News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is now run by political hacks appointed by Bush who know zilch about disaster relief. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said to Michael Brown a few days before the FEMA chief was relieved of his oversight of the relief efforts. Brown, who reportedly doctored his unimpressive resume and didn't have a background in emergency management, resigned Monday. He had secured this plum job because he was a college buddy of his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh, who managed Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.
FEMA refuses
hundreds of personnel, dozens of vehicles - Chicago Tribune, 9/2/05
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902daley,1,2011979.story
FEMA won't let
Red Cross deliver food - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/3/05
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm
FEMA fails to
utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board - Chicago Tribune, 9/4/05
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509040369sep04,1,4144825.story
FEMA turns away
state-of-the-art mobile hospital from Univ. of North Carolina - CNN, 9/5/05
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/04/katrina.sick.redtape.ap/
FEMA won't accept
Amtrak's help in evacuations - Financial Times, 9/5/05
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e
FEMA turns back
Wal-Mart supply trucks - New York Times, 9/6/05
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05blame.html
FEMA prevents
Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel - New York Times, 9/6/05
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05blame.html
FEMA blocks 500-boat
citizen flotilla from delivering aid - News Sentinel, 9/8/05
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/12595873.htm
FEMA asks media not to take pictures of dead - Washington Post, 9/8/05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702126.html
FEMA turns
back German government plane loaded with 15 tons of food - Spiegel,
9/12/05
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,374268,00.html
FEMA: "First
Responders Urged Not To Respond" Unless Dispatched - FEMA's own website
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470
For those who are ready to go even deeper, read about FEMA's shady beginnings by clicking here. Then, to see Online Journal's revealing analysis article "New Orleans: Dress rehearsal for lockdown of America," click here.
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency's paperwork slowed the evacuation of patients from the airport, Acadian's frustrated medics waited with empty helicopters. "At one point I had 10 helicopters on the ground waiting to go," said Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic, "but FEMA kept stonewalling us with paperwork. Meanwhile, every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying." The company sent in outside doctors and nurses. FEMA rejected the help because the doctors and nurses weren't certified members of a National Disaster Medical Team. "When the doctors asked why they couldn't help these critically ill people lying there unattended," Mr. Creswell recalled, "the FEMA people kept saying, 'You're not federalized.' "
Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?" As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters...a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday [less than a week after landfall] in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta. Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they have learned they are going...to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA. On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.
Note: If the above link does not work, click here.
Eight years ago Congress...set aside $500,000 for FEMA to create "a comprehensive analysis and plan of all evacuation alternatives for the New Orleans metropolitan area." Frustrated two years later that no study had materialized, Congress strengthened its directive. This time it ordered "an evacuation plan for a Category 3 or greater storm, a levee break, flood or other natural disaster for the New Orleans area." The $500,000 that Congress appropriated for the evacuation plan went to a commission that studied future options for the 24-mile bridge over Lake Pontchartrain.
Anyone who types the words "9/11" and "conspiracy" into an online search engine soon learns that not everybody buys the official narrative of what took place on Sept. 11, 2001. As a professor emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, 66-year-old David Ray Griffin would seem to have more affinity for leather elbow patches than tin hats, yet after friends and colleagues prodded him into sifting through the evidence, he experienced a conversion. "For the first year and a half I just accepted the conventional view ... that this was blowback for our foreign policy. When a colleague suggested to me ... forces within our own government had arranged it, I didn't accept that. Then several months later another colleague sent me a website that had a timeline. Once I ... saw all those stories drawn from mainstream sources that contradicted the official account, I decided I needed to look into it more carefully, and the more I looked, the worse it got. The fact that Building 7 ... collapsed when it had not been hit by an airplane ... that's a smoking gun. The fact that standard operating procedures were not followed that morning, and we've gotten three different stories now by the U.S. military as to why they did not intercept the planes, that's a smoking gun. The 9/11 commission simply ignored those questions. The official account itself is a conspiracy theory. It says that 19 Arab Muslims...conspired to pull off this operation. The question is not whether one is a conspiracy theorist about 9/11. It's which conspiracy theory do you find most supported by the evidence?"
Note: If the Los Angeles Times link does not work, click here for the full article. The timeline to which Prof. Griffin refers is the WantToKnow.info timeline at http://www.WantToKnow.info/9-11cover-up
The provincial government will announce tomorrow that Ontario is embracing more nuclear power plants. Premier Dalton McGuinty has privately spoken of his government's plans to confidants for days, insiders say. In an off-the-record speech on Saturday night in Ottawa to the secretive Bilderberg group, McGuinty discussed the pros and cons of more nuclear plants. The premier privately admitted the public will officially learn of the plans tomorrow. Insiders told the Star he was unequivocal in private conversations about his support for the controversial electricity source. McGuinty's staff deliberately omitted any mention of his speech Saturday to the Bilderberg session...from his public itinerary. The group, named for the Dutch hotel the organization first met at in 1954, holds its sessions behind closed doors amid tight security. Because participants in Bilderberg sessions are sworn to secrecy under threat of ex-communication from the group, politicians tend to lower their guard and speak candidly. It was the kind of power-broker audience the premier, who sat with Pataki, Reisman and Queen Beatrix, would want to reach when delivering a message about investing in Ontario — and massive investment will be required to pay for $40 billion in nuclear plants.
Note:If the above link fails, click here. If the Bilderbergers truly support the interests of all of us, why the need for so much secrecy? Why is there no website? Why until just a few years ago was there virtually no reporting on the influential Bilderberg Group at all in the major media?
Four days after they arrived quietly at a Kanata hotel, the world's rich and powerful left just as mysteriously, in limos and SUVs with blacked-out windows. The Bilderberg Group, a secretive organization of politicians and business leaders from around the world, gave no public statements. With private security guards and metal barriers keeping outsiders on the street, the Bilderbergers met privately and then whisked themselves away in ones and twos, mostly to the airport. What they talked about at the Brookstreet Hotel is still a secret. The group meets annually, and is usually rumoured to discuss international politics and business, from Middle East crises to oil prices. They emerged singly yesterday -- Bilderberg president Etienne Davignon of Belgium, American David Rockefeller, Italian economist Mario Monti, European competition commissioner Neelie Kroes from the Netherlands, and, watchers thought, Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi. Protesters on the sidewalk have their own version of the agenda: world domination, a merger of Canada with the United States and Mexico, hiding the cure for cancer, suppression of cars that get 200 miles per gallon of fuel, [and] an invasion of Iran.
Note: This article lists the names and descriptions of 21 participants of this Bilderberg meeting. If you read through them, you will see that they are clearly among the most powerful and wealthy people in the world.
Among prominent attendees at this year's conference of the Bilderberg group, a secretive society that includes some of the world's most powerful people: Jacques Aigrain, CEO of Swiss Re. Ahmad Chalabi, former deputy prime minister of Iraq and long-time opponent of Saddam Hussein. George A. David, chairman of Coca-Cola. Paul Desmarais, CEO of Power Corporation. Richard Holbrooke, key American negotiator for 1995 Bosnian peace accords. Vernon Jordan, friend and onetime presidential aide to Bill Clinton. Henry Kissinger, foreign-policy guru and secretary of state under Richard Nixon. Ed Kronenburg, director of NATO's private office. Bernardino Leon Gross, Spain's foreign minister. Ronald S. Lloyd, chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston. Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands. Gordon Nixon, Royal Bank of Canada president, CEO. George Pataki, governor of New York state. Richard Perle, senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush. David Rockefeller, retired banker, heir to oil fortune. Dennis Ross, former Clinton Mideast negotiator. Giulio Tremonti, VP of Italy's chamber of deputies. James Wolfensohn, U.S. Mideast envoy, former head of the World Bank. Robert Zoellick, deputy U.S. secretary of state.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For those who know about the pre-war manipulations involving weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the participation of Ahmed Chalabi speaks volumes. And for a revealing three-minute video clip on CNN about this highly secretive group, click here.
Greeted at the airport by limousine drivers holding single-letter "B" signs, global luminaries such as Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands began quietly slipping into Ottawa yesterday for the annual gathering of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg Group. The group's discreet approach was evident as attendees arrived yesterday at the Ottawa Airport. Outside the airport, a phalanx of limousines lined up to ferry guests to the Brookstreet. Approached by a Citizen reporter upon his arrival, former U.S. defence policy adviser Richard Perle shot down criticism about the secrecy of the group's meetings. "It's a private organization," he said. He denied the charge, advanced by Bilderberg critics, that the organization crafts public policy behind closed doors. "It discusses public policy," he stressed. Mr. Perle also dismissed suggestions that the group's heavy representation from the oil industry gives it influence over energy prices. Also seen arriving yesterday were Jorma Ollila, chairman of Royal Dutch Shell [and] World Bank president James Wolfenson. According to an unsigned press release sent by fax yesterday, presumably by Bilderberg organizers, attendees will also include New York Governor George Pataki, deputy prime minister of Iraq Ahmad Chalabi, the heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, [and] the Royal Bank of Canada. "The meeting is private to encourage frank and open discussion," said the release. "There will be no press conference."
Note: To see photos of this article on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/Pictures/Jun06/110606bbg_media_ottawa_citizen.jpg
http://www.prisonplanet.com/Pictures/Jun06/110606bbg_tucker_paper_cover.jpg
For a video clip of reporters trying trying to get close, click here and go to the "Video" section on the right.
A serene setting in Ottawa's west-end Kanata suburb has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards and a bevy of conspiracy theories. The security outside the Brookstreet Hotel is much tighter than it is on Parliament Hill. Inside, the CBC was told, all guests were asked to check out at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday. The hotel appears to be hosting the annual meeting of one of the world's most secretive and powerful societies: the Bilderberg group. But, of course, no one will admit it. People who follow the Bilderberg group say it persuaded Europe to adopt a common currency, and, among other things, persuaded Bill Clinton to support the North American Free Trade Agreement. "David Rockefeller is going to be here. Henry Kissinger is going to be here. Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, is going to be here" says Daniel Estulin, who has written a book about the Bilderberg group. Jim Tucker, who has followed the Bilderberg group for the last 30 years, told CBC News he is troubled by all the secrecy. "Officials of the United States government [should not] have a private meeting with private citizens about public policy," Tucker says.
Canadian authorities detained an American activist filmmaker at the Ottawa airport late Wednesday night, confiscating his passport, camera equipment and most of his belongings. Citizenship and Immigration Canada agents stopped Alex Jones, whose films include Martial Law 9/11: The Rise of the Police State, and questioned him for nearly four hours before letting him go with only one change of clothes and telling him to return Thursday morning. “It’s really chilling, like a police state,” said Mr. Jones of his detention. Mr. Jones and his crew...travelled to Canada to film a documentary about the Bilderberg group, a secretive group of former politicians and business leaders who are meeting in Ottawa this week. A Citizenship and Immigration representative said that her department was unable to comment on Mr. Jones’ detention.
Members of the Bilderberg Group will descend on the upscale Brookstreet Hotel for the three-day meeting, several police sources confirmed yesterday. When asked about police plans for the event, a police spokeswoman referred the Citizen to Alan Bell of Globe Risk Holdings. Reached by phone, Mr. Bell -- who is listed as president of Globe Risk Holdings in Toronto and a former SAS paratrooper commando -- said he hadn't heard of the Bilderberg Group and denied that his firm has been hired to guard this week's conference. "Never heard of that conference. What is it?" said Mr. Bell before politely cutting the conservation short. But according to the company's website, Globe Risk Holdings specializes in "strategic planning and counter-measures," recruits its consultants primarily from elite military counter-terrorist and special forces units, and has "undertaken consultancy and project work worldwide in areas of high risk". "The consultants at Globe Risk Holdings have proven backgrounds in military, special forces, law enforcement and government organizations with real life expertise in the areas of international security...close protection, sabotage prevention, and military/law enforcement," reads the company website.
Note: Denial and lying seem to be standard protocol for those involved with the Bilderberg group. What does that say about what is being discussed in their secret meetings?
The meetings of a secretive global think-tank would bring 100 of the world's most powerful and influential figures to Ottawa next month [for] deliberations on such weighty issues as the direction of global oil markets and potential military action against Iran. Reports circulating on the Internet say this year's Bilderberg Conference will be held June 8-11 at the Brookstreet Hotel - a rumour the hotel would not confirm. Patrice Basille, general manager of the Brookstreet Hotel, said no event associated with the Bilderberg group has been formally booked. "'What is the Bilderberg?" he asked. "This is the first I've heard about it." Journalists aren't allowed to attend the sessions, and staff at the host hotels are told not to confirm or deny any event is scheduled. But, if a gathering in Ottawa is anything like past Bilderbergs, invitees will be drawn from the pages of International Who's Who, with a emphasis on political and corporate leadership and strong representation of the oil and banking industries. The Bilderberg has been accused of being everything from a Zionist cabal building a single global government to a secret star-chamber that seeks to fix the price of oil and presidential elections. Even some rational critics suspect the Bilderberg's meetings set the economic and political agenda for much of the industrialized world without any public oversight or accountability. They denounce the Bilderberg as elitist and overly secretive, calling it an anti-democratic gathering of "the high priests of globalization."
A year on from 7/7, wild rumours are circulating about who planted the bombs and why. On the morning of 7/7 a former Scotland Yard anti-terrorism branch official had been staging a training exercise based on bombs going off simultaneously at precisely the stations that had been targeted. [Bridget] Dunne was confused by the conflicting reports. "I have only one reason for starting this blog," she wrote. "It is to ascertain the facts behind the events in London on...July 7 2005. That the times of trains were totally absent from the public domain was one of the factors which led to my suspicions that what we were being told happened was not what actually happened." The Home Office [claimed] that on July 7 the quartet boarded a 7.40am Thameslink train to King's Cross. According to Dunne, when an independent researcher visited Luton and demanded a train schedule from Thameslink, he was told that the 7.40am had never run and that the next available train, the 7.48, had arrived at King's Cross at 8.42...too late for the bombers to have boarded the three tube trains. The next problem is the CCTV picture. If you look closely at the image...you will see that the railings behind Khan, the man in the white baseball cap, appear to run in front of his left arm while another rail appears to slice through his head. Some people believe the image was faked in Photoshop. This theory is bolstered by the fact that police have never released the further CCTV footage showing the four emerging on to the concourse at King's Cross where, according to the home office narrative, they are seen hugging and appear "euphoric".
Note: For more serious evidence of complicity in the London Bombings, click here. See also the excellent information on the July 7th Truth Campaign at http://www.julyseventh.co.uk.
In the ballroom foyer of the Embassy Suites Hotel, the two-day International Education and Strategy Conference for 9/11 Truth was off to a rollicking start. More than 500 people — from Italy to Northern California — gathered for the weekend at a major chain hotel near the runways of O'Hare International. There were talks on the Reichstag fire and the sinking of the Battleship Maine as precedents for 9/11. There were speeches by the lawyer for James Earl Ray, who claimed that a military conspiracy killed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and by a former operative for the British secret service, MI5. 9/11 Truthers [are] a group that, in its rank and file, includes professors, chain-saw operators, mothers, engineers, activists, used-book sellers, pizza deliverymen, [and] college students. Steven E. Jones [is] a professor of physics at Brigham Young University and the movement's expert in the matter of collapse. Dr. Jones...is a soft-spoken man who lets his writing do the talking. He composed an account of the destruction of the towers...that holds that "pre-positioned cutter-charges" brought the buildings down. There is a plan by the British delegation...to get members of Parliament to watch "Loose Change," the seminal movement DVD. The Truthers are not alone in believing the whole truth has not come out. A poll released last month by Zogby International found that 42 percent of all Americans believe the 9/11 Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence" in the attacks. [And a] Zogby poll two years ago that found that 49 percent of New York City residents agreed with the idea that some leaders "knew in advance" that the attacks were planned and failed to act.
Nine-eleven conspiracy theories have been circulating for years, producing millions of Web links, scores of books, and a nationwide collection of doubters known as the "9/11 Truth" movement. For those who can't find information about the alleged cover-up on the nightly news, there is Loose Change, a documentary about 9/11. Since it appeared on the Web in April 2005, the 80-minute film has been climbing up and down Google Video's "Top 100," rising to No. 1 this May, with at least 10 million viewings. It's safe to say that, if it were a theatrical release, Loose Change would be one of the most popular—and incendiary—movies in the country right now. Most of what we see on-screen during Loose Change are actually news reports from mainstream-media outlets like CBS News, Newsweek, CNN, the Associated Press, even Fox News. Loose Change is an investigation into the official story of 9/11 as told by The 9/11 Commission Report. Why were the black boxes from American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 never found, when the passport of one of Flight 11's alleged hijackers, Satam Al Suqami, turned up unscathed a few blocks from the World Trade Center? Hani Hanjour, one of the alleged hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, had trouble controlling and landing a single-engine Cessna 172 when he did test runs. Yet according to the official version of events, if Hani Hanjour had been the pilot he would have had to execute a perfect 330-degree turn at 530 miles per hour, descending 7,000 feet in two and a half minutes, in order to crash Flight 77, a Boeing 757, into the Pentagon.
Note: To watch this incredibly revealing documentary free online, click here.
Poverty can be solved, declares Muhammad Yunus. A former economics professor, who holds honorary doctorates from 22 universities in 11 countries, Yunus has seen for himself what works and what doesn’t work in Bangladesh, just about the poorest country in the world. "Charity is not the way to help people in need. If you want to solve poverty, you have to put people in a position to build their own life. Unfortunately, this is not how the aid industry works. Western governments and development organizations think they need to offer permanent charity. As a result, they keep entire economies in poverty and families in an inhuman situation." As founder of the Grameen Bank, he is the creator of a concept that now represents an emerging force in the financial world: microcredit, small loans for poor people. Grameen has become a model for banks in nearly 100 countries. "I still think we can cut poverty in half within 10 years and can eradicate it within a human lifetime. Credit is one of the barriers we must eliminate so that the poor can clamber out of poverty. Thanks to the mobile telephone, farmers in Bangladesh can negotiate directly with their customers. Via internet, farmers find out the actual market value of their goods, enabling them to strengthen their negotiating position. They are no longer forced to rely on the clever middleman who kept the farmers in ignorance and took off with their money." Yunus has demonstrated that combating poverty starts with action. And that these actions can sometimes even make a profit.
Note: Yunus was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his empowering work. For lots more on this inspiring movement and what you can do to help pull families out of poverty, click here.
It is one of the ill-kept secrets of America's intelligence agencies--for decades, they have worked virtually non-stop to perfect means of controlling the human mind. But while many have suspected the existence of these projects, the details have long been preserved. MIND CONTROL blows the lid off years of chilling experiments, drawing on documents reluctantly released through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with some of the victims, including a woman whose past was literally taken away. Hear from John Marks, the author of In Search of the Manchurian Candidate, who broke the story of the CIA's abuses by unraveling the mysteries contained in financial records. All the other records pertaining to the experiments were destroyed by the agency in an attempt to prevent the details from ever being known.
Note: Interviews in this eye-opening documentary with top psychiatrists, lawyers, and victims send chills up the spine. A former head of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Ewen Cameron, is one of many highly respected doctors who erased the personalities of thousands of unsuspecting victims, while many in the profession simply turned a blind eye. To watch this powerful documentary free online, click here.
David Hartsough is quietly building an army. Hartsough is traveling the globe to rally a force that will march into the danger zones of the world armed with only a commitment to peace...In 1960, all across the southern states of the US, people began protesting [racial] segregation. Every Saturday, Hartsough and his black friends would leave DC, which had already been desegregated, and cross into Maryland. They would sit at a lunch counter there until they were arrested. When months passed and no one challenged the racist law [in Virginia], he and his friends mustered their courage. "Twelve of us went in and sat down at this lunch counter. Within minutes there were cars and sirens coming from all directions. They didn't arrest us, but neither were they going to serve us any food. We stayed there for two days, and it was the most difficult two days of my life." Hartsough and his friends endured vicious name-calling, lit cigarettes being dropped down their shirts, punches so hard they were knocked off their stools...and members of the American Nazi Party sporting swastikas and brandishing photos of apes. At the end of the second day, as Hartsough sat in meditation...a man approached him from behind. "He said to me, 'you nigger-lover', and he had this horrible look of hatred on his face; `if you don't get out of this store in two seconds, I'm going to stab this through your heart'." In the man's hand was a switchblade. "I had two seconds to decide if I really believed in nonviolence. I looked this man right in the eye, and I said, `Friend, do what you believe is right, and I'll still try and love you.’ It was quite amazing, because his jaw began to fall and his hand began to drop and then he left the store.'"
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.