Clean Energy: US Lags, Church Protects Abusive Priests, Kissinger Aided Assassinations
Revealing News Articles
April 26, 2010
Dear friends,
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on the failure of the US to pursue promising clean energy alternatives, the Catholic Church's protection of pedophilic priests from legal proceedings to stop their sexual abuses, new documentation of the role played by Henry Kissinger enabling the Condor Program of assassinations, and more. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails to function, click here. The most important sentences are highlighted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can and will build a brighter future.
With best wishes,
Tod Fletcher and Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Special Note: For an exciting new energy invention based on magnets demonstrated recently at a university in the Netherlands, click here for a video demonstration, and click here for more information. Will it be suppressed? For media articles on other inventions which have not received the attention they should have, click here.
Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags
April 13, 2010, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.html
The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock. Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago. In that time, such plants have become both the mainstay of garbage disposal and a crucial fuel source across Denmark, from wealthy exurbs like Horsholm to Copenhagen's downtown area. Their use has not only reduced the country's energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration. Across Europe, there are about 400 plants, with Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack in expanding them and building new ones. By contrast, no new waste-to-energy plants are being planned or built in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says – even though the federal government and 24 states now classify waste that is burned this way for energy as a renewable fuel, in many cases eligible for subsidies.
Note: Why isn't the US implementing this clean technology? For lots more from major media sources on promising new clean energy developments, click here.
Navy Submarine Runs Eternally on Thermal Power from Ocean Currents
April 8, 2010, Popular Science magazine
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/submarine-runs-eternally-thermal-power-ocean-currents
A Navy-funded thermal engine bobbing off the coast of Hawaii is accomplishing a rare feat -- it produces more energy than it consumes. Though it's not quite a perpetual motion machine, it could provide scientists or the Navy with a perpetual presence on the seas. The engine is attached to an unmanned underwater vessel, called SOLO-TREC, and uses the energy of the ocean to derive a practically limitless energy supply. SOLO-TREC is outfitted with a series of tubes full of waxy phase-change materials. As the float encounters warm temperatures near the ocean's surface, the materials expand; when it dives and the waters grow cooler, the materials contract. The expansion and contraction pressurizes oil, which drives a hydraulic motor. The motor generates electricity and recharges the batteries, which power a pump. The pump can change the float's buoyancy, allowing it to move up and down the water column. "In theory what you have now is unlimited endurance for something that has this type of engine," said Thomas Swean Jr., team leader for ocean engineering and marine systems at the Office of Naval Research, which funded the project. "Other things can break, but as far as the energy source, it will only stop working if the ocean ran out of energy, which is unlikely to happen."
Note: For lots more from major media sources on promising new energy inventions, click here.
Predator Priests Shuffled Around Globe
April 14, 2010, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/14/world/main6397279.shtml
There he was, five decades later, the priest who had raped Joe Callander in Massachusetts. The photo in the Roman Catholic newsletter showed him with a smile across his wrinkled face, near-naked Amazon Indian children in his arms and at his feet. The Rev. Mario Pezzotti was working with children and supervising other priests in Brazil. It's not an isolated example. In an investigation spanning 21 countries across six continents, The Associated Press found 30 cases of priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad. Some escaped police investigations. Many had access to children in another country, and some abused again. A priest who admitted to abuse in Los Angeles went to the Philippines, where U.S. church officials mailed him checks and advised him not to reveal their source. A priest in Canada was convicted of sexual abuse and then moved to France, where he was convicted of abuse again in 2005. Another priest was moved back and forth between Ireland and England, despite being diagnosed as a pederast, a man who commits sodomy with boys. "The pattern is if a priest gets into trouble and it's close to becoming a scandal or if the law might get involved, they send them to the missions abroad," said Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and critic of what he says is a practice of international transfers of accused and admitted priest child abusers. "Anything to avoid a scandal."
Note: This is only the tip of the iceberg. If you want to understand how pedophile rings have infiltrated the highest levels of government, don't miss the powerful Discovery Channel documentary on this available here.
Psychologist For Priests: I Saw Abusers Reinstated
April 15, 2010, NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126024849
For years, the Catholic Church has quietly sent priests accused of sexual transgressions to psychiatric centers for treatment. Dr. Leslie Lothstein has treated more than 300 Catholic priests at one of those centers, the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn. Lothstein, who is not Catholic himself, says many of his patients have sexual problems. And he says the church does not always follow psychologists' directives about patients who are treated. "My experience was that if it was said to one of the clergy who was in charge ... that this person needs to have much more supervision, they would say, 'Oh yes, yes, it'll be there, they'll have supervision.' But then what happened was they went back to their normal, everyday work. And in going back to it, we learned much later that they didn't have the supervision." Lothstein says there's a "universal feeling" that if a priest has had sexual activity with a child, he should not be around children. But, he says, it didn't always work out that way. "In my experience, there were some people who were sent right back to working in youth ministries, and they often offended," he says. "There was also a subgroup of people that I saw in my private practice where they were sent back by their religious order to a foreign country, and within that country continued to molest children. And it was just horrible."
Kissinger Blocked Demarche On International Assassinations To Condor States
April 10, 2010, The National Security Archive, George Washington University
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB312/index.htm
Only five days before a car bomb planted by agents of the Pinochet regime rocked downtown Washington D.C. on September 21, 1976, [assassinating Chilean exile diplomat Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffitt,] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rescinded instructions sent to, but never implemented by, U.S. ambassadors in the Southern Cone to warn military leaders there against orchestrating "a series of international murders," declassified documents obtained and posted by the National Security Archive revealed today. The instructions effectively ended efforts by senior State Department officials to deliver a diplomatic demarche, approved by Kissinger only three weeks earlier, to express "our deep concern" over "plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad." "The September 16th cable is the missing piece of the historical puzzle on Kissinger's role in the action, and inaction, of the U.S. government after learning of Condor assassination plots," according to Peter Kornbluh, the Archive's senior analyst on Chile and author of the book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. "We know now what happened: The State Department initiated a timely effort to thwart a 'Murder Inc' in the Southern Cone, and Kissinger, without explanation, aborted it," Kornbluh said.
Note: George H.W. Bush was head of the CIA when Orlando Letelier was assassinated just a few blocks away from the director's office. For the full text of the documents click on the link above. For an analysis, click here.
What Would Daniel Ellsberg Do With the Pentagon Papers Today?
April 19, 2010, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/business/media/19link.html
Before Wikileaks, or even the Internet, there were just plain leaks. Two weeks ago, Wikileaks.org released a classified video showing a United States Apache helicopter killing 12 civilians in Baghdad. The reaction was so swift and powerful – an edited version has been viewed six million times on YouTube – that the episode provoked many questions about how such material is now released and digested. Put another way: if someone today had the Pentagon Papers, or the modern equivalent, would he still go to the press, as Daniel Ellsberg did nearly 40 years ago and wait for the documents to be analyzed and published? Or would that person simply post them online immediately? Mr. Ellsberg knows his answer. "I wouldn't have waited that long," he said in an interview last week. "I would have gotten a scanner and put them on the Internet." Today, he says, there is something enticing about being independent – not at the whim of publishers or government attempts to control release. "The government wouldn't have been tempted to enjoin it, if I had put it all out at once," he said. "We got this duel going between newspapers and the government."
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on government secrecy, click here.
How did Big Finance grow so powerful that its hijinks nearly brought down the global economy?
April 16, 2010, Bill Moyers Journal, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/watch.html
Why is it so hard to hold Wall Street accountable? Even as we speak the banking industry and corporate America are fighting against financial reform with all the money and influence at their disposal. Their effort is to preserve a system that would enable them to ransack the country once again. What can ordinary Americans do? That's the question I want to put to my guests, Simon Johnson and James Kwak. They have written this new book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. It's a must read - already a best seller -- and it couldn't have come at a better time. This book could change the debate over financial reform by tipping it in favor of the public. Together James Kwak and Simon Johnson run the indispensable economic website BaselineScenario.com. [Moyers:] Let me get to the blunt conclusion you reach in your book. You say that two years after the devastating financial crisis of '08 our country is still at the mercy of an oligarchy that is bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Correct? SIMON JOHNSON: Absolutely correct, Bill. The big banks became stronger as a result of the bailout. That may seem extraordinary, but it's really true. They're turning that increased economic clout into more political power. And they're using that political power to go out and take the same sort of risks that got us into disaster in September 2008.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the hidden methods used by financial corporations to manipulate the world economy and gain huge profits at the expense of taxpayers, click here.
The Great Federal Reserve Bank Con Job
April 13, 2010, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36233217#36233217
[video transcript:] In America today we are getting closer to fully exposing the greatest con and cover-up in this [country's] history. It involves our banks, the federal reserve, our congress, and, of course, you and me. Here's how the con went down. The bankers were operating under an implicit guarantee from the godfather [at] the Federal Reserve, in the form of guaranteed interest rates, guaranteed cheap money exclusively for the con men. Then, Chairman Greenspan, the godfather, would agree to hold those rates -- let's say 2% -- for as far as the eye could see. The banks, or bankers, the con men, would borrow that money from the Federal Reserve, let's say 2%, and turn around and lend it back to [you], and let's say 6%. That encouraged the patsies, you and me, to be drawn into the con because 6% looks like a pretty low rate. Low rates for houses, low rates for cars. Heck, you could join a health club, make that into payments, turn that into bonds, and of course promises of a higher-than-average return for those managing teachers and policemen's and judge's pension funds that are buying into the con as well. And here exactly is where the con comes in. As you and I both know, the banks had no money. They were getting it from the Federal Reserve. It's funny money.
Note: For abundant reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of what may be the greatest con job in financial history, click here.
Ensnared by Error on Growing U.S. Watch List
April 7, 2010, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07watch.html
Every year, thousands of people find themselves caught up in the government's terrorist screening process. Some are legitimate targets of concern, others are victims of errors in judgment or simple mistaken identity. Either way, their numbers are likely to rise as the Obama administration recalibrates the standards for identifying potential terrorists. On Friday, the administration altered rules for identifying which passengers flying to the United States should face extra scrutiny at the gate. And it is reviewing ways to make it easier to place suspects on the watch list. "The entire federal government is leaning very far forward on putting people on lists," Russell E. Travers, a deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said at a recent Senate hearing. Before the attempted attack on Christmas, Mr. Travers said, "I never had anybody tell me that the list was too small." Now, he added, "It's getting bigger, and it will get even bigger." Even as the universe of those identified as a risk expands, the decision-making involved remains so secretive that people cannot be told whether they are on the watch list, why they may be on it or even whether they have been removed. Civil liberties advocates say [the secrecy] can hide mistakes and keep people wrongly singled out from seeking redress.
Note: For lots more on government threats to civil liberties, click here.
Study Says Overuse Threatens Gains From Modified Crops
April 14, 2010, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/business/energy-environment/14crop.html
Genetically engineered crops have provided "substantial" environmental and economic benefits to American farmers, but overuse of the technology is threatening to erode the gains, a national science advisory organization said ... in a report. The study was issued by the National Research Council, which is affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences. David E. Ervin, the chairman of the committee that wrote the report, ... warned that farmers were jeopardizing the benefits by planting too many so-called Roundup Ready crops. These crops are genetically engineered to be impervious to the herbicide Roundup, allowing farmers to spray the chemical to kill weeds while leaving the crops unscathed. Overuse of this seductively simple approach to weed control is starting to backfire. Use of Roundup, or its generic equivalent, glyphosate, has skyrocketed to the point that weeds are rapidly becoming resistant to the chemical. That is rendering the technology less useful, requiring farmers to start using additional herbicides, some of them more toxic than glyphosate. One critic, Charles Benbrook, said the conclusion that the crops help farmers might not be true in the future. That is because the report relies mostly on data from the first few years, before prices of the biotech seeds rose sharply and the glyphosate-resistant weeds proliferated.
Note: The benefits of GE crops are not substantial and have been intensely debated by involved scientists, though this debate has been covered up by both government and the press. For an excellent overview of the threats posed by genetically modified foods, click here.
Rotarix rotavirus vaccine contaminated, officials say
March 22, 2010, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/22/rotavirus.vaccine/index.html
Federal health authorities recommended [on March 22] that doctors suspend using Rotarix, one of two vaccines licensed in the United States against rotavirus, saying the vaccine is contaminated with material from a pig virus. Rotarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline, was approved by the FDA in 2008. The contaminant material is DNA from porcine circovirus 1, a virus from pigs that is not known to cause disease in humans or animals. About 1 million children in the United States and about 30 million worldwide have gotten Rotarix vaccine. Rotavirus disease kills more than 500,000 infants around the world each year, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. Before rotavirus vaccine became available, the disease was blamed for more than 50,000 hospitalizations and several dozen deaths per year in the United States. "We're not pulling it from the market, we're just suspending its use during this period while we're collecting more information," [Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg] said.
Note: If you explore the vaccine approval process, you may be shocked to find how potentially dangerous materials added to vaccines are not tested for safety. A mercury-based derivative called Thimerosal is still allowed in many vaccines, including the recent swine flu vaccine that was given massively to populations around the world. For more reliable information on this, click here.
Green MBA degrees sprout up on campuses
April 21, 2010, San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/20/BU3A1CVGEQ.DTL
"Green" no longer just symbolizes money at business schools. So-called green MBAs - master of business administration programs that focus on sustainability - are a fast-growing part of the academic landscape, incorporating sustainability into all coursework. The [San Francisco] Bay Area is home to two pioneering programs that grant green MBAs - the Presidio Graduate School (www.presidioedu.org) with a campus in San Francisco's Presidio, and the Green MBA program (www.greenmba.com) at Dominican University in San Rafael. Other local MBA programs increasingly are going green, too. Stanford ranks No. 4, and UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business No. 6 in "Beyond Grey Pinstripes," a biannual ranking that spotlights MBA programs that integrate social, environmental and ethical issues. Green MBA programs say they teach students to pay attention to the triple bottom line - people, profits and planet. Graduates of local green MBA programs [are] trying to use their degrees as a force for positive change.
Note: Click on the Chronicle link above to read the interviews with successful "Green MBAs".
Vegetarians 'get fewer cancers'
March 16, 2010, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7942479.stm
A vegetarian diet may help to protect against cancer, a UK study suggests. Analysis of data from 52,700 men and women shows that those who did not eat meat had significantly fewer cancers overall than those who did. Writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition the team said the findings were worth looking into. Although it is widely recommended that people eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day to reduce their risk of cancer and other diseases, there is very little evidence looking specifically at a vegetarian diet. In the latest study, researchers looked at men and women aged 20 to 89 recruited in the UK in the 1990s. They divided participants into meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans. During follow-up there were fewer cancers than would be expected in the general population - probably because they were a healthier than average group of people. But there was a significantly lower incidence of all cancers among the fish-eaters and vegetarians compared with the meat eaters. For colorectal cancer, however that trend was reversed with vegetarians having a significantly higher incidence of the condition than the other groups.
Note: For many promising reports from major media sources on potential cancer cures, click here.
'Life's Purpose' author Eckhart Tolle is serene, critics less so
April 15, 2010, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-04-15-tolle15_CV_N.htm
Are you weighted down by your past? Anxious about tomorrow? Stewing over how to face today? Stop. Drop those thoughts. Breathe. Be still. Just be. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle will tell you this is the ultimate path to inner peace, available to you any time. All you have to do is let go of all your thoughts. Of course, that's a lot trickier than it sounds. Hence, Tolle's soaring popularity as a guide to living in the present un-tense. His most recent book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, a sequel to his earlier best seller, The Power of Now, has sold 6 million copies. When Oprah Winfrey read it, she was so inspired that she invited him to co-host a 10-week set of Internet seminars on how to simply be. So far, 35 million people worldwide have viewed these "webinars." In July, he launched Tolle TV, an Internet channel featuring his videotaped teachings and meditations. Subscriptions to Tolle TV, at $14.95 to $19.95 a month, cost less than a movie and popcorn, and a growing amount of the content – his lectures, teachings and meditations – is free. Most of the proceeds of his books and teaching tours are plowed back into Tolle TV's elaborate professional productions, or the overhead for lecture halls.
Key Articles From Years Past
A Donor Who Had Big Allies
January 8, 2006, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-banker8jan08,0,1764103.story
In a case that echoes the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, two Northern California Republican congressmen used their official positions to try to stop a federal investigation of a wealthy Texas businessman who provided them with political contributions. Reps. John T. Doolittle and Richard W. Pombo joined forces with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to oppose an investigation by federal banking regulators into the affairs of Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz, documents recently obtained by The Times show. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was seeking $300 million from Hurwitz for his role in the collapse of a Texas savings and loan that cost taxpayers $1.6 billion. The investigation was ultimately dropped. Doolittle and Pombo – both considered protégés of DeLay – used their power as members of the House Resources Committee to subpoena the agency's confidential records on the case, including details of the evidence FDIC investigators had compiled on Hurwitz. Then, in 2001, the two congressmen inserted many of the sensitive documents into the Congressional Record, making them public and accessible to Hurwitz's lawyers, a move that FDIC officials said damaged the government's ability to pursue the banker. The FDIC's chief spokesman characterized what Doolittle and Pombo did as "a seamy abuse of the legislative process."
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