TV News LIES

The Pentagon has paid $1.1 trillion to hundreds of defense contractors and their parent companies that have defrauded the government over the past ten years, according to a Department of Defense report released Thursday.

More than 300 contractors involved in civil and criminal fraud cases that resulted in judgments of $1 million or more during the last decade were paid a total of $573.7 billion by the US military, including $398 billion that was paid to contractors after judgments for fraud. When awards to parent companies are included, the Pentagon awarded $1.1 trillion to the top 37 companies that defrauded the US military since 2000.

Today we get our first look at American wages in 2010 based on payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration. David Cay Johnston picks out the most important takeaways, including:

1) Half of all workers made less than $26,364, the median wage in 2010. That means the typical wage is at its lowest level since 1999, after adjusting for inflation.

The economic crash led to the loss of 9 million jobs and the biggest drop in American home-ownership since the Great Depression. Long-term unemployment, poverty and hunger have increased dramatically. People are angry. The Occupy Wall Street movement, a stand against Wall Street's greed, excess and criminality, has captured the imagination and participation of millions across the nation and the globe.

The giant mortgage bubble and the irresponsible and corrupt practices that caused the catastrophic economic crash didn't emerge out of thin air. They were a consequence of decades of pay-to-play politics rife with conflicts of interest; a political system awash in cash and legal pay-offs, designed to undermine the checks and balances that could have prevented the meltdown.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s operations center was hindered by high turnover and inconsistent training when it missed an early warning that could have tipped off the Army about a series of murders allegedly committed by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, according to an Army investigation obtained by The News Tribune.

Lt. Col. Charles Roede’s report primarily faults the noncommissioned officer who failed to act on a phone call he received Feb. 14, 2010, describing plots to kill Afghan civilians.

A new report published in the popular journal Nature has revealed that antibiotics are permanently destroying beneficial bacteria within the gut, a condition scientists link to mental illness. While it has been known for some time that antibiotics contribute to the development of drug-resistant superbugs and certain gut problems, the link between antibiotic use and mental illness through the permanent destruction of beneficial bacteria only further tops the pharmaceutical paradigm. In fact, the pharmaceutical paradigm set in place by drug makers is so vast that it actually offers drug-based ‘solutions’ to the very problems that drugs originally created!

A University of Zurich study 'proves' that a small group of companies - mainly banks - wields huge power over the global economy.

The study is the first to look at all 43,060 transnational corporations and the web of ownership between them - and created a 'map' of 1,318 companies at the heart of the global economy.

The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) — a right-wing “pro-Israel” pressure group — attempted to paint the Occupy Wall Street protests as anti-Semitic. But while plenty of evidence runs counter to the ECI’s far-reaching assertions that politicians are “turning a blind eye to anti-semitic, anti-Israel attacks,” the ECI is much slower to condemn its own ties to ethnic and religious intolerance.

ECI board member Rachel Abrams — wife of George W. Bush administration Middle East adviser Elliott Abrams — litters her blog, “Bad Rachel,” with homophobic, anti-Palestinian, innuendo-filled screeds about political opponents.

Secret justice looks set to be a regular feature of British courts and tribunals when the intelligence services want to protect their sources of information. Civil courts, immigration panels and even coroner's inquests would go into secret session if the Government rules that hearing evidence in public could be a threat to national security.

The proposals, which run counter to a centuries-old British tradition of open justice, were introduced to a sparsely attended House of Commons yesterday by the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke – and met almost no opposition. The planned changes to the British justice system follow lobbying of the Government by the CIA.