurred on Friday the 13th of 1307, which some believe was the origin of Friday the 13th being a day of bad luck. This group is suspected of harboring many secrets. The order still exists today (do a Google search) and may still play a role in political manipulations. For highly revealing media articles on other powerful secret societies, click here.
Despite being implicated in several controversial killings, [Blackwater] is the Pentagon's most favoured contractor and has effective diplomatic immunity in Iraq. Referred to as "the most powerful mercenary army in the world", both the US ambassador to Iraq and the army's top generals hold it in regard. The company, based near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, was co-founded by Erik Prince, a billionaire right-wing fundamentalist. At its HQ, Blackwater has trained more than 20,000 mercenaries to operate as freelancers in wars around the world. Prince is a big bankroller of the Republican Party - giving a total of around $275,550 - and was a young intern in the White House of George Bush Sr. Under George Bush Jr, Blackwater received lucrative no-bid contracts for work in Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. His firm has pulled down contracts worth at least $320 million in Iraq alone. Jeremy Scahill, who wrote the book Blackwater: The Rise Of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, says when Bush was re-elected in 2004, one company boss sent this email to staff: "Bush Wins, Four More Years!! Hooyah!!" One Blackwater employment policy is to hire ex-administration big-hitters into key positions. It hired Cofer Black, a former State Department co-ordinator for counter-terrorism and former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre, as vice-chairman. Robert Richer, a former CIA divisional head, joined Blackwater as vice-president of intelligence in 2005. Scahill says the firm is "the front line in what the Bush administration views as the necessary revolution in military affairs" - privatisation of as many roles as possible. Scahill went on to call Prince a "neo-crusader, a Christian supremacist, who ... has been allowed to create a private army to defend Christendom around the world."
The nation’s biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs. The campaign — which involves some of Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms — has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed. If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community — or risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to the government without a judicial warrant. But critics say the language proposed by the White House — drafted in close cooperation with the industry officials — is so extraordinarily broad that it would provide retroactive immunity for all past telecom actions related to the surveillance program. Its practical effect, they argue, would be to shut down any independent judicial or state inquires into how the companies have assisted the government in eavesdropping on the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. “It’s clear the goal is to kill our case," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, [which] filed the main lawsuit against the telecoms after The New York Times first disclosed, in December 2005, that President Bush had approved a secret program to monitor the phone conversations of U.S. residents without first seeking judicial warrants. “I find it a little shocking that Congress would participate in the covering up of what has been going on," added Cohn.
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.