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Excerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media


Below are key excerpts of little-known, yet highly revealing news articles from the media. Links are provided to the full news articles for verification. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore these articles listed by order of the date of the news article or by the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves, we can build a brighter future.

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.


Pope Decries “Shameful and Culpable Silence” on Arms Sales “Drenched in Innocent Blood”
2015-09-24, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/24/pope-decries-shameful-culpable-silence-ar...

Pope Francis on Thursday gently scolded Congress on a variety of issues. Speaking about his determination “to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world,” when he said this: "Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade." The U.S. is by far the largest arms supplier in the world. During the Obama administration, weapons sales have surged to record levels, in large part due to huge shipments to Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia. A healthy chunk of those arms sales are heavily subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer. Congress, which could have blocked any of this, went along happily — in no small part because of the approximately $150 million a year the defense industry spends on lobbying and direct campaign contributions. U.S. firms make up seven of the top 10 arms-exporting companies, with Lockheed Martin and Boeing coming in at numbers one and two. In August, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he would even further speed up U.S. arms sales to Gulf countries.

Note: Read an excellent essay by a top US general exposing how war is a racket. The Pope began speaking out against this racket in a talk with Italian schoolchildren in May. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.


Shades of 'Star Trek'? Quantum Teleportation Sets Distance Record
2015-09-22, Live Science
http://www.livescience.com/52259-quantum-teleportation-sets-distance-record.html

A record-breaking distance has been achieved in the bizarre world of quantum teleportation. Scientists teleported photons (packets of light) across a spool of fiber optics 63 miles (102 kilometers) long, four times farther than the previous record. Quantum teleportation relies on the strange nature of quantum physics, which finds that the fundamental building blocks of the universe can essentially exist in two or more places at once. Specifically, quantum teleportation relies on an odd phenomenon known as "quantum entanglement," in which subatomic particles can become linked and influence each other instantaneously, regardless of how far apart they are. Scientists cannot distinguish the state of either particle until one is directly measured, but because the particles are connected, measuring one instantly determines the state of the other. Currently, physicists can't instantly transport matter (say, a human), but they can use quantum teleportation to beam information from one place to another. "What's exciting is that we were able to carry out quantum teleportation over such a long distance," study co-author Martin Stevens, a quantum optics researcher at the NIST in Boulder, Colorado. Quantum teleportation could enable the development of a "quantum Internet" that allows messages to be sent more securely, Stevens said. The scientists detailed their findings ... in the journal Optica.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Ignoring Sexual Abuse in Afghanistan
2015-09-21, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/opinion/ignoring-sexual-abuse-in-afghanista...

The incidents of sexual assault on children described by American service members who served in Afghanistan are sickening. Boys screaming in the night as Afghan police officers attacked them. Three or four Afghan men found lying on the floor of a room at a military base with children between them, presumably for sex play. No less offensive is that American soldiers and Marines who wanted to intervene could not. The Pentagon’s indulgent, even complicit, attitude toward pedophiles among the Afghan militias that it funded and trained is indefensible, at odds with American values and with international laws Washington has taken the lead in promoting. Sexual abuse would appear to violate the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit violence, cruel treatment and “outrages upon personal dignity” against people taken into custody. International human rights law outlaws rape. The Geneva Conventions and federal law also impose an obligation on the United States to investigate and prosecute violations of the laws of war under its jurisdiction, including military bases in Afghanistan. “There are no gray areas here,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch. Fourteen long years of war and billions of dollars invested have proved that the United States cannot remake Afghanistan. But there should be no question that the American military cannot allow such practices on its bases. Nor should service members like Captain Quinn and Sergeant Martland be penalized for refusing to turn a blind eye when a boy is kept as a sex slave.

Note: If you want to understand how pedophile rings have infiltrated the highest levels of government, don't miss the powerful Discovery Channel documentary on this available here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


Pope Francis’s Philadelphia prison visit highlights crisis in US justice system
2015-09-21, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/21/pope-francis-philadelphia-pris...

Pope Francis will meet more than 100 men and women from a dangerously overcrowded prison population. Some 80% of those inmates at that prison, [Philadelphia's] Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility (CFCF), have not yet been convicted of the crime with which they were charged. Most of them are behind bars because they have not paid or cannot afford to pay bail while awaiting trial. Francis has visited prisons in multiple countries. This particular prison ... presents an extreme microcosm of two of the most pressing national prison problems: pretrial detention and overcrowding. The prison system – particularly in holding those who cannot afford to pay bail – targets the very people Pope Francis has shown the most concern for: the poor. With 2.2 million people incarcerated mostly in state prisons and jails like Philadelphia’s, the US now ... spends about $80bn on prisons. At any given time, between 400,000 to 500,000 of those people [are] held in pretrial or midtrial detention, sometimes for weeks, months and even years, usually because they cannot afford to pay bail. The Justice Department estimates that two-thirds of those inmates are non-dangerous defendants.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about income inequality and systemic prison industry corruption.


Brazil bans corporations from political donations amid corruption scandal
2015-09-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/18/brazilian-supreme-court-bans-cor...

Amid a massive corruption scandal which has tarnished Brazil’s political class and driven the country’s president to the brink of impeachment, the Brazilian supreme court has banned corporate donations to candidates and parties in future elections. With eight votes in favour and three against, the court declared late on Thursday that the rules allowing companies to donate to election campaigns were unconstitutional. Rosa Weber, one of the judges who ruled in favour of the ban, argued that undue economic influence comprised the legitimacy of the country’s elections. “The influence of economic power has ended up transforming the electoral process into a rigged political game, a despicable pantomime which makes the voter a puppet, simultaneously undermining citizenship, democracy and popular sovereignty.” According to “The Spoils of Victory”, a US academic study into campaign donations and government contracts in Brazil, corporate donors to the PT in the 2006 elections received between 14 to 39 times the value of their donations in government contracts. The case was brought to the supreme court around one and a half years ago by the Order of Brazilian Attorneys (OAB). On Thursday the organization’s secretary general, Cláudio Pereira de Souza Neto, celebrated the decision. “It is what Brazilian society has been hoping for, even more so in these times of crisis,” he said, adding that the court order should make future elections cheaper.

Note: What do you think might happen if the US and Europe banned corporations from making political contributions? Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Cancer patients may need better prep for chemo side-effects
2015-09-18, CBC/Reuters
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cancer-patients-may-need-better-prep-for-chemo-...

Cancer patients need to be prepared for serious side effects from chemotherapy, and hospitalization is one that happens much more often in the real world than in drug trials, according to a new study. Researchers found that people with advanced lung cancer receiving chemotherapy in real-world settings were almost eight times more likely to be hospitalized during treatment than those participating in clinical trials. What's more, very few clinical trials even report how often participants are hospitalized during the research, the study authors found. "Clinical trials should be routinely reporting their hospitalization rates so we know what to expect," said senior author Dr. Monika Krzyzanowska, a medical oncologist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center in Toronto, Canada. Krzyzanowska and her colleagues write in JAMA Oncology that the number of times a person goes to the hospital with treatment complications is important to the patient and to the hospital. The researchers suggest several possible explanations for the differences in hospitalization rates. First, the patients in highly selective clinical trials are different from real-world patients. In this study, people receiving chemotherapy in real-world settings were also older, on average, than those in clinical trials.

Note: While big pharma profits from hiding the negative effects of their drugs, there is some promising cancer research underway, some of which is being suppressed to keep the cash cow flowing for big pharma.


Japan set to pass security bills despite widespread protests
2015-09-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/japan-to-pass-security-bills-des...

Japan is expected to pass controversial security bills ... after days of fraught debates that at times descended into scuffles, tears and tantrums. The controversial laws have seen tens of thousands take to the streets in almost daily rallies for the past few weeks, in a show of public anger on a scale rarely seen in Japan. Opponents argue the new laws – which would allow the tightly restricted military to intervene overseas to defend its allies – violate Japan’s pacifist constitution and could see the country dragged into American wars in far-flung parts of the globe. The changes reinterpret the constitution to allow Japan’s military to fight to protect its allies, which [prime minister Shinzo] Abe argues is necessary because of threats from an increasingly belligerent China and unstable North Korea. Still, there are growing signs the campaign has taken a political toll – opinion polls show the vast majority of the public is against the bills. Protesters, including a Nobel Prize winner, popular musicians and other prominent figures, fear the changes could fundamentally alter Japan’s character as a pacifist nation. Security experts said the bills would also force a re-evaluation of Japan’s place on the world stage.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.


GM to pay $900m to avoid criminal inquiry into fault that led to deaths
2015-09-17, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/17/gm-fine-avoid-criminal-inquir...

General Motors has agreed to pay a $900m fine to avoid a criminal investigation into allegations that it deliberately hid information about a fault that led to the deaths of at least 124 people. As part of the settlement with the Department of Justice on Thursday, GM admitted that it “failed to disclose to its US regulator and the public a potentially lethal safety defect” and “further affirmatively misled consumers about the safety of GM cars afflicted by the defect”. The company paid the fine in order to avoid being criminally charged with scheming to conceal the fact that a fault with its ignition switch could lead to engines suddenly turning off and brakes being disabled. America’s largest car maker eventually recalled 2.6m cars to replace the faulty ignition switch. An investigation found that GM engineers and lawyers knew about the defect for more than a decade before the company admitted to any problem and began the recall. GM fired 15 employees following the 2014 internal investigation. Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Automotive Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group, said: “GM killed over a 100 people by knowingly putting a defective ignition switch into over 1 million vehicles. Today thanks to its lobbyists, GM officials walk off scot-free while its customers are six feet under.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


What is the meaning of life? 'Human' documentary digs for an answer
2015-09-16, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2015/0916/What-is-the-meaning-of-...

What unites us as human beings? French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand filmed interviews with more than 2,000 people in 60 countries to answer that ambitious question for his latest project, "Human." "For the past 40 years, I have been photographing our planet and its human diversity, and I have the feeling that humanity is not making any progress," Mr. Arthus-Bertrand writes. For more than two years, his crew ... traveled the world, seeking answers. Without any disclosure of location or identity, each subject answers the same 40 questions, including: What is the toughest trial you have had to face, and what did you learn from it? Why are our differences so great? What is your message for the inhabitants of the planet? When is the last time you said "I love you" to your parents? And so on. The result ... is a riveting portrait of life, love, anger, and desire, as told by real-life characters ranging from a laborer in Bangladesh to a death-row inmate in the United States to the former president of Uruguay. Arthus-Bertrand released a web-adapted version of the project on YouTube ... with subtitles available in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. "The film speaks to ... the difficulties we each encounter in relation to our own lives, in maintaining valuable connections with our families and those around us and coming to terms with our personal ethics," Arthus-Bertrand says. "The older I get, the more I understand how difficult those objectives are to achieve. But the answer is always love. Love is the answer."

Note: Watch a profound three-minute segment of the conversion of a murderer taken from this beautiful, sometimes disturbing documentary. That will likely convince you to watch the entire engaging documentary "Human."


Few U.S.-Trained Syrians Still Fight ISIS, Senators Are Told
2015-09-16, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/world/middleeast/isis-isil-syrians-senate-a...

Only four or five Syrian individuals trained by the United States military to confront the Islamic State remain in the fight, the head of the United States Central Command told a Senate panel on Wednesday, a bleak acknowledgment that the Defense Department’s $500 million program to raise an army of Syrian fighters has gone nowhere. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the top American commander in the Middle East, also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States would not reach its goal of training 5,000 Syrian fighters anytime soon. In May, the Defense Department began its training program for up to 5,400 fighters a year, in what White House officials described as a necessary component of President Obama’s strategy to use local troops on the ground against the Islamic State. General Austin told the Senate committee that many fighters in the first class of 54 graduates of the training program for Syrians were attacked in July by an offshoot of Al Qaeda, the Nusra Front, and either fled or were killed, leaving only a “small number” of rebels still in the fight. Asked how many fighters were still in Syria, General Austin said that “it’s a small number.” He added, “We’re talking four or five.”

Note: Read a carefully researched report on the covert origins of ISIS. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.


Report: America's Aging Voting Machines Could Present Election Problems
2015-09-15, NPR
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/09/15/440255752/report-americ...

Voting machines around the United States are coming to the end of their useful lives. That could be a serious problem for next year's presidential elections. According to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice ... 43 states will use some voting equipment next year that's at least 10 years old. "We're not saying that all the systems are going to fail on Election Day. But the closer you get to this end of projected lifespan, the more likely you're going to see problems," said Larry Norden, one of the report's authors. Problems such as vote flipping - that's when a voter presses one candidate's name only to have the opponent's name light up. It happens when the glue on touch-screen machines gets old and erodes. Norden said everything's coming to a head at once because almost every state bought new computerized voting equipment right after the disputed 2000 election, using $2 billion in federal aid. But he says now there's neither the money nor the same sense of urgency. "More than one official has said to me [that] legislators [and] county funders are waiting for a disaster, which I think is crazy," he said. Disaster does seem increasingly possible. Earlier this year, the state of Virginia realized that machines used in 20 percent of the state were vulnerable to hackers and immediately ordered them replaced. The Brennan Center found a similar pattern in other states. Wealthier counties are getting new equipment, while poorer ones are not.

Note: Read more on the major problems with electronic voting machines in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing elections corruption news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Elections Information Center.


How a Botched Translation Landed Emad Hassan in Gitmo
2015-09-11, Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/09/18/emad-hassan-guantanamo-bay-hunger-strike-a...

It was the spring of 2002. Pakistani authorities burst into the house [Emad Hassan] shared with 14 other foreign students and brought them to a nearby prison. After two months of beatings and interrogation, the Pakistanis handed him over to the U.S. military. They stripped him of his clothes and put him in a diaper. Then they blindfolded him, placed earmuffs over his head and marched him onto a plane. When the aircraft landed, he soon learned he was in the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. For years, the White House has been trying to close Gitmo. As of early September, 52 of the 116 prisoners who remain at the U.S. facility have been cleared to be set free, a tacit admission, critics say, that they should never have been imprisoned. The Pakistani forces who took Hassan from his student housing, his lawyers say, received $5,000 from the U.S. military. This was typical. According to a 2006 analysis ... the vast majority of detainees at Guantánamo Bay were arrested by local groups eager to profit from the counterterrorism gold rush. His lawyers claim much of the U.S. government’s incriminating information comes from a small group of informants at Guantánamo who told interrogators what they wanted to hear. Many sold out their fellow detainees for small rewards. [In 2009] Obama’s task force cleared Hassan for release - a process that requires six federal agencies to agree that a prisoner doesn’t pose a national security threat.

Note: In 2015, Hassan was freed from Gitmo and granted asylum by Oman. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles from reliable major media sources.


Karzai calls al-Qaida a 'myth' and denies 9/11 attacks were plotted in Afghanistan
2015-09-10, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/10/hamid-karzai-al-qaida-myth-sep...

Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan, has questioned the existence of al-Qaida, and denied that the 9/11 terror attacks ... were planned in Afghanistan. On the eve of the anniversary of the 2001 attacks, Karzai, who left office last year after 12 years, used an interview with al Jazeera to express his doubt that the terrorist group led by the late Osama bin Laden was responsible for the operation which prompted the invasion of Afghanistan. Karzai ... also claimed in the interview that Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan are “definitely” members of “Pakistani militias”. When asked if he agreed that al-Qaida in Afghanistan had been behind the 9/11 attacks ... Karzai replied: “I can tell you for a fact that the operation was neither conducted from Afghanistan, nor were the Afghan people responsible for that.” A daring and bloody operation involving US special forces and the CIA put Karzai back in Afghanistan in the last weeks of the 2001 war and then into power as a supposed consensus candidate. But Karzai quickly proved himself independent and contrarian. Officials from the US, the UK, Nato and the UN all repeatedly criticised Karzai for failing to crack down on rampant corruption and the booming narcotics trade in Afghanistan. By 2009, according to Robert Gates, the former US defence secretary, Washington was so keen to oust the Afghan president that officials connived in delaying an Afghan presidential election and then tried to manipulate the outcome in a “clumsy and failed putsch”.

Note: By 2000, the Taliban had mostly stopped heroin production in Afghanistan. But once former Unocal employee Hamid Karzai was installed into power by the US, bags of CIA cash helped transform Afghanistan into a narco state.


Nonprofit providing showers for the homeless rolling along
2015-09-08, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Nonprofit-providing-showers-for-th...

Lava Mae - the unlikely nonprofit that turns old Muni buses into shower stalls to be used by homeless people - said Tuesday that its second bus is rolling along and that it has a new plan to expand throughout California. Doniece Sandoval, founder of Lava Mae, stood in front of Bus No. 2, which will be parked every Tuesday on Fulton Street next to the Main Library. Sandoval ... had the idea for Lava Mae after seeing a filthy homeless woman crying and saying she would never be clean. Lava Mae’s simple solution of providing homeless people with showers and toilets has captured the attention of people around the world, many of whom have asked Sandoval to help them create a similar program. City Librarian Luis Herrera said Lava Mae is a great addition to the Main Library, which sees up to 3,000 visitors every day - many of them homeless and seeking bathrooms, sinks or just a place to rest. Despite all the praise, getting Lava Mae up and running has been much harder than expected, Sandoval said. The first bus is being taken out of rotation for a few weeks so some electrical glitches can be fixed. Finding licensed bus drivers adept at working with homeless people and willing to do it for $16 an hour has also been a huge problem, especially with all the competition from corporate shuttle buses. Sandoval said the bus driver shortage has prompted her to plan for the third Lava Mae vehicle to be a pickup truck pulling a shower stall on wheels. That should be running early next year.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


David Cameron faces scrutiny over drone strikes against Britons in Syria
2015-09-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/07/david-cameron-justifies-drone-st...

David Cameron is facing questions over Britain’s decision to follow the US model of drone strikes after the prime minister confirmed that the government had authorised an unprecedented aerial strike in Syria that killed two Britons fighting alongside Islamic State (Isis). Cameron justified the strikes on the grounds that Reyaad Khan, a 21-year-old from Cardiff, who had featured in a prominent Isis recruiting video last year, represented a “clear and present danger”. Two other Isis fighters were killed in the attack, [which was] the first time that a UK prime minister has authorised the targeting of a UK citizen by an unmanned aerial drone outside a formal conflict. One of them, Ruhul Amin, 26, was also British. A third Briton, Junaid Hussain, 21, was killed by a separate US airstrike three days later. Cameron disclosed the strikes in a dramatic afternoon statement which had originally been billed as a chance to outline his plans to take thousands of extra refugees from Syria. Downing Street dismissed suggestions that the prime minister had deliberately engineered UK involvement in the drone strikes rather than leaving them to the US ... as a way of making the case for greater British involvement in action against Isis in the country. Cameron, who had said that he would seek parliament’s approval before extending any British military action against Isis targets from Iraq to Syria, said he had acted in line with his commitments, [because he] reserved the right to authorise strikes without a vote in the event of an emergency.

Note: So as long as a person is declared a known terrorist, the government is claiming the right to kill that person without any legal process. Is that constitutional? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.


NYT Claims U.S. Abides by Cluster Bomb Treaty: The Exact Opposite of Reality
2015-09-03, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/03/nyt-claims-u-s-abides-cluster-bomb-ban-ex...

The New York Times today has a truly bizarre article regarding the U.S. and cluster bombs. The Paper of Record [claims the U.S.] government, though refusing to sign the cluster ban treaty, has nonetheless “abided by its provisions.” This claim is totally false. The U.S. has long been and remains one of the world’s most aggressive suppliers of cluster munitions, and has used those banned weapons itself in devastating ways. In December 2009 - just weeks after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - President Obama ordered a cruise missile strike (that) “killed 35 women and children.” Among the munitions used in that strike were cluster bombs. Although the U.S. at first refused to confirm responsibility, a Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, visited the scene and found irrefutable proof that it was done by the U.S., a finding subsequently confirmed. Obama ... then forced the imprisonment for years of the Yemeni journalist who reported it. Under the treaty which The Paper of Record today claimed the U.S. honors: "Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to: (a) Use cluster munitions; (b) Develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions; (c) Assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention. The U.S. does not occasionally violate one of those provisions. It continually violates all of them, systematically and as a matter of policy.

Note: The international trade in cluster bombs is funded by major banks. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.


Citizens taking video of police see themselves facing arrest
2015-08-31, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Police-sometimes-turn-on-the-citizen...

Thomas Demint's voice is heard only briefly on the eight-minute video he took of police officers arresting two of his friends, and body-slamming their mother. "I'm videotaping this, sir," he tells an officer. After he stopped recording, Demint says three officers tackled him, took away his smartphone and then tried, unsuccessfully, to erase the video. They then arrested him on charges of obstruction of governmental administration and resisting arrest. Demint is part of a growing trend of citizen videographers getting arrested after trying to record police behavior. "By all accounts the situation has gotten worse," said Chris Dunn ... of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "People are more inclined to pull out their phones and record, but that is often met with a very bad response from police." What makes the situation hard to define ... is that no one is ever arrested on a charge of recording police because that has widely been upheld as protected under the First Amendment. Instead, they are being hauled into court on obstruction, resisting arrest or other charges. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said the right to take videos of police encounters in public is clearly protected by the First Amendment. He said the trend is for police to detain people who are shooting video, and subsequently drop the charges. "State and federal courts ... have made it abundantly clear that citizens have right to film police in public," he said. "Police are ignoring this clear precedent and continue to threaten citizens."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles from reliable major media sources.


Feds fighting to keep cash seized from person never charged with crime
2015-08-29, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/08/29/feds-fighting-to-keep-cash-seized-...

Federal prosecutors are battling in court to keep $167,000 in cash seized in a 2013 traffic stop, despite the motorist never being charged in the incident. The case ... highlights the ongoing concerns about the government unjustly seizing money and property. A Nevada state trooper pulled over ... Straughn Gorman’s motor-home in January 2013 for allegedly going too slow along Interstate 80. The trooper released Gorman but not before requesting the county sheriff’s office stop him again ... this time with a drug-sniffing dog. No drugs were found [when] Gorman was pulled over for two alleged traffic violations. But his vehicle, computer, cellphone and the cash ... were seized. In June, a federal judge in Nevada ordered Gorman’s cash be returned. In his ruling, District Judge Larry Hicks cited Gorman’s “prolonged detention” for the alleged traffic violations and criticized federal authorities for failing to disclose that the first officer requested the second stop. Hicks [wrote], “The two stops were for minor traffic violations, and they both were extended beyond the legitimate purposes for such traffic stops.” Hicks also said in his ruling the second stop never would have happened if the first officer had not relayed information about the first stop. The federal government earlier this month appealed Hicks' ruling in the 9th Circuit Court. Federal attorneys did not submit a reason for the appeal. The court is expected to also decide whether Gorman should be reimbursed $153,000 in legal fees, which federal lawyers don’t want to pay.

Note: A recent Washington Post investigation found that the theft of private property by police and other government officials has dramatically increased in recent years. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


Assange: What Wikileaks Teaches Us About How the U.S. Operates
2015-08-28, Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/emb-midnight-827-assange-what-wikileaks-teaches-us-ab...

A new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to U.S. Empire ... explains how the leaked U.S. documents have lifted the veil on the imperialist nature of American foreign policy. At the time of writing, WikiLeaks has published 2,325,961 diplomatic cables and other US State Department records. To randomly pick up isolated diplomatic records that intersect with known entities and disputes, as some daily newspapers have done, is to miss “the empire” for its cables. Diplomatic cables are not produced in order to manipulate the public, but are aimed at elements of the rest of the US state apparatus and are therefore relatively free from the distorting influence of public relations. When WikiLeaks publishes US government documents with classification markings ... two parallel campaigns begin: first, the public campaign of downplaying, diverting attention from and reframing any revelations that are a threat to the prestige of the national security class; and, second, an internal campaign within the national security state itself to digest what has happened. Publicly, the US government has claimed, falsely, that anyone without a security clearance distributing “classified” documents is violating the Espionage Act of 1917. The response of the United States to the release of the WikiLeaks materials betrays a belief that its power resides in a disparity of information: ever more knowledge for the empire, ever less for its subjects.

Note: Wikileaks has published everything from suspicious messages about 9/11 to cables showing US diplomats working directly for companies such as Monsanto to drafts of secret trade deals that big banks use to grow their power. PFC Manning is currently serving a 35 year prison sentence for leaking the data analysed in the book mentioned above.


Prominent Catholic priest Father Julian Fox jailed for child sex crimes
2015-08-28, Herald Sun (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/prominent-catholic-priest-father-j...

The former Australian head of the second-largest Catholic order ... Father Julian Fox, 70, is today behind bars, 16 years after being accused of child sex crimes while teaching at Melbourne schools in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1999, shortly before the first known complaints were made to his superiors, he fled to Rome where he worked at the Salesian headquarters. In 2000, the Salesians made a confidential $36,000 payment to one victim. Despite claims by the Salesians that Fox was banned from working with children, he was later caught giving lectures to overseas students about social media. He finally returned to Melbourne in 2013. Detectives had been negotiating with the Catholic Church for his return since July 2012. Fox was sentenced to four years’ jail and fined $10,000 today for sexually and physically assaulting five students. Following eight County Court trials, he was found guilty of three charges of indecently assaulting two students, and now has pleaded guilty to charges of common assault of three victims. Fox is one of a long list of priests and brothers from the Salesian order who have now been convicted of terrorising Victorian kids between the 1960s and 1990s. Despite his crimes he rose to become head of the Salesian order. In 2004, the Australian chapter was engulfed in global scandal after it was alleged local superiors moved priests accused of sexual assaults across international and state borders to evade authorities.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sex abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.


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