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Explosive Saudi 9/11 Evidence Still Ignored By Media by Russ Baker
Zacarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative dubbed the “20th hijacker,” has given explosive testimony alleging substantial Saudi royal family support for al Qaeda right up until the Sept. 11 attacks. There may be some question about whether Moussaoui is telling the truth, but there’s plenty of evidence out there that the mainstream media has ignored for years. Russ Baker investigates.
WHO
A Blackwater World Order
Kelley Vlahos of The American Conservative examines the growing privatization of America’s wars and a new book by former Army Paratrooper and DynCorp employee Sean McFate. In “The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order,” McFate writes that “the United States has opened the Pandora’s Box of mercenarianism” and “private warriors of all stripes are coming out of the shadows to engage in for-profit warfare.” This new paradigm—which he terms “neomedievalism”—will not make the nation-state obsolete. It will instead produce overlapping allegiances among non-state actors in a multi-polar world. This makes private contractors a far more attractive—and profitable—option for countries that can’t rely on a Vietnam-style draft.
How Brian Williams’ Iraq Story Changed
Noted media reporter Brian Stelter compiled a timeline of NBC anchor Brian Williams’ evolving helicopter shoot-down story from the time he was embedded with troops in Iraq in March 2003, until the beginning of his apology tour this month. The scandal has only grown, with former anchor Tom Brokaw pushing back against rumors he wants Williams fired, debates over the cloudy recollection of the pilot and new questions about other stories Williams fronted over the years.
WHAT
How ISIS Makes Its Blood Sausage
Gawker traces the “polished, lubricated route” those shocking Islamic State videos take from conception to production and dissemination. That’s when their infamous videos end up splashed across the mainstream media on, seemingly, a perpetual loop. One security expert believes that ISIS got into the social media business because it was eager to compete with al-Qaeda’s far more established propaganda operation and, in effect, ramped up their operation by trolling al-Qaeda on Internet forums. Welcome to Terrorism 2.0.
Will Right-Wing Movies Save Hollywood?
The Daily Beast ponders the long-term implications of the overwhelming, $200 million success of “American Sniper” and a new report which says that conservative movies made three times more money than liberal ones in 2014. Films “with strong conservative, patriotic and/or capitalist content” numbered 110 last year, up from just 59 in 2009, according to Movieguide, the conservative watchdog group that authored the report. Does this mean the capitalists in Hollywood will finally get religion? It’s certainly hard to imagine them not following the money.
WHY
Meet – and Hear – the World’s First Bilingual Chimps
Researchers have found that a group of chimpanzees relocated from a Dutch zoo to the Scottish zoo began to grunt the word “apple” in a Scottish brogue. The scientists made recordings of the chimps’ vocalizations over three years and found that the chimps dropped their “Dutch” pronunciation in favor of that of their Scottish hosts. It’s yet more evidence of the complex language capabilities found in human beings’ primate cousins and their amazing ability to learn. When in Scotland, do as the Scots do … and say.
Boy Diagnosed With ‘Fear of Growing Up’
What if Peter Pan was really just suffering from gerascophobia? It’s an “excessive fear of aging” and has only been reported three times by clinicians. But it does seem to have a devastating effect on those who are simply afraid to grow up. The latest case centers on a 14-year-old boy in Mexico who went to extremes to hide his age, keep his weight down, retard his physical growth and alter his voice to sound younger. After treatment, the boy began standing upright, gained weight and started to “act his age.” The quite real condition he suffered is in stark contrast to the childishness displayed by certain members of Congress … who really don’t have a clinical excuse. Or do they have a note from their doctors?
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