News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Every July, some of the richest and most powerful men in the world gather at a 2,700 acre campground in Monte Rio, Calif., for two weeks of heavy drinking, super-secret talks, druid worship (the group insists they are simply “revering the Redwoods”), and other rituals. The people that gather at Bohemian Grove — who have included prominent business leaders, former U.S. presidents, musicians, and oil barons — are told that “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” meaning business deals are to be left outside. One exception was in 1942, when a planning for the Manhattan Project took place at the grove, leading to the creation of the atom bomb. The club is so hush-hush that little can be definitively said about it, but much of what we know today is from those who have infiltrated the camp, including Texas-based filmmaker Alex Jones. In 2000, Jones and his cameraman entered the camp with a hidden camera and were able to film a Bohemian Grove ceremony, Cremation of the Care. During the ceremony, members wear costumes and cremate a coffin effigy called “Care” before a 40-foot-owl. The Sonoma County Free Press, which has published investigative stories on the grove since at least the 1980s, says activities include plays and comedy shows in which women are portrayed by male actors, and Lakeside Talks, in which high-ranking officials speak about information not available to the public. The group calls them “public interest talks.” Protests take place at the Bohemian Grove nearly ever year.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on other powerful secret societies, click here.
Are the gold bars in Fort Knox really made of the precious metal? Or has the U.S. government secretly sold off the nation's stockpile and replaced it with metal bars that are only painted gold? Ron Paul wants to find out. Giving legitimacy to an Internet conspiracy theory that the gold in Fort Knox is fake, the iconoclast Republican congressman from Texas has asked adminstration officials to audit the purity of the nation's 700,000 gold bars held in Fort Knox, according to an internal Treasury document obtained by CNBC. Paul, ... who chairs the House's subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy, had previously called for the U.S. gold reserve to be counted and for a return to the gold standard. He now appears to be going a step further. One conspiracy theory says that no one has actually seen the gold since the 1930s. But in a letter to Paul in September, the Treasury Inspector General said he had "personally observed the gold reserves located in each of the deep storage compartments." CNBC asked for a tour of Fort Knox to film the gold. An official at the Mint told us that not he was not aware that any member of Congress had toured the facility since [1974]. Fort Knox is "a closed facility," the official said. And so the conspiracy theory continues...
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government secrecy, click here.
One in six Americans live in "food insecure" homes. This means one in six Americans is seriously hungry, likely under-nourished or malnourished and doesn't know when he/she will have their next meal. When Panera Bread Founder and CEO Ronald Shaich learned this, he thought about how Panera Bread opens two restaurants every week, employs 60,000 people, and he knew Panera's resources could have impact on America's hunger problem. He personally set out to help, pitched his board (with a lot of respect and credibility under his belt), created a foundation and the result is a new kind of chain restaurant: pay-what-you-can Paneras. Panera Cares shops look like any other Panera Bread, but the prices are just suggestions. If you can pay, you do. If you can't, you don't. If you can pay more, you're welcome. More than one year into the program, Panera Cares has restaurants in St. Louis, Detroit and Portland, and the shops will serve between 500,000 to 1 million meals this year. Each restaurant must generate enough revenue to be self-sustaining, and so far, all of them are. One out of five customers leaves more than the suggested donation; three in five leave the suggested donation; and one in five customers leaves less or nothing, usually because they have real need. "People get it, people feel it and people appreciate it," said Shaich.
Note: It is interesting that no major media reported this inspiring Reuters article. Could it be that they don't welcome a new paradigm like this?
On 28 March 2011, President Obama was given a "transparency award" from five "open government" organisations: OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government Oversight, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and OpenTheGovernment.org. Ironically – and quite likely in response to growing public criticism regarding the Obama administration's lack of transparency – heads of the five organisations gave their award to Obama in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House. If the ceremony had been open to the press, it is likely that reporters would have questioned the organisations' proffered justification for the award, in contrast to the current reality: • Ignoring his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, Obama's presidency has amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers. • President Obama has initiated a secret assassination programme, has publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and has attempted to assassinate at least one, Anwar al-Awlaki. • President Obama has maintained the power to secretly kidnap, imprison, rendition, or torture, and he has formalised the power to lawlessly imprison in an executive order.
Note: For key reports on the lawless war on terrorism carried out by the US government, click here.
FBI agents took box after box of address books, family calendars, artwork and personal letters in their 10-hour raid in September of the ... house shared by Stephanie Weiner and her husband. The agents seemed keenly interested in Weiner’s home-based business, the Revolutionary Lemonade Stand, which sells silkscreened baby outfits and other clothes with socialist slogans, phrases like “Help Wanted: Revolutionaries.” The search was part of a mysterious, ongoing nationwide terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor organizers. Investigators, according to search warrants, documents and interviews, are examining possible “material support” for Colombian and Palestinian groups designated by the U.S. government as terrorists. The apparent targets, all vocal and visible critics of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and South America, deny any ties to terrorism. They say the government, using its post-9/11 focus on terrorism as a pretext, is targeting them for their political views. The activists have formed the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, organized phone banks to flood Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s office and the White House with protest calls, solicited letters from labor unions and faith-based groups and sent delegations to Capitol Hill to gin up support from lawmakers.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government attacks on civil liberties, click here.
The United States and Switzerland are in advanced talks on a multibillion-dollar deal that would let several Swiss and European banks join a common settlement and avoid potential U.S. prosecution for helping wealthy Americans dodge taxes. As part of the agreement under discussion, known as a global resolution, U.S. government agencies would invite the banks to pay a fine, exit their undeclared offshore banking businesses for Americans, and turn over client names to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Justice Department. In exchange, the agencies would drop an ongoing investigation into the banks. It could not immediately be determined which banks could be invited to participate in the global resolution. The fines involved could collectively total several billion dollars, they said. Banks that "opt out" of the deal could face heightened scrutiny from U.S. authorities, including a possible legal summons for client names from the IRS and tougher scrutiny by the Justice Department. A resolution would signal another strong blow to the Swiss tradition of client confidentiality, whose laws date to 1934 but whose tradition goes back centuries.
Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
[Attorney-General Dominic Grieve's] refusal yesterday to request an inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly was furiously condemned by campaigners, who are now planning [to] seek a judicial review of Mr Grieve's decision. Dr Stephen Frost, who has led a group of campaigning doctors, said the decision was "deeply flawed" with "no basis in law". Calling the continuing "cover-up of the truth" a "national disgrace", he said they were "perplexed and outraged" and called for Mr Grieve to resign. Dr Kelly's body was found in woods near his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after he had been revealed as the source of a BBC report claiming a government dossier [on evidence for Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction"] had been sexed up. The respected weapons inspector died aged 59, two days after he had faced MPs' questioning. The campaigning doctors ... pointed out the [Hutton] inquiry spent only half a day of its 24 days considering the cause of Dr Kelly's death and insisted no "coroner in the land would have reached a suicide verdict on the evidence". Yesterday Dr Frost added: "This Government has now revealed itself to be complicit in a determined and concerted cover-up."
Note: For much more on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.
In February 1993, Mary's son, Laramiun Byrd, was shot to death. He was 20, and Mary's only child. The killer was a 16-year-old kid named Oshea Israel. Mary wanted justice. "He was an animal. He deserved to be caged." And he was. Tried as an adult and sentenced to 25 and a half years -- Oshea served 17 before being recently released. He now lives back in the old neighborhood - next door to Mary. How a convicted murder ended-up living a door jamb away from his victim's mother is a story, not of horrible misfortune, as you might expect - but of remarkable mercy. A few years ago Mary asked if she could meet Oshea at Minnesota's Stillwater state prison. As a devout Christian, she felt compelled to see if there was some way, if somehow, she could forgive her son's killer. Oshea says they met regularly after that. When he got out, she introduced him to her landlord - who with Mary's blessing, invited Oshea to move into the building. Today they don't just live close - they are close. Mary was able to forgive. "Unforgiveness is like cancer," Mary says. "It will eat you from the inside out. It's not about that other person, me forgiving him does not diminish what he's done. Yes, he murdered my son - but the forgiveness is for me. It's for me." For Oshea, it hasn't been that easy. "I haven't totally forgiven myself yet, I'm learning to forgive myself." To that end, Oshea is now ... singing the praises of God and forgiveness at prisons, churches - to large audiences everywhere.
Note: Watch a beautiful, moving video by the founder of StoryCorps, which led to this story.
Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest contractor ... has received more than $19 billion in federal contracts so far this year. Lockheed has already spent more than $3 million lobbying Congress this year. Lockheed supports a platoon of Washington lawyers and lobbyists dedicated to getting more federal contracts. Sixty-four of Lockheed's lobbyists are former congressional staffers, Pentagon officials and White House aides. Two are former members of Congress. As such, they used to be on the public payroll, representing us. Lockheed also has been spending more than $3 million a year on political contributions to friendly members of Congress. Lockheed is hardly alone in using taxpayer money to get fatter contracts from taxpayers. All of the 10 biggest government contractors are defense contractors. Every one of them gets most of its revenue from the federal government. And every one uses a portion of that money to lobby for even more defense contracts. Next year's expected drawdown of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq is supposed to save money. But Lockheed and other giant defense contractors have made sure all anticipated savings will go to new weapons systems. Lockheed recently delivered a budget bombshell with a proposed tab of more than $1 trillion for a fleet of F-35 joint-strike fighter jets.
Note: $1 trillion for a fighter jet fleet means that each American will pay over $3,000 for this fleet. The author of this op-ed, Robert Reich, is former U.S. secretary of labor, professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He blogs at www.robertreich.org.
Sexual secrets and drive do turn the tide of our public life. Just ask Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or porn impresario Larry Flynt, author of a new book, One Nation Under Sex: How the Private Lives of Presidents, First Ladies and Their Lovers Changed the Course of American History. This public-private collision turns up as sexual speed traps in the waylaid careers of Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, John Edwards and fully half of the presidents in our history, according to Flynt's book, which he co-wrote with Columbia history Professor David Eisenbach. Lying, blackmail and hypocrisy about secret carnality just add spice to the stew of a particularly American phenomenon described in Flynt's book. One common trait among the powerful and errant, Flynt [commented], "was a huge ego." The book presents us as an often prudish culture where mistresses, illegitimate children and homosexuality in Washington not only dominate the landscape but hijack it at key moments in our history. "I'm the first person to defend a philandering president" who's doing a good job for the public, Flynt says. He'd just like people to know a lot more about sex themselves and care a lot less about how other people practice it. In 2003, Flynt briefly ran for California governor as "the smut peddler who cares." If he had been elected, at least we would have known what we were getting.
Note: If you are ready to see just how ugly it gets when sexual slavery reaches to the highest levels of government, watch the revealing Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.
A group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners are volunteering to tackle the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station. The Skilled Veterans Corps, as they call themselves, is made up of retired engineers and other professionals, all over the age of 60. They say they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young. It was while watching the television news that Yasuteru Yamada decided it was time for his generation to stand up. No longer could he be just an observer of the struggle to stabilise the Fukushima nuclear plant. The retired engineer is reporting back for duty at the age of 72, and he is organising a team of pensioners to go with him. For weeks now Mr Yamada has been getting back in touch with old friends, sending out e-mails and even messages on Twitter. Volunteering to take the place of younger workers at the power station is not brave, Mr Yamada says, but logical. "I am 72 and on average I probably have 13 to 15 years left to live," he says. "Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30 years or longer to develop. Therefore us older ones have less chance of getting cancer." Mr Yamada is lobbying the government hard for his volunteers to be allowed into the power station. The government has expressed gratitude for the offer but is cautious.
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin ... signed into law a bill establishing a single-payer health care plan for the state, making Vermont the first state to do so. Shumlin lauded the legislation as an "economic and fiscal imperative" -- as well as a moral one. "This law recognizes an economic and fiscal imperative - that we must control the growth in health care costs that are putting families at economic risk and making it harder for small employers to do business," he said. "We have a moral imperative to fix this problem, with 47,000 Vermonters uninsured and another 150,000 underinsured and worried about how to afford keeping their families healthy." Vermont lawmakers passed the legislation in March by a 92-49 margin. At the time of its passage, Shumlin lauded the legislature for becoming "the first state in the country to make the first substantive step to deliver a health care system where health care will be a right and not a privilege." The legislation, when fully enacted, will guarantee every Vermont resident the right to enroll in a state-sponsored insurance plan, Green Mountain Care. The law is set to become operational in 2014.
Note: The huge medical and pharmaceutical industries in the U.S. have a vested interest in keeping health care private in order to maintain their massive profits. This may be why the important news above was hardly reported in the media. The rest of the industrialized world already knows that it is much cheaper for government to provide medical care than for the private sector. Yet the media, a major source of whose income comes from advertising by these industries, is quite biased against providing health care for all, unless it is done through a profitable private system.
For Maria Gillespie, the memories of what she endured in a prison in Uruguay, when she was only 15 years old, are almost too much to bear. She remembers being hooded, interrogated and tortured. Eventually every tooth was wrenched out of her mouth. But she also remembers - as Amnesty International marks its 50th anniversary - how much she owes to the organisation that helped end the horror and set her free. "I don't think that if I say 'thank you' it will be enough," Mrs Gillespie says of the Amnesty activists around the world who campaigned on her behalf. "I think that I do owe them my life." Amnesty was founded 12 years before she was jailed. It called for collective action on behalf of those unjustly imprisoned around the world. Maria Gillespie fell into that category after the military seized power in Uruguay in 1973, ushering in a period of severe repression. She was ... married to a trade union activist who was wanted by the authorities, and had fled the country. In his absence ... Maria was arrested. She was accused of aiding the regime's enemies, and sentenced to 75 years in prison. And so she began her solitary confinement in a windowless cell lit only by an electric bulb. She was repeatedly taken - with her head in a hood - for questioning about her husband's associates. But she knew nothing of his activities. She had no answers for her interrogators.
Note: The brutal repression of political activity in Uruguay described in this article was supervised by the CIA in its Operation Condor, a campaign of torture and killing across Latin America.
In November 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed before television cameras to prosecute those responsible for the market collapse a year earlier, saying the U.S. would be “relentless” in pursuing corporate criminals. In the 18 months since, no senior Wall Street executive has been criminally charged. Prosecutions of three categories of crime that could be linked to the causes of the crisis -- corporate, securities and bank fraud -- declined last fiscal year by 39 percent from 2003, the period after the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc., Justice Department records show. “You need a massive prosecutorial effort,” said Solomon Wisenberg, a white-collar defense attorney at Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Washington and a former federal prosecutor. “I don't see evidence that it's happening." The seizing up of credit markets led to the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and sparked the worst economic slump in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Much of the blame belongs to banks that profited from selling products that imploded with the housing market.
Note: For undeniable evidence of fraud at the highest levels of Wall Street, click here.
On deadline day [May 20], President Barack Obama ... sent a letter to Congress expressing support for a bipartisan resolution favoring military operations in Libya. At issue: The 1973 War Powers Act, which says if the president does not get congressional authorization 60 days after military action, the mission must stop within 30 days. The president formally notified Congress about the mission in Libya with a letter on March 21. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-California, told CNN before news of the letter broke that he believed Obama was trying to "bring democracy to Libya while shredding the Constitution of the United States. He cannot continue what he is doing in Libya without congressional authorization." To be sure, presidents in both parties often ignored another part of the War Powers Act -- that the commander-in-chief should get congressional approval before any military action. But it is virtually unprecedented for a president to continue a mission beyond 60 days without a resolution from Congress. "Make no mistake: Obama is breaking new ground, moving decisively beyond his predecessors," Yale law professors Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway wrote this week in the Washington Post.
Note: For ideas on why Obama has shifted to become as much of a war-monger as his predecessors, see what a top general has to say at this link.
For a bespectacled, peace-loving Englishman, there can be few places less congenial than a berth on the sixth floor of Miami main jail. The place has to be seen to be believed. Up to 24 inmates are crowded into a single cell, living behind metal bars on steel bunks, sharing a single shower and two toilets. Little of the bright Miami sun filters through the grilles on the windows. Visits to the yard happen twice a week for an hour. The rest of the time, inmates are holed up round the clock, eating, sleeping, and going slightly crazy. But what is most shocking is the behaviour of the inmates themselves. For reasons that remain to some extent opaque ... the incarcerated here have created a brutal gladiatorial code of fighting. They fight for respect, for food and snacks, or simply to pass the time. With around 7,000 inmates, the Miami jail system is one of the biggest in America - a so-called "mega-jail". In America, jails are distinct from prisons in that they hold people who are pre-trial and therefore unconvicted. But the hardened few hundred who are either charged with particularly serious offences or have a track record of misbehaving behind bars get sent to the fifth and sixth floors of the main jail - a place with its own myth and lore.
Note: If you want to understand that tragedy of some U.S. jails and why they tend to harden criminals much more than reform them, read the full article.
A German insurance firm has admitted rewarding its 100 best salesmen with a prostitute-filled "sex party" in Budapest's most famous thermal baths. Hamburg-Mannheimer International (HMI), now part of the huge Munich Re insurance conglomerate, rented out the historic Gellert Baths in the Hungarian capital and turned it into an "open-air brothel", where it let staff run riot. At least 20 prostitutes were hired by HMI top brass for the so-called "incentive trip". According to those present, the women were colour-coded to indicate which men were allowed to have sex with them. Those wearing white ribbons were reserved for "the very best salespeople and executives", said one HMI employee. After an investigation printed in the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Munich Re has admitted that the party ... – did occur. [A] guest said that beds had been set up around the baths where the salesmen could "do what they wanted". The women, he claimed, were then given an ink stamp on their forearms to show how popular they had been: some of the women ended up with more than a dozen stamps, it is alleged.
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
The New York Attorney General's office has been requesting information from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on how they created and structured mortgage bonds at the height of the credit boom. That investigation has reignited questions about why, nearly three years after the financial crisis, no Wall Streeter has yet to face criminal charges directly related to the mortgage bonds and other toxic deals that lead to the financial crisis. No one really knows the answer, but there are a number of theories out there. Here are the best ones: Theory No. 1: Prosecutors have been told to back off. In mid-April, the New York Times did a large investigative piece that found a number of instances where prosecutors were told not to pursue Wall Street. Theory No. 2: Wall Street is innocent. It may seem like the most bizarre answer, but it is getting some traction. No one is really saying that Wall Street didn't do anything wrong. It's clear that setting up risky mortgage bonds to sell to investors and then betting against them yourself is wrong. But is it illegal? It's not quite clear. Theory No. 3: The cases are still in the works. There seems to be some evidence that prosecutors are starting to be more aggressive in pursuing cases. It's not clear what part of the mortgage process, or what potential wrong doing, the NY AG Eric Schneiderman is investigating. The truth is that Wall Streeters rarely go to jail. Yes, other bubbles and financial crises have resulted in numerous convictions, but generally not of Wall Streeters.
Note: Remember that Elliot Spitzer probably got taken down for going after Wall Street. Now his successor, Eric Schneiderman, is doing the same thing. For an excellent article on this brave man, click here.
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said it is studying whether the facility's reactors were damaged in the March 11 earthquake even before the massive tsunami that followed cut off power and sent the reactors into crisis. Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed source at the utility on Sunday as saying that the No. 1 reactor might have suffered structural damage in the earthquake that caused a release of radiation separate from the tsunami. Tepco has provided a new analysis of the early hours of the Fukushima crisis. The utility said on Sunday that a review of data from March 11 suggested that the fuel rods in the No. 1 reactor were completely exposed to the air and rapidly heating five hours after the quake. By the next morning - just 16 hours later - the uranium fuel rods in the first reactor had melted down and dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel. The No. 2 and No. 3 reactors are expected to have gone through a similar process and like No. 1 are leaking most of the water being pumped in a bid to keep their cores cool. A massive pond of radioactive water has collected in the basement of the No. 1 reactor. Experts fear that the contaminated water leaking from the plant could threaten groundwater and the Pacific.
Note: For lots more on corporate and government corruption from major media sources, click here and here.
ExxonMobil's first-quarter earnings of $10.7 billion are up 69 percent from last year. Other oil companies are also scoring record gains. The five biggest oil companies together report more than $35 billion in profits. An ExxonMobil vice president asks that we look past the "inevitable headlines" and remember the company's investments in renewable energy. What investments, exactly? Last time I looked, ExxonMobil was devoting a smaller percentage of its earnings to renewables than most other oil companies, including the errant BP. In point of fact, no oil company is investing much in renewables - precisely because they've got such a money gusher going from oil. Republicans are defending oil's tax subsidy. They're responding to soaring gas prices by trying to open more of our oceans to oil drilling. House Republicans recently passed a bill to accelerate oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia. They're readying measures to open vast new areas of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans to oil exploration. The oil companies now are gushing profits as Americans pay more and more at the pump. This makes no sense. The gusher should be used to shift America away from our costly dependence on oil.
Note: The author of this opinion, Robert Reich, is former U.S. secretary of labor, professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of the new book Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He blogs at www.robertreich.org.
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.