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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.


Three-Wheeled Elio Gets Closer to Going on Sale
2014-08-15, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/wheeled-elio-closer-sale-24991923

Your next commuter car could have two seats, three wheels and get 84 miles to the gallon. Elio Motors wants to revolutionize U.S. roads with its tiny car, which is the same length as a Honda Fit but half the weight. With a starting price of $6,800, it's also less than half the cost. Phoenix-based Elio plans to start making the cars next fall at a former General Motors plant in Shreveport, Louisiana. Already, more than 27,000 people have reserved one. Elio hopes to make 250,000 cars a year by 2016. Because it has three wheels — two in front and one in the rear — the Elio is actually classified as a motorcycle by the U.S. government. But Elio Motors founder Paul Elio says the vehicle has all the safety features of a car, like anti-lock brakes, front and side air bags and a steel cage that surrounds the occupants. Drivers won't be required to wear helmets or have motorcycle licenses. The Elio's two seats sit front and back instead of side by side, so the driver is positioned in the center with the passenger directly behind. The Elio has a three-cylinder, 0.9-liter engine and a top speed of more than 100 miles per hour. It gets an estimated 84 mpg on the highway and 49 mpg in city driving. Elio keeps the costs down in several ways. The car only has one door, on the left side, which shaves a few hundred dollars off the manufacturing costs. Having three wheels also makes it cheaper. It will be offered in just two configurations — with a manual or automatic transmission — and it has standard air conditioning, power windows and door locks and an AM/FM radio. More features, such as navigation or blind-spot detection, can be ordered.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing alternative automotive technology news articles from reliable major media sources.


Warrior cops on steroids: How post-9/11 hysteria created a policing monster
2014-08-15, Salon
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/15/warrior_cops_on_steroids_how_post_911_hysteri...

Sometime after 9/11 strange stories began to emerge about small town police agencies all over the nation receiving grants from the newly formed Department of Homeland Security to buy all kinds of high-tech equipment to fight “terrorism.” As Radley Balko thoroughly documented in his book Rise of the Warrior Cop the military industrial complex has created a new industry: the police industrial complex. Since 9/11 the United States has been spending vast sums of money through DHS to outfit the state and local authorities with surveillance and military gear ostensibly to fight the terrorist threat at home. What we have been seeing in Ferguson, Missouri, these past few days is largely a result of that program — and an entire industry has grown up around it. In less than a month a group of militarized police equipment vendors across the nation will be gathering for an annual confab called “Urban Shield” in Oakland, California. It features dozens of sponsors, from the Department of Homeland Security and police agencies all over the country to such vendors as Armored Mobility Inc. The Department of Homeland Security disburses somewhere in the vicinity of $3 billion a year for this sort of thing. Add in the loot that’s legally appropriated by police agencies in the war on drugs and you have a massive incentive to turn the streets of Ferguson, Missouri ... into a scene that looks more like the siege of Fallujah. We’ve been spending billions of taxpayer dollars for decades to turn the streets of urban America into a war zone at the merest hint of dissent. And now it’s here.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing military corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


GOP suit claims a right to corruption
2014-08-14, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/GOP-suit-claims-a-right-to-corruption-5...

Wall Street is one of the biggest sources of funding for presidential campaigns, and many of the Republican Party's potential 2016 contenders are governors. And so, last week, the GOP filed a federal lawsuit aimed at overturning the ... law that bars those governors from raising campaign money from Wall Street executives who manage their states' pension funds. In this case, New York's and Tennessee's Republican parties are represented by two former Bush administration officials, one of whose firms just won the Supreme Court case invalidating campaign contribution limits on large donors. In their complaint, the parties argue that people managing state pension money have a First Amendment right to make large donations to state officials who award those lucrative money management contracts. With the $3 trillion public pension system controlled by elected officials now generating billions of dollars worth of management fees for Wall Street, Securities and Exchange Commission regulators originally passed the rule to make sure retirees' money wasn't being handed out based on politicians' desire to pay back their campaign donors. The suit comes only a few weeks after the SEC issued its first fines under the rule - against a firm whose executives made campaign donations to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a Democrat. In a statement on that case, the SEC promised more enforcement of the pay-to-play rule in the future. The GOP lawsuit aims to stop that promise from becoming a reality.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Embracing flag, Snowden says he hopes to return to U.S.
2014-08-13, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/13/snowden-wired-flag/13995013/

Development of a U.S. counterattack for cyberterrorism that could do more harm than good was one of the final events that drove Edward Snowden to leak government secrets, the former National Security Agency contractor tells Wired magazine. Snowden ... said the MonsterMind program was designed to detect a foreign cyberattack and keep it from entering the country. But it also would automatically fire back. The problem, he said, is malware can be routed through an innocent third-party country. "These attacks can be spoofed," he told Wired. MonsterMind for example ... could accidentally start a war. And it's the ultimate threat to privacy because it requires the NSA to gain access to virtually all private communications coming in from overseas. "The argument is that the only way we can identify these malicious traffic flows and respond to them is if we're analyzing all traffic flows," he said. "And if we're analyzing all traffic flows, that means we have to be intercepting all traffic flows. That means violating the Fourth Amendment, seizing private communications without a warrant, without probable cause or even a suspicion of wrongdoing. For everyone, all the time. You get exposed to a little bit of evil, a little bit of rule-breaking, a little bit of dishonesty, a little bit of deceptiveness, a little bit of disservice to the public interest, and you can brush it off, you can come to justify it," Snowden told Wired. "But if you do that, it creates a slippery slope that just increases over time. And by the time you've been in 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, you've seen it all and it doesn't shock you. And so you see it as normal."

Note: Read the cover story from Wired magazine with a deep inside report on Snowden.


Oil a key motive for U.S. air strikes in Iraq
2014-08-12, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Oil-a-key-motive-for-U-S-ai...

This week's U.S. air strikes in northern Iraq are being accompanied with an undertow of "it's all about oil" talk. Take for example, Columbia School of Journalism Dean Steve Coll's observation in The New Yorker, that "Obama's defense of Erbil (capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region) is effectively the defense of an undeclared Kurdish oil state." It's no secret that Iraqi Kurdistan has an abundance of oil reserves, nor that U.S. oil companies, like [Chevron] are busy exploring there. Chevron has three "production sharing contracts" with the Kurdish government, covering a combined 444,000 acres, north of Irbil, where it's in the early testing and drilling stage. And it likes what it sees. Asked for an update, a Chevron spokesman said Monday, "We continue monitoring the situation. We remain in regular contact with the Kurdistan Regional Government and are dedicated to supporting the (Kurdistan Region of Iraq) in developing its natural resources." A potentially bigger worry for both Chevron and the Kurds .. could be if Iraq did stabilize and unite, with Kurdistan under its umbrella. For Chevron ... a new arrangement in Iraq could entail the renegotiation of contracts it has with the Kurds, which by the way, Baghdad refused to recognize. Kurdistan's oil pipeline via Turkey continues to pump out oil - 120,000 barrels per day.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing military corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Oil companies fracking into drinking water sources, new research shows
2014-08-12, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-fracking-groundwater-pavillion-20140811-s...

Energy companies are fracking for oil and gas at far shallower depths than widely believed, sometimes through underground sources of drinking water, according to research released [on August 12] by Stanford University scientists. Fracking involves high-pressure injection of millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals to crack geological formations and tap previously unreachable oil and gas reserves. Fracking fluids contain a host of chemicals, including known carcinogens and neurotoxins. Fears about possible water contamination and air pollution have fed resistance in communities around the country. Fracking into underground drinking water sources is not prohibited by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted the practice from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. But the industry has long held that it does not hydraulically fracture into underground sources of drinking water because oil and gas deposits sit far deeper than aquifers. The study, however, found that energy companies used acid stimulation ... and hydraulic fracturing in the Wind River and Fort Union geological formations that make up the Pavillion gas field and that contain both natural gas and sources of drinking water. “Thousands of gallons of diesel fuel and millions of gallons of fluids containing numerous inorganic and organic additives were injected directly into these two formations during hundreds of stimulation events,” concluded Dominic DiGiulio and Robert Jackson of Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences.

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


The $2 trillion economic risk you haven’t heard about
2014-08-07, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/the-2-trillion-economic-risk-you-hav...

Every so often, on time scales measured in days or weeks, a solar flare appears in the sun’s outermost layers. Many flares produce coronal mass ejections (CMEs is the term of art). Although the sun continuously pushes charged particles outward to form the “solar wind,” a CME outburst produces many times the normal particle flux, and contains particles moving at higher speeds than the ordinary solar-wind particles possess. Consider the greatest CME recorded on Earth: the “Carrington event” that ended August 1859. Intense streams of charged particles from the sun ... shook the Earth’s magnetic field, inducing electrical currents that put telegraph systems on the fritz around the world. Today, of course, we no longer rely on the telegraph. Instead, we routinely depend on transformers ... to regulate the electrical currents that power pretty much everything. A sufficiently powerful CME could burn out these transformers and deaden the electrical grid. It might also induce short circuits in anything that uses electrical circuits. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that the economic damage [from such an event] could reach $2 trillion. When can we expect the big one to arrive? Earlier this year, the physicist Peter Riley, ... published his estimate. Analyzing the records of CMEs for the past half-century, Riley estimates that the chance of a CME packing the punch of a Carrington-like event during the next decade at 12 percent, which he called “a sobering figure.”

Note: For more on this, see this Guardian article.


NYT Will Use The Word Torture, Finally
2014-08-07, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/07/nyt-torture_n_5659997.html

The New York Times announced on [August 7] that it will use the word torture to describe the United States' controversial interrogation tactics on terror suspects. "From now on, The Times will use the word “torture” to describe incidents in which we know for sure that interrogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information," said Times executive editor Dean Baquet. In the past, the Times had been sharply criticized for not using the word torture. Instead, [it] had referred to torture as "brutal interrogation," or similar epithets. The Times is hardly the only major media outlet to avoid using the word "torture." Reuters referred to the tactics as "brutal interrogation methods" and the AP has called them "enhanced interrogation techniques." The media have been accused of following along with President Bush's denial that the U.S. does not use torture. Banquet [says] that "while the methods set off a national debate, the Justice Department insisted that the techniques did not rise to the legal definition of 'torture.'” Baquet said that reporters and editors had debated the issue in wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report, which has yet to be released. Last week, President Obama admitted that the CIA "tortured some folks" in post-9/11 anti-terror efforts.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing media cover-ups news articles from reliable major media sources.


New leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes
2014-08-06, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker

The federal government has concluded there's a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN. Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published [August 5] by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden's leaks. The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names during the Obama administration. The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges. Government officials have been investigating to find out that identity. In a February interview with CNN's Reliable Sources, Greenwald said: "I definitely think it's fair to say that there are people who have been inspired by Edward Snowden's courage and by the great good and virtue that it has achieved." The biggest database, called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, now has 1 million names, a U.S. official confirmed to CNN. The Intercept first reported the new TIDE database numbers, along with details of other databases. As of November, 2013, there were 700,000 people listed in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), or the "Terrorist Watchlist, according to a U.S. official. The Intercept report said, citing the documents, that 40% on the "Terrorist Watchlist" aren't affiliated with terror groups.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 'terror' manipulation news articles from reliable major media sources.


Why do two white Americans get the Ebola serum while hundreds of Africans die?
2014-08-06, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/06/why-do-two-white-a...

What should happen if a massive viral outbreak appears out of nowhere and the only possible treatment is an untested drug? And who should receive it? The two American missionaries who contracted the almost-always-fatal virus in West Africa were given access to an experimental drug cocktail called ZMapp. It consists of immune-boosting monoclonal antibodies that were extracted from mice exposed to bits of Ebola DNA. Now in isolation at an Atlanta hospital, they appear to be doing well. It’s an opportunity the 900 Africans who’ve died so far never had. The reasons for different treatment are partly about logistics, partly about economics and, partly about a lack of any standard policy for giving out untested drugs in emergencies. Before this outbreak, ZMapp had only been tested on monkeys. But privileged humans were always going to be the first ones to try it. ZMapp requires a lot of refrigeration and careful handling, plus close monitoring by experienced doctors and scientists—better to try it at a big urban hospital than in rural West Africa, where no such infrastructure exists. And the two Americans who got it in Africa had been infected for more than a week, making its efficacy completely unknown.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.


Ebola virus: British experts urge US and WHO to ‘give Africans cure’
2014-08-06, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-outbreak-british-experts...

Three of Britain’s leading Ebola specialists have said experimental treatments for the deadly Ebola virus must be offered to the people of West Africa, after two US aid workers were administered with the “cure” in Liberia. The two missionaries, Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, are alive and now being cared for at a specialist isolation unit in Atlanta. Though the pair remain weak – and there is no way of knowing at this stage how much of a help the new drug has actually been – the fact that it was given to the two Americans has resulted in widespread criticism and recriminations in West Africa. Almost 900 people have died from the Ebola virus across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since the latest outbreak began in February this year. Some strains can have fatality rates of up to 90 per cent, though that of the current crisis appears to be around 60 per cent. Now Peter Piot, who discovered Ebola in 1976, David Heymann, the director of the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security and Jeremy Farrar from the Wellcome Trust have said there are in fact several drugs and vaccines under study that could be used to combat the disease. Liberia’s assistant health minister, Tolbert Nyenswah, said that the news of Dr Brantly and Ms Writebol’s treatment had “made our job very difficult” as dying patients and their relatives in Africa request the same “cure”. The US aid workers were given ZMapp, a drug made from antibodies produced in a lab that has never gone through human trials or been approved by the US’s FDA Food and Drug Administration. Piot, Farrar and Heymann questioned why Africans were not being given the same chance.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.


Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers
2014-08-05, The Intercept
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept. Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000. “If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.” The classified documents were prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, the lead agency for tracking individuals with suspected links to international terrorism. Stamped “SECRET” and “NOFORN” (indicating they are not to be shared with foreign governments), they offer the most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting system to date. The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing 'terror' manipulation news articles from reliable major media sources.


NASA approves 'impossible' space engine design that apparently violates the laws of physics and could revolutionise space travel
2014-08-04, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasa-approves-impossible-space-engi...

In a quiet announcement that has sent shockwaves through the scientific world, NASA has cautiously given its seal of approval to a new type of “impossible” engine that could revolutionize space travel. In a paper published by the agency’s experimental Eagleworks Laboratories, NASA engineers confirmed that they had produced tiny amounts of thrust from an engine without propellant – an apparent violation of the conservation of momentum; the law of physics that states that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction. NASA’s engineers have tested an engine known as a ‘Cannae Drive’, a machine [that] uses electricity to generate microwaves, bouncing them around inside a specially designed container that theoretically creates a difference in radiation pressure and so results in directional thrust. In an ordinary engine the rocket moves forward as fuel is flung backwards - the momentum of the rocket (a measure of both its mass and velocity combined) is 'conserved' because it is moved from the rocket to the fuel. However, with the Cannae Drive there is no fuel - the microwaves aren't expelled from the engine. NASA’s scientists tested a version of the drive designed by US scientist Guido Fetta and found that the propellantless engine was able to produce between 30 and 50 micronewtons of thrust – a tiny amount (0.00003 to 0.00005 per cent of the force of an iPhone pressing down when held in the hand) but still a great deal more than nothing.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing new energy technologies news articles from reliable major media sources.


U.S. Senate report to suggest harsh CIA interrogations were unnecessary
2014-08-01, Chicago Tribune/Reuters
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-cia-tor...

A U.S. Senate committee report will conclude that the CIA's use of harsh interrogation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks yielded no critical intelligence on terrorist plots that could not have been obtained through non-coercive methods, U.S. officials familiar with the document said. [The] report [is] expected to suggest that the "enhanced" techniques were unnecessary and also to accuse some CIA officers of misleading Congress about the effectiveness of the program. Officials said the Senate Intelligence Committee was unlikely to release the report to the public without some additional review. "A preliminary review of the report indicates there have been significant redactions. We need additional time to understand the basis for these redactions and determine their justification. Therefore the report will be held until further notice and released when that process is completed," Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee's chair, said. Committee investigators also concluded that the agency misled other executive branch agencies and Congress by claiming that only by using harsh methods did the agency achieve ... counter-terrorism breakthroughs that otherwise would not have been possible. The report will criticize some CIA officials by name, the officials said.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable major media sources.


FBI Defends Search for Oklahoma City Bombing Video
2014-07-29, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trial-opening-video-oklahoma-city-bombing-...

The FBI thoroughly searched its archives and found no evidence that more videos of the Oklahoma City bombing exist, agency employees told a judge [on July 28] in a trial that has rekindled questions about whether any others were involved in the 1995 attack. Additional searches for videos that Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue believes are being withheld would be burdensome and fruitless, FBI attorney Kathryn Wyer argued during the first day of a bench trial. Trentadue says the agency is refusing to release videos that show a second person was with Timothy McVeigh when he parked a truck outside the Oklahoma City federal building and detonated a bomb that killed 168 people. The government says McVeigh was alone. [But] the 30 video recordings the FBI has released don't show the explosion or McVeigh's arrival in a rental truck. Unsatisfied by the FBI's previous explanations and citing the public importance of the tapes, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups has ordered the agency to explain why it can't find videos that are mentioned in evidence logs. Trentadue believes the presence of a second suspect explains why his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, was flown to Oklahoma several months after the bombing, where he died in a federal holding cell. Kenneth Trentadue bore a striking resemblance to a police sketch based on witness descriptions of the enigmatic suspect "John Doe No. 2," who was never identified..

Note: There is strong evidence of a major cover-up in the Oklahoma City bombing. See this Wall Street Journal article, this Associated Press article, this ABC News article, and this Deseret News article for examples.


Morrison accused of 'state sanctioned child abuse'
2014-07-29, Sydney Morning Herald (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/morrison-accused-of-sta...

A group of Catholic and Anglican church leaders have accused the ... government of ''state-sanctioned child abuse'' in the immigration detention system, and called for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to step down from his position as guardian for all unaccompanied minors. Leaders from nine Christian denominations, which form the Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce, [have released] a report [with] recommendations to the ... government to improve the wellbeing and treatment of children in onshore and offshore immigration detention centres. The church leaders ... say the church has learnt a painful lesson from decades of child abuse within their congregations. Reverend Peter Catt, the Anglican Dean of Brisbane said: ''We have the absolute duty to make sure the events that came out from the Royal Commission aren't repeated in any setting. Institutional child abuse occurs in many different settings and it's illegal, it's horrific and it's unacceptable.'' The recommendations in the report include ending closed detention for all unaccompanied children; providing institutional child welfare and protection; and replacing the Immigration Minister as the guardian of about 135 unaccompanied asylum seeker children who are being held in onshore and offshore centres. There are about 4330 children in immigration detention - most of them living in the community. ''The Minister forsakes his guardianship duties when he sends unaccompanied children to the detention camp in Nauru,'' says the report, titled Protecting the Lonely Children. The report said there was clear evidence that children are experiencing ''terrible physical and mental suffering''.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.


Corporate Artful Dodgers
2014-07-28, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/opinion/paul-krugman-tax-avoidance-du-jour-...

On current trends, we’re heading toward a world in which only the human people pay taxes. We’re not quite there yet: The federal government still gets a tenth of its revenue from corporate profits taxation. But it used to get a lot more — a third of revenue came from profits taxes in the early 1950s, a quarter or more well into the 1960s. Part of the decline since then reflects a fall in the tax rate, but mainly it reflects ever-more-aggressive corporate tax avoidance — avoidance that politicians have done little to prevent. Which brings us to the tax-avoidance strategy du jour: “inversion.” This refers to a legal maneuver in which a company declares that its U.S. operations are owned by its foreign subsidiary, not the other way around, and uses this role reversal to shift reported profits out of American jurisdiction to someplace with a lower tax rate. The most important thing to understand about inversion is that it does not in any meaningful sense involve American business “moving overseas.” Consider the case of Walgreen, the giant drugstore chain that, according to multiple reports, is on the verge of making itself legally Swiss. If the plan goes through, nothing about the business will change; your local pharmacy won’t close and reopen in Zurich. It will be a purely paper transaction — but it will deprive the U.S. government of several billion dollars in revenue that you, the taxpayer, will have to make up one way or another.

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


Before Snowden: The Whistleblowers Who Tried To Lift The Veil
2014-07-22, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-the-whistleblowers-who...

Bill Binney worked at the National Security Agency [for] nearly three decades as one of its leading crypto-mathematicians. He then became one of its leading whistleblowers. The NSA is overseen by Congress, the courts and other government departments. It's also supposed to be watched from the inside by its own workers. But over the past dozen years, whistleblowers like Binney have had a rough track record. Those who tried unsuccessfully to work within the system say Edward Snowden — the former National Security Agency contractor who shared top-secret documents with reporters — learned from their bitter experience. For Binney, the decision to quit the NSA and become a whistleblower began a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he says he discovered the spy agency had begun using software he'd created to scoop up information on Americans — all without a court order. "I had to get out of there, because they were using the program I built to do domestic spying, and I didn't want any part of it, I didn't want to be associated with it," he says. "I look at it as basically treason. They were subverting the Constitution." Binney says he and two other NSA colleagues who also quit tried sounding the alarm with congressional committees. But because they did not have documents to prove their charges, nobody believed them. Snowden, he says, did not repeat that mistake. "He recognized right away, it was very clear to me, that if he wanted anybody to believe him, he'd have to take a lot of documentation with him — which is what he did," Binney says.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations news articles from reliable major media sources.


Taking Time Off Is Good For Your Body, Your Mind, And Your Business
2014-07-21, Huffington Post
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vacation-inspires-creativity_n_5600183

The average American employee only takes advantage of half of their earned vacation days, and 61 percent of workers admit to working during their supposed time off. However, science shows that taking a true vacation ... not only allows the body to physically repair itself, but can also leave you feeling inspired when you return. Designer Stefan Sagmeister embraced the necessity of time off and has come to rely on it to help produce his most meaningful artwork. Combining his passions for art and music, he is responsible for famous album covers for Lou Reed, The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, to name a few. He also co-founded Sagmeister & Walsh, Inc. with Jessica Walsh, where he now works as a graphic designer and typographer. And every seven years, he shuts down their New York City studio for a full year while he travels to a faraway place to rest, explore and seek inspiration. “Right now we spend the first 25 years of our lives learning, then there’s another 40 years that’s really reserved for working, and then tacked on at the end of it are about 15 years for retirement,” said Sagmeister. “And I thought it might be helpful to basically cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse them between those working years. The work that comes out of these years flows back into the company and into society at large rather than just benefiting a grandchild or two.”

Note: Watch Stefan Sagmeister's TED Talk “The Power Of Time Off” for more on the value of vacationing. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The Details About the CIA's Deal With Amazon
2014-07-17, The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details-about-the-...

The intelligence community is about to get the equivalent of an adrenaline shot to the chest. This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. For the first time, agencies within the intelligence community will be able to order a variety of on-demand computing and analytic services from the CIA and National Security Agency. What's more, they'll only pay for what they use. For the risk-averse intelligence community, the decision to go with a commercial cloud vendor is a radical departure from business as usual. It is difficult to underestimate the cloud contract's importance. In a recent public appearance, CIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Wolfe called it "one of the most important technology procurements in recent history," with ramifications far outside the realm of technology. The importance of the cloud capabilities the CIA gets through leveraging Amazon Web Services' horsepower is best exemplified in computing intelligence data. Instead of each agency building out its own systems, select agencies ... are responsible for governing its major components.

Note: The CIA tries to "collect everything and hold on to it forever." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.


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