News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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The Bush administration’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting paid 10 journalists here to provide commentary on Radio and TV Martí, which transmit to Cuba government broadcasts critical of Fidel Castro, a spokesman for the office said Friday. The group included three journalists at El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language sister newspaper of The Miami Herald, which fired them Thursday after learning of the relationship. Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba for El Nuevo Herald, received the largest payment, almost $175,000 since 2001. Other journalists have been found to accept money from the Bush administration, including Armstrong Williams, a commentator and talk-show host who received $240,000 to promote its education initiatives. But while the Castro regime has long alleged that some Cuban-American reporters in Miami were paid by the government, the revelation on Friday ... was the first evidence of that. After Mr. Williams admitted in 2005 to accepting money from the Federal Education Department through a public relations company, federal auditors said the Bush administration had violated the law by disseminating “covert propaganda.” A few months later, The Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon had paid millions of dollars to another public relations firm to plant propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the manipulation of mass media.
As many as one in 300 HIV patients never get sick and never suffer damage to their immune systems and AIDS experts said on Wednesday they want to know why. Most have gone unnoticed by the top researchers, because they are well, do not need treatment and do not want attention, said Dr. Bruce Walker of Harvard Medical School. But Walker and colleagues want to study these so-called "elite" patients in the hope that their cases can help in the search for a vaccine or treatments. So far Walker and colleagues have not been able to find out why certain people can live for 15 years and longer with the virus and never get ill. The AIDS virus usually kills patients within two years if they are not treated. Walker has tracked down 200 elite patients and has now joined up with other prominent AIDS researchers to find at least 1,000 "elites" in North America and as many as possible globally.
Most of the electronic voting machines widely adopted since the disputed 2000 presidential election "pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state and local elections," a report out Tuesday concludes. There are more than 120 security threats to the three most commonly purchased electronic voting systems, the study by the Brennan Center for Justice says. For what it calls the most comprehensive review of its kind, the New York City-based non-partisan think tank convened a task force of election officials, computer scientists and security experts to study e-voting vulnerabilities. Together, the three systems account for 80% of the voting machines that will be used in this November's election. Lawsuits have been filed in at least six states to block the purchase or use of computerized machines. Election officials in California and Pennsylvania recently issued urgent warnings to local polling supervisors about potential software problems in touch-screen voting machines. Among the findings: Using corrupt software to switch votes from one candidate to another is the easiest way to attack all three systems; the most vulnerable voting machines use wireless components open to attack by "virtually any member of the public with some knowledge and a personal digital assistant;" even electronic systems that use voter-verified paper records are subject to attack unless they are regularly audited; most states have not implemented election procedures or countermeasures to detect software attacks.
Note: For an abundance of reliable, verifiable information on elections manipulations:
http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation
Chief executive officers in the United States earned 262 times the pay of an average worker in 2005. In fact, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in 52 weeks, said the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The typical worker's compensation averaged just under $42,000 for the year, while the average CEO brought home almost $11 million. In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies earned 24 times a worker's pay. In recent years, compensation has been a hot issue with shareholders who have been bombarded with news stories about chief executives who are given multimillion dollar bonus and pay packages even if shares have declined. The chief executives of 11 of the largest companies were awarded a total of $865 million in pay in the last two years, even as they presided over a total loss of $640 billion in shareholder value, a recent study from governance firm the Corporate Library, found.
The federal government sued the New Jersey attorney general and other state officials Wednesday to stop them from seeking information about telephone companies' cooperation with the National Security Agency. The unusual filing...is the latest effort by federal authorities to halt legal proceedings aimed at revealing whether and how often AT&T, Verizon and other phone companies have provided customer records to the NSA without a court order. New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber, a Democrat, and other officials sent subpoenas to five carriers on May 17, asking for documents that would explain whether they supplied customer records to the NSA, the lawsuit said. The subpoenas followed by a few days a USA Today report that the phone companies had complied with the secretive agency's request for the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Justice Department said more than 20 lawsuits have been filed around the country alleging that the phone companies illegally assisted the NSA. The government says sensitive national security information would be revealed if judges allow those cases to proceed. In this matter, the federal government said the New Jersey officials are treading on federal turf and that the companies, if forced to comply with the subpoenas, would be confirming or denying the existence of the program. President Bush and other top federal officials have refused to do that.
A serene setting in Ottawa's west-end Kanata suburb has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards and a bevy of conspiracy theories. The security outside the Brookstreet Hotel is much tighter than it is on Parliament Hill. Inside, the CBC was told, all guests were asked to check out at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday. The hotel appears to be hosting the annual meeting of one of the world's most secretive and powerful societies: the Bilderberg group. But, of course, no one will admit it. People who follow the Bilderberg group say it persuaded Europe to adopt a common currency, and, among other things, persuaded Bill Clinton to support the North American Free Trade Agreement. "David Rockefeller is going to be here. Henry Kissinger is going to be here. Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, is going to be here" says Daniel Estulin, who has written a book about the Bilderberg group. Jim Tucker, who has followed the Bilderberg group for the last 30 years, told CBC News he is troubled by all the secrecy. "Officials of the United States government [should not] have a private meeting with private citizens about public policy," Tucker says.
Imagine the dilemma of having so much cash in your bank account that you didn't know what to do with it. This pipe dream for the average American is now reality for the country's biggest corporations. The industrial companies that make up the Standard & Poor's 500 index...have a staggering $643 billion in cash and equivalents. "We're in a time that is out of whack with all historical numbers," said Howard Silverblatt, equity market analyst at Standard & Poor's. "People are demanding why corporations need so much cash, what are they going to do with it?" Companies began propping up their reserves through 16 straight quarters of double-digit profit growth. Leading the pack with the most cash is Exxon Mobil Corp., which has about $36.55 billion on its balance sheet. That amount is nearly equal to its 2005 profit of $36.13 billion, the highest ever for a U.S. company. Some results of the cash riches: An unprecedented $500 billion of stock buybacks. Last year, ExxonMobil spent $18.2 billion buying its shares. One of the biggest avenues in which companies have spent this excess money has been through mergers and acquisitions. Some 75.4 percent of all deals under $1 billion so far this year were done purely with cash.
Note: A Google search reveals that though this Associated Press article was widely picked up by medium-sized newspapers in the U.S., none of the top 10 papers picked it up. The Seattle newspaper above also removed the word "huge" from the title after it was published. $36 billion means that more than $100 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. went into ExxonMobil profits last year, and another $100 for each person went into their cash reserves. If ExxonMobil and other oil companies have so much extra cash, why are gas prices so high? It's also quite interesting that the advertisements of these mega-corporations continually invite us to go into debt buying their products, while their profits and cash reserves grow ever higher.
The [9/11] commission's conclusions and recommendations should be totally rejected. Its story is full of lies, distortions and omissions of fact. Following are two of the more than 40 reasons why the official story about what happened on 9/11 is untrue. First, who were the hijackers? None of those named appear on any of the passenger lists released by the airlines. Six of the men named by the government are still alive. We know that because European media have interviewed them. In his book, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," Dr. David Ray Griffin documents all that and concludes the whole report is one long lie. Second, in the months after 9/11 all of the surviving New York City Fire Department personnel who were on the scene were interviewed. Those oral histories were recorded and withheld from the public until Aug. 15, 2005. Only after losing in court three times did the city of New York finally release them. All 503 are now posted on The New York Times Web site. Why did the city fight so hard to keep them from the public? It turns out those oral histories reveal details about what was happening in the World Trade Center buildings that are completely inconsistent with the tale told by the commission. Dozens of firefighters and medics reported hearing, seeing and feeling explosives going off in the buildings that collapsed. Why were there explosives, very powerful explosives by all accounts, going off in the buildings? The report seems to be an obvious cover-up. The question that we all need to ask is: What is the commission covering up? Was 9/11, in fact, an inside job?
Is there a case for conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the Iraq war? About 10 minutes into the ultra-low-budget documentary 'Loose Change,' now making its way around the Internet, that late, great genius of addled truth-telling, Hunter S. Thompson, is heard giving his gonzo opinion of the way the American press behaved after 9/11. "Well, let's see, 'shamefully' is the word that comes to mind," he says. The kernel of truth in all the conspiracy theories is that the Bush administration's biggest supporters and closest political allies have benefited mightily from its policy of open-ended war. Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company -- which is all about both oil and defense -- has seen its stock rise from about $12 a share to about $80 a share under this administration. ExxonMobil, which has contributed mightily to the Republican Party, has seen its stock soar from about $32 to $64 since Bush took office. Share prices in both companies, and in their industries, were plunging before the Bush administration came to office in early 2001. 'Loose Change' doesn't present a plausible case for conspiracy, only a collection of innuendoes. But the invasion of Iraq, well, that's a rather different matter. As a whole raft of books by former members of the administration, Bush admirers and outside analysts have established over the last couple of years, the president and vice president were hell-bent on toppling Saddam Hussein even before September 2001.
Note: Though the author belittles 'Loose Change,' he also makes some great points and alerts people to the fact that this free documentary has gained wide popularity.
Invisible "smog", created by the electricity that powers our civilisation, is giving children cancer, causing miscarriages and suicides and making some people allergic to modern life, new scientific evidence reveals. The UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) calls the electronic smog "one of the most common and fastest growing environmental influences". It adds that "everyone in the world" is exposed to it and that "levels will continue to increase as technology advances". Wiring creates electrical fields, one component of the smog, even when nothing is turned on. And all electrical equipment - from TVs to toasters - give off another one, magnetic fields. Radio frequency fields - yet another component - are emitted by microwave ovens, TV and radio transmitters, mobile phone masts and phones themselves. The WHO says that the smog could interfere with the tiny natural electrical currents that help to drive the human body. The International Agency for Research on Cancer - part of the WHO and the leading international organisation on the disease - classes the smog as a "possible human carcinogen". Perhaps strangest of all, there is increasing evidence that the smog causes some people to become allergic to electricity, leading to nausea, pain, dizziness, depression and difficulties in sleeping and concentrating. Some are so badly affected that they have to change their lifestyles. The WHO ... estimates that up to three in every 100 people are affected by [the condition].
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.
The question puzzles and enrages a city: how is it that the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth? Irritation grows as residents deprived of air-conditioning and running water three years after the US-led invasion watch the massive US Embassy they call 'George W's palace' rising from the banks of the Tigris. In the pavement cafés, people moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam Hussein built. Officially, the design of the compound is supposed to be a secret, but you cannot hide the giant construction cranes and the concrete contours of the 21 buildings that are taking shape. Looming over the skyline, the embassy has the distinction of being the only big US building project in Iraq that is on time and within budget. In a week when Washington revealed a startling list of missed deadlines and overspending on building projects, Congress was told that the bill for the embassy was $592 million (Ł312 million).
Note: For the deeper reasons behind this war, don't miss http://www.WantToKnow.info/warcoverup
A sugar pill, a salt solution, a doctor in a white jacket -- these all have the power to cure as long as the patient believes in their healing qualities. That seems impossible. So what does science say about the elusive placebo effect? Very little research has been done in this area of medicine. The pharmaceutical industry can’t profit; after all, they can’t make money from sugar pills. It is often forgotten that the effect could help people and shave billions off spiralling health-care costs. If researchers could gain more insight into how the effect works, it would stand as one of the biggest medical breakthroughs in history. Some people are convinced that the effect proves that strength of mind is sufficient to heal the body. Placebos have...proven successful in treating depression, anxiety, stress, warts and ulcers -- sometimes in as many as 60 to 70 percent of the cases. There are...objective effects everyone can measure. Placebo treatments have been shown to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels as well as improve reaction speeds, pulse rates and immune-system activity. Ultimately, the placebo phenomenon points to a strange paradox in modern medical science. As soon as an alternative-health treatment proves successful, it is dismissed as the placebo effect. It works only because people believe in it. Yet this explanation appears to contradict one of the foundations of medical science, which stresses that the mind and body are separate, therefore ruling out the possibility of healing through belief.
Note: For ideas on why the placebo effect has rarely been studied, see our two-page health cover-up summary at http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup
The Freemasons say they are simply a fraternity that aims to make good men better and to support each other. Because they are essentially secret, however, groups such as the Freemasons can stir all kinds of theories. Some conspiracy theorists say that the Freemasons, or Masons, have designs on government control. "The thing people think about when they think of Masonry is secrecy. They think of this hidden order that they know almost nothing about," said Steven C. Bullock, author of Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order. The Freemasons have a 500-year history. Originally, they were stonemasons who built the great cathedrals of Europe. There were once anti-Masonic political parties and early 19th-century President John Quincy Adams called the Freemasons a power-hungry "boa constrictor" of an organization. Throughout the centuries, the Freemasons evolved into a wide-ranging, worldwide fraternity with many members having considerable power and influence. In this country, that influence has sometimes reached all the way into the White House. Fourteen of 43 presidents have been Freemasons. "More than one-third of the presidents belonged to the fraternity, so this is a substantial tradition of politicians being involved in Masonry. There are fears at times in American history that Masons are too involved in politics," Bullock said.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on secret societies, click here.
[April 10, 2006] The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have...helped the Bush administration tie the war to...Sept. 11. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," [said] Col. Derek Harvey, who...was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature...made him more important than he really is." One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war. There were direct military efforts to use the U.S. media to affect views of the war. One slide in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter. Filkins's resulting article...ran on the Times front page. U.S. propaganda efforts in Iraq in 2004 cost $24 million. "Villainize Zarqawi" one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed..."PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work. One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said..."The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."
Two research teams have independently discovered explanations for the chief features of the H5N1 bird flu virus -- its difficulty infecting humans, and the deadly effects when it does. Unlike influenza viruses that are passed easily between people, H5N1 has a hard time attaching to cells in the nose, throat and upper airways. But it readily attaches to cells deep in the lungs. This suggests that people need close and heavy exposure to the H5N1 virus for it to get into the lungs.
Note: Yet governments have already spent many millions of dollars stockpiling Tamiflu believing that avian flu will mutate and cause a pandemic killing millions. And top government officials have already made many millions of dollars on stocks related to Tamiflu--the drug designed to combat a deadly virus which hasn't even mutated yet to know if the drug works! Remember that generating fear in the public is one of the best ways to make a profit. For lots more, click here.
The Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has paid thousands of pounds in compensation to servicemen who were fed LSD without their consent in clandestine mind-control experiments in the 1950s. MI6 has agreed an out-of-court settlement with the men, who said they were duped into taking part in the experiments and had waited years to learn the truth. Don Webb, a former airman, said yesterday: "I feel vindicated; this has been a classic cover-up for years." MI6's counterparts at the CIA also did LSD experiments on men without their knowledge to try to control their minds. Mr Webb said scientists gave him LSD at least twice in a week. He remembers a nightmarish experience when he hallucinated for a long time. He saw "walls melting, cracks appearing in people's faces ... eyes would run down cheeks, Salvador Dali-type faces ... a flower would turn into a slug". He said he had first made inquiries about the experiments in the 1960s but was "blanked by the government, which quoted the Official Secrets Act". He said he experienced flashbacks for 10 years after the experiments. "They treated us just like guinea pigs."
Note: For lots more on the use of human guinea pigs by the government in attempts to master mind control, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol and http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol10pg#lsd
Project Censored specializes in covering the top news stories which were either ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year. Project Censored is a research team composed of nearly 200 university faculty, students, and community experts who review about 1,000 news story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources, and national significance. The top 25 stories selected are submitted to a panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. The results are published each year in an excellent book available for purchase at their website, amazon.com, and most major book stores.
1.
White House Erodes Open Government
2. Media Coverage on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Death Toll
3. Distorted Election Coverage
4. Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In
5. U.S. Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia
6. The Real Oil for Food Scam
7. Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood
8. Iraqi Farmers Threatened By US Mandates
9. Iran’s New Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency
10. Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy
One of the nation's leading suppliers of electronic voting machines may decide against selling new equipment in North Carolina after a judge declined Monday to protect it from criminal prosecution should it fail to disclose software code as required by state law. Diebold...is worried it could be charged with a felony if officials determine the company failed to make all of its code some of which is owned by third-party software firms, including Microsoft Corp. available for examination by election officials in case of a voting mishap. The requirement is part of the minimum voting equipment standards approved by state lawmakers earlier this year following the loss of more than 4,400 electronic ballots in Carteret County during the November 2004 election. The lost votes threw at least one close statewide race into uncertainty for more than two months. Diebold machines were blamed for voting disruptions in a California primary election last year. California has refused to certify some machines because of their malfunction rate.
A second manufacturer is beginning mass production of a vaccine to protect against bird flu, and the Senate moved Thursday to invest far more -- $8 billion -- on preparations in case the influenza strain ever sparks a worldwide epidemic. Before the Senate acted, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt awarded a $62.5 million contract to Emeryville, Calif.-based Chiron Corp. to manufacture bird flu vaccine. Sanofi-Aventis of Paris began manufacturing $100 million worth of a similar vaccine last month. The Bush administration is putting the final touches on its plan for how to fight the next super-flu...amid growing concern that the H5N1 influenza strain spreading among birds from Asia to Europe could trigger a pandemic if it mutates into a form easily spread from person to person. The massive out-of-budget expenditure...would increase stockpiles of the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza, thought to be effective against current strains of bird flu. "The money that we spend now will not be wasted even if this particular strain of the virus, H5N1, ends up not becoming a pandemic flu," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. "We know that over the next two, three decades there will be a pandemic flu. That's almost certain."
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Isn't is interesting that over $60 million dollars (potentially $8 billion!) has been "awarded" for a vaccine against a bird flu that hasn't even mutated yet? How are these people so certain that it will mutate and kill millions of people? How do we know these vaccines will work when it hasn't even mutated? Note also that the pharmaceutical industry, which manufactures vaccines, has the largest lobby in all Washington and is raking in huge profits. For lots more on this, don't miss the vital information in our Health Information Center.
Solar Energy Cells Made of Everyday Plastic. In research published today in Nature Materials magazine, [several researchers] showcase their work on an innovative new plastic (or polymer) solar cell they hope eventually can be produced at a mere 10 percent to 20 percent of the current cost of traditional cells, making the technology more widely available. The price for quality traditional solar modules typically is around three to four times more expensive than fossil fuel. Independent tests on the UCLA solar cell already have received high marks. The nation's only authoritative certification organization for solar technology, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), located in Golden, Colo., has helped the UCLA team ensure the accuracy of their efficiency numbers. The plastic solar cell is still a few years away from being available to consumers, but the UCLA team is working diligently to get it to market.
Note: Why is it that ABC was the only one of the mainstream media to pick up this important article, and even ABC's report appears to belittle the development as much as it gives an optimistic outlook. And why isn't the government pouring funding into this most worthy project?
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.